Rudy Havenstein — How to Fix America’s Accountability Crisis (EP.255)
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Hi, I'm Jim O'Shaughnessy and welcome to Infinite Loops.

Sometimes we get caught up in what feel like infinite loops when trying to figure things out. Markets go up and down, research is presented and then refuted, and we find ourselves right back where we started. The goal of this podcast is to learn how we can reset our thinking on issues that hopefully leaves us with a better understanding as to why we think the way we think and how we might be able to change that

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Thanks for joining us. Now, please enjoy this episode of Infinite Loops. Well, hello, everybody. It's Jim O'Shaughnessy with yet another Infinite Loops. Today's guest I have been waiting to talk to for a long time. He is very much in demand, both on the podcast circuit and elsewhere.

My guest today is Rudi Havenstein. No, not the German head of the Reichsbank during the Weimar Republic of Germany that caused hyperinflation.

that basically collapsed the German economy, sowed unrest and instability in society, and crushed the citizens' trust in institutions like the political ones and the media ones. Gee, Rudy, that's sounding a little familiar.

And also gave rise to our good friend Adolf Hitler. This Rudy is an American who set up a Twitter account in 2013 to warn us here in the United States and the rest of the West about the dangers of hyperinflation.

Rudy, first off, welcome. I've been waiting to talk to you for a long time. Thank you. It's an honor to be talking to you. A pleasure. Thanks for having me. So we're roughly contemporaries. I guess my first question is, for people who don't think about this a lot, why don't we talk a little bit about hyperinflation? Because if you know the history of hyperinflation, of course, the Weimar Republic

Germany was a classic case, but recently Venezuela had essentially 1.7 million percent inflation between 2016 and 2018. Zimbabwe, but when I talk to people, they always say, well, yeah, that's Zimbabwe or that's Venezuela. The United States is the world's reserve currency. It's the biggest and most militarily powerful country in the world. That could never happen here.

Explain why that might be wrong. Well, you know, Germany wasn't a small backwater in the 20s either. I mean, it was a major European power even after losing World War I. I've been clear all along I'm not calling for – I mean, I wrote a post probably almost 10 years ago saying I'm not calling – I certainly don't think the United States is at imminent risk, and I think –

It's it'll happen other places first, obviously, if it happens. But I'm just saying we have to be careful that any nation that monetizes debt is putting itself on a dangerous path. And we have monetized the debt. I mean, if you know, they say that they're tapering the balance sheet. If you look at it on a semi log scale, it's really dangerous.

Not much. There's a lot of people expecting that they're going to have. I mean, I can't tell you how many podcasts I've listened to recently where people say, well, they're going to have to monetize the debt. I mean, Tom Honig the other day was talking to somebody and he said there's going to be a lot of pressure on the Fed to monetize the debt. And, you know, people are talking about, you know, 20 billion.

trillion dollar balance sheets or 30 trillion dollar balance sheets if we don't get our house in order so but i'm not calling for it by the way hyperinflation i've always made clear too is not very high inflation it's not like 70s inflation or the nine percent we just had it's a currency collapse it's a different animal it's i think very high inflations can lead to hyperinflations but it's night and day i'm not calling for it imminently but i'm just saying we gotta be you know we can't

What's the, is it Stein's law that what can't go on forever will stop? Yeah. So that's all. And, you know, I picked the guy because I always had an interest in that period of history. And I have a bunch of contemporary accounts written by people who lived through it of the hyperinflation, particularly Germany. And you can see how, like you pointed out in your intro, that

It absolutely destroys society in ways that I don't think we can appreciate. And my thing is if we ever go that route, and I really hope that it never does, and I'm not calling for it, but I'm just saying if we ever go that route with the world reserve currency, it would destroy the United States and it would destroy people.

you know, probably the greatest political experiment we've ever had, you know, in the last couple hundred years in this, in the history of the world. So I, I'd hate, you just have to be careful. You can't just say, well, we're in the United States so we can do whatever we want all the time. And that's, that's the thing I think we say in a lot of levels, you know, some country that we don't like, we'll invade them. You know, we don't, we, we need some, we need to send money. We'll print it. You know, I think we need, because we're Americans, we've got, you know, I've said before, people don't, Americans generally don't put themselves in other people's shoes and,

You know, look at the keep going, the sanctions and everything that they did. They told people like the Chinese and the Russians, hey, don't keep your money in U.S. assets because, you know, one day we might be mad at you and confiscate your your stuff. So without rule of law, you know, so that's dangerous, too. But it wasn't just, you know, and as I say, my name.

Rudy Havenstein was intended as a warning, not as encouragement. But it seems like the warning part has been ignored by our leaders. But I also I mean, I also came on for stock market other reasons, too, because I always, you know, I've been telling people I used to.

I still do send emails for years to friends and stuff just with news articles and stuff like my sub stack now, because most people are too busy, you know, trying to survive or trying to make a living to pay attention to the vagaries of what goes on in the stock market or in politics, you know. And so anyway, yeah, it's dangerous. Just be aware we're not we're not some special country that can't make mistakes. You know, I say that the FOMC now thinks they're so much smarter than the Reichsbank in 1923. And I don't think they are.

Yeah. And I have been fascinated by things like currency collapses for a long time. I also write like a lot of fiction stories and way back when in the 80s.

I wrote one and a friend of mine joked to me, the reason I started a publishing company was simply so I could publish all my own stuff. And that's a joke. That's a good plan. But now that after selling O'Shaughnessy Asset Management and our new venture, we actually do have a publishing company.

And one of the reasons why that we started that is we think that a lot of topics should be much more deeply explored. And back to kind of the fiction idea, back in the 80s, I wrote a treatment about the easiest way to destroy a country would be through destroying its currency.

And that was because it wasn't very good, I'll admit. You know, I was in my early 20s. But the reason for that is like currencies are stores of value. One of the things that always confuses me, and I'd love your opinion on this, is like the Bitcoin aficionados. Look, Bitcoin is a speculative asset. And if you want to invent a speculative asset that you can trade, okay.

but it's certainly not a store of value. And, and I sometimes in what, in my career in asset management, I was always struggling to get people to kind of understand that kind of understand inflation and real returns. And I'll tell you, man, in a couple of my books, I used real returns and real returns are those stripped of inflation. Okay. So, um,

People just did not like it. Why do you think it's hard for many people to really grok the impact and effects of inflation? I was just posting on that on RealReturns.

You know, what you were saying about the best way to destroy a country is destroy a currency. That's straight out of Lenin. There's a there's a great quote from Keynes. I mean, Keynes quoting Lenin in his book. Of course, I posted on all this that that is the best way to destroy a country. So we have stealing. And of course, it causes all sorts of ramifications. Why don't people I don't know. I mean, I think everybody, if you ask them, I mean, I've done surveys. Of course, they're not scientific, but, you know, I get a couple thousand replies. You know, what do you think?

is your, what do you think is the, your cost of living increase? Is it two point? Well, you know, I said, whatever the CPI was, or is it 10% or is it more or is, and everybody, I mean, I think I listed 10% as the highest and that one won by a, by a good margin. And then a lot of people were replying that it's what was higher than that. And I mean,

You know, someone could show, well, you know, look, we have this data series from the BLS and it's no, it's only 2%. But, you know, I know my, you know, everybody's going to add my, my auto insurance went up 41%.

You know, same everything. No, you know, and a lot of people said, oh, mine was worse than that. Other people said mine was 30. Mine was I mean, so it's not it's not two point seven. OK, I think everybody knows that. Now, why don't they think in terms of real? I don't know. I mean, I just posted a cartoon from a Federal Reserve, a New York comic book that they produced not that long ago. And.

It has a guy looking at his paycheck going, you know, what good is it if I make 3% more if my cost went up 5%? That's real. That's, you know, that's it. But so many people don't seem to understand that. I mean, look, they still, one of the favorites I see is retail sales. They announced that. That's not adjusted for inflation. I think the government has a huge incentive to understate inflation. I mean, that's it. First of all, and also all municipalities and all types of government, they want inflation.

Of course, they want things to be nominally more expensive because then they can, you know, they get more tax revenue, you know, whether it's property taxes or anything. So there's so and the media, of course, as I was ranting yesterday, is completely in the pocket of the Fed and the government. There's our financial media is our mainstream financial media is just abysmal. There's no. Did you see the press conference yesterday with Powell?

I did not know. There was a number of questions. There was one guy asked a question. I forget what it was, but I'm like, oh, that's a good question. Cause I'm always going, oh, they never ask any good questions. So he asked a good question. Powell goes, I'm not going to discuss that, you know, and there's no followup because if that guy gets aggressive and says, oh, hang on, you know, chairman Powell, you need, you need to address this. He won't be invited. That guy won't be invited to the next press conference. And

And they're all handpicked. It's always the same guy. Steve Leesman got the first question yesterday. If it's not him, it's Timoros or one of the others. And, you know, Timoros has written a book glorifying the Fed, as has Hilsenrath. Hilsenrath wrote a book called he said he called it a love story about economics. And the title of the book was Yellen. So we're not getting we're not getting objective reporting out of our financial media. And, you know, there's a great clip that this guy made.

of uh everybody on cnbc pumping sbf you know about oh i mean is he the new jp morgan is he the new this that the other thing and it's hilarious it goes on for like two and a half minutes and all they're doing is just saying how he's the you know the savior of crypto and everything and anyway i just got off on a tangent on the financial media but people should read the lenin quote about inflation as far as how it destroys society and you know

That's their stated mandate. Their legal mandate is stable prices, which would be zero, I think, most people. But they've somehow come up with 2%, and there's a hilarious clip of Powell trying to explain 2%. And his argument is basically, well, everybody else is doing it, which is...

A mom wouldn't accept that as an excuse. But Congress does because Congress, you know, Congress loves, I mean, the way I put it is the Fed is Congress's drug dealer. So, you know, they're not going to stop anything. They love everything the Fed's doing because it enables them to

To keep printing. I mean, as Kevin Warsh of all people said, you know, it was the Fed that got political when they decided to cut rates to zero and buy up all the bonds that Trump and Biden were creating, you know, the debt. It was the Fed said, sure.

You know, I mean, there's no independence. It's their part of the Treasury, basically, except when they don't like the president. I'm sure they would have cut rates if Biden, if Harris had won. I'm not big on that. But I think a lot of people who've worked there have said that, you know, like Joseph Wang or I think Whalen, Chris Whalen said it the other day, that the Fed is overwhelmingly, I mean, overwhelmingly democratic, liberal institution. They they're, you know, borderline socialists. But the socialism they do is for the rich, you know.

I joked that I had a tweet where I said, you know, I mostly make flippant comments about serious issues as opposed to the Fed, which transfers wealth upwards.

So, I mean, that's my view of basically what they've done, the Cantillon effect over the last, at least post-Greenspan. And that's an area of interest for me because as I was coming up, you know, we all looked at Volcker as kind of a hero, right, for breaking the back of inflation by pushing interest rates up. So when I bought my first house, when I got married, when I was 22, I was like thrilled that I got the owner to write the

a note to me because mortgage rates were so high. It was just like impossible. Oh, you did sell the finance. Yeah, I did. Yeah. And he was, I think if I recall correctly, it was around 14%. And I was like the cat that swallowed the canary. I just thought that was the greatest deal ever. And so, uh,

One thing, though, that in my mind, at least, was a real tipping point. I'd like your view on it. And that is the great financial crisis. So.

To give the prelude to that, there was a huge crisis in the late 80s, early 90s called the savings and loan crisis. And the government under George Bush Sr. took it on. But after they took it on, 1,000 people were prosecuted. 800 were convicted.

Many spent time in jail and paid huge civil fines. They were barred from banking. In other words, they were like, guess what, guys? You weren't playing by the rules, and here are the consequences. Go forward to the great financial crisis of 2008. One person.

went to jail one person yeah the rest of it was entirely monetized we socialized all of the fuck ups of both government and the industry like i'm not gonna let one or the other off the hook here and and i remember i i keep journals and i went back before when i was getting ready to talk to you

And I wrote, this is going to be very, very bad going forward that nobody is being held accountable. I think it devastated the non-elite psyche in America to see that. I didn't lose a house, but there were people who did lose houses. And then they're watching, you know, Lloyd Blankfein become a billionaire. You know, it was a failed hedge fund manager who got somehow miraculously became a taxpayer-fed bank. Yeah, that was huge. I mean, I think that was huge.

When you know you got this populist uprising, you know, and populist, you know, I said, I'm taking back the word populist because it means basically you're interested, you're advocating for the what's best for the common people, for most people. And we've done the exact opposite, I think, this entire century. And.

Yeah, it's a problem. I think, you know, Ken Lay was George W. Bush's greatest donor. And when Enron went down, he was actually sentenced to prison. I think he died awaiting before he went to prison. But that was, you know, what you say, I'm not a fan of George W. Bush, but...

his top donor, you know, Kenny boy, uh, was going to go to prison and under Obama and Holder, I think Holder was a bank lawyer who came in and created, I have a clip of this to a too big to jail theory. And no, he literally did. And I, I, well,

When I go through and listen to this later, I'll probably just post these things. Sometimes I annotate these things and say, here, this is what I'm talking about. Yeah. And then when he left, he went back to the same law firm to defend banks, Eric Holder. Yeah.

A lot of people think he's some sort of progressive great guy, but no, he's not. He works for the banks. And Obama was the bank's best friend, too. You know, and I used to say that I used to listen to Obama's speeches until I found out they didn't mean anything. You know, so and I was I voted for him in the first time because I was so angry at what the George W. Bush administration had done.

But Bill Black is a guy, he was a bank examiner back when you were talking during the savings and loan crisis. And yeah, they put, I think they had a, I think he said they had like a couple thousand criminal referrals. So maybe a thousand went to actually trial.

Um, it was a big deal. People went to jail, the CEOs and stuff. And, you know, the scene at the end of the big short where Steve Carell is just sitting there going, shaking his head on the phone going, you know, they're, they knew it. They knew they were going to get bailed out. You know, that's, you know, there's a, that's when I just like,

That period of time, because I'd followed the housing bubble, you know, all through the early 2000s, mid-2000s. You know, ever since Paul Krugman said we need a housing bubble to replace the dot-com bubble. And, of course, Greenspan accommodated him. So I watched the whole thing. And when they – the way they handled that and they just – I mean, Geithner, who then went on to become president of Warburg Pincus –

When they did what they did or didn't do what they should have done, I think I was appalled. And of course, I was very aware of what was going on. But I think even the Joe Sixpack that

just saw what was going on in his neighborhood or losing his job or the house's foreclosure, I think they, everyone had a sense that something was not right and you needed. And I, I've said before, if you would have had, if, if they would have prosecuted, you know, some top wall street guys who committed fraud. I mean, that's Ben Hunt, you know, but he's talking about Lehman. Lehman was fraud, flat out fraud that, you know, Ben knows more about this than me, but he said he could, it's, they prosecuted all day long. It's no problem. If they would have done that,

Instead of giving these guys $500 million bonuses on their way out, I don't think you'd have Trump today. I think that – now, Trump, if you remember, in 20 – and I'm not a Trumper. In 2016 and 2015, he's starting to run for president. I think he did it. I didn't think he knew he was going to win, but he –

He's talking about things. I have a whole thread on this where I talk about this. He's bashing the banks. He's bashing George W. Bush for the stupid wars. And, you know, if you look at my pinned tweet, that's all it is. It's the kleptocracy and the wars. I mean, that's my main focus now. I mean, hyperinflation is a minor, really minor thing now. But I have long threads on it and I touch base with it once in a while. But-

What you brought up, I was going to, you asked, I was listening to your Eddie Elphabine or whatever his name is, but nice guy. He's a nice guy. He is a good guy. At the end, you asked him, you said like, what's two things or what's one thing that you think is very important now? And, and.

What you just said about the difference between the savings and loan crisis and the 2008, 2009 and the 2020, too. There was a lot of broad stuff going on there, too, is accountability. I keep going back to accountability, whether it's the white collar bank criminals or for generals who lose wars for my entire lifetime base, you know, or most of it. You know, I mean, when's the last war we won?

There's no accountability. Where was the accountability for Afghanistan or for Iraq or for 2008? As you point out, there's none. You know, Geithner shouldn't been run out of town on a rail, put an Anki. They gave him a Nobel Prize. The guy was basically the captain of the Titanic when it hit an iceberg that everyone's many people see. They love to say afterwards nobody saw it coming. That's you know, that's nonsense. A bunch of people saw it coming. They were just ignored or fired or laughed at.

I mean, the people talking about the housing bubble in like 06, 05, 06 were brought on Fox or CNBC and laughed at. They'd bring them on and laugh at them. You know, here's a housing bearer.

And no accountability at all for anything that's gone on. The whole COVID thing where we basically, you know, Australia is putting people in camps and where people are getting fired from their jobs because they didn't want to get an experimental vaccine. And there's no accountability. Everyone's like pretending, oh, well, let's move beyond that. We don't want to. Well, you know, we had a bunch of authoritarians, you know, running amok. And I think there should be accountability.

But anyway, just to, you know, go stop going off, but accountability is huge. People need to be held responsible. Now, if you're a guy and you screw up at work and you get fired or you get reprimanded, that's what people know. They know, Hey, I screwed up. They see, they see these guys. Oh, you know, look at Yellen. She's been around for 50 years, almost at the fed off and on and her other, her other gigs. I think she's been appalling for her records and appalling for most Americans because

Now, she's set for life. She's already loaded and she can go make $300,000 or $400,000 or $500,000 for a speech now. You know, it's normal. People can't do that. And she's, you know, we're getting back to inflation. Inflation is theft. I mean, Bernanke said inflation is a tax.

And he said it's too high to Ron Paul. And when he said it, inflation was around 2%. He also said we're never going to allow inflation to rise above 2%. We could hike rates. Remember he said that on 60 Minutes? He goes, we could stop that in 15 minutes. Well, we're now on 44 months in a row with CPI over 2%. And I think their mandate is 0%, but, you know, I'm a crank, right? So they failed on all levels. There's a great quote from, again, I posted on Twitter.

from the Fed minutes in the 90s, where Greenspan's talking and Yellen asked him, what do you think inflation, what do you think the official rate should be, the target? And I think it was Greenspan says, well, it should be zero. I think it was 96, zero. And Yellen goes, no, I think it should be like 2%. I mean, as Jim Grant says, you know, if work is heartbeats, then, you know, when you take away someone's income through inflation, you're stealing from them. You know, you really are. You know, it's like, he calls it monetary shoplifting.

And there's another great quote from the Minutes where Greenspan is talking about, well, we could increase productivity or we could monkey with the CPI numbers to get them lower. I mean, and then there's laughter. You know, I always love when the Fed Minutes have laughter in them because it usually means something bad's going on. But he literally joked about that in a Fed Minute meeting. Why don't we just monkey with the CPI?

And of course, you know, as Grant Williams, the great Grant Williams points out, you know, every adjustment to CPI is always to lower it. You know, they have a massive, massive incentive to understate inflation. I think they do. And I think they do by a huge amount. And I think that's a big reason for why people are upset when you have the greatest economy ever. You know, everyone was telling us until recently, you know, until Trump got elected. You know, remember, I mean, Biden, Harris, all the newspapers, you know, did you see the quote from...

Wall Street Journal, the economy's great. You know, the people are wrong, you know, or the Jonathan Chait said that, yeah, Paul Krugman is right on the economy and you're wrong. And they're, you know, imagine that the hubris and the arrogance of these people. And I always joke, you know, that they don't have people who aren't millionaires on CBC to talk about inflation. You know what I mean? I keep like when I get in a disagreement with some FinTwit guy, including some very prominent people.

people. I say, well, you know what, let's have this, you know, on FinTwit, you know, I can hold my own, but why don't we go to a supermarket and you could tell everybody about how low inflation is, you know? And we've never had them. I said, let's have a meeting like an aisle nine and just put a table up and have people come walk by, you know, we can do a podcast there. Right. It's like, I don't know. I mean, I try and stick up. I grew up, you know, middle, very middle class, you know? And, and so that's where my heart is, you know, and that's who I fight for because nobody fights for, you don't see anybody middle-class on CNBC ever. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. And, you know, one of my big things, I'm not a big fan of politicians on either side of the aisle. Oh, same here. But my big deal is, like, if I have anything that defines me politically, it is that I am fiercely anti-authoritarian. And one of the things that worried me, for example, you mentioned the 2006 period. I was one of those people. I was at Bear Stearns at the time, and I was worried.

walking around telling anyone I would listen to me. You know, if I could short my house, I would. But, you know, they had a CDO hedge fund that was doing really well. So I was told to, and I'll use the polite version, O'Shaughnessy, shut the fuck up. Right. Because, you know, I believe passionately that the playing field should be level and that if you've got a level playing field and accountability, things work much, much better

than when you have this two-tier system. And, you know, one of the things, for example, all of the asset management companies that I work

formed, have my name in them. And I did that because I was talking to my wife when I was founding my first one when I was in my 20s. And I was trying to, you know, this is in the 80s and everyone had cool names, right? And so I was trying to think of a really cool name for this new asset management company. And my wife looked at me and she goes,

Um, weren't you just telling me about how JP Morgan, the man solved the 1907 crisis because of, uh,

the authority that he held over others. And also then you continued, I tend to go on tirades. You continued by telling me that banking worked a hell of a lot better when the partners had to actually put their names on the firm and actually make good for any losses. And so I'm like, you know what? You're right. I am going to name it after myself.

And one of the reasons for that is literally talking about putting skin in the game, you're putting your entire reputation in the game. That's right. And like, to me, those things are just so incredibly straightforward. Yeah.

That watching the machinations of like, well, yeah. Or, or your note of the laughter during the fed minutes. It's like, I do find myself something you talk about a lot. Like,

President Eisenhower warned us about this in his farewell address. He basically, you know, he said to wear the military industrial complex, you know, that leads to forever wars, that leads to us, you know, paying basically the full freight of our Western allies defense budgets because that seemed like a good idea during the Cold War. Like, do you see a path back towards accountability, towards a level playing field?

I hope so. I mean, you've got some semblance of it now with Trump. I mean, of course, if you don't like Trump, then this is all horrible. But I think he's trying to hold some people accountable, close down some programs, maybe fire some people. You know, you've got, whether you like it or not, you've got a new sheriff in town at like the DOD. And I hope Tulsi Gabbard gets in. I actually hope RFK Jr. gets in because, you know,

People are like, oh my God, he has this view and that view. And I'm like, well, you know what?

What we've had is not working. You know what I mean? And I think I listened to his podcast for years and he has he does a great job. I mean, I like the guy. Do I agree with everything? Absolutely not. Do I agree with everything Tulsi Gabbard has done or said? Absolutely not. But I still think they're better, perhaps, than the alternative. And, you know, as I tell I'm very suspicious of Donald Trump and the people surrounding him, but I'm I'm quite happy that Kamala Harris lost, you know, so it's you can I

We need common ground. That's why I like guys like, you know, Ron Paul, who's, you know, just amazing guy. And Dennis Kucinich, who's the probably opposite Ron Paul on, you know, 80 percent of issues. But they're friends and they did legislature together because they agree on some things. They agree on, for example, being anti stupid wars, you know.

um, what I call my, my Psalm rule. S O M M E. Don't get into stupid wars, but, uh, but I like that common ground. So like, there's people that I, that follow me and I follow them and, and we agree on like some huge, you know, Venn diagram of stuff, but, but I think they think I'm nuts on over here and I think they're nuts over there, but,

I don't I choose not to like pick on the part that I disagree with them. I might read repost things that they posted. I agree, as I have to tell people sometimes it's like just because when I quote someone, I'm not endorsing everything.

single thing they've ever said, written or done. You know what I mean? I think, but there are people, I mean, I've quoted Karl Marx before, you know, I've quoted, you know, Lennon, I've quoted Lennon. Does that mean I support Lennon? No, but I mean, sometimes, you know, people you disagree with can say things that are very pertinent. So I think people need to calm down, not have a litmus test of,

you know, like I won't do this podcast with you unless you and I agree on, you know, here's a hundred issues you have to agree with me on. I mean, I don't believe in that at all. If we agree on 10, I'm fine with that. Let's talk about those 10. And maybe if you want to talk, talk about a few of the others, but, um, yeah, so common ground is very important to me. And, um, uh, so I try to, that's how I try to operate, you know, with people and, and some people you can't reach, you know, but, um, the ones you can, it's, it's worth it.

Yeah, and that's another thing we actually agree on. I definitely, I often say that if you think that you can know all of my political or social views by simply seeing one of them, then you are captive of an ideology that is going to be really hard for you to break out of. And I definitely, I think it would be great knowledge.

to find a coherent way in which people who, like even people or institutions that vehemently disagree with one another on many, many things, why don't we experiment with putting them in a room, like putting them in front of a jury system and having them debate things and having the jury say, okay, who's more compelling or this idea, not who, see, even I fuck it up.

Not who is more compelling. What idea is more compelling? And, you know, they did an experiment. I can't remember when. It was probably more than 10 years ago where they took a very, very conservative political think tank and they put them in a room with a very liberal political think tank. And they said, don't come out of here until you guys can come up with 10 ideas that both of you agree with.

And like, it took a lot of time, but it worked. And they did come out with those 10 ideas. Now, did any of them get enacted? Probably not. But the idea that the, the isolation that we've seen develop in these, these private echo chambers comes, I think very easily because, you know, confirmation bias, the minute we believe something, we are literally almost blinded to any information that disagrees with what

with what our beliefs are. And so we tend to cocoon in our little bubble of information and literally cannot or will not understand the points that people who disagree with us are making. And obviously, at least obviously to me, that is horrible for society. You need cognitive diversity. Like,

you know, with all of the talk about, you know, diversity, all that kind of stuff. Hey, I totally agree that we need cognitive diversity, but what did it end up being? It ended up being about surface appearances, like what color you are, what religion you are, you know, what group do you belong to? And then, and then saying, well, if you are this color or this sex or this sexual preference, then you must agree with all of these things like that.

To me, that is like one of the worst outcomes. Cognitive diversity, on the other hand, is very, very useful because like I'm sure I'm wrong about a ton of things. And so what what how do I get less wrong? I get less wrong by allowing error correction in the way I think about the world.

And the way you error correct is you see some compelling arguments that differ with the ideas you're holding.

And like, you know, one of my things that I'm very bullish about AI is really good at steel manning arguments. And so one of the things that I do is I'll take arguments that I fundamentally disagree with, and then I will put them in to a large language model and have them steel man that argument.

And you know what? It like it steals from you the ability to say, oh, all those guys are idiots and those ideas are worthless because you know what? Some of them are. And one of the things that we do when we attach ideas to a specific individual is.

is it just makes it so easy for the ad hominem type of argument. Like you mentioned Kennedy, very, very easy. If you look at those hearings that are going on, he's done a lot of things that are pretty easy to attack, right? But that doesn't determine whether he would be a good choice for health and human services. But as you pointed out,

Given what's happened, it hasn't worked. And when things don't work, you should fix them, in my opinion. Call me a crazy radical. But if things are not working, you should work towards solutions. Working towards solutions for things that are really catastrophically not working should be inclusive, not just one group over another. I mean, do you think...

Am I just is this just a pipe dream? I think people need to do some introspection. I think the Democratic Party and the media in particular, and I'm not a fan of the Republican Party. So you have to explain that to if I say something about one, it's, you know, they have done no introspection. You know, the Democratic Party in 2016 should have said.

Wait a minute. I mean, the Washington Post said Trump had zero percent chance of winning, you know, like, you know, a couple weeks before he won. And they should have said, wait a minute, people got obviously for this guy to win this maniac this, you know, this time he was Hitler. And I think last time he was Hitler, too.

So our message, there must be something. But you'd think they'd say, wow, we must have done something wrong. Now, immediately, and of course, Hillary echoed this too. She was an election denier for years. She said, they said, oh, no, it's Russia. They went with Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia.

And then and they so they basically did. And for two, you know, for four years, it was not my president. He's the Russians stole the election. He's not a legitimate president. Resist, blah, blah, blah. Then in 2020, you got the flip side.

Trump loses. I know a lot of people question that, but people question every election. And then the Republicans are saying the election was stolen and the Democrats are all up in arms. Oh, my God. How dare you question the integrity of our election electoral system? Well, and I'm like, hang on. Didn't you guys just spend four years questioning the integrity electoral system? So there's no self-awareness. There's no introspection. You know, remember the night Trump won just a few weeks ago or what is it in November?

I'm watching MSNBC, which I broke my rule of never watching cable news, which I've had for eight years now, I think. And they're all in there. Oh, it was, you know, it was misogynist Mexicans and and anti misogynist black guys that elected Trump. I mean, they're just they were like, I'm looking at them going, are you guys going to be this clueless again? And and so there's people need to have some introspection.

And the other thing is, you know, I grew up years ago. I learned I could argue with you, Jim, about some issue. Very could be a very touchy issue. And then when we're done, we're done yelling at each other. We'll go, ah, screw it. Let's go have a beer. And I totally, totally, I still can do that now. What you especially learned in the last, since 2016 is a lot of people can't do that.

I found out that you disagree with me on this issue. I hate you. I can never be your friend. I'm not inviting you to Thanksgiving. I mean, it's tragic. Look at the celebrities. What was the one from The View or whatever telling people not to go to their not to go have Thanksgiving with their family if they voted for Trump or something? I mean, it's so absurd. Neither Trump nor Harris is worth losing friends over or family over. OK, honestly, come on, guys. Let's let's have a little perspective here.

So that's one thing people have to know. You can disagree on something and you don't need to hate that person. I've been convinced over the years. I've been – I got – I was probably initially pro-Iraq war because I'm thinking, well, hell, they've got smallpox. He's got nukes. And I had friends telling me, no, this is BS, man. And they were right. And I quickly – when I saw – I think it was within a week of the invasion that –

There were people like looting nuclear, you know, like hospitals of nuclear equipment and all that. You know what I mean? Like radiation stuff. And our soldiers are just standing there watching. I'm like, what the hell is going on here? We're there for – these guys could make dirty bombs theoretically. But I remember them saying like, you know, not only Condoleezza Rice saying, you know, it's going to be a mushroom cloud. You know, this is going to be our first warning of Saddam. But they were talking about anthrax and they were talking about smallpox and they were talking about all sorts of things.

So, and then there's a whole side story about how the Patriot Act got passed with the anthrax attacks, which were, you know, from America.

But the other thing, I make a point to follow people who I disagree probably 90% about, but with, and they probably, and they disagree with me with 90%, but we have common ground on some issue. And they, like me, don't have a litmus test. They're willing to follow me in spite of all the stupid stuff that I'm wrong on, you know? But I do that. So I was looking through, I do lists, you know, and so I, you know, kind of,

on Twitter to kind of, you know, make it a little more readable. And, uh, there's a couple of people I'm reading all these like, um, really far right and far left, um, retweets and posts. And I'm, and I'm thinking, ah, should I unfollow or should I? And I'm like, no, no, just leave it. And, and because I want to see, I want, I really do. When I was back in college,

For a year, I subscribed to the National Review, which is, people don't know, it's very conservative, and the Nation, which is considered to be liberal. And I subscribed to both for a year. And the way I put it is I read them cover to cover. And I haven't since, but I did at that time. And I remember thinking with each of them, about a third of it I agreed with. I thought, yeah, that's right. And then about a third of each, I said, eh, I disagree, but I understand where they're coming from.

And then the remaining third was, this is, you know, this is batshit crazy. You know, this is nuts. So I found that on the left and the right. So I found that very useful to at least people should be aware. Like I tell people, I posted before about Chris Hedges.

who I think is, talk about anti-authoritarian, and do I agree with him on everything? Absolutely not, but I think it's important for, he'd be considered a very left-wing guy in America by American standards. I think I posted that conservatives should listen, should read this guy. You know, you may be all upset and angry and everything, but you should read him just to get, just to kind of get an idea. As I pointed out, I grew up as like a Cold War hawk, and I read a book by Noam Chomsky called Deterring Democracy. Sure.

And again, I have a lot of problems with Chomsky, but as you point out, let's talk about the ideas, not the person, right? So his book, Determined Democracy, which is basically about the – I think it was the first Iraq War in the 90s, was – he explained a lot of American foreign policy to me that never made sense. Like why is –

You know, Batista, good guy, Castro is bad. Or why is, you know, Saudi Arabia is wonderful and Iran's bad, you know, or I didn't understand that. And the way Chomsky, maybe I'm doing him, not doing him justice, but the way he phrased it is, are you friendly to U.S. business interests?

Then you're an ally. And if you're not, you're not. Human rights means nothing. Democracy means nothing. That's what we say. You know, I don't know if it was Berenson or whoever said that when Victoria Nuland used to go around talking about freedom and democracy all around the world, you know, he said –

She said that's that's that's only for American audiences. He goes, nobody, nobody outside the US believes any of this, that we that we really care about freedom and democracy. I mean, one of our best allies all these years has been Saudi Arabia. And if you remember back before his first term, Trump was saying they were the guys that did 9-11. I mean, he was a bash in the Saudis.

And then the problem is, you know, so remember I had to say, and he was bashing the banks, he's bashing the wars, he's bashing the Saudis. Remember he was making fun of Ted Cruz for taking money from Goldman. And, and then when he gets elected in 2016, he puts Goldman in charge of his, of his administration, basically replacing Obama's city group guys. And his first visit was to Saudi Arabia where he gets a little medal put around his neck. And he,

As far as I think white collar crime prosecutions declined to the lowest on record under Trump, you know, so all this bank bashing and now on wars to his. I mean, we still killed a lot of people in countries. Most people couldn't find on a map, but he didn't start any any new ones really as has been too common among presidents lately. So.

On that alone, I think he's less of a, you know, mouth-breathing warmonger than we're used to Trump. So I will give him credit for that, and I hope it continues. Although he's made some decisions that make me question that. But like I said, I'm suspicious. But I'm willing to, you know, take the good things. I think sending, you know, arresting illegal immigrants who commit crimes is a good thing. You know, I think not having a porous open border is a good thing. I

I'm just so like I said, I'm so I'm very suspicious of Trump and I'm sure glad Harris didn't win. You know, I was having a conversation with a friend the other day and I was talking about Orwell's 1984. And I said the really terrifying thing about that book was newspeak.

And my friend was like, what? And I went, do you really? And I've read the book several times, right? So, so, so applicable today. Yeah. Right. And it is. And that terrifies me. Right. Because the objective of new speak was to make it impossible for the in quotes, citizens of these totalitarian societies to even conceive that

of an idea that differed with the party's policies. Right. And when you think about that and then you kind of look, uh, I like you, I stopped watching cable TV news of all sorts probably now 15 years ago. Good for you. And one of the reasons I did it was just, I was seeing the beginnings of that kind of hypnotic propaganda. And,

And by the way, like what's really funny is I would bring it up. Now, listen, I live in the bluest of blue areas, right? I'm in Connecticut and New York. And like, so most of my friends are, are very liberal and,

And so I would bring this thesis up with them and they would say, you know what? You're absolutely right. Fox News is nothing but propaganda. And then I would say, yeah, yeah, I agree. But I'm also saying that MSNBC is nothing but propaganda. And they would pause.

And they'd say, well, I don't know. I think that they're mostly straight news. And then I would have the conversation with a conservative friend and they would immediately say, well, of course, MSNBC is pure propaganda, but you can get pretty good news. Right. And like I'd never really like a couple, I convinced a couple friends that.

It's all propaganda, right? It's just, this is a different flavor over here than the flavor over here. And like, it's one of the reasons why at our new company, we have all these new media efforts. I definitely sense that the old models, in fact, we have a series on it called the great reshuffle. The old playbooks don't work anymore, right? Like I, I, I tease the world economic forum all the time on Twitter because

Because when I watch their clips, it's kind of like, are you so tone deaf that you literally think that this is going to convince someone to back your proposals? And the answer is, yeah, they really are that tone deaf. The Fed's the same way.

Yeah. And so like, again, I always try to look for things to root for as opposed to root against. Right. Because it's pretty easy to be against a bunch of shit. I mean, obviously there, there are horrible things happening in the world all the time. And of course it,

We could have an entire five-hour conversation about all that's wrong with the world. But if that's all we do, what are we doing? We're just propagating that meme, if you will, to make people feel terrible. Do you see any green shoots? No.

where, well, you mentioned Trump not getting into as many wars, something I absolutely support. In other words, don't get into foreign wars, if anyone needs me to clarify that. But do you see other, specifically on the financial side, do you see any green shoots that is something that we could collectively root for? Well, I've noted that in the 2016 and 2020 elections,

and democratic party, um, platforms. They called for the, uh, bringing back glass Stiegel and transparency.

Trump is on record as supporting the return of Glass-Steagall, which, if you remember, was I do remember. Oh, yeah, of course you remember, but I mean, the audience, 1999 was it, I think, under Clinton signed it, but it was very bipartisan, probably more GOP than Democrat. And it basically took away all of the protections we had from banks being publicly backed gambling casinos since 1933. I mean, they learned a lesson in the Great Depression that then passed this law that that

You know, we didn't have these bank failures with rare occasion until, you know, until they repeal Glass-Steagall. And then, of course, within a few years, we have Great Depression II, you know, or GFC. But I call it Great Depression II because I think for half of America, it really was and still is.

Yeah, that's something that they could do. So let's bring back Glass-Steagall. Let's have – I said the other day there's a great site that escapes me right now that does a list of all the financial crimes and the fines and everything. Bank of America is at the top and you're talking like $57 billion in fines or something in the last –

not many years and JP Morgan's up there too. And, and of course the Citigroup, all the usual suspects, Goldman. But I say, hey, why, why is it that the, it's always the shareholders that are, and the brick and mortar of these, of these banks that are committing all these crimes, you know, including felonies. I think, I think JP Morgan has been convicted of five felonies.

But apparently these felonies are done – are not done by any executives or any individuals at the bank. They're done by shareholders because they pay the fines. It's like an income thing for the DOJ. So maybe if we started prosecuting white-collar crime again, like I said, under Trump last time, it hit all-time low. And I don't know if it would be any better under Biden.

I don't know if he would have been aware if it was any better under him or not, but they need to start doing that because then people say, okay, I feel like the ship is being righted. You need to change. You need to get, get people, boost people's morale. Yeah. And I think, and I pointed out in prior interviews that I think most Americans feel like the, our leaders are, and this includes not just the president, but the Senate and the Congress care more about people,

of pharma lobbyists or care more about people in Ukraine or people in Israel than they do about Americans. I mean, there's a great article from a couple of years ago about Scranton

And it says, you know, people in Scranton, you know, Ukraine is a very small issue for them. They're worried about they see that there's something wrong with the American dream. There's something there's a malaise. There's a, you know, it's almost like a Carter era type feeling. And, and so instead of Reagan, you get Trump this time, but, and, but because I think people wanted to change and I hope that, that they're going to see a change. And I hope Trump takes advantage of these four years and the Republican Congress and

um, take advantage of this so they don't get voted out. And we go back to, you know, I don't know, Gavin Newsom or something, you know, and as someone in the, uh, the people's Republic of California, that's not a good thing. So, but it would get, Hey, I'll actually, I support him running for president because it would get him the hell out of California, but maybe Karen Bass will be his running mate. But I mean, yeah, there's things like we can do accountability, accountability. I keep coming back to that. And,

People need to see, because if you notice, like when they were like, you know, in California or all over the country, really, but in California, especially, you know, they'd have these guys just go in and just take whatever they want and run out of the store. Yeah.

And a lot of times you'd have videos of this, people would film it and, you know, security guard would be standing there twiddling his thumbs because he doesn't want to get fired because they tell him don't stop anybody. And you'd actually see patrons, patrons going out and grabbing the stuff out of the cart and throwing it and fighting with these thieves, these felons. And because they're like, wait a minute, this is wrong. I play by the rules. I don't break the law. I don't steal. I don't steal.

Why is this guy getting away with it? And I think on a, so they see it on a small scale and they get upset. I think on a large scale, they see it too. You know, how the hell is John Mack and Lloyd Blank fine billionaires today? You know, that's not right. I mean, most people have no idea who those guys are, but I'm saying someone like me, that, that angers me in the same way that it angers me if I see a shoplifter, you know, running out with a TV or something, you know, it's like, Hey buddy,

You know, I'd love to have a, you know, some fancy new TV too, but I'm going to pay, I'm going to work and pay for it, you know, and people, people have a sense of justice and right and wrong, your average guy. And I think they see that there's no justice and no right and wrong. Once you get above a certain level, particularly if you're at a large financial institution, because, uh,

You know, as Eric Holder said, you know, well, we can't, you know, it might hurt the economy if we prosecute J.P. Morgan or if we prosecute Citigroup. I mean, Citigroup should not exist, you know. But neither should a lot of these banks. But, you know, this goes back to Glass-Steagall. So let's say I'm dictator, which I'd love to be. Tomorrow, first item of legislation. No, let's say I'm president. First item of legislation is reenact Glass-Steagall, break up these big banks. I think even Kevin Warsh was just saying that, and he's a Fed insider. He loves the Fed.

But at least he's got more common sense than most of these Fed guys, I think, from over the years listening to him. I think he has an understanding. You talk about cluelessness. I've said before, I don't know that there's any group of people with less self-awareness than central bank officials. And WEF guys are just like that. They live in their own rarefied world. But the St. Louis Fed or the New York Fed or even the Federal Reserve, sometimes they'll have these tweets and they'll say things like,

uh housing has increasingly become a problem for young people or something you know here join our we're having a conference on this to discuss it and i'm like do you guys have any clue about what you did like buying you know almost three trillion dollars of mbs and its effect on the housing market you guys you know which they had zero in 2008 right they still have like 2.3 trillion i mean and no one and this goes back to the media too no one says hey guys could

Could the Fed monetizing a few trillion of MBS have affected the mortgage market at all? I don't know. Cluelessness is a big problem in our society, especially at our major institutions. There's no accountability going back to like the Fed conference yesterday. I was talking to you, I think, maybe before we started recording. They don't admit they don't.

There's no accountability. As Joseph Wang, who's from the New York Fed, is a guy you might be familiar with on Twitter. He says, you know, all the people that said inflation was transitory and no big deal, all the people who fought for that average inflation targeting, that insane policy that they adopted around 2020, all those people are still there. They still have their jobs.

And this is a guy that used to work at the New York Fed as a trader. And he says, you know, there's no incentive to care. You know, they don't care if inflation is 20%. They don't care if we have to have a recession to –

They're not going to lose their job. In fact, I think the only people that ever lost their job were like at the Fed were people like who got fired for not getting the vaccine at the Minneapolis Fed. And I've asked Neil Kashkari if he's reinstated those people with back pay yet. Not that I think they were doing anything productive, but there was there was they fired him, you know, and that was probably the only time people at the Fed were ever fired. They're certainly never fired for making bad decisions. Otherwise, Janet Yellen would have been out of out of a job, you know, decades ago.

So I agree on accountability and I'm always trying to figure out, okay, so if we restored accountability, if we restored some kind of litmus rule of law where you're either above that bright line or you're below that bright line. I remember when I was coming up.

uh in the industry in the uh 80s and early 90s like our council would literally rewrite commentaries that i would write because he he used to joke jim you write like emile lagasse cooks bam you know and and he and he would be and he would say i love i love it but this is puffery

And I'm like, puffery? And he goes, and I was like looking at other things that I really kind of thought were buffering. But like those rules were in place and we knew there was a bright line. Here's what you can do as an asset manager and here's what you can't do. But also the idea of I was bound by the fiduciary rule. In other words, when you're a fiduciary, you have to put your client's interests ahead of your own.

And I take that shit really seriously. So, for example, at all of our companies, our employees, including me, could only invest our equity investments in our own strategies. Right. We believed very deeply that the cook should eat their own cooking. And to me, that was just like, you know, kind of table stakes. And so it was with like just increasing confusion.

as I saw all of that kind of go by the wayside. And it's just like literally when you remove accountability, like you're fucked basically, I think. And so, okay, Glass-Steagall, what other kind of ideas would you have to right the ship? Because you also make the very good point that like what we've seen is kind of like

When I was growing up, I was transfixed by the, I was, okay, I'm outing myself as an Uber nerd here, but like I was 13 years old during the Watergate hearings and that summer, that's all I did was watch those because I was so like transfixed by, and this sounds silly, but like the American system worked.

Right. You had you had Nixon committing these crimes, trying to do the cover up. The Senate was like, yeah, that's not going to fly, man. And he was forced to resign because they would have impeached him.

And so it's like there's this confluence of events where you see the media, right? You mentioned taking publications and it was funny because I also did the same as you, except I took National Review and Mother Jones. Sure. I don't even know if Mother Jones is still around. But Mother Jones back then was the most left wing. Yeah.

magazine that you could read. And I would read them simultaneously. In other words, I would read them together and try to learn, okay, so is there any kind of synthesis here? And by the way, as you found, no doubt, similar, yeah, it might have only been like 15 or 20%, but there was a synthesis of those types that you could say, get behind. My challenge is like,

How do you, other than through the market, and again, I'm a huge fan of actual free markets, not rigged markets, not regulatory capture markets, but free markets where if you

fuck up, guess what? You go bankrupt. You lose your company. You, you know, you got to roll your sleeves up and try again. What other things could we look to root for staying with that theme that might be helpful with the overall lack of accountability of all of our institutions? Basically, I've been convinced now of term limits.

For years, I kind of said, well, you know, we have term limits every two years in Congress and every, you know, six years in the Senate. But Paula Macro on Twitter, who I was talking with recently, he did a he made a great point that the one thing that our our founders who wrote the Constitution never considered, never conceived of was that there would be people who would want to do politics as a career or the people who would expect to be paid for

for doing this. And I don't think he can imagine the kind of senators we have like going after RFK who if they, as people have listed their pharma contributions, you can directly see a correlation between the ferocity of the attack and the political contributions. So I think term limits now...

could they pass um i don't know but term limits i think i i would absolutely support now at all levels and it can be some reasonable thing i know you know maybe maybe two terms for a senator and maybe uh i don't know five terms for a congressman or something like that i don't know but i'm just saying we need that these career politicians is a problem because they're not beholden to you or i or anybody they're beholden to the people that give them millions of dollars so

So it's corruption that I think that – I think that's something like Washington and Madison and Monroe and everybody would agree on. They never foresaw somebody like Nancy Pelosi trading stocks and being – or a Feinstein basically –

You know, until she drops out, drops dead in the in the Senate, you know, so so that's a problem. And I think that's that's one solution. I think we need to bring back moral hazard to you know what? It's OK if the stock market, you know, right in early in January when we already knew a pandemic was coming, if you were paying attention, 2020, you know,

There was a great, you know, the market was down in January, like 15%. And I remember Steve Leisman was on TV going, the Fed needs to step in and act now. And I replied to him. I said, not that he ever replies to me, but I said, hang on a second. I go, young people,

that are starting careers and at 401k plans or something that stocks are now 15% cheaper than they were. Why? So what we do is we pick winners and losers. And as, uh, uh, what we've done is, is, is overwhelmingly reward people like you and me. And, and I mean, we get rewarded, but certainly people like, you know, John Mack and Jamie diamond and get rewarded on infinitely high, David Tepper and everybody on infinitely higher level. But, um,

At the expense of young people. The metaphor I use or analogy I use, I always get those confused, is that, you know, where you and I take all our grandkids and family out to dinner at Fancy Place, tell them to order whatever they want, and then we leave. We skip out. So...

I think we need to bring back moral hazard, which I think Volcker – Volcker's quoted as saying that he thinks – I think Russell Napier said this, that Volcker told him that when – he thinks that when the Fed jumped the shark was with long-term capital management in 98.

There's a chancellor's book. He talks about how Warren Buffett actually had a higher offer for, you know, he would buy up the remains of long-term capital. But if that had happened, they wouldn't have all gotten, you know, their bonuses or whatever. They wouldn't have all gotten their money back eventually. So they didn't take his higher offer. I think that was in Volcker's eyes, apparently that was the beginning of the real corruption. Of course, 2008 was just corruption in spades. And you know what?

In March 2020, I said, you know, the sound you hear right now is the Gini ratio exploding, going up. Because all those programs there. Now, everybody got, you know, here's your check for $1,200, you know, Jim. But, and I was actually, remember all those Fed programs they set up? I just saw a list of them the other day. There was a dozen. And.

I went in, I said, I want to see who's getting these $100, $200 million loans at 0.5% interest. And it was LLC set up in the Cayman Islands like a week before. It was the biggest feeding frenzy.

I think 2020, the theft upwards was even overwhelmed 2008, 2009. If you remember with – well, when I say if you remember, I know you remember. But TARP, for example, that was a big bait and switch. The only reason it passed is because on the second vote was that they said – they told Congress it would be for – to help the homeowners. And also because –

Congress between the first vote, it was three pages. And then by the time they voted on the second tarp, it was 450 pages. Right. But it, but,

And immediately Paulson and Geithner and Kashkari said, no, no, we're not going to help. They wanted to help the banks. And that was it. That's what it was all about. And I keep pointing out, like in the same year that these banks were going bankrupt, they handed themselves out tens of billions of dollars of bonuses, you know, and that kind of thing. When I point that out to people, of course, I'm aware of this because I have the freedom to pay attention to this.

When I point this out to people over the years, they're like, are you kidding me? No way. They, they, they gave how many, they gave a thousand bonuses. Goldman gave a thousand bonuses over a million dollars in 2008. You know, they're like, they can't, they can't believe it, but there, you know, it's, it's, there it is, you know, it's, uh, so we need to have, we need to bring back moral hazard. You know, it's okay. If the stock market drops, I mean, we survived 50% index drops in a one to Oh three and a Oh eight Oh nine. And, uh,

So what? I mean, I remember Bush's thing on TARP. He gave a speech and he said, you know,

If TARP doesn't pass, you know, more banks will close. The stock market will fall. Well, as I point out in his speech, everything, every single, single thing he said happened anyway. It's just, and the market went down 40% or something after TARP passed. So you didn't save anything. And, and, and frankly, what is it? 93% of stocks are owned by 10% of the people or something like that. You know, for most people, stocks are like, you know, coffee table talk or something. And half of America owns no stocks.

In any form, as Warsh is one of those good at pointing that out too. So that's one thing. I mean, you know, common ground on certain issues like I keep bringing up. Here's a no brainer, I think, for far left and far right. Civil forfeiture.

You know, they pull you over in a car, Jim, and you've got $3,000 cash. Well, where'd you get the cash? Well, I sold a lawnmower and this and that. Well, we're going to confiscate this. We think this was from drug proceeds. I mean, it's fine if they want to take you to court and charge you and prove that you were in the drug business, but that's not what's happening. And I've heard horror stories about people who don't have the resources to hire a lawyer.

And they may have just sold a car or something and they're driving cross country and they get pulled over somewhere in the South and they say, hey, what's this five grand of cash we found? You could spend, one of the cases was, hey, you know, they had two kids or something. Hey, you can spend the weekend in jail till the judge comes on Monday and we'll send your kids to foster care or you can give up the $5,000. Yeah. I mean, so that's something, I mean, let's talk about common ground that we should be, but nobody, who's the advocate for that in Congress? Who's going to be the advocate? Who's going to be the advocate in Congress for term limits?

I mean, how does that happen? Because, you know, none of them want term limits. The same thing with the two party system, too. I was really happy to see I'm happy to see Marianne Williamson and RFK. And there was all these other candidates. Of course, the Democrats completely shut down the the primary process because.

to defend a senile candidate, which was really criminal when you think about it. And as someone pointed out the other day, you know, all these pardons and things that were done, I mean, was Joe even aware of them? Who was running the administration the last four years? Nobody really knows. I don't know if we'll, I guess maybe in 10 years, someone will spill the beans, but we just need to have more accountability. I keep going back to that. And term limits would be great.

Glass-Steagall would be great. Let's have some white-collar prosecutions would be great when people start seeing accountability. I don't know what else. I don't even pay attention much to the stock market anymore because why? It's just, you know, it's like Mike Green's passive machine, you know, just did, you know, money in and then they buy. There's no, it's price insensitive investing. So I don't know what we could do to fix that. I know Mike probably has some ideas about

you know, a lot of legal things that just force people to be into these, these same old things. And someday, uh, maybe that's going to end badly. Um, I don't know, withdraw from, you know, it seems like every time we bomb a country, we, we end up creating more enemies, maybe stop doing that. Um, maybe instead of building schools in, in Ukraine or Afghanistan or, or sending aid, we're still sending aid to Afghanistan. I mean, maybe we could send aid to some American cities, you know, I hear North Carolina could use some help, um,

Um, you know, California could use some help too. You know, um, I don't know. You say you're surrounded by a bunch of liberals in Connecticut. I'm, I, uh, I, I live in a deep, deep, deep blue, uh, state. And, um, but I'm wondering, you know, all those people in Pacific Palisades and, and, uh, Pasadena, two very liberal areas. I wonder when they start having to deal with the coastal commission and the, um, the, the, the permitting and the city and all that, I wonder if they're going to maybe move a little bit more to the center.

Um, that would be, that would be good. Yeah. It wasn't that one of Milton Friedman's jokes about a conservative is a liberal who got mugged. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, those people, I think if they haven't got mugged yet, I think they're going to be mugged. I think, I think it was gunlock yesterday who lives up there apparently, um, was saying, uh,

on CNBC, like you, you have no idea how bad it is. And that's the, that's, that's what I've seen. This it's so bad. We don't even begin another ramifications of these fires. Um, as far as rebuilding, I mean, I don't even know how they're going to be able to do it. It's just good. There's so much that has to be done. I mean, they're saying it's going to take a year and a half more to clear, just clear the garbage out. Yeah.

toxins and everything. So it's, that is, that is just, I think the ramifications of those fires are going to be just massive on the seventh, what the seventh largest economy in the world. Um, I don't know if they're going to be good or bad. I mean, I guess by Paul Krugman's logic, if you, if you burn all the houses down, that's good for GDP because you know, you're building back up. But, um, I think it's, there's, I don't know, I guess if you're a construction worker, you probably got a job for the next 10 years, but, um,

That's if they let you build. One of the things I'm thinking is maybe they just own it all multifamily and they put up 100,000 apartments or something instead of the old Pacific Palisades. That's what Karen Bass and Kevin Newsom want to do. So I don't know. I don't know. It'd be interesting. But I think that's another huge issue.

So lots to drill down on there. But you did remind me when you talked about burning down the houses, being good for the economy of one of my favorite philosophers who masquerades as a science fiction writer, Douglas Adams. Remember the story where the guy, the consultants come in and they tell the planet that what they need to do is use tree leaves as their currency. Yeah.

And then they have an emergency meeting like two weeks later with the consultant saying, so after converting tree leaves to our currency, we have all become immensely rich. However, inflation seems to be a problem. And so rather than not use tree leaves as the currency, we suggest that we immediately engage in a planet wide deforestation.

Where we burn all of the trees. That's how they think. That's how the economists think. I'm always making fun of them. You know, Bill Dudley actually said some years back after some major hurricane, he says, you know, hurricanes are going to be good for in the long run because it'll bring all this rebuilding. This is how they think. And just like if you go to someone in the store and you say, hey, if prices go up 5%, is that bad? And they're like, they probably would say, God, I wish they would only go 5%. But, but,

But if you ask Paul Krugman, is 5% inflation bad? He'd go, no, I think it's what we need. So they just completely, they don't think like normal people. And I posted many examples of that. It's kind of an ongoing fun thing to do. But then kind of back to the solutions. My friend Philip Howard has written several books about a lot of this decoupling happened when we stopped holding people accountable and created a law or a rule that

And so he's got a good book called The Rule of Nobody, because basically what he articulates in his book is, you know, in the old days, a teacher in a public school system was left to make up their own decision on how to react to any number of.

Things going wrong in the classroom or or what have you. And that now, like literally the rules governing and I think he used New York's public school system are thicker than an old phone book. And that literally it takes any option away from the individual teacher who is there to

when the incident is occurring. And then he goes on to say, same thing for judges. In the old days, the judge was given wide discretion

over the sentencing of somebody or dismissing something. And then we created laws that took all of that authority and ability that used discretion away from people in authority, making accountability, because accountability is obviously at the individual level.

And making that much, much more difficult. So a thing I might add to your list of things bringing moral hazard back, term limits, etc., would be kind of a sunset provision for laws whereby a law exists for 10 years and then sunsets and is no longer a law unless the then Congress reenacts it.

Um, because I think that that would clear out a lot of, you know, laws that just accumulate and nobody, as you mentioned, you know, by the time they passed the, the, uh, version of the TP, uh, TP. Yeah. Tarp. Tarp. Tarp. Right. Thank you. It was like 500 pages. The original one was three pages. The pork. Yeah. Yeah.

Fork, exactly. And another thing that I think might be helpful is now that we have generally pretty useful large language models, like all laws should be put through an AI and put into English, in my opinion. Oh, that's a great idea. Like the Patriot Act. I should ask. In fact, I'll ask that later. I'll ask, can you summarize the Patriot Act? Because nobody read it.

And there's a great quote from Dennis Kucinich. Why did you vote? Why did you vote against? He says, why did I vote against the Patriot Act? Because I read it. He's probably the only one who read it.

And with another reason, I like that guy. You know, what you were talking about just now is it's like zero tolerance. You know, remember when that got in the school, zero tolerance. So they literally if you brought a nail clipper to school or a nail file or, you know, I grew up, every boy had a pocket knife in his pocket. Every boy. And no one ever put and there was fights and nobody ever pulled a knife in a fight. Just back then, you just didn't do that.

But nowadays, if you bring a pocket knife or not a pocket knife, well, if you brought a pocket knife to school, you probably go to Gitmo. But if you brought a nail, they actually have people like a kid with a little nail clipper or something treated as if he brought an Uzi. You know what I mean? Because it's zero tolerance. Anything that could be a weapon, you know. So that's the kind of zero thinking. Zero tolerance is zero thinking. And I know these judges sometimes, you're right, they're put under mandatory sentencing and they're not allowed to consider that, you know, mitigating circumstances, I guess, in many cases. Yeah.

That's another, that's another issue, you know, and when I'm dictator, I'm going to, I'm going to fix all of these things, you know, so. Well, I also think that like, you know, you also have to walk the walk. So, you know, and set an example would, well, I was still with OSAM as an asset manager when they offered those loans, right?

Um, like if you were just purely rational and you said, wait a minute, they're offering me a loan that is forgivable. In other words, you're offering me a bunch of money. And so I had some people on the team, particularly on the financial side, that we should, we should apply for this. And I, I went, I don't, I don't yell. I don't shout, but I was like, absolutely not. Yeah.

And they kind of looked at me like, what's wrong with you? You're saying no to free money. And I'm like, money is never free. And we don't need that. So if we take that, we are taking that money from somebody who might really, truly, truly need it.

And so other things like I just do believe you've got to walk the walk. You know, you've got to not take that free money. You've got to like another solution for inequity. Like I shouldn't get Social Security.

Like I would be entirely in favor of a litmus test where people above a certain net worth or income level just don't get social security. And yet that seems very non-controversial to me. And yet, like even I've had very, very liberal friends say, I understand why you are saying that, but Jim, you don't get it.

if we put a litmus test in, then people will stop seeing it as a social benefit for everyone. And then, you know, it'll be easier to argue against. And I'm like, okay, but we have a real problem here. And these are simple things that we could do to, is it going to get rid of the problem? Absolutely not. But will it ameliorate it to a certain extent? I think so. And, and so like,

So same kind of thing on immigration and all of those things. Like there are simple, straightforward ways that you can make rational, intentional immigration policies that are good for the country, good for people wanting to come here. I mean, like all deal. And yet it just always devolves into these screaming matches of,

I, to the point where, you know, you just know unanimity and also the idea of seeing the person on the other side of the aisle as your sworn enemy. You mentioned earlier in our conversation about,

About like, you know, we could go at it hammer and tongs and then go have a beer together. That actually happened when Reagan was president and Tip O'Neill was Speaker of the House. Those guys used to like eviscerate each other.

on news and you know when they were having conferences and things but then they have a drink together in the oval office at the end of the day they're both irish weren't they and then yeah the irish can do that i'm a big fan big fan of the irish

Yeah, no, that's what we need to get back to. And I think, you know, I mean, you know, of course, Trump will call, you know, I think Trump does that secretly. He'll call someone like the worst names in the book and then you'll see them later at a party hanging out or something, you know. So I think maybe people understand that it's kind of a game or it's all part of a cave. What is a cave? Is that the expression? Yeah. Yeah. Like the wrestlers, you know, and yeah.

Yeah, it's funny. You know, just a brief aside on that Social Security, Greenspan told Congress in the mid-90s, he says, oh, we can guarantee all the Social Security benefits you want as far out as you want. He goes, but I cannot guarantee their purchasing power. Hence the incentive for higher inflation. You know, just to go off again, as they say,

As I've said, the Fed, they all want higher inflation. They all want it. They just can't acknowledge that they want higher inflation. So they have to have all the hedonics and all the other little tricks and everything. But yeah, that's the way out, I think, for them. And Social Security will be another one. I do think they'll try stuff like what you said first. They'll put maybe an income limit on it. At some point, they're going to have to, right? And then-

And maybe they'll raise the age. And I've always come from the assumption that I'm never going to see a penny from it. So I'm not really that worried about it. But other people, it's what they need to survive, you know. But I think that money was already spent. I mean, you know, how many wars do we have this century that we put on the credit card, you know? So...

And I think the inflation is the way that most people see that they're going to get out of that. And as I like to say, you know, yeah, you know what? I hear that a lot, mostly, but I never hear it from poor or middle class people. I always hear it from very well-off people that inflation is the answer. So, you know, the Bill Ackman's and the Barry Sternlicht and everybody else. So anyway, just getting back to my nom de gore.

But the idea that, I mean, there are a set of solutions, and we've discussed several of them here, that have kind of low cost in quotes in terms of enacting them, like a limit on social security, bringing back moral hazard, that kind of stuff. Term limits. Term limits, thank you, that have sunset of laws, et cetera, that have big impact tied to

reasonably implementable costs, right? And I just wonder, like, given the current environment,

How do we change that? Like, for example, investigative journalism. I used to say, you know, I would probably look very favorably on a proposal to start a new company or journal or some concern where they literally where their mandate was. We are going to go after journalism.

Every grift, every political malpeasance and keep it. And here's the part where it, you know, maybe my mom used to say, if wishes were horses, beggars would ride. Yes, there are other versions of that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But but the idea, keep it completely nonpartisan and like, here's a scandal. Let's go get them.

Do you think something like that's possible? Do you think that could even get funded these days? It would have to be some billionaire that just

really was a good guy that was not wanted it to be non-partisan i mean you're not going to get any um i mean nobody's going to advertise you know with with these people um right it's it's tough there's no there's no money in it really i i and uh i mean other than like the self um you know the sub stack people um uh i guess the top ones make make a ton of money but um

Yeah, no, that would be wonderful. I would love to see that. And I like to think that if I was a billionaire, when I win the lottery, I'll fund somebody. Just go investigate. And of course, you've got to have a huge legal team because you're fighting against the most powerful, wealthiest people in the world because that's – a lot of the corruption is trickle down or –

I always try to punch up. That's one thing I say is, you know, I'm not, I'm always going after people way more powerful and wealthy than me. And because I see the corruption and I see that it's, they don't, they get away with it and it bugs me, you know? So I don't know. I mean, I just, I just hope we need, you know what we need? I've talked about this before with Reagan comparing Reagan. Now Reagan, remember where they called Reagan, Hitler,

Reagan was a stupid actor who was, you know, like a TV game show host, you know, kind of a lot of the same things. And I'm not saying Trump is Reagan, but Reagan, as you pointed out, came in and he had enemies.

real enemies who really hated him. And yet he, in many cases could go, they didn't hate him, but they really didn't like his policies. And, but he could go and hang out with them afterwards. And I think, and I've mentioned this before with Trump, if Trump can be, you know, a lot of times in his first administration, I felt like he went out of his way to just antagonize, really go after his opponents and,

And sometimes it's justified. But after a while, it just gets old. And I think that turned off a lot of independents in the meantime. And then, of course, you had the next administration, which was so awful that I think a lot of people who didn't vote, who voted for Biden the first time, voted for Trump the second time because they said, I'll give this guy a chance. It wasn't that bad, you know. But I think what he needs to do is try and get common ground that we've been talking about. I think he needs to like.

You know, meet with an Adam Schiffer or whatever or try to. I mean, they're going to grandstand and everything. And but I don't know if Trump has. I think he does have it in him because he's used to being friends with all these people. You know, there's pictures of him at, you know, with the with the Clintons at wedding him and Melania staying right next to Bill and Hillary smiling away. You know, there's plenty of pictures of Trump hanging out with people who are now his, quote, unquote, political enemy.

But I guarantee you behind the scenes when no one's around, there's no cameras. I bet there, I bet a lot of them are still making cracking jokes. And if you let me look at Trump at the, uh, it was a Carter's funeral with, you know, just joking with Obama. He's joking with everybody. And somebody made a very great quote. He's Trump is sitting there joking with Obama who a few weeks before had been basically saying that Trump was Hitler. Right. Right. And in front of cameras and they're joking and laughing. And the guy, whoever posted this made a great comment. He says, you know,

Imagine like writing off your family or friends over over one of these two because because of one of these two guys, you know what I mean? Like getting so attached to Obama or so attached to Trump that you think that they are fighting for you. I mean, I think it's all kind of like a cafe because it's a great, great word. Yeah.

It's kind of an act and I think Trump if Trump can tone his act out to be a little more conciliatory And because he's you know, he's getting his way on a lot of things now There's no need to rub it in the in the Liberals faces and stuff try and win a few more overs I mean, I think Reagan did you know win some people over who you know? He won that he was the blue. He was getting the blue-collar Democrat vote back then, you know Remember and I think kind of like Trump is me Trump got more Hispanic and black votes than

than I think any Republican has like ever. So they need to keep that up. You know, don't alienate these people that are now reaching for him. Help them. They need economic help. I mean, everybody needs economic help. And they need to know that they matter. And he needs to emphasize that you matter. He needs to emphasize it, not just to Israel and Ukraine and his, you know,

His hangers on around him, the billionaires, but he needs to emphasize it to the people in Scranton and the people in California and the people in all over the country that you matter. You're an American. You know, besides 2008 or nine, what really disillusioned me and the Iraq war, which was met huge once once I saw how that was handled. But also Hurricane Katrina. I watched that. I watched that for like a week. I was home and I was I had it on.

And it was amazing to me that the difference between what was being shown on the ground and

And what was being shown in Washington, you know, Chertoff and Bush were like, everything's great, everything, you know, and on the ground, you're seeing people who, you know, 80 year old people who've been on a roof for four days, you know, and, and I'm like, this is America. This is not right. I don't care that these people are Democrats and black, you know, because Bush was president, you know, Republican, like these are American citizens. What are, what's the delay? And eventually Americans did what Americans do. They go in and they, they,

Do whatever it takes. They had the Coast Guard I hear went in and did a bang-up job. I had a buddy who was there the next day, fireman. He's one of the guys going around the boat scraping, you know, spray painting on the walls how many people are dead inside, you know. And so Americans eventually, you know, do the right thing often without leadership. I mean, look at the people in North Carolina now, you know. They've been –

Someone said a post, of course, I don't know what is propaganda, what isn't, because I didn't verify it and check it, but about a ton of, you know, a whole bunch of dump trucks that are headed in North Carolina. You know, I suppose the assumption was, well, it's happening under Trump. It didn't happen under Biden. I'm like, why? Well, if it is happening, I'm glad it's happening. But why didn't it happen under Biden? You know, these labels Republican, Democrat, most people are neither, I think, you know, and independent. I'm not. I'm neither. I don't care. I've got huge problems with both parties.

And I think we need to think again about that. We're Americans. We disagree on some issues, but let's go have a beer afterwards or let's go help out these people in Carolina. Let's help out the people in Altadena, you know, whether they agree with you politically or not, they're Americans. I think we need to get back to that. You're an American and you're not a gay American and you're not a, you know, an Irish American or a, you know, a,

Hispanic American, you're an American first. You really are. And so we need to start thinking like that and our leaders need to start thinking like that. And so I really hope for Trump's administration that he comes through for the non-billionaires, you know, and reaches out to these new groups that voted for him and doesn't let them down. I think if he does that, that'd be great.

Yeah. And the point you're making that I really agree with is the average American is actually a pretty awesome person.

And I would let's strip away all these artificial things that try to label people and put them in a category so that we can hate them or love them. Like I, a lot of European friends who will come here and, you know, like to say, Oh my God, you know, you guys are at each other's throats and everything. And I would say, Hey,

do you ever go anywhere but here in New York or in California? And I'm like, no. And I'm like, what you should do is you should go to any of the towns that are not New York and not LA or San Francisco and

and drive around. Like what you'll find is that the average American, no matter what, right? It's not contingent on what color they are, what sex they are, what their sexual orientation is. None of those things. If your car breaks down and you're in what I call real America, you will probably within 20 minutes have a car stop and offer to help you.

And that is America. And the more we allow this, what I view as artificial kind of Potemkin villages being built,

of, you know, this is right wing, this is left wing. That's that isn't what America is all about. And so I completely agree that when you're talking to your average American, they're kind of go along to get along their offer their help immediately. You know, when, when the towers came down, we volunteered to just go down and, and help out. And like,

They were like, absolutely. And so they assigned us a slot. And basically we were, you know, giving water to the first responders, firemen, cops, et cetera. And like, I cannot describe to you the feeling of camaraderie of like, you know, horror, obviously, because these guys are coming in and like, I don't know if you've

run into too many New York firefighters or cops, but they don't cry easily. And they were literally in tears.

And, and like, just to just, that's the, that's the American spirit that I think we need to try to reinstate. And then you're talking about Reagan. It, it also makes the points that you've made about what's a good leader, right? A good leader connects with actual citizens. They're, they're pragmatic over ideological. They, they understand history.

And they hold themselves accountable. Like Harry S. Truman, the buck stops here. Like these, these are in the American DNA and it doesn't mean that we have to go back to them exactly, but just like starting with accountability, right?

Starting with your political opponent is not your enemy. Recognizing what, like, the other brilliant thing I always thought that Reagan did, he was the one who started the American heroes. Whenever he gave the State of the Union address, he would always have, sitting with his wife Nancy, a group of almost always a nurse, a firefighter, a cop,

you know, and, and he called them American heroes, right? Like this nurse saved this many lives and went out of her way, worked five ships. Like, again, when all of you, like, if there's a great quote from Robert Anton Wilson that goes, the happy man lives in a happy world. The sad man lives in a sad world. The dark man lives in a dark world. In other words, if we are just being fed, uh,

poison and awful thing after awful thing after awful thing that's going to affect the national zeitgeist and and so i'm not saying that we should be pollyannish i'm not saying that we should uh not face the problems of which there are many i'm saying that again back to my things to root for

Like, let's root for accountability. Let's root for an understanding of history. Let's root for what, you know, your average American is actually like, as opposed to the caricatures of both sides, the extreme sides of the political spectrum. And, you know, we might make some progress. You know, if I just mentioned real quick, there was a woman I knew who was traveling in the south of France with a couple other people and her car broke down.

And this was not a real touristy area, just rural Southern France. And they had, for a variety of reasons, it took days to get another car. And in the meantime, some of the locals there came along when the police were of no use. They just said, "Get off the road." But the locals came by, "Oh, I know a mechanic. Here, let me take you to his house."

Let me take it. So these are these are white women and these guys were just wonderful. They had families. They're fix the car. No, you know, I mean they gave him money, but they were gonna do it They didn't charge me anything. They couldn't have been more gentlemanly and nice to these women these American strangers and they were all French Muslims they were off, you know, and if you think a lot of people think that

You know, I don't think this way, but some people think, oh, Muslims and white women in southern France is going to be. No, these guys were wonderful. And that was great to hear. And I think that I think that Muslims and Christians and Jews and Hindu, your average guy, not just Americans, your average human being is a good person.

And it is our leaders, I think a lot of times, whether they're religious or whether they're political, who get people riled up over our differences. I think so. It was very good to hear that.

about what happened to them in France that it was just these guys were just wonderful their families were wonderful and I think that's a lot year-round I mean I mean world world world around there's good people and and we need to maybe try and kill a few less of them you know um yeah because you know every time we drop a bomb you know maybe we're killing one bad guy but we might be killing you know some wedding party or something you know it's not right

Yeah, yeah, no, I agree. And I think that's a good place for us to end because I'm about to make you the emperor of the world and you're going to, you're only going to get two though, Rudy. I know you have more than two. Oh, but before we get to that final question, I just think if we can concede that people are not our enemies because they have a different belief than we do.

If we can concede and understand that by turning our views and our friendships and our family relationships into a draconian, if you do this or support this person, I'm going to cut you out of my life. I think everyone, certainly all of my listeners and viewers, I hope agree that

Like just getting rid of that, like then we can start those small steps back towards these things to root for like accountability, like term limits, like sunsetting of laws, all of all of the above. And and keeping in mind and you bring the point out, well, it's not just the average American who's a good person. Basically, most people in the world are bad.

good people. And if we can figure out ways to harness that goodwill, we'll have better tomorrows than we have had yesterdays.

So, Rudy, it's been really fun chatting with you about this. Now, I am making you emperor of the world. However, you can't kill anyone. You can't put anyone in a re-education camp. But what you can do is we're going to hand you a magic microphone, and you can say two things into it that are going to incept the entire population of the world, all 8 billion.

They're going to wake up whatever their morning is the next day and say, you know, I just had two of the greatest ideas. And unlike all the other times, I'm actually going to act on both of these ideas starting today and going forward. What two things are you going to accept? I wish I would have thought more about this, but I'll go with go do something nice for no reason to someone who can't help you in any way.

You know what I mean? Just go do that every day. And the second one, because I guess this would...

i get three this way uh go to my pin tweet and that's really what i've been all about is mainly besides making jokes and stuff is is uh the wars you know that that washington and eisenhower warned us about in their federal addresses and also the what i call the kleptocracy you know and we've talked about in this interview accountability white-collar crime should be prosecuted uh people need to see that and i think that would make a big step get

Getting rid of the stupid wars and getting rid of the unaccountable financial class, the Cantillon effect, I think that would be a big step towards what America and the world needs. So, amen. Great talking to you, John. Great talking to you, too. And your first one, by the way, is also a great filter to use for hiring somebody. Yeah.

When I was at OSAM, I would always end somebody's interview process and everything by taking them to lunch.

And anybody who treated the waiter or waitress poorly, I just would not hire. Oh, yeah, that's a good one. That was punch down behavior. And I think you should only punch up. And I know you agree with that. Rudy, thank you so much for joining me. This has been really fun. Yeah, it's been great. Thanks, Jim. Thank you.