Chapo Trap House - 915 - Hero Hedge feat. Joe Weisenthal (3/10/25)

Episode Date: March 10, 2025

We start the show discussing the arrest and detention of Mahmoud Khalil in a glaring escalation of attacks on American civil liberties in behalf of Israel & its supporters. We’re then joined by journalist and co-host of the Odd Lots podcast Joe Weisenthal to take a shockingly timely (for us) look at markets, tariffs, crypto, and economic policy under the 2nd Trump administration. Is there a plan here? Who’s actually in charge? Will these tariffs ever actually happen? Are we careening toward a recession? Joe shares his thoughts on these questions and more with us. Listen to Odd Lots wherever you get podcasts, and find Joe’s work at Bloomberg here: https://www.bloomberg.com/authors/AQ0VXvE12t0/joe-weisenthal Go see Eephus as it rolls out to your neck of the woods, search for showtimes @ https://www.eephusfilm.com/

All I wanna do is hit the drum All I wanna do is hit the drum Hello everybody, it's Monday, March 10th and in just a little bit, Felix and I will be talking to Joe Weisenthal with the Odd Lots podcast about tariffs, the markets, the economy, what you tune into this show to listen to. But I can't start today's show and I can't really like complete today's show without talking about the, I don't know, the rendition, the kidnapping of Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil that took place this weekend over in New York City. He's a Columbia grad student, a Columbia grad student graduate who has been basically kidnapped by ICE out of his house in New York City, leaving his wife eight months pregnant at home and been rendered to an ICE facility in Louisiana in what is obviously an attempt

to separate him from legal counsel. I mean, I don't know what to say about this other than it is probably the most terrifying thing that's happened in recent memory in American politics. One of the most nauseating and truly frightening in terms of its implications, because this guy is a legal resident of the country. He's a green card holder. They initially said that they were just canceling his student visa, and then they said they were canceling his green

card. I mean, this is probably the most profound attack on freedom of speech that I can think of in my lifetime. And this is something that I think everybody needs to be aware of and be active in raising awareness about talking about protesting. I mean, I know it sounds stupid in light of, you know, armed agents of the state just disappearing political activists for political free speech. Like this is really something I think you should consider contacting your representative, your senator, your local government about. And if there's a protest on his behalf, I would also consider really looking into joining that because if they can do this to a green card holder, there's

not much that will prevent them from doing it to anyone who's a U.S. citizen. But I just want to make clear here that this is not an immigration issue. This is a freedom of speech issue. And I don't think it's in any way an exaggeration to state that the Zionist project and its supporters in this country are the single biggest threat to our constitutional rights that exist today. Yeah. No, this is, even if this just was about immigration, it would be horrifying enough. But it is not an exaggeration to say that declaring someone's legal status and personhood as they exist in the United States by the standards of BATAR or the ADL.

This is a horrifying line that we have crossed. And, you know, I mean, like in no public has Has Mahmoud been accused of a crime? convicted of a crime or Like they're not even pretending that that's the case and if you look at the statement put up by the White House today It said he's being deported for Hamas aligned activities Like and I see a lot of supporters of this crowing about Anyone anyone who provides material support for terrorism should be deported. Well, providing material support for terrorism is a crime.

And if that crime has been committed, it's usually you're charged with it and it's adjudicated in a court of law. I think we should think very seriously about what being Hamas-aligned entails. He committed no crime whatsoever. He is having his rights stripped away from him because he is a pro-Palestinian activist. He is Palestinian himself and he was organizing protests to demand that the university that he is a member of divest from companies that profit off the genocide of his own people. I cannot stress this enough. A green card holder is entitled to all of the First Amendment rights that a U.S. citizen

is. A green card holder is represented by politicians like Chuck Schumer, who has yet to say anything about this. I, you know, and just to think about this in light of the endless bleeding that we've heard about freedom of speech and freedom of speech on campus and the dire threat that anti-Semitism poses to Jewish college students. What are they going to, I mean, like, where are these people going to be when they start deporting Jewish American students for doing the exact same thing that Mahmoud is accused of, which is to say nothing at all?

You can't be, he's being accused of having an opinion that is anathema to the agents of Zionism in this country. Yes, and making statements in support of Hamas, that just means anything other than complete fealty and subservience to Israel. There's no other definition. This country is not exactly shy about charging people with material support for organizations on the terror watch list or officially designated or whatever. There's endless people who are rotting away in federal facilities or who have been deported

or otherwise charged with this for, you know, things that if it were anyone else, if it were any other charge, it would not withstand the light of day or a decent attorney. But they are not even doing that. There is so little here in the way of an actual crime being committed. But that's kind of the point. The point is to scare the shit out of people. Yeah, the crime is not supporting Israel.

The crime is supporting Palestine. That's the crime here. And if that encompasses the way you feel, I mean, I think you have a duty to be very, very active in this regard. I mean, I'm thinking about this in the context of a Gallup poll I saw that was released just this past week that said for the first time ever, a majority of Americans are more sympathetic with Palestine than they are with Israel. And I think you're going to see like as the, you know, like the consummated bubble of public

opinion and support that exists for Israel in this country, and has been maintained for decades now through politicians that are bought and paid for and extensive propaganda apparatus, as that continues to evaporate, and the effectiveness of the previous sort of peaceful, the carrot, shall we say, of support for Israel and American public continues to evaporate, we are going to see, like I said, of support for Israel and American public continues to evaporate. We are going to see, like I said, I think we're going to see agents of Israel have designed this project, begin to get ever more feral and desperate and violent in terms of how they literally police speech that they find unacceptable. Going back to what Will said about how it may seem silly to contact your elected representative

or go to a protest in light of armed agents carrying out renditions at the behest of a fascist ethno-state. I remember at the start of all this, we talked about how these next four years or however long, it could be a test of a lot of things. It could be a test of how much you are willing to risk, how much you are willing to put yourself in the line of fire, how much some of these things may really mean to you. Right now with attending a protest or contacting your elected representative, I mean, if that feels silly, well, fucking do it anyway. Because the first test of that is, is any of this at least worth you potentially feeling

silly or like an asshole or like you were fighting a losing battle. Yeah. If it's not, I don't know what the fuck you're doing. Yeah. It's worth at least trying anything. And just just to go off that, like the intention here is to yell like to stifle freedom of speech in this country, to stifle a political opinion that is essentially held by the majority of Americans. So take some strength from that because there are more

of us than there are of them. So the power here is in continuing to speak out, to continuing to make your voice heard, continuing to share and using the rights that we do have for the time being in this country to make a statement of political speech, which is that Israel and its surrogates in this country have no fucking right to tell us to dictate terms to anyone in this country of what is and isn't acceptable or what does and doesn't constitute support for terrorism.

I remember at the start of the first Trump term during the Muslim ban where it was definitely a different environment and tone and tenor, but they did attempt a similar idea and obviously a different application, a different time. But the idea behind it, which is to use people's legal status and their freedom of movement as a tool to scare the shit out of people, that was the attempt. And that was met with a critical mass of people with an overwhelming response. And I know that people don't have a very long memory for these things anymore, but it did effectively scare them. It didn't totally stop the policy,

but it stymied them and it did gum up the works enough to make a potentially more horrifying presidency much more ineffectual. These things are absolutely worth doing. And one last thing, one last thought I'll share on this is if you are a professor at Columbia University, if you're any way associated with Columbia University and your attitude towards this is I'm just gonna keep my head down until things blow over. I would suggest that you

consider keeping your head down on a walk from the Brooklyn Bridge to the East River. Because like, I'm just going to keep my head down during this. Just look away. Just look away. Look off the Brooklyn Bridge to the water below would be my advice to you. Yeah, there is no point in you fucking being alive after this, if that's it. If it's not this, if this is not worth your ire, then fucking what is? I could go to your house and sell your fucking hideous family to the shake from Taken and you would keep your head down. Like I said, I'm sure we will have more on this story in the weeks to come. I don't have

much more to say about it right now, but I would just like to say to you, to Mahmoud Khalil and his family, his wife, we are thinking of you. We're thinking of everyone who supports you. And like I said, if you're listening to this, I would really, really encourage you to make your voice heard on this issue in any way, shape or form that you can, if you feel the same way. And I can't imagine why you wouldn't. All right. On to Joe Weisenthal. Okay, we're back. And the topic for today is tariffs, NASDAQ, the markets, the global economy, crypto, all

things that I know I'm way out of my depth talking about and hate thinking about. But good news is we are joined by someone who fits the bill. Joe Weisenthal of the ODLOTS podcast is with us this week. Joe, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. Our pleasure. I'd like to begin with tariffs. Yeah. I'm just going to begin here with this is a headline from CNBC. Trump rejects pleas from business for more clarity on tariffs.

They always say that. Right. I'm just going to read here a little bit. It says, the S&P 500 fell 3.1% for its worst weekly marks in September. The Dow fell 2.37, while the Nasdaq composite shed 3.45. At the center of the storm were Trump's tariffs, Trump's stiff 25% tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico, which were initially paused for a month, then restarted Tuesday, only to be reigned in Wednesday and then partially paused for another month on Thursday.

So Joe, I'm just going to begin. What is this? What are the status of these tariffs? And like, what do you, what does, what do the markets say? Like, what do they mean when they say they want clarity from Trump on this? Yeah, I mean, these are both really excellent questions. And so my understanding is that as of today, most of the terror, the meat of the tariffs have been postponed yet again, there are some tariffs in place somewhere, but most have been postponed yet again.

But this has been a very strange and I think for the market, difficult rollout because I think at least if we're talking about in the context of Canada and Mexico, which is the big surprise here, everyone sort of knew the tighter trade against China was coming. I think there's some ambiguity and it's like what exactly is Trump asking for? I think there's clear, uh, un-clarity about that. In theory, if the tariffs are in place and they're set policies, then businesses can begin to make a plan. And so if they say, okay, we supply this, uh, resources from Canada and it no longer makes sense to do that because of the

tariffs, then okay, we can start the long multi-year process of perhaps building a factory in the United States or something. But none of that could really be done until they know exactly what they're going to look at because to actually respond to the tariffs in a meaningful way from the business perspective, like if they're going to take the multi-year plan and allocate billions of dollars to build some new supply side capacity in the US to avoid the tariffs, they're not going to want to do that unless they know, okay, these are in place for the longterm, et cetera.

So I think when you ask about like clarity, what does that mean? Businesses always say they want clarity. They want to know what the rules are, making air quotes, et cetera, because you hear it for years. That's simply what that means, that you don't want to make any investment plans until you actually understand the nature of the trading.

Joe, that is something I've been curious about. You see that from a lot of like the Trump boosters, like the Sean McGuire types who are saying, why would anyone be against increased US manufacturing capacity? And then when there's sort of like this typical Trump one pattern of like a flare up, then a mutual drawdown, and then like, it looks like the original policy is going to be put in place in an incredibly diminished capacity. They'll turn around and go, oh, you know, everyone was freaking out about nothing when they were just saying two days ago, we're going to completely remake the

American economy. But to take them sort of like at face value here with the original purpose for these tariffs, like the protectionist idea for them. Has anyone ever done that? Like, has anyone ever pulled that off where they have this consumer economy that really relies on like a strong currency, cheap imports, cheap consumer goods, and then they turn around and they make it a production, a producer export economy, presumably with no central planning, because it would be under like an absurd austerity regime. Like has that ever happened? I mean, I'm pretty sure the answer is no. But the main reason that the answer is no is that there's, you know, there's never been an economy like the United States before, just in

terms of its sheer well, its sheer power, its sheer size, etc. You know, I think, look, I'll say two things. One is that, you know, there certainly is a track record for some developing countries, for example, of protecting domestic manufacturing, infant industries, so to speak, and then becoming manufacturing export powerhouses and protecting their local champions, the local players. And I think there's a lot of success stories. Typically people point to East Asia as an example of this and

But to your point and you said it is like these typically come with a plan in addition in the successful instances where a country has become a manufacturing powerhouse there is some sort of real plan Such that the investment domestically has a chance of succeeding. So for example, they might say, okay, we're going to protect this local car maker or this local sneaker maker or whatever it is. And you're going to sell them to the market, you're going to sell, you're going to export, and we're going to subsidize you. And the way we're going to subsidize you contingent on your proving success in

foreign markets, because the one risk, obviously, when you're protecting local industries is that they just take public money and they just give it all to shareholders and they just get fat and happy and they don't actually do anything. And so one way to protect this is you have a handful of companies that are all competing and you say, okay, companies that are all competing, and you say, okay, go out into the world, sell your goods, and whoever gets the biggest market share in Europe and the United States and Japan, etc., will provide you with more cheap credit, etc.

And those of you who can't compete overseas, we're going to leave you to die. And that way you sort of protect against the you protect against the risk of a corruption and cronyism etc. So there are examples of that working. There are also logical examples why any country might want to just have more manufacturing domestically and I think there's like two distinct categories of this that I can think of. One is issues of sort of like national security things where you had some sort of existential danger if you were cut off. That's arguably why we have a strategic petroleum reserve

back when we didn't produce much oil. You could imagine saying like, you know what, we really need to have a factory capacity in the United States to produce PPE equipment, which we obviously lacked when the coronavirus hit. So you could say these are areas in which it would be really bad not to have domestic manufacturing. And then the other category you could say is, well, we really want to have domestic manufacturing at the cutting edge of tech, particularly, you know, like things like semiconductors is like high margin, very crucial for having a sort of advanced rich economy.

It's really important that we always maintain some sort of lead has national security implications, et cetera. Like both of those are sort of to my mind, logical reasons why you might want to not have the sort of classical views of free trade, so to speak, but we're talking about treated the Canada, this is, or in Mexico, this is the part that I've been having trouble wrapping my head around. It's like, I don't see many categories in either.

I didn't see many categories that are either the sort of like critical for national security that we have the Canada is making we have to make here. Nor do I see the sort of cutting edge high margin stuff that's also really important here. So it's uh it feels like we're in sort of to your point uncharted territory. Yeah yeah like prior to these really big blow-ups I mean with Mexico I kind of feel likeinbaum has a very good handle on how to handle Trump, at least for Netflix. She seems very skilled, yes. Yeah, she's very canny.

She has pulled the, I'll get some guys to look into that move on him repeatedly. And it just, I always think that's his move. How does he keep letting her do it? But with Canada, this is less of a case. But before that, one of their big explosive moves was like, it was increasing tariffs on Taiwanese chips, right? Yeah. And that, like, initially, I kind of thought the same thing I thought with a lot of their actions, which is like, you know, why are you just gutting all the, all the benchmarks of post-war prosperity,

this entire thing that was built for 50 years. But then, you know, you actually think about it and it does kind of make sense from that perspective. Like this idea that we would protect our own, like a nascent chip industry that would theoretically, yeah, not be over there and couldn't just be overtaken by someone else. But with Canada, it's like, yeah, what possibly, yeah. So the funny thing that you mentioned, and I totally agree that shine bombs is very very skilled at managing the relationship.

No way that like you know you well now is in thirty more. What like i can obviously true to when trump are like a very different wavelengths the funny thing though is this is like. is this was like this has been the best thing that's happened for the Liberal Party in Canada because you know they were getting killed in the polls it certainly looked several weeks ago that at the upcoming national elections that the Conservatives led by Pierre Pauli have we're gonna win and now they're being rewarded for taking maximum hardball so they're free like there's you know typically you would think there is this danger, like the leader has to stand up,

but they risk to the economy. And so they played this game chicken, but they really love hurt their economy, et cetera. And then that makes a sort of negotiating difficult. It actually looks like the Canadian side has had a very easy time with the negotiations because they're getting rewarded so politically to play maximum hardball. They haven't really offered much of anything and they've been pretty comfortable going

tit for tat. The Ontario leader, I forget the title, Dun don't know, Doug Ford. He's been totally in alignment with the Liberal Party, even though he's a conservative. He announced there's going to be a 25% tax on Canadian electricity. And so, Scheinbaum seems to be playing it well from the Mexican side, but actually the Canadian Liberal Party seems to have it very easy because they're getting rewarded in the polls for just refusing to budget. Yeah.

I mean, like, like going back to the policy on, on the whole, it does seem emblematic of like a very specific to Trump to issue that they're having, which is you, you, you kind of see it in all their signature policies that they're kind of split down the middle. Like Israel, it's sort of like Israel policy. Like on one hand, they are doing at times like this George H.W. Bush, Reagan type thing where they will treat Israel like any other American ally or vassal or proxy. And it will drive a lot of people in Israeli politics absolutely nuts. But then on the other hand, it does seem like they're accepting policy dictates from like Betar or like someone insane or like Miriam. With this, it's like the trade policy is,

on one hand it reminds me of like those people who they're like 37 and they're like, yeah, I think this is the year I get my shit together and I start a family. That's what America is saying that we're going to start a domestic chip industry that replaces Taiwan's capacity. That is the national equivalent of that. Well, keep going, keep going. Then on the other hand, it's this weird like the only explanation I can give, but at least that's coherent, right? Like you kind of know what they're going for. On the other hand, this Canadian Mexican policy that you've talked about, it seems like Trump just

like remembered that in 2016, he won partly on NAFTA and thought, oh yeah, NAFTA, right. Those two countries, let's do something with that. Yeah. I mean, the tensions within this administration on economic policy in general are extremely stark. And, you know, one thing I've been thinking a lot about is in 2016, the markets liked Hillary. So when it looked like Hillary was doing better, the markets went up during the campaign. When it looked like Trump was doing better, markets went down.

The night of the election, famously, stock futures plunged once it became clear that Trump was going to win it. And then, you know, of course, like that first Trump administration was like a very normie Republican. They did a tax cut and that is about it, right? And like, you know, stocks did great during his administration. It was pretty, you know, there was probably deregulation. When he won this time, you just had everyone on Wall Street

sort of like, okay, we're going to get the tax cut and we're going to get deregulation and we're going to get liberalization of merger and acquisition rules. Everything just went to the moon for a few weeks. Every stock, every crypto, et cetera, which we can talk about later, it all shot up right afterwards. Then it's been like this reversal Hey, interestingly enough the new FTC chief has kept Lena cons merger guidelines in place

So it's not clear that we're gonna get a sort of liberalized M&A regime But then also you have um this year, you know, yeah, like they're gonna push for maintaining the tax cuts But outside of that, you know, this would not be Wall Street's number one pick by any measure of where to start politically. It wouldn't even be the tech industries. You know, there's like various tools. There's the Wall Street backers, there's sort of tech people who really came around to Trump and Trumpism over the last several years.

I don't think this will be any other priority, the terror stuff, but this is where it's beginning and you sort of see the reaction. But I do think it like from day one, it was obvious that there are going to be some like very deep economic splits in preferences. And from my perspective, like this was always going to be the story of like from the podcast covering the next four years. I didn't quite expect it to become so stark right at the beginning of the administration. Well, Joe, a point you made recently that stuck out to me was that obviously in MAGA part two, leaders, you know, American firms and the people who work for them. We saw an article in The Wall Street Journal and Financial Times.

They feel very liberated now that work is over and they can speak freely about calling people gay retards. But however, this freedom, it doesn't really seem to apply to like them openly sharing their opinions on Trump's tariff policies. No, it's funny. Yeah. Like, did you ask a CEO right now? And I have watched, you know, financial TV over the last several days. If you ask the CEOs, they're really careful with their

words. Like she would not think that they've suddenly entered into a land in which they could just sort of speak their mind freely without fear of reprisal. Like they're very, well, we need to see more clearly what the goal is here. And of course, you know, it's very, very awkward, uncomfortable practice words. And they don't really say anything. What can I read their minds? No, I can strongly guess the vast majority of these CEOs hate the tariffs and think this is terrible policy. And very few are going to just say that they're going to.

Yes, they're being very current. Well, I mean, when this administration was incoming, I wouldn't say I was excited about this, but I was certainly interested to see what the promise of these tariffs like would that that be fulfilled? Because here before, I had assumed that like something so fundamental to the structure of global free trade and the US economy, I assume things like that were sort of removed from democratic consideration. Yeah, I don't know, like that that question is still sort of open. Because like, what's going on here? Like, they keep announcing it, and then they keep walking it back. Like Like you can take what they say at face value that like they intend these tariffs to,

you know, raise billions of dollars to offset, you know, money that they're not raising through taxes. And then it will also stimulate reshoring American manufacturing and things like that. But like, it doesn't seem like there's doesn't seem like there's much of a plan to accomplish the second part. Right. Of this of of this equation. But I guess I'm wondering, like, can this be seen? Is this a promise or is this a negotiating tactic? And like, how does this relate to a concept that you've talked about on the show?

Oral intuition is a concept you quote from a a Jesuit scholar here in terms of like, what is one to make of these these pronouncements then like, the sort of, I don't know, the fizzling out of what it implies. Yeah, you know, one of the funny things about Trump, I think, obviously, you know, at this point, everyone sort of recognizes that he's, I would just extraordinarily gifted at communicating in the year 2025, that many years he's had this sort of ability to get his message across to the public in a way for soundwives, through slogans, through insults, et cetera, in a way that's just like

uncanny and he's funny and most people, most politicians just can't pull it off. And one of the sort of like hobby horse, I've had ideas that I've had and the world is becoming more oral, you know, in the age of pre-literacy, think Homer, et cetera, you think, okay, everything has to be rhythmic, repetitive, viral, because it's forgotten, then it disappears.

And so virality in the sort of oral age was required. And that carries with it all kinds of interesting implications of how people think but there was a quote he's in Trump in 2016. Use as he was like something about bashing his opponents is like always that presidential. everyone's sort of gotten over that no one but uh he's like well i'm winning i'm winning the race from the presidency right now this is march 2016 he's like their court's presidential this idea that like if you're the president it surprises us and so you think about like you many people would look at the back and forth on the terrace sick you know they would say this is crazy this isn't how world leaders are supposed to behave this is how this isn't how presidents are supposed to behave. Presidents are supposed to be steadfast and resolute, and they say one thing,

and you have these various adjectives and characteristics that you associate with that term presidential. And I think to Trump, he doesn't really buy that because he's the president. He won. And so he is per se presidential. So all of this back and forth stuff, which, again, I'm not sure is good enough. Other people can decide whether it's a good negotiating strategy. I think to him, in sort of a sort

of different logical framework from which she's thinking, from which his mind operates, that is presidential. Now, you know, like, I want to go back to something you said in the beginning of your question, there is this tension on the tariffs is really interesting, which is like, what are they for? So let's say they were in place. There's one argument that like, it's a revenue ratio. And so you have this idea that we're gonna have tariffs, or we're not going to need income taxes. I sort of doubt that's plausible, but setting it aside, that's a thing people say. And then there's the idea, well, if we have tariffs, then we can have, we're going to rebuild US manufacturing. But right now it's not really clear what the

goal, like it's not clear that those can co-exist. I mean, for one thing, if you imagine we consumed everything we bought here, we stopped importing, then we wouldn't have tariff revenue anymore. And then that wouldn't be a very big source of revenue, wouldn't be able to replace the income tax. So like that part of the indicator, part of like what's perhaps confused Wall Street and many others about the tariffs is this idea of we don't even know what the gold is for the US economy because the administration themselves does different things. Yeah, I think that makes it sort of, it's all very ambiguous, let alone speaking of goals. We don't even really fully know the ask of Canada, something to do with fentanyl maybe, but it's not really clear like what the deliverable

is for Canada because like, okay, I'm sad. Well, if Russia invades, we want to be able to make our own fentanyl. Well, if Russia invades, we want to be able to make our own fentanyl. Joe, before before these tariffs are announced, like, how would you describe the economic relationship between the United States, Canada and Mexico? And like, firstly, what would be some of the goods that we would see, like, really affected should these tariffs be insured? Well, I would say there are sort of two, two main things, which is one is the big auto companies all have supply chains to be insured? Well, I would say there's sort of two, two main things, which is one is the

big auto companies all have supply chains that crisscross the borders in some cases, several times. So you could imagine, for example, you know, I'm just making this up. You could imagine a steering wheel and then it crosses the border somewhere else to get the airbag put in it. And then it crosses the border somewhere else to get attached to the thing that, you know, you, for the windshield wipers, whatever. They have very complex supply chains

across the borders multiple times. And that includes both Mexico and Canada. If you go to Ontario, a lot of auto parts companies there. A lot of US companies have factories in some cases for final assembly, I believe, in Mexico. So that exists. And then the other big one is a lot of things related to agricultural goods. And so some of that might be like fresh fruits and vegetables coming up through Mexico. Some of that might be grain or meat coming in from Canada. Dairy is obviously something that we get from Canada. And then things like potash.

So that's important for fertilizer and growing. So it's really, and then from Canada, obviously, oil and electricity. And there are certain pipelines that come in from Canada to get oil. I think those will be exempted in any tariff regime. I don't think there's much political appetite to just sort of mechanically raise the price of oil because you see that in the price of gasoline. But yeah, it's basically a lot of things related to do with auto and then some energy commodities and then a lot of agriculture. One of the things that's striking to me

about the the US-Mexico relationship is I've been following Claudia Scheinbaum and the way she's been dealing with sort of these public pronouncements and these negotiations is that in her public statements about it, she is always referencing the equal relationship between two sovereign nations. And she's always talking about not just the sovereignty of Mexico, but that all negotiations must be conducted as among equals. And if someone raises an eyebrow to that, you might think, well,

the United States is a much wealthier, bigger country than Mexico. But like in terms of a trade relationship, Mexico and the United States are equals. I mean, like we import so much from Mexico. Yeah, we are very reliant on Mexico for for many, many things. This is the tension, which is that one country's reliance, you know, reliance goes in both directions. So, you know, even if you're talking about us and China, I mean, the US is incredibly reliant on China for all kinds of manufactured goods.

which is incredibly reliant on China for all kinds of manufactured goods. By the same token, China is incredibly reliant on the US for end demand for all of its manufactured goods. There's not a big substitute for the sheer wealth of the US consumer. So that means employment and the ongoing economic development in China. But I think it's the same, you know, when you think about the in trade,

both parties are sort of equally reliant on something. And so, yeah, the US is very reliant on Mexican produce and other things like that. And of course, parts for cars and so forth. And the flip side is that Mexico is very reliant on the US for money and dollars and everything we buy from them. I think there is a point to what she makes, basically. And especially just thinking about it geographically, if there were some islands out in the middle of nowhere that the US had a trading relationship, and if we just want to cut them off, we probably could relationship and if we just want to cut them off, you know, we probably could and find some other ultimately find some other partner for them. But these are like the there's an integral, a fairly

integrated economic block, Mexico, the US, in Canada. We don't we can't like swap out our neighbors in this case. And so you think about like supply chains and something, you know, there's nothing like being able to ship something by truck across those borders. And so in the end, I think like all three countries are pretty reliant on each other in some deep ways, whether we're talking about the flow of money or we're talking about the flow of goods that makes it hard even for a country as rich as United States to say like, Oh, we're done with you.

Like, I think that's really tough. We're just about ready to land. I'll tell you what, of course you hesitate. Who knows? All I know is this. We're going to take in hundreds of billions of dollars in tariffs, and we're going to become so rich, you're not going to know where to spend all that money. I'm telling you, you just watch. we're going to become so rich you're not going to know where to spend all that money I'm telling you you just watch we're going to have jobs we're going to have

open factories it's going to be great and the plane is landing and thank you for a lot of good questions okay. I'd like to move on now to questions of a question of political will and I'd like to highlight a statement made by the Trump's treasury Secretary Scott Bennett the other day in New York City. He said, quote, access to cheap goods is not the essence of the American dream, which is, you know, in a certain context could be seen as a very brave, courageous stand to take. However, in a context in which housing, health care and education are more expensive than they've ever been, what like what does it say about like, what do you think the American public feels about the American dream right now and how cheap whether cheap consumer goods are a part of that or not?

I mean, I think there's a lot of a lot of us who like, I don't know, spiritually, or somewhere deep down. I think there's a lot of people for whom a line like that, like, it's, it's sort of resonates. Yeah, that would be good if we weren't like all buying a bunch of random stuff in Costco or whatever. But like, there is a sense in which people like the idea of sacrifice, you know? And I would say two things. One is I think the idea of a sort of collective sacrifice really does require

a lot of political buy-in from people. So if people are just like, well, what is the end vision here? What are we going to get at the other end for our sacrifice? Now, obviously, the US is like a pretty divided country politically. It's not clear what we're going to get at the other end. But inherently, I think one could envision a world at which like, okay, like we're going to sacrifice cheap goods that we buy and sporting equipment and electronic equipment and various things like that are going to become more scarce because there's something more wholesome, right? There's something more fulfilling on the other end.

I think a lot of people kind of like the sound of that, but again, I don't think there's I'm skeptical that the political buying exists because I don't think people know what the end looks like, you know, or very divided and so forth. In the meantime, people really don't like paying more for stuff as we saw over the last four years. And you know, look, look, progress, economic progress is in some sense about more and more cheap goods, right? We put in a certain amount of hours a day at work and with our wages, hopefully, every 10 years, you can buy more with that than you can the previous

10 years, or 10 years earlier, or a year earlier, like that is sort of, it's hard to actually come up with some other measure of economic progress besides in its core being able to consume more with less and that's what the word cheap implies. So like, yeah, in theory, like, a sure, great great, like there's more to life than cheap goods, but ultimately what we want is, um, well, what does that look like? And then what is economic progress look like if it's something other than getting more stuff for the same amount of money? The counterpoint that I have seen people offer to that that I think is interesting is

this idea that the thing that would eventually replace cheap goods would be goods that cost a lot more and yeah Manufactured here or partly manufactured here, but of you know such higher quality Yeah, it's like a barber code or like red-winged Sure. They last longer. But at the end of the day, that is sort of the same argument. It is kind of the same thing. You're you're you're buying less boots because you have the same boots for 30 years. But I do think I do think there's something worthwhile there. That said, for sure. That's yeah,

that said, like, you're definitely right. Yeah, that the idea of, like bringing're definitely right. Yeah. The idea of like bringing sacrifice to the American people in 2025 in like after like a 51, 48.5 election or 40, 49.5 in like a sort of popularity anywhere between 40 to 60, 55, 45, not your favor. I mean, crazier things have happened, I guess. But what are the odds, right? Yeah, no, I think it's really tough. And I think like that, you know, one of the risks that the Trump and Elon have is the idea of, I don't know what their information diet looks like. I think Trump likes so much that the networks and cable news and, but I, you

know, I think Elon seems to be swimming in an information world of sort of echo chamber or so to speak. And so he may, it's possible that he sort of overstates or believes that in a that there is a greater popularity or greater universality. Perhaps he doesn't see any criticism of this sort of economic path. I don't really know is it maybe things all them blind is already there. I don't think it is. And again, I think part of it is because I think we really know what that like, what we're going to get from our theoretical sacrifice, what that looks like. Now, by the way, just to your earlier point, there's not really a trade off

as I see it on as you know, it's like a spectrum of like, we could have like, nice things that are cheap, and they last long time, that's quality. That's great. And like, I love stuff like that. But at the end of the day, that doesn't really change the equation that what we want is sort of more consumptive power for anything, whether it's high quality, whether it's more goods for the amount of time that we like, put in and have to lay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. What you said about like,

Elon's reading of the room. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. What you said about like Elon's reading of the room. Yeah. This is a problem, this is something that we, we talked about very early on before even, I think in like right the first like month after he was forced to buy Twitter, that they were going to, not just Elon, but just sort of like the right in America as a whole.

And maybe in the Western world, they were going to run a risk very similar to what happened to liberals and specifically people on the Hillary 2016 campaign and the Elizabeth Warren campaign into a smaller scale. The Morales campaign for New York city mayor, where staffers, their timelines are so curated. Yeah. There is such a sort of amplifying effect where you go deeper and deeper into bubbles, where you overstate the amount of not just support, but like recognition for these concepts and ideas.

Yeah. You can inundate yourself with, there's so much content they lose. You can, you can inundate yourself with so much that you, you stare at your phone for 12 hours and then you go outside and you're like, everyone is noticing, you know, a fucking single moms are making their kids gay. Everyone's talking about it. And then you talk to someone and they go, what the fuck Everyone's talking about it. And then you talk to someone and they go, what the fuck are you talking about? You sound insane. The same thing can happen where you go, everyone loves paying $24 per egg.

Yeah, I think it's a real risk and I don't think anyone is really a public including Elon. I mean, look, we're supposed to have, you know, obviously, elections are a one mechanism by which the public records how it's how it feels about how things are going. But in the meantime, you know, there's polls and obviously now like social media is another sort of like daily election, so to speak, or, you know, daily poll. And I think if you're Elon or certain people, people you can is very easy to construct the world which everyday you know you have a universal hundred percent or close to that approval ratings and she was risky. What did you know what it really gets to the core of the question of what how well, how much is there the buy-in for the

sacrifice? I think the shorter, you know, like, we don't really know what's going to happen with prices yet or whether tariffs are going to cause higher prices or inflation is going to pick back up, et cetera. The most clear thing to my mind in the short term or in the immediate term is just like what's been happening with the stock market, which does it a pretty wide swath of people. It's helped people pay for education. It's helped people retire the base of like pensions and so forth. And the feedback is like pretty quick on that. And I think it can change the box. And so to see like this pretty sharp deterioration, some of it, you know, I'm open to the idea that there's like the economy was slowing or the trumps coming into office for various

reasons. Maybe the fence should have been more aggressive about coming race, whatever. But, um, you know, one of the ideas that people talk about is like a Trump put. So this idea that like, at some point, the stock market hits a level where he's like, I'm going to backtrack, etc. And everyone wants to know where that is. Everyone's trying to calibrate. Oh, if we go down another 10%, does that mean we don't get tariff? This is like a source of a lot of discourse and Wall Street research and stuff like that. But right now, the continued message seems to me that whether we're talking about social media discourse, whether we're talking about all story reaction, so

far, there's no indication of like, we're going to slow the trend. Well, I mean, according to the NASDAQ, S&P and Dow Jones stocks have just gotten a lot cheaper. So everyone can buy them now pay for retirement and education. That's one thing that's getting cheaper. Yeah, that's right. Business president. This is it. He's watching the stock market the stock market he knows all about you know he doesn't want the market to go down and now we've got tariffs and the market has been going

down well not much I mean in all fairness you said look we're gonna have a disruption but we're okay with that is that what you meant the stock market going down was the disruption what other disruption were you alluding to look what I have to do is build a strong country. You can't really watch the stock market. If you look at China, they have a hundred year perspective. We have a quarter. We go by quarters.

That's true. And you can't go by that. You have to do what's right. What we're doing is we're building a tremendous foundation for the future. Joe, I talked about Besnit, Secretary of the Treasury, but there's also Howard Lutnick, who is Trump's Commerce Secretary. What can you tell us about who they are, where they come from, and what their general macroeconomic philosophy is, and how it might be guiding this current Trump administration?

Sure. I think, so Scott Besson, the Treasury Secretary, the treasury secretary, you know, what I would say is he, you know, he used to work for Soros. Um, and was a sort of like Soros right-hand man for a long time that he like started his own macro hedge fund. You know, I think he has economic views that are like pretty well within the mainstream of like normie economics. Some of them have been actually pretty impressed by, he wrote this pretty great piece about Abenomics back in the day and Shinzo Ame and he has a really deep understanding of Japan and like pretty like, you know, like smart stuff, nothing extraordinary groundbreaking.

He said some interesting things on a podcast a while back, when it looked like when people are starting to pay attention to him as a key name within the Trump orbit, this idea of, we want other countries rethinking international security, so we want the way we're going to pair security with our debt is like countries have to commit to buying long-term American debt and then they'll be under the US security umbrella. So that's sort of interesting. You know, but again, you know, I think it's like fairly mainstream.

I think it's background. it's a very trader back. So you think like, that's sort of like the macro guy and like thinking about things like albinomics and stuff like that. Uh, London shop cancer for general. And it's like a very like treaty or into thing. And so like, I think that's like more of the culture of like poker and guys who like to make bets on stuff. And in that world, thinking too much about macroeconomics probably holds you back.

You don't want to be too smart about stuff because then you start getting in your own head. There's a bet. You make it. The odds are your favor. The odds are against you. And so you're just always betting. And so that's the world he comes out of. So like, I don't think anyone like has a strong sense of like what Howard Lutnick's like take on global macro economic policy is I doubt he had one. I'm not really sure, but like that's just like not the kind of background he came from. If I said being at the hedge fund where he had to make these big macro bets.

He's an economic thinker, a lot more of the trader background. And so I think like it's interesting because before Trump decided on Treasury secretaries and really seemed like those were the two names in large contention, a lot of people on the street wanted to see Vesant get their job because he sort of understood to be a fairly, you know, a deep thinker. You know, the first Trump administration, Mnuchin was seen as an excellent pick and that within the broad cabinet, like some better, some worse, Mnuchin stands out in people's memories. That's like for all the chaos in that administration, like Mnuchin was rock solid. And so I think there was a hope that it's like, okay, Bassett is going to be that, that he may surround himself with this whole cast

of characters, but Bassett will play that Mnuchin role of sort of being the ballast, the stabilizer. And that might be accurate, but it's interesting in the trade talk specifically, it feels like we're hearing from Lutnick quite a bit more. And I think Besant, we haven't heard from him as, you know, he's given interviews, but he's been within the sort of the chorus of various voices speaking from this administration. I wouldn't say he's like established themselves as like the anchor or like the voice. He sort of feels like he's sort of, he's one of the cast.

I think like Trump won is an incredibly useful framework to look at this all through. And like in the first month of this, I thought about Trump won a lot because during that, and especially the first month of this I thought about Trump won a lot because during that and especially the first year of that There is this sense of them You know doing the Frank Grimes thing going into the fuse box and zapping themselves But there was always like right before they could do something crazy there

It seemed like there were guide rails whether it was you know The Joint Chiefs of Staff, like sitting him down in a room and going, you're going to die, we're going to kill you, or it was something much more subtle, or just, you know, him backing off. There was a sense of like, okay, we're going to go exactly this far, and then revert to the mean of what a Republican in, you know, 2017, 2018 is. This time it does not seem like there are bumpers or guard rails. And it does make me think like we previously had like, I think we took that Mnuchin was like the perfect American version of an Audubon Bismarck that our Bismarck would be a guy who produced suicide

squad. But yeah, the the Mnuchin stand in now is lacks any of Mnuchin's powers because Mnuchin did seem to have some special insight on how to like talk Trump down. And I think a lot of what we saw is is guard rails or bumpers or maybe people threatening him obliquely within the American government to get more fantastical about it. That was all probably Mnuchin, or a lot of it at least, because we do know that Mnuchin did things like talk about an invasion of Venezuela and tons of really crazy ideas that were being floated around by both sort of like new conservative elements within the administration and everyone for every bad idea from Bannonites to the Jared and Ivanka faction.

I think that like Besset could have fulfilled a similar role, but yeah, just the dynamic is such that he either lacks his minutiae's personal persuasive powers or it's just the personnel are laid out differently. I don't know. I mean, I think the big difference is the existence of Elon and the fact that Trump from day one sort of outsourced, I don't know if that's the right word, but you know, gave Elon this extraordinary role within his administration to carry out his agenda that there's no real precedent for in history, to some extent, the various, um, bureau, uh, chiefs, uh, secretaries implicit, you know, to some extent, they report to Elon or, you know, Elon can say, all of their employees have to send an email every week about what they're doing, what they're doing, etc. I think that's really new. I mean, who knows? It's hard to, you know, how in minutiae didn't have operated in that environment. I think it's really difficult to know, you know, maybe there's like Alvin Luttre would never have stood for this, would never have looked. Who knows

really how these things go? But also like, you know, others, many people have made this point, like Trump understands the executive branch of the US government much better than he did when he took office in early 2017. And so he's hitting the ground running in a way that would have been impossible the first time around when he had never been there before, didn't have his feet on the ground, et cetera. They paid years to prepare for this. They didn the whole like, you know, they didn't think they were going to win last time and the people around them didn't think they were going to win and it wasn't the full like media apparatus and think tank apparatus, all of that. That's sprung up over the last several years about what to do with Trump as a

vehicle, they were like starting from scratch basically. And so yeah, the, uh, the idea of it's really hard to know, but like it's not surprising that, you know, they know where the fuse box is right now, so to speak. And they could just start going there. They can just start going there immediately. Yeah. And that like in the first administration, that was like a huge source of tension within Trump world

that the administration was staffed by like, you know, these perceived never Trumpers and like, brush to, uh, and even like Obama alumni is just because it's like, yeah, you know, they didn't expect to win. So they never thought, okay, how do we staff like our state department? This time they definitely did not have that problem. No, no, it's, it's evident. It's a very different, different dynamic. There's a full bench. There's a full slate of names, both obviously at the top level on down.

And like, you know, people who are on the team. So I don't want to let too much time go for it. I have to ask you about something that I'm genuinely baffled by. And that is the and that is the announcement of an American strategic crypto reserve. Yeah. Like, first of all, like, the idea that crypto is a strategic asset, I don't know what even to say about that. But like, this

to me seems to be the equivalent of like, if the like railroad or oil barons of a previous era got to start their own bank that was capitalized directly by the US government. I mean, the only difference being is that like oil and railroads are like useful to the economy. Like, what is this strategic crypto reserve? Like, under what circumstance would we have to tap into the global strategic crypto reserve? Yeah.

What if we're at war and we need to buy Mali? What if we're at war and we need to buy Mali? I mean, like, it's, I have no idea. You know, Wyoming Senator Cynthia Lummis has been talking about this idea for a while that like, you know, we need to, the US should have, should be stockpiling Bitcoin because in Bitcoin specific, you know, Bitcoin was going to be the new, you know, the new reserve asset in the future and something, something. Honestly, it's hard for me to articulate the logic because I the logic is so far fetched to me.

I mean, but actually, like I can articulate the logic surrounding tariffs, but like this is something where my like analytic capacities fail me. Yeah, because it's like, oh, we're hedging against the collapse of the US dollar. But then if the dollar collapses, like what are we all doing here? I mean, should the US government be hedging against the collapse of our currency? I mean, this is exactly like the right question, which is like, you're talking like, should the US government be hedging against the collapse of the US government? Because like, right question, which is like, you're, you're talking like, should the U S government be hedging against the collapse of the U S government?

Because like, right. It's just like, what is the scenario where like that makes sense? Cause that's really what you're saying. Like a currency doesn't just collapse overnight. It can't allow us because the government collapses. And so it's, it's not sure you're saying government collapses. And so it's a century thing. Well, we did ahead in case the US government collapses, but I would rather the US government not collapse or take steps to avoid a collapse rather than so I don't really understand anyway,

but this idea has been out there and so what to their credit, not all of the Bitcoiners have been championing this idea. Um, you know, then the crypto industry writ large, obviously really, uh, got into, uh, sort of, uh, swarmed around Trump or blessed, uh, several years. And so then he put out this tweet in which he named some others and he said, we're going to have XRP and Solana and we should, you know, it's like, and he said, we're going to have XRP and Solana and Cardano and these random coins. And then over the weekend, Dave and Sachs, who is the crypto czar, came out with a tweet and explained it. And it's going to be two things.

One is that they're just going to consolidate various coins that have been seized over the years in criminal seizures and they're gonna hold on to all right. It seems whatever like they want to give it a name. It probably does make sense on some level to like have all of these be organized and put together so that they can keep track of it all. And if they want to call it something, whatever. There also is a line in there about they're not going to buy any more Bitcoin. So in the end, it's not like some huge reserve that's going to hedge against whatever. It's a fairly modest sum, but it's worth several billions of dollars because there have been a lot of seeds over the years.

But then there's been a line about how deficit neutral means of further acquisition and I don't really know what they mean. So I guess they're saying one thing they're not going to do. They're not just going to go out and like borrow money and buy bit or, you know, use tax dollars directly to buy Bitcoin. So, okay. But, like, could it mean, like, some gold gets sold for Bitcoin? I guess it's conceivable.

There is no more gold. There is no more gold that's been replaced by shitcoins in Fort Knox. It's all meme coins now. They're starting their own dark web drug market, I guess. That's what it means. I mean, like, this is such a Bobby Axe move. We tricked them. We destroyed the US dollar, our own currency. We went long on Bitcoin, which for some reason is responding positively to the reserve currency of the

world collapsing. Right. Like in what fucking universe is America? It's over. But Bitcoin through the roof. This is interesting. You know, there's an interesting phenomenon, which is that like some people were fairly bright. You know, the way I go, Bitcoin has gold like properties. It could be a new global reserve currency, kind of like gold, et cetera.

Yeah. It holds value because people have decided it's valuable. Yeah. It's like whatever. But the interesting thing is that Bitcoin as a thing that trains, does not trade anything like gold. It trains like a tech stock. So the overlayer chart with a Bitcoin and the NASDAQ, they don't look tremendously different. And so when I talked about that post-election rally, everything went up and then you can see it all sort of peaked around the same time. And this has been a phenomenon for a long time, where at least on a day-to-day basis or a week-to-week basis, cryptocurrencies more or less kind of look like stocks when you chart them against each other.

And so even if theoretically Bitcoin has these sort of inherent properties that are gold-like and other people can have that debate, there's no evidence in the market that they behave as such. And so to your point, like every time there has been some sort of like big collapse in markets, March 2020 when the coronavirus really hit is sort of the most obvious example. Every time when people are feeling like, oh, there's existential risk here, we're really worried. Bitcoin has gone down. There has never been a period that I can recall in which

people are like losing their minds, running around like, oh, I'm selling everything. I'm selling my stock. I'm selling my bonds, but I'm buying Bitcoin. But it happened at some point in the future. Anything can happen, but there is no evidence that as a trading or as an investment asset, it behaves in the way that they claim. I'm just, by the way, this is me saying this.

This is not Joe saying this. I, it's hard to see the crypto reserve as it's called as anything except like a David Sachs enrichment project. When I look at the actual utility, that seems to be the only case because all the misstated reasons and goals just seem pretty self-defeating. Besides that, it's certainly, um, you know, he claimed that he had like divested a bunch of stuff, I guess, but we'll have to see. But like, I will say this, like the idea of like the president of the United States, like Twitter, specific tickers on random coins, I kind of get the Bitcoin thing.

Or I kind of like there is a world in which not the reserve, but there is a world in which I can see why the president is talking about Bitcoin. Like if I strain. Well, like when you see the president of the United States like tweeting about Solana and Donald and all of these, yeah, it's very good for an industry that's been very, very good to him over the last several years. Yeah, I never wanna hear about Solana again. Like the other ones, whatever. Solana is like a currency in a free to play game.

I never wanna hear about it. I hate the name, I hate how it looks. So, I got a quote here from Trump over the weekend. He said, quote, from this day on, America will follow the rule that every Bitcoin knows very well. Never sell your Bitcoin. That's a phrase that they have.

I don't know if that's right or not. Who the hell knows, right? Like, Trump doesn't know any, he doesn't, he understands cryptocurrency about as well as I do. I just think he knows that like people who love crypto, crypto love him and give him lots of money. So he's like- You know what I think is like, here's some great,

I mean, look, this is another one of those things where like Trump has pretty great intuitions. Someone tweeted, so I forget who, after the announcement, like if you don't know what Cardano is, like go ask your taxi driver, your taxi driver knows what Cardano is. And actually, I think that's spot on.

Like even like people within the crypto industry or like big crypto influencers, the VCs who take crypto seriously, like the co-hosts of the all in pond chest and so forth. They like denigrate, you know, they'll sneer at Cardano. So, you know, that's not really, that's not a real coin. No one's building on that coin, whatever. But it got like in the real world and, you know, touch your barber.

He's definitely heard of Cardano and they're into Trump is to Trump. I think he's good. But like his mentioned of those part of it is like, to your point, like, yes, many in the crypto industry professionally, um, will like his support for the industry. But there's something even further actually, in which I think he has his finger on the pulse of the average person out on the street who has some money in crypto. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.

Okay, Joe, this is a pretty good one. One final question for you. Okay. Now, this is why people tune into our podcast for financial advice. Yeah. So Joe, in your professional opinion, is the U.S. economy headed towards a recession? In my professional opinion, they're real. Even prior to the tariff back and forth, there were some real risks emerging in the U.S. economy.

The housing market is pretty mediocre. The labor market has been slowing down. The hiring rate is not great, et cetera. There's already tension at the state and local level on the finances that are going to cause layoffs, etc. Add into it all of the Doge cuts that we've seen and we saw today, there was a headline that Harvard University is having a hiring freeze because of their concerns about federal funding.

That Stanford denounced the same thing by the week and a half ago, etc. So you have added the Doge stuff, add in the stock market decline, which has a negative wealth effect. People are like, oh, maybe we don't need to take that vacation, but we don't need to eat out tonight because I'm feeling a little anxious because the money in the account is gone. And now add in the negative shock that the sort of tariff effect could have on investment because all those CEOs are awaiting that clarity that they're so desperate for. I believe that there is real risk of recession and add in the fact that

normally given these recession risks that we're talking about, you know, the, the impulse is for the Fed to keep cutting rates to offset some of the weakness, but they're anxious about the tariffs because they also have, they're worried about the effect that tariffs are going to have on inflation. And so there is a risk that the Fed falls, finds itself behind the curve, not cutting as fast as perhaps they should have because they're anxious about the tariffs and what that's going to do to inflation. The risks are certainly not. I mean, I'm speaking for myself personally, I am very disturbed by what I consider to

be a leading recession indicator, which is the number of commercials I see on TV for whole body deodorant. If this is a product that's getting sold, people are going to be wearing barrels and selling pencils on the street corner pretty soon. That's just how I feel. I don't know how valid that is. You need to check that out. Whole body deodorant seems like a very...

The whole body deodorant signal could become one of those famous Wall Street indicators that people look at in all sorts of... I think that's incredibly astute. Full body deodorant is... if they had that 100 years ago, that would be the first thing you would buy after getting off a steamboat on Ellis Island. That's right. Okay, Joe, I want to thank you for joining us. The podcast is odd lots.

Thanks Joe Weisenstahl for coming on and talking to us a little bit about the economy. Anytime. I have one more pitch to you to begin by saying shout out and love to everyone in New York City who came out this weekend to see EFIS at Lincoln Center and IFC. I would just like to continue to pitch you on this wonderful movie. I don't know if you noticed, but it's been receiving some absolutely rave reviews. It is the critics pick across the board. It's been called the best baseball movie since Moneyball. So once again you can go to ethisfilm.com

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In fact, they all drop down a point Each time the tickers tick. We'll have to have more margin now, There isn't any doubt. So you better dash with a load of cash Or we'll have to sell you out.