The David Pakman Show - 12/12/23: Inflation down again as stocks soar, Trump cabinet leaked

Episode Date: December 12, 2023

-- On the Show: -- Morgan Housel, author of the internationally bestselling books "The Psychology of Money" and "Same as Ever: A Guide to What Never Changes," joins David to discuss the psychology of money, the things that seem to never change, and more. Get his latest book here: https://amzn.to/3RmDYr7 -- Year-over-year inflation ticks down again to 3.1% as the stock market approaches an all time high with record low unemployment -- Fox News host Steve Doocy derails another Joe Biden crime segment by mentioning that there is still no evidence of any crimes -- Donald Trump's potential 2024 cabinet members leak, and it's as disturbing and deranged as anyone could imagine -- Failed former President Donald Trump attacks his own lawyer for supposedly bad legal advice after a disastrous court decision for Trump -- Failed former President Donald Trump says that he was merely "joking" about becoming a dictator -- Special Prosecutor Jack Smith will present evidence directly from Donald Trump's phone at trial -- Republican Senator Mitt Romney says that in order to support a Joe Biden impeachment inquiry, he would like to see evidence of wrongdoing -- Voicemail caller thinks David needs to spend more time covering Hunter Biden -- On the Bonus Show: Special Counsel wants immediate Supreme Court decision on Trump, Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny missing from prison, Iowa fight over Satanic display a reminder of Republican hypocrisy, much more... 🔊 Babbel: Get 55% off your subscription at https://babbel.com/pakman 🌱 Ounce of Hope: Get 20% OFF with code PAKMAN at https://www.ounceofhope.com/ 💻 Stay protected! Try our sponsor Aura FREE for 2 weeks at https://aura.com/pakman 🪒 Henson Shaving: Use code PAKMAN for FREE blades at https://hensonshaving.com/pakman 🖼️ Aura Frames: Use code PAKMAN for $30 off at https://auraframes.com/pakman 💻 Get Private Internet Access for 83% OFF + 4 months free at https://www.piavpn.com/David 💪 Athletic Greens is offering FREE year-supply of Vitamin D at https://athleticgreens.com/pakman -- Become a Supporter: http://www.davidpakman.com/membership -- Subscribe on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/thedavidpakmanshow -- Subscribe to Pakman Live: https://www.youtube.com/pakmanlive -- Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/davidpakmanshow -- Like us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/davidpakmanshow -- Leave us a message at The David Pakman Show Voicemail Line (219)-2DAVIDP

All right, my friends, we have to have a heart to heart about the economy. We have to have a heart to heart, very sober and realistic about the historical and political implications of an economy that is on paper as strong as today's economy is. Now, I know, I know there's people who are going to be mad. David, you're so out of touch. You don't have any idea what's going on out there. My comments about the economy are never based on what I or you as individuals are personally experiencing. My commentary about the economy is always based on the broad based data and metrics that we use to measure how an economy is doing. Let's start with today's news. Inflation is down again. You might recall that October inflation was zero point zero, pulling down year over year inflation to three point two percent. Well, we now have the November

numbers published at 830 a.m. Eastern Time this morning. Inflation in November was zero point one percent. What this did to the year over year number is pull it down further from three point two percent to three point one percent. I've explained a dozen times or more how that year over year number is constructed from the trailing 12 month of individual numbers. I won't do it again. But the point here is we now are essentially within that inflation target of between two and three percent that's considered healthy and desirable for a developed economy like the United States. You can say, well,

eggs are still too expensive. That absolutely may be the case. My hipster pasture raised eggs are down 30 cents a dozen. My you know, I get these. They're completely they're free of everything. They're like air. They're, you know, soy free, gluten free, a pork free whatever. It's nothing. These eggs are nothing. Just grass. They used to be seven. They were all the way up to seven seventy nine a dozen at their peak. They're now down to seven forty nine. OK, your eggs maybe are up. I don't know. But the point is inflation slowed to three point one percent annual. We found that out today. What else is going on? Well, the stock market is imminently going to reach all time highs depending on which metric you look at and which index the stock market is already at all

time highs by one. Here's a report from Business Insider. By one measure, the Dow is already at a new all time high on a total return basis, measuring performance that includes the dividend payments. The Dow Jones industrial average is already at an all time high. The S&P 500 is less than one percent away from an all time historic high on a total return basis. Now, you might say, David, not everybody's exposed to the stock market. That's not a good metric by itself for how the economy is doing. And I would say to you, you are absolutely and completely correct. That's why we don't only only look at stock market performance. We now have unemployment year over year at three point one stock market at

or within one percent of an all time high on a total return basis. And we have unemployment at a historic low. You go back to the mid 1950s. You see slightly lower unemployment. And short of that post World War two New Deal employment boom, you haven't seen a period of such sustained low unemployment for decade after decade after decade. Now why do I care about this? This is not about telling you we've solved the economy. We now have a northern European style and even that economy, those economies aren't perfect.

A northern European style economy where we're no longer concerned about inequality, we're no longer concerned about people not having a safety net. That's not the point here. The point is the following. Many of my dear friends and colleagues on the left from the reports I'm getting from people emailing me and in my subreddit, although admittedly, I haven't actually seen any of these clips, but I'm trusting that my audience is accurately reporting it to me. Many of my friends and colleagues on the left are convinced that Joe Biden cannot win. Why can't he win? Some say because he's old. Well, Trump's basically just as old and far less healthy. Others say it's because people are angry with Joe Biden

about his handling of the Israeli Hamas war. I don't believe that that's the primary voting issue for most voters. There's all these different reasons to be worried about Joe Biden. Some are even going as far as to say Biden should be pulled and replaced with somebody else. Here's the argument I want to make. And again, any one of us could be wrong. I didn't think Trump would win in 2016. It's not like I make predictions with some great predictive ability. But when I look historically and I see economies that are this stable, incumbent presidents get reelected. This is a similar analysis to the keys to an election that Alan Lichtman does, which is when you have systemic stability and economic strength the way we do now, usually presidents

get reelected. Now, could it be different in twenty twenty four because Joe Biden is old and despite a strong economy, voters are going to say we want Trump instead of Biden, even though the economy is is is strong because Biden's two and a half years older would be pretty stupid of voters to do. Voters do stupid things. Sometimes they elected Trump in 2016, but that seems hard to believe. Are voters going to be so disgusted with Biden's handling of the Israeli Hamas war that they will say, screw the good economy.

We're going to make Trump the president. It doesn't make a lot of sense. So I am not predicting a Biden win definitively in any way, shape or form. What I am telling you is that some of the breathless assumptions that Biden certainly cannot win when the economy is this solid for such a sustained period of time. Every metric looking at minimum fine, right? You don't have to be shouting from the rooftops about everything's perfect. Would we rather 2.4 percent inflation? Sure. Might it be down to that by November? Yeah, it might be. You don't have to put hang your hat on every single metric. But when the economy generally is doing this well, presidents get reelected. And so the argument you need to make is what is so bad about Biden that despite a historically

strong economy and the fact that presidents get reelected when the economy is this strong, what is so bad about him that he is uniquely destined to lose to the guy he defeated three years ago? That's the question we have to be asking. None of us should assume anything. We all should be registered. We all should vote. Steve Doocy on Fox News derails a Fox News segment by saying, hey, guys, all this talk about the Biden impeachment. There's no evidence linking Biden to any crime at this point in time.

And his fellow Fox hosts don't love it when he brings this up. We've had a number of examples over the last year of Steve Ducey saying, hey, guys, maybe like slow your roll just a little bit here because it kind of seems that they've proven nothing. Sometimes they haven't even proven that there has been a crime committed, never mind that Joe Biden did it. Let's take a look at this. This is from yesterday on Fox News. And Steve Doocy is not doing anything that miraculous. It's just unusual on Fox News. Don't you think those districts where they have 18, the Republicans are in those 18 states that voted for Joe Biden, they're scared to vote for an impeachment because they're scared

they'll lose votes and they won't have a job. But don't you think if they do this inquiry, which we all are supportive of and if they find enough evidence, don't you think the voters are smart enough in those districts to say, you know what, we did vote for Biden, but this looks really bad. And absolutely, if they have the stuff, I mean, the Republicans at this point don't have, they've got a lot of ledgers and spreadsheets, but they have not connected the dots. They've connected the dots, the Department of Justice did on Hunter, but they have not shown where Joe Biden, you know, did anything illegally. That's right.

Now, the other Fox hosts, as you can see, each of them does not look pleased at this. They're all kind of just looking down at their shoes and saying, Steve, why? Why you got to mention that? Why do you have to say that to us? We don't like hearing that. This is absolutely and completely correct. And I know that a lot of Republicans don't care. A lot of Republicans are determined to just say, hey, we're just going to impeach the guy. Listen, evidence, evidence, whatever. We're going to impeach the guy.

One of the really important aspects of this, I think, to remember is that they love insisting that not only have crimes been committed, even though they can't tell us what the crimes are, that Joe Biden committed the crimes, even though it's not clear there are any crimes. They also take this approach of saying there was a cover up and Joe Biden wouldn't even be the president had the Hunter Biden story not been censored. Why do they say that? There is a poll that found that a lot of voters said, had I known about the Hunter Biden thing, I would have been less likely to vote for Biden in 2020.

And this is their evidence that the cover up of the story that they believe took place is what helped Biden win. What they will never tell you is that the vast majority of those voters who said I would be less likely to have voted for Biden if I had known about Hunter Biden, they already weren't voting for Biden. And so this is a really important thing. The poll they talk about that they believe justifies all of this because the election was stolen by covering up the story. Mostly Republicans who were voting Trump were asked, are you more or less likely to vote Biden based on what was in? Would you have been less likely to vote Biden based on what what was covered up about Hunter? And they go, oh, I would have been

less likely to vote for Biden. They weren't going to vote for Biden either way. They're just saying they even more forcefully would not have voted for Biden. That's the entire framing of the cover up helped Biden. This is all about vengeance. Trump was correctly impeached. Trump has been indicted for crimes for which there is plenty of evidence. They want to level the playing field by saying, hey, listen, both of the people running have been indicted. Both of the people running have been indicted. Both of the people running have been impeached. Hasn't happened yet, but that's what they want to do. I believe it will be a political mistake that backfires. They appear determined to do it.

Eric Swalwell last week told us they seem determined to do it. But I believe that it will backfire. And if even Fox News isn't yet completely on board, that tells you this could go very badly for House Republicans. They seem desperate to do it. I believe it'll be a mistake. Let me know in the comments whether you agree or disagree. Someone on our shopping list who is tough to find a gift for. Here's an out of the box idea. Cannabis as a holiday gift. Our sponsor, Ounce of Hope, ships psychoactive THC cannabis products right to your door all over the US. It is completely federally legal and they are giving you 20 percent off for the holidays

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and you can support them. We all have that friend on our list who should enjoy some cannabis for I'm David Pakman, the David Pakman. That's O-U-N-C-E of hope.com. Use code Pacman for 20% off. The info is in the podcast notes. Many of you have heard me talk about the hacking that I've dealt with in the past. Look up the statistics. If it hasn't happened to you, it still could at some point. Our sponsor, Aura, is the all in one solution that I use to keep all of our accounts safe. Aura will scan the dark web for your personal info, email password, social security number, and will alert you if it's found and will help you take steps to fix it. You'll get alerts about suspicious credit inquiries. Aura will monitor bank accounts and home and auto titles to help protect you against fraud. And Aura also will protect your actual devices from malware and scams with state of the art antivirus and a call screener. And

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If you thought that Trump's first term had a cabinet filled with unqualified loyalists, I'm here to tell you, Rex Tillerson and John Bolton seem like rational, stable geniuses next to the folks that Trump is reportedly considering for his next cabinet. And this is, you know, Trump's dictatorial aspirations are bad enough. Trump's plan to weaponize the Department of Justice against his political enemies, real or perceived, is absolutely nuts. But this is the next layer. Take a look at this clockwise from the top. Here are the people Trump is reportedly considering. Stephen Miller, his bloodthirsty propagandist speechwriter from the first term. Senator J.D. Vance, propagandist Stephen Bannon, Mike Davis, Tucker Carlson and Kash Patel, some of the most weaponized, unhinged and deranged partisan voices. Axios reports Trump would fill

the most powerful jobs in government with men like Stephen Miller, Senator J.D. Vance and Kash Patel with the possible return of Stephen Bannon. If Trump won in 24, he turned to loyalists who share his zeal to punish critics, purge nonbelievers and take controversial legal and military action. Trump's prospective officials don't miss words about their plan, mince words about their plans. They want to target in jail critics, including government officials and journalists, deport undocumented immigrants or put them in detainment camps, unleash the military to target drug cartels in Mexico or possibly crack down on criminals or protesters at home.

They want to scrap rules that limit their ability to purge government workers deemed less disloyal. We've talked about that in detail already. The article is quick to say Trump hasn't settled on specific roles for specific people. He hates it when there is speculation otherwise. But this is all about the people that he has spoken to. So here's what you really have to understand. Most Republican voters right now are OK with a dictatorship made up of unqualified radical

ideologues as long as it is their side, their dictatorship, a dictatorship that they like. Now we're later going to go to Trump's wishy washy stuff about I'll be a dictator on one day. But even that was a joke. But here's a list of what I want to do. And it is pretty damn dictatorial at the end of the day. We're going to get to all that. But this is something that is not getting the attention it deserves. You have sort of like a triumvirate, I guess I would say. There are three aspects of this. Number one, there is Trump's second term as an unrestrained, delusional, authoritarian wannabe dictator, wannabe ideologue. The things he's told us he plans to do attacks on media attacks on his

political enemies, legal and otherwise, potential deployment of the military in ways it's not supposed to be deployed. We have the stuff Trump really wants to do himself. That's number one. Number two, we have the reality that those who work for Trump in the next term will be totally unrestrained. I know that to many of us, it seemed as though the first term was pretty damn unrestrained, but that was nothing compared to what he is clearly planning for term number two. And that should really scare us. And then number three, there is this Project 2025 Agenda 47 type plan, which includes purging lots of career diplomats. I don't know how many people know this, but it's important to understand in many of the government departments, education, commerce at the Pentagon, Department of Defense, et cetera. There are people there who work there,

thousands and thousands, tens of thousands of people who it's not that privately they might not be political in the sense that they vote. They might vote Trump. They might vote Biden. Who knows? But these are career government employees who are there regardless of whether the president's a Republican or a Democrat. They're not considered political actors.

Their day to day decisions are not political in the way that a cabinet secretary would be part of Project 2025, part of Agenda 47. These are these plans cooked up by Heritage Foundation and by the people around Trump personally. The idea is we're not just going to put in cabinet members that are going to be unrestrained Trump loyalists. Just the rank and file of these departments. We're going to fire half or more of these career federal government employees, and we are going to put in unrestrained loyalists. We don't even know the full scope of what disastrous damage that might be able to do. So those are the three sides of it. Trump's plans personally unrestrained cabinet members and then mass firings of career government employees and replacing them with partisan

actors. It's as scary as it sounds. And we're going to continue talking about this because if anybody forgets about it, when they think about should I vote or should I not? Should I write someone in? Should I stay home? I don't know. You need to know what's on the table. You need to know what's at stake. And a lot is at stake. The failed former president is now attacking his own lawyer after a disastrous legal decision has been handed down in one of Trump's many trials. Let me explain to you what is going on here. Newsweek reports Donald Trump hit out at one of his own lawyers over the advice he says he received in the civil sexual assault case brought against him by writer E. Gene Carroll. In May, a New York jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing Carroll.

Of course, we've now heard the story so many times in the Bergdorf Goodman department store in the 90s and then defaming her. Trump continues to deny the claims was ordered to pay five million. Now, you might recall that Trump didn't appear before the New York court in person, despite saying he would probably be there. Now, this is a common thing Trump does. Over the weekend, Trump's lawyer said Monday, yesterday, Trump will testify in his New York civil fraud trial. Then Trump said, I'm not going. Trump is now saying the reason he didn't show up was because his lawyer told him not to do it and that this was bad legal advice.

Trump attacking forget about former lawyers. Trump is attacking recent and current lawyers posting to Truth Social Central, quote, This disgusting slob, a Democrat political operative is the same guy who funded a woman who I knew absolutely nothing about, sued me for capital R rape, for which I was found not guilty. She didn't remember the year, decade or much else. In interviews, she said some amazingly inconsistent things. Disgraceful trial. Very unfair.

I was asked by my lawyer not to attend. It was beneath me and they have no case. That was not good advice. So Trump, remember, lashes out at anybody who he believes is immediately inconvenient or disadvantageous to his immediate goals. And he won't hesitate to attack his own lawyers. Now, we have to be very realistic about this whole thing of Trump testifying. Trump's testimonies in general are destined to be disasters. Trump believes that he is so smart, charming and articulate and erudite that he can just lie and he'll convince everybody in the room. He doesn't realize that there are attorneys who do this for a living.

They are professionals at catching people in lies, inconsistencies and misstatements. But Trump doesn't realize that. So the idea of Trump's testimony and presence likely isn't good for Trump. The E. Jean Carroll situation, there is no evidence that had Trump shown up, it would have gone better for him. But it doesn't matter. He's going right at his lawyer and he will not stop going after those who were formerly loyal to him or formerly on his side. It has to be someone else's fault. And now when it comes to Trump's dictatorial aspirations, he's also blaming everybody but himself. All right. So listen to this. Trump now says he was

joking about being a dictator. We're going to look at the videos. You can assess whether you believe that these were jokes. Donald Trump posted to Truth Social, quote, Fake News writer Peter Obama Baker of the failing New York Times readership and subscriptions way down from the good old Trump years, whose claim to fame is that he will never write anything good about the great job President Trump did. Just wrote in a major front page story that I want to be a dictator, but doesn't mention it was said in a joking manner and completed with but only for a day

because I'm going to close the border and drill, drill, drill a much different attitude and meaning. So let's just look at the back story. OK, Trump has been saying dictatorial things for months now about what he will do with the Justice Department, what he will do with media critical of him, what he will do with anybody he doesn't like or who's not sucking up to him. So Sean Hannity in last week's town hall in Iowa went to Trump and gave him the opportunity to simply say, of course, I'm not going to be a dictator.

Trump didn't answer and change the subject. Here's how it all started. They want to call you a dictator. You use the words I am your retribution. And now before that, you said if you've been wronged and you used other words as well. But I want to be very, very clear on this. To be clear, do you in any way have any plans whatsoever if reelected president to abuse power, to break the law,

to use the government to go after people. You mean like they're using right now? So in the history of our country, that's not a no. What's happened to us again has never happened before over nonsense, over nothing made up charges. I often say Al Capone, he was one of the greatest of all time. If you like criminals, he was a mob boss, the likes of which Scarface they call him. And he got indicted once I got indicted four times. So not a denial. And so Hannity realizes, oh boy, this is not good. And later on during the town hall, Hannity goes back and tries to give Trump an out again and says, Mr. President, he's almost begging Trump to just say, of course, I'm not going to be a dictator. And here's where Trump,

again, I guess he's joking here, doesn't deny it. I want to go back to this one issue, though, because the media has been focused on this and attacking you under no circumstances. You are promising America tonight. You would never abuse power as retribution against anybody. Except for day one. Except for he's going crazy. Except for day one. Meaning I want to close the border and I want to drill. That's not a drill. That's not that's not retribution. I'm going to be I'm going to be, you know, he keeps this guy. He says, you're not going to be a dictator, are you? I said, no, no, no. Other than day one. No indication here that Donald Trump is joking, even though that's the argument he's making. And then here, finally, and maybe maybe most unhinged.

Here is Donald Trump once again talking about this dictator thing at his speech to the New York Young Republican group over the weekend. And again, we're supposed to believe all of this all along was a joke. It's very difficult to believe. A baker today in The New York Times, he said that I want to be a dictator. He said, I want to be a dictator for one day. But The New York Times said, and you know why I wanted to be a dictator. He said, I want to be a dictator for one day. But The New York Times said and you know why I wanted to be a dictator, because I want a wall. Right. I want a wall and I want to drill, drill, drill. So. Tons of jokes, right? I mean, it's so obvious that he's joking here.

Even if these are jokes, they're completely inappropriate. But all you have to do is look back at Trump's being enamored with dictators, his entire presidency and since it ended saying he will do dictatorial things and then not denying that he will try to be a dictator when Hannity asks him about it. At some point, don't we just have to say he's going to try to do the thing that he's repeating over and over and over again that he's going to try to do? Or are we now just looking for new ways to excuse these claims? You tell me what you think.

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What Never Changes Psychology of Money. Actually on my on my list of recommended personal finance books at David Pakman dot com slash finance. Morgan, really great to have you on. I appreciate your time. Thanks so much for having me, David. So maybe to start with, you know, one of the things I've talked with my audience about is there is a lot of money made

in the world, either by convincing people that something that's really complicated is actually simple or the opposite, which is convincing people that something that's really simple is actually complicated. And it applies differently in different areas. I think it's the latter when it comes to to personal finance. Can you talk a little bit about as you wrote The Psychology of Money and then in terms of your motivation for Same As Ever, what are the fundamental principles that you want to communicate to people about the way the world works that are reflected in the books? Yeah, David, so much of what I wrote about in same as ever was just my experience as a financial writer and, and, and also as a student of history of looking back

at what happened, what people were doing with their money, uh, 500 years ago, a hundred years ago, and realizing it's the same thing that they're doing today. And so look, the cast of characters changes, but it's the same movie over and over again. The way that people behave around greed and fear and risk and uncertainty, that never changes. And this is actually really important because in the financial industry, we spend so much of our time and effort trying to predict what's going to happen next. When's the next bear market? Where's the stock market going next?

When's the next recession? Our ability to do that is effectively zero. Nobody can do that with any consistency. So my point, same as ever, was if we can't predict what's going to change, let's focus all of our time and our effort on what we know is never going to change the behaviors about how people think about greed, risk, fear, uncertainty that have been with us for hundreds of years. And therefore we know they are going to be part of our future.

I would argue that even the psychology of money is a book that's about much more than personal finance, but same as ever, even more overtly is about so much more than that. And it could be applied to relationships. It could be applied to technology, certainly to education and business, et cetera. And one of the things that you talk about when you talk about greed and fear, et cetera. And one of the things that you talk about when you talk about greed and fear, et cetera, is this contrast where on the one hand, as we see technology develop and we see conversations that are taking place on platforms A and B, and then the conversations move to C and D. And what is the future of

communication going to look like or of news or the spaces in which I operate. The thing that is unlikely to change is that greed will influence how cynical actors will try to take advantage of whatever the communication platforms are as as an example, et cetera. Do you as you write these ideas and think about them, do you worry that there may at some point be such a paradigm shift that some of these principles will no longer apply? Or what's your basis for being as confident as you seem in the book that these principles will persevere? I think there's definitely cycles and shifts in the extent to which they apply. I'll give you one example that you kind of hinted at. The incentives on social media are to be loud, boisterous, controversial, wave your hands. That's the incentives. That's what's going to get you retweets and likes. That's what's going to get

you a bigger following. The incentives like that have always existed regardless of what the platform was, whether it was in newspapers or radio or television, it's just much more accentuated now because the volume of content and the ease of publishing content is so much greater. So a lot of these things where if you looked at social media, you would say this is a completely new paradigm relative to what existed even 10 or 20 years ago. But I think it's just an accentuation of trends that have always existed. The trend there being the power of incentives. Most people really underestimate the boundaries of their morality and the boundaries of what they are willing and capable of doing, given the right incentives. And I think you see that very clear in social media, where you have people who, if you know them in real life, they are calm, articulate,

measured people. And on social media, they're maniacs because that is what is incentivized on social media. So that's always existed. It's just much stronger now. It seems that maybe not totally universally, but close to it. A lot of the folks that are in the kind of circles in which you run. So folks like Cal Newport, Tim Ferriss and others, there's this move towards it's better to spend increasingly less time on social media and even just in terms of consumption. We're better off with long form books, et cetera.

Do you have a personal what's your personal social media usage at this point? I spend quite a bit of time on Twitter. You do not much else. My Twitter and Instagram are the only accounts that I really have. Instagram is like a couple pictures of my kids. I don't have a very big following there. Most of it is Twitter. Now, I would say too that for my profession, most of what I do is selling books. And how you sell books is word of mouth. It's not to be a monster on Twitter and wave your arms as hard as you can. It's to write a book that hopefully people after they buy it will recommend it to their friends. So because of what I'm doing, which is very different than, um, you know, to use extreme examples, somebody like Mr. Beast, who is just on YouTube, just putting out videos, that's his platform. Whereas books, it's like the book itself is the marketing tool. So it's different. So I do spend quite a bit of time there. I've always had, we're not always, but for the last 10 years or so, I've had this idea that I want to read fewer blogs and more books, and I want to read more history and

fewer forecasts. That's where I'd lean. So I definitely feel like I gain a lot of more intelligence and wisdom, and I become more informed when I'm reading a history book versus a blog post about a forecast. Now, it's not to say that there's not a lot of great content on blogs, but what social media and blogs incentivize is quick volume, whereas what books incentivize is slow thoughtfulness. And so that's what that's that's the game that I want to play. So I lean towards that in my content consumption. Yeah, I agree completely. And to my own detriment, given the space I'm in, I mean, I'm up front with my audience that if you think about like that old food pyramid and just apply it to like a, you know, information consumption pyramid, I think myself really is the kind of triangle at the top that you want to really limit and say this is really almost more entertainment. And hopefully

I'm giving people some useful ideas and things to think about. But that that base really needs to be critical thinking, philosophy and epistemology. You would build on that with history and economics and sort of principles based. And then there's probably even a couple more intermediate things that I would look at news reports before before you go to commentary. And it sounds more or less like your principle is similar to that. Yeah. I mean, you know, I, I can't remember one newspaper article or blog posts that I read in 2013 that stuck with me, changed my life. I could rattle off a number of books that I read around that time that will stick with me forever. And I can tell you what they were about the examples in them, how they influenced my thinking. And I think that's like, that's the

perfect litmus test is like, what are you going to remember? A really good filter when you're reading is asking yourself, will I still care about this in one year or 10 years or 20 years? And definitely in books, a lot of times the answer is no, there's a lot of bad books or books that are not meant for you, but it's, you're's you're much more likely to have a higher hit rate of saying yes in a book than in some sort of online content. Now, I write a lot of online content myself. I'm not against it whatsoever. But just in terms of the slow thoughtfulness that is required in a book, it's going to lean much towards something that you are going to remember in the future. And part of it seems in the same way that with personal finance, you think about what's my right asset allocation based on where am I in life

and my risk tolerance, et cetera. You might say based on my values, you know, I I probably spend 10 minutes a day catching up on online articles, but try to have an hour for reading of books. And it's sort of a similar idea to me, which is I'm setting myself up based on what are my values and how valuable do I think these different types of content are? I think it's similar to an asset allocation in a sense. Yeah, I think that's right. And, you know, what is the equivalent of tick tock and asset allocation? It's like day trading penny stocks. And what is the equivalent of, you know, uh, uh, an old time tested history book. That's like an index fund kind of thing. And so, yeah, I, I, I think you're definitely

right in that analogy. And I think viewing tick tock and Instagram as candy, which by the way, I love candy. I love, I love, I love Reese's peanut butter cups, nothing, nothing against them, but they have a place in your diet and you need to make sure that you are not getting, gaining the majority of your calories, so to speak, from that kind of content. I want to talk about the principle of compounding a little bit, which I think is somewhat intuitive when it comes to finance to a lot of folks. And this is sort of the idea that you start earning dividends on dividends. You start earning interest on interest that you've previously earned and the way in which you can accelerate your investment returns with with financial compounding. In the new book, Same as Ever, you talk about this principle as it applies to relationships

or health and work. Can you talk a little bit about how you think about that and how it applies? Yeah, I think there's compounding anywhere, like anything that gives you a slow advantage that you can stick with for a very long period of time, you're going to see some form of compounding. I'll give you like a really obscure example. I have this kind of like mild obsession with people who have lived in their homes for 40 years, 50 years, 70 years. It's just astounding to me what kind of memories you must be forming in a house that you've lived in for half a century. That is a form of compounding. Another example of compounding that is very important, but people really over miss it and ignore it. One of the most important news stories in modern times of

our lives has been the decrease in heart disease mortality that has taken place since about the 1960s. It has saved literally tens of millions of lives. In the 1960s, if you had a heart attack, even if you made it to the hospital, you were dead that day. There was not that much you could do for you. And a lot of people were having heart attacks because we effectively had no blood pressure medication. That has obviously completely changed and that rate has plunged. The reason that people don't really talk about it or think about it that much is because what happened over the last 70 years was about a one and a half percent annual improvement in heart disease mortality. Now, if you compound one and a half percent per year for 70 years, the result is incredible. You save tens of millions of lives.

But in any given year, in any day's news, you never heard about it. You're never going to see front page of The New York Times breaking news. Heart disease mortality improves by 0.2 percent. You're never going to see front page of the New York Times breaking news. Heart disease mortality improves by zero point two percent. You're never going to see that. But over time, it utterly changes the world. And I think a lot of good news is like that. It's a slow compounding that in any given news cycle is impossible to see. Everybody ignores it. But over the course of a lifetime or half a century, right, it completely changes everything. That seems to relate also to your your thoughts and writing about incentives to some degree, because where would we hear about that sort of news?

Well, we would hear about it primarily through media outlets whose incentives are really explosive headlines. And what you just mentioned doesn't align with those media incentives fundamentally. And even look, this is not I'm not cynical about the media, because if you are a news producer and you have two news stories that day, number one is heart disease. Mortality improves by zero point two percent. The other is terrorist attack, plane crash, pandemic, murder, whatever. Of course, of course, you're going to do the latter. That would be the right thing to do if there was a horrific terrorist attack and you push that headline aside for heart disease,

mortality improves by 0.2%, you are doing your readers a disservice. So I understand why it occurs. And the thing I'm getting at here is that most bad news tends to happen very fast. Terrorist attacks, plane crashes, pandemics, assassinations, they literally happen in the blink of an eye. Most good news is the equivalent of heart disease. It's a very slow compounding over time. So over a long period of time, the good news surpasses the bad news for society as a whole. Things get better, we become richer, healthier, life expectancies improve. But in any given day, all you're hearing about predominantly is the bad news, not because the news producers are cynical. It's because it's happening so much faster that you can't look away. Even if there is a slow drumbeat of good news, that's very easy to ignore. You write about the importance of having low expectations as something that can contribute

to success or to satisfaction. To some people, this might be counterintuitive. I do see overlaps there, though, with stoic philosophy. I see overlaps there with the psychological concept of like negative visualization as a as a means for reducing anxiety or increasing preparedness, etc. Can you talk a little bit about the specifics of what you mean by that? I think it's a tragedy to think about a world in which almost everything gets better and no one appreciates it because they expected all of it. That's a pretty tragic world. And I think that is actually a very common world. John D. Rockefeller was the richest man in human history.

He was worth almost half a trillion dollars just for inflation. He never had, David, he never had Advil, penicillin, sunscreen. He didn't have electricity for most of his adult life. He never had all of these things that you and I don't even think about that would have been considered magic to him that you and I can benefit from every day. Now, what's important is that you and I do not wake up thankful for Advil. We just accepted it that that's a thing that we are entitled to in this world because we've come to expect it. That's just an example of something that is like a massive improvement in your life, but then your expectations rise by the same amount and you don't get any benefit from it.

You're not actually thankful for it. It's always been like this, and I think it always will be. It's not something that we can particularly change. And you can imagine a world in which our grandkids are earning twice as much money as us, living longer than us, living in a safer world than us with better technology, go on down the list, and they're not any happier for it. And you can imagine that because that's the case for us when we compare ourselves to our grandparents who are coming of age in the 20s and 30s. It's the same. That's been. And I think so at the society level, there's not much we can do about it. At the individual level, if you go out of your way to identify the game that's played where things get better, but your expectations rise by

just as much, and then you feel no better off for it. If you identify that game, you realize how important that going out of your way to manage your expectations with as much emphasis as you do, improving your circumstances is really critical. If you want to live in a world where not only are things getting better and you're getting richer, but you're actually happier for it. Yeah. I think that the distinction between at the personal and societal level is an interesting one because there's maybe I know there are people in my audience who very much disagree with the sort of Steven Pinker perspective on, listen, you're less likely than ever to die in a war. You're so unlikely to die in a terrorist act. The standard of living on average around the world has gone up so much.

And yet there are still so many problems left to solve. And on a societal level, it seems that the constantly rising expectations are where innovation and continued improvement may come from. And if I hear you correctly, what you're saying is at the personal level for our subjective experiences, a different approach may be better. I think at the society level, it's just it's so ingrained in human behavior to raise your expectations with your prosperity that at the broad level, it's always going to be like that. I do think though, much easier said than done, but some people can at least around the margins, around the edges, influence their expectations that they have. I'll give you a personal example that I use for my own

financial planning and whatnot. Historically, the US stock market after inflation has returned about 6% per year on average over a long period of time. When I'm thinking about my future, I just automatically assume it's going to be something like three. Now, maybe it's going to be six, maybe it'll be eight, maybe it'll be two, whatever. But if I automatically assume it's six, but I'm expecting, or if historically it's six, but I'm expecting three, I'm just going out of my way in an arbitrary way to manage my expectations. If it's six, that's a cherry on top. But the danger would be you assume it's six and it ends up as three. And then, and then look, you've earned 3% real returns. It's actually not that bad. You're actually going to like gain some wealth

over time, but you're devastated because of it. So just going out of your way to arbitrarily lower your expectations is I think about the best that we can do to fight back against what I described as the tragedy of everything gets better, but you're no happier for it because you expected all of it. I'm so curious at this point, particularly with how increasingly well known what you outline in the psychology of money is, do you still get people that when they meet you, they say, what do you think will happen in the psychology of money is do you still get people that when they meet you, they say, what do you think will happen in the economy next year? Even though it's so even though answering that question is so obviously antithetical to the entire principles that you lay out, do people still come to you and ask you your

opinion on stuff like that? Yes, all the time. And I'll tell you why they do it. It's always been like this and always will be, which because when somebody asks you, what is the economy going to do next year? I think in their core, they don't actually care what the economy is going to do next year. What they want you to do is to reduce the uncertainty that they have in their head right now. And if you say, even if you give them an answer and you say, look, I think the economy is going to go up 3%, but I'm not really confident on that. Like it may do something different. Even if you say that you've reduced the uncertainty that they have in their head,

they feel a little bit better. Uncertainty is a really unpleasant feeling, particularly when the stakes are high, like for your health or the economy or like your job prospects, it's really uncomfortable to, to say to yourself, I have no idea what's going to happen. And even the slightest bit of pushing, nudging you in one direction, uh direction reduces that. So that's why even for people who don't believe in forecasts of whom I am one, right? Whenever I'm reading the Wall Street Journal, I see some sort of forecast. You can actually feel in real time. You're like, oh, that's actually really pleasant to read that. It's reducing a little bit of uncertainty that I have.

The new book is same as ever a guide to what never changes. We've been speaking with Morgan Housel, who is also the author of The Psychology of Money. Morgan, I really appreciate your time and insights today. Congratulations on the book. Thanks so much, David. Appreciate it. When you browse the Internet with an unencrypted connection, you're just inviting all sorts of people to watch everything you're doing online.

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This is not the sort of stuff that you want to prosecute or excited about using, because if they are, it's probably insanely incriminating. Let's take a look at this report from Axios Jack Smith to use Trump's phone data at trial. Special counsel Jack Smith plans to use data from Trump's White House cell phone in the federal 2020 interference case, according to a Monday court filing. Smith plans to call an expert witness who is, quote, extracted and processed data from the phones of the former

president and another unnamed person. The witness could determine the usages of the phones during the post 2020 election period, including on or around January 6th. That includes the period of time when the Twitter app was open on Trump's phone, the day of the Capitol riot per the court filing. You may recall, as the article says, Trump was indicted in August in this particular case. This is very much not good for Donald Trump. What is it that could be on that phone. Obviously, text messages, private text messages related to what was Trump saying to others about his opinion about the riots that day and what were others urging him to do and potentially how was Trump responding to those requests? We know about phone calls. We know

about people personally coming to Trump and saying, listen, your daughter is trying to get through you to do this, to do that. The other thing we don't know what communications Trump was involved in directly. Secondly, the Twitter thing is a fascinating question. What was Trump doing on Twitter with regard to direct messages as it relates to the January 6th riots? Were there individuals in touch with Trump who were not coordinating riots with Trump, but who separately could be triangulated to having been in touch with other members of Donald Trump's inner circle. If you are a defendant, this is rarely the sort of thing that signals you're going to have an easy time when prosecutors are now saying we will be bringing forward this information

as a very general concept. I anticipate that the sort of behavior we've been seeing from Donald Trump during a civil fraud trial is going to be about 100 X during his criminal trials. Because remember, in the civil fraud trial, worst case and not that this isn't bad, but worst case, we're talking about financial penalties. Trump may be being forced to sell off some assets and Trump taking losing the ability to do business in the state of New York. That's worst case. Pretty bad, but that's worst case.

When it comes to the four criminal trials, we're talking about a situation where Trump potentially goes to prison for life. And so as unhinged as he has been every single day that he goes to that civil fraud trial, I imagine and expect that it will be endlessly worse, endlessly worse with the criminal trials and the latest news that Trump's cell phone data is going to be presented. Very much not what you want to hear if you're a criminal defendant. We've been talking about the handful of Republicans who aren't people we love. They're not people I'm going around saying if only we could get

Mitt Romney to be president. But we recognize that we now have two very different calibers of Republicans out there. I am going to play a clip of Mitt Romney for you here from over the weekend on Meet the Press. Mitt Romney was asked about the Biden impeachment inquiry, and he's saying something which is so simple. I mean, you can't get simpler than this, but it's surprising to hear from 2023 Republicans. Romney says, if we're going to do this impeachment thing with Biden, I would like there to be evidence that he did something worthy of impeachment. How dare he ask for evidence before going forward with an impeachment inquiry? And by the way, asked whether he has seen any such evidence. He says,

no, I have not. This gets you called disloyal in Magaland. But all he's saying is what every single one of these elected officials should be saying. Listen to this. As you know, House Republicans have signaled that they may vote as early as this week on an impeachment inquiry into President Biden, despite the fact that they haven't shown yet a direct link between Hunter Biden's business dealings and President Biden. Have you seen any evidence that President Biden has committed high crimes and misdemeanors? No. Uh-oh, oh boy. I don't see any evidence of that at all. I think before you begin an impeachment inquiry, you ought to have some evidence, some inclination. Can you imagine? He's demanding they have evidence?

What a loser rhino. That there's been wrongdoing and so far there's nothing of that nature that's been provided. So are you opposed to the impeachment inquiry? Well, if I were in the house, I'd vote against it unless they were able to bring forward evidence that suggested there were a high crime or misdemeanor that had been committed. But so far that hasn't been the case. Look, fortunately for most people, we're not responsible for the misdeeds of our kids and grandkids and great grandkids. Nothing in my family I'm embarrassed about. But President Trump's, excuse me, President Biden's son, Hunter, is obviously a very unsavory person.

And has had some extremely damaging personal foibles, including a drug habit and so forth. That's not President Biden. And and we're not going to impeach someone because of the sins of their kids. There was a time when this wasn't controversial. There was a time where we hey, you know what? We disagree about abortion. We disagree about taxes. We disagree about foreign intervention.

We disagree about what the educational system should look like. We disagree about how health care should be organized. We disagree about immigration. OK, but we're not going to impeach a president absent any evidence because of allegations related to something their child is accused of doing with no connection whatsoever to the president. We're just not going to do it. That is the way it used to be at a certain point in time. This view now for Mitt Romney is so rare that we hear it. We go, wow, that's refreshing. It's refreshing that he's saying don't impeach a president unless we have evidence. Don't impeach a president for what their son is accused of doing, given that there's no connection whatsoever to President Joe Biden. The reason this is so surprising, the reason this

stands out is because it is so rare at this point in time. It's considered controversial for a Republican to say this. It's considered disloyal in the MAGA wing of the Republican Party. For someone like Mitt Romney, you say, I just call me crazy. I don't think we should start an impeachment inquiry unless we actually have evidence that Joe Biden did something wrong. And there are lots of Republicans who are playing coy with this by saying we don't have the evidence because they've covered it up. We need the power of the impeachment inquiry to force them to give us the evidence. That's the latest way that they are spinning this thing. Good for Romney. I don't agree with him on just about any policy issue,

but good for him. Easy for him to do it. He's retiring. He's at the end of his political career. But so many in the Republican Party right now lack the testicular and ovarian fortitude to just say simple, uncontroversial things like this. There are some in my audience who think this should be the Hunter Biden 24-7 show or I'm somehow being biased. We have a voicemail number. That number is 219, David P. And here is a caller who says I'm a total POS. He's furious. And he says I'm simply not talking about Hunter Biden enough on this program, because remember, we talk about American and world politics here. And I guess somehow Hunter Biden is related to the political positions of the United States. I don't know. Listen to this. Hey, man, you are just a total POS, man. Wow. You're over there talking about Trump wants his former staffer killed. Right. That's what Alyssa Farah Griffin said. Trump wanted someone

who was believed to have leaked information about Trump. They want he wanted him executed. Right. I did talk about that because we have a source on that who was there. Some bull crap still up Trump's ass. Listen, man, Hunter Biden just got indicted. Right. Facing several charges. Right. Federally.

And you don't even want to touch it. We touched it. There's nothing linking it to Joe Biden. Joe Biden is saying he will not get involved in any way in trying to help Hunter Biden here, as he shouldn't. Hunter Biden's cases should be adjudicated without any involvement from from Joe Biden. And it has no bearing whatsoever on policy. But I've not been avoiding it. I've talked about it the amount that I think makes sense, given that Hunter Biden has nothing to do with the American government, unlike Jared Kushner, unlike Ivanka and others around Trump who were directly involved with his administration.

How biased and corrupt are you, dude? Corrupt total POS. All right. Well, listen, you can have an opinion as to what the right amount is to talk about Hunter Biden, but you're not my segment producer. You don't control the show. And I'll talk about whatever I want to talk about or not. And if you don't like it, the great thing is there's probably some show out there that's doing Hunter Biden 24 seven. I don't know what show that is, but there must be some show doing it. You can go and find that show if this one's not suitable. We have such a great bonus show for you today. The bonus show where you want to make money. Everybody else that makes money to fund themselves is bad.

You know, with Alex Jones back on X on Twitter, I'm worried that the bonus show will come under new scrutiny because Alex worried that the bonus show will come under new scrutiny because Alex Jones hates the bonus show. We are going to talk about the apparent disappearance of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. He is supposedly missing from prison, didn't show up in court. Extremely concerning situation. Secondly, it turns out that when it comes to religious freedom, Republicans aren't interested in religious freedom for the Satanic Temple. And we have yet another example from Iowa that reminds us of this. And thirdly, special counsel Jack Smith wants the Supreme Court to quickly and immediately, with no delay, decide whether Trump is immune from January 6th prosecution. Will they get that

decision in a short amount of time or not? All of those stories and more on today's bonus show. Don't miss it. Sign up at join Pacman dot com. Use the coupon code two million to save sixty six to the world.