Real Time with Bill Maher - Overtime – Episode #722 Anthony Scaramucci, Lloyd Blankfein

Episode Date: March 17, 2026

Bill Maher and his guests answer viewer questions after the show. (Originally aired 3/13/26) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to an HBO podcast from the HBO late-night series, Real Time with Bill Maugh. All right, here on overtime with the former White House Communications Director of podcast, host and author Anthony Scaramucci, and the former CEO of Goldman Sachs, an author of the book, Streetwise, getting to and through Golden Sachs Lloyd Blank Fund. All right. So this is for you, Lloyd. You suggested the current moment has echoes of the run-up to the 2008 financial crisis. one was more in the middle of that than you. What warning signs should we be paying more attention to? I read this about it. You're talking about the private credit sector?

Yeah, just generally. What is that? Private assets on the balance sheets of asset managers, things that are illiquid, can't be marked to market. And so you... Like what? What is that mean? Like private credit, in some cases like private equity, obscure securities that don't sell, that get marked to what the money managers are marking them to. but since they are private, they don't transact in the market. So you really can't ascertain the true mark-to-market value. And there's some suspicion that some of these things are overmarked. This is why this shit happens.

I can't even understand the dumbdown explanation. I don't know. I'm going to get it. That could have been in Chinese. And it would have been absolutely known. They buy shit that they can't properly appraised. What kind of shit are we talking about? Okay, so they loan money to a business, and the business is private, and no financials are disclosed,

and now they're guessing at what the valuation is, and the markets are rocking, and the economy's dipping, and they probably have the position overmarked in their book, and so when they start to mark it down, it's going to put pressure on the banks. That didn't help anymore. Open two. How that is it? Try it one more time. It's like any priesthood.

A priesthood, they have their own little... language, whether the lawyers or actual priests or financial guys. We don't know what they're saying, and then he gets through. People buy stuff, and it may not be worth what they say it's worth. Right. Okay, well, I mean, like houses? I mean, that's what it was the last time. Like stocks, like loans, like business, like businesses, like anything. You said, the article I read quoted you as saying the people say the world's not leveraged, but that's what they said in 2008. And then we found out that the world is. About there was a lot of mortgage risk in Iceland.

Right. That's right. Is that literally there was? That's literally true, and it's literally true that people say this now. And the thing about a bubble, the thing about people being wrong about values, is that when you're wrong, you're wrong, and everybody gets caught up in it. And then in hindsight, which is always 2020, you find out that everybody was living the same dream. That's the problem. Right.

So you wonder about it. Okay. All right. Here's one for three, Lloyd. Here's one anyone can answer for the panel. The FBI is bringing in UFC fighters to train agents. Is there any value to this or is it just a publicity stunt? UFC fighters to train agents.

I don't know what to do about that. It takes a lot. FBI agents, G-men, G-men. Yes, FBI agents, most of whom, I assume. And was there any value? to Cash Patel, like shaking beer with the... That's more competition for Goldman Sachsen hiring interns, huh? It's absurd.

I mean, I put this in the category of many things with Trump, which is, like, I can't... There's too many things. Some, you just have to let pass like a cloud. I just can't worry about this one. I just can't. But you know what that is. That's for the audience of one.

The Cash Patel's looking at the June UFC fight, and he's sending a little UFC balloon over to Trump at the White House. I could understand maybe Seals or somebody who's going to be involved in hand-to-hand combat. I don't think of FBI guys as needing to be this kind of UFC fighter. I mean, I'm sure they do get into some scrappy shit sometimes, but I bet you some FBI agents retire, just like some cops having never fired a weapon, and having never had use for.

of this. So I'm not sure whether it's not just performative, I'm sure it is. Just don't take it seriously. I don't. It's not real. Okay. Congressman James Clyburn just announced he will seek another term at 85 years old. Young.

What? Well, it's young. You got the other guy from Iowa. It's like 97, I think, Chuck Grassley, right? He's a spring chicken. No, that's the question. How old is too old is serving? I guess what they're really asking is do we make a law about it? I think we have to. I don't know what you think.

But I think it's ridiculous. But what if we make a law in the next two years, AI changes the game, and then 85-year-olds, you know, are... No, it's a democracy, and people can vote for whoever they want. Who's anybody to say that if the Democratic population wants to vote for somebody who's 86 years old,

who's to say they're not allowed to do that? I think that's right. Why then make the case, then you should have no tone on this. And we should end the term limits. You've got to have some guardrails, in my opinion. So what you just said is true to an extent, but then why do we have term limits for the president? Well, as I get older, I find a guardrail premised on old age should be tossed off.

Can I just answer why you have to end it? You get too much of a consolidation of power as a result of someone spending four decades in the position. And I don't think the founders wanted that. I think we need a recirculation. Okay. Gas prices are climbing because of the Iran situation. Do you think moments like this permanently push people toward electric vehicles, or is it just a short-term reaction?

I mean, I've had one for a while. I mean, once you have one, it just seemed barbaric going to a gas station. You just never want to do that again. Yeah. It's just a short-term reaction, in my opinion. Really? Yeah. I think the problem now, eventually the technology will get better,

battery lives will get better. But, you know, I want to get into a car, know that I could drive it 300 miles and don't have to have my fingers cross that I can recharge it and have it take two hours if I do. Lloyd, mine goes 360. Okay. I'd like to... Then I know to get away,

I'll need to go 400 miles that day. All right. This week is the sixth anniversary of COVID. Happy birthday. I remember it was this exact day. I was on the show with you, Bill. You were? March 6, 2020. We were doing the show. Then we went to Craigs together.

and you were the cause of that I was probably patience you didn't get cold because of me again you got it later you got later patient zero was that the last I thought we today's March 13th I thought that was the last show we did

maybe that was the first show before it was around that time when people we were just everyone was at home shitting in their pants not we couldn't even think like going near anybody and I would get I mean I never thought it was what it was okay I'm

I'm not saying I'm Nostradamus. I just thought everybody overreacted. Looking back up to six years, any agreement there that we overreacted. No question. Also, we put up so much disinformation. Not only did we overreact, the whole vaccine controversy made us more polarized.

So it was a disaster on a lot of different fronts. Well, what are your thoughts on the vaccine? Well, I'm not a vaccine conspiracy theorist, but I will tell you, I know people that have had vaccine injuries, so I think they've rushed it. I was so glad to get that vaccine. Great. Everybody, I got the vaccine.

I took several doses of it. I don't like to judge, but anybody who thinks otherwise is nuts. Well, hold on a second. It's not that I think of them. Well, long. Good for you. I'm glad you liked it. Yes.

I didn't want to get it, and I didn't need it. So I'm not saying it didn't save millions of people's wives. It did. I got it. But if you think everybody who got it needed it, you're nuts. I think that there's some things that only work if people. You know, there's, I mean, again, I don't want to say there's a herd, you know, there's a herd sensitivity. Look what's going on with measles today.

People are electing not to get the measles vaccine. And now something that had really gone by the boards is now becoming epidemic. Because some people are choosing, it's kind of selfish and it's antisocial because we as humans aggregate together and we pass things to each other. So it's a little bit. Well, that would be fine if we absolutely knew that the vaccine was safe for everybody. that we didn't, some of us didn't want to choose to fight something with our own natural immune system. Now, there are one, there are pathogens that are probably out there where I would fight you to get the vaccine. That wasn't one of them. I shouldn't have that right? No, but the thing

is, is that your infection can infect me. And so... I know, but you're saying you want to put something in my body that I don't want in my body. I think that's, that's kind of been established for a long time. People have forced inoculations on people, costs society requires. It just like we all have to stop it, red lights, and we all have to pay taxes. But it didn't stop it. Everybody got it. They told us that if you got the vaccine, you couldn't pass it, and you couldn't get it, and they were both lies.

No, I'm not saying they don't, I'm not saying they deliberately lied about it, but they were wrong about it. You could get it and you could pass. My point, it polarized us really badly, and it came out, in my opinion, with hindsight, without a lot of data, it came out very, very quickly, and it created. a lot more distrust in the society. Well, it needed to come out quickly. Those vaccines actually hurt the vaccine movement that you're describing. I mean, they were working on it for a long time. It just wasn't like COVID came along and they were, oh, let's do this MRNA thing.

They had a lot of data? They had a lot of data? They had a lot of data on the success of it? No, they still probably are going to find out things in the future. But basically, you know, I got it too. I didn't want to. I just couldn't continue my life if I didn't get it. I got it. Yeah, you got it. Well, you couldn't. You couldn't. You couldn't. I couldn't go anywhere. I couldn't get it in the studio. I couldn't go on the road. I couldn't do anything.

I mean, that's a little coercive. Again, depending on how bad the pathogen is. I think everybody should have to, should be able to make that decision for themselves. You're in the flu shot category, which is more optional. But what about measles? Do you think measles should be mandatory? I loved having the measles. I'm not saying we should encourage it or not try to stop it.

I don't have kids, but I remember just being home. watching reruns all day, it was awesome. No, I mean, back in the, when I was a kid, I mean, you probably got measles too. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I mean, they used to have measles parties. They would, they would actually... Because you'd want to get an infection when you were young to get it over with.

But they also wanted all the kids to get it at the same time. No, look, I'm sure that there are bad things that can happen from measles. There are just some things that we all give to each other, where we're in a community, and look, they oversold it, obviously. Maybe they did it intentionally. Maybe they didn't know what they were doing. Maybe it was just not even negligent. We just didn't have enough experience with the disease.

But it prevented in a lot of cases, and it made the effects of it a lot milder in many, many more cases. Absolutely. And so it was a good thing, but I wouldn't want to go into a room where there were a lot of people that were unvaccinated because then, despite my best efforts, I'm going to get your infection. So don't go in that room? Well, who don't know?

People don't self-identia. I know, but, you know, if you want to lock yourself at home, then you do that. I just think there's some decisions that we have to make collectively. Other societies treated it differently. Florida did better than New York. Other societies, what they did, you know, and I'm talking about like, I think Sweden did it this way more, and Florida, you know, other societies, where they laser-focused on the vulnerable. Oh, and that would have been better.

And let the younger, the people who probably were not going to get too sick from any way go on with their lives. My younger son didn't get it because he was below the certain category, and I'm glad he didn't get it in hindsight. But, you know, like giving it to toddlers and masking two-year-olds, some of this was just really over the top. But let's hope there isn't another one. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. Catch all new episodes of Real Time with Bill Maher every Friday night at 10,

or watch them anytime on HBO on demand. For more information, Log on to HBO.com. Lazangue surgelley, Pucance-Moyerned 15 minutes. We're like it's the hour Dojo!

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