The Ricochet Podcast - Not Scary With Larry

Episode Date: April 24, 2020

The Question of the Week, maybe the month, perhaps the year, oh, heck — likely of the century is “when is the economy re-opening?” Sure, we could round up a bunch of egg-head economists to ponder and scratch their chins, but instead we went directly to the West Wing, to the room where it happens (to coin a phrase) and got our old friend and former podcaster Larry Kudlow on the Skype machine. Source

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Terms apply. Bet responsibly. 18plusgamblingcare.ie We will have coronavirus in the fall. I am convinced of that. I'm the president and you're fake news. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Peter Robinson and Rob Long. I'm James Lylex and our

guest today is Larry Kudlow. Don't need to say any more than that, so let's have ourselves a podcast. I can hear you! Welcome everybody, this is the Ricochet Podcast number 493. Seven more to 500, and what a celebration we're going to have, because when that day comes, we're all going to be out dancing in the street, no masks, shaking hands, bare-chested, sweaty, embracing, all the rest of it, because it'll be done, or maybe not. This is James Lallix here in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with Rob Long, I assume, in New York, and Peter Robinson, I assume, in California.

We spread the breadth of the land. Now, Rob, you're in New York, the Robinson, I assume in California, we spread the breadth of the land. Now, Rob, you're in New York, the epicenter, the place that the stats that are just dragging us all down. Thanks a lot. And Peter, you're in California where I assume things are not so bad. California seems to have been weathering this with with not the ghastly toll of New York. That's right. It seems a little better than, certainly, than the governor expected. The weird thing now, up until a week ago, the weather here in Northern California was gloomy and gray, and that fit what we were all going through. Spring has rolled in, cloudless skies, high 60s and low 70s, and it just doesn't feel sensible. It doesn't fit anymore. It's the same here. The sun is out. The trees are budding. Had some lawn guys come and dumped

a whole bunch of cedar mulch so that the backyard smells just wonderful and lush with sundered trees. So yeah, in Minnesota, we've just had the governor say we're going to modify the lockdown. Now 100,000 people can go back to work. And he's being praised as such for his Solomon-like temperament because he's on Trump and people who would have screamed if a Republican governor, I think, let us go. Trust this guy because everybody's seeing this through the political priors. So the mood here is better. Rob in New York gives the temperature there. Well, it's sort of the same.

I mean, the problem is that it's like with everything with this virus is that, well, it's hard to say to people that they need to keep doing it. Not only do we need to keep doing this, but we need to do it even more vigilantly when it looks like the numbers aren't disastrous. The numbers aren't, you know, there are ICU beds available in all of the five boroughs of Manhattan. The infection rate has gone down below one, according to this website I check every day. And there's plenty of respirators. In fact, if this is the epicenter of the virus, we all did pretty good. Congratulations to us. We should all open, you know, start planning to open stuff.

Maybe give everybody a week who owns a store or restaurant to clean things up and figure out how the table is going to be configured. But then, you know, pick a day and open it up and it'll be the weirdest, most uncelebratory BJ day. It'll be, you know, a sailor and a nurse kissing in Times Square with masks and gloves on. But there's nothing wrong with that. And I, you know, I guess what I would say is that there's plenty of time to litigate what happened and whether we overreacted or we didn't. I suspect that the answer to that will be yes and no. But for right now, it seems like the people who are hurting are the people who live – who can work – 40 percent of Americans who can't work at home. And the people who can work at home tend to be the kind of people who write think pieces for The New York Times and appear on MSNBC and CNN.

And so perhaps the latter should have a little bit more respect and concern for the former at this point. Well, I'll write, Peter. Rob's on board then with killing old people. Hey! I just want to get that out there because that's the thing. Before it was shelter in place to flatten the curve and to make sure that the hospitals weren't, everybody knew that every single hospital system in the country was going to be overwhelmed and there wouldn't be enough ventilators. That's all off the table now. And now it's testing. Until we can test and get everybody out there, we risk exposing people to the disease as if there's a point at which exposure to the disease will somehow magically evaporate.

It's not going to happen. Peter, you were going to say? Well, no, I do have a question for Rob. It seems, just reading the statistics, in the last week or so, it has emerged that New York is different from every place else. Yes. And unfortunately different in all the bad ways. The infection rate is much worse. It's the worst here.

15 to 20% in New York. I haven't seen any other immune. Of course, we're still early on these serology tests, but out here in California, Santa Clara County, 2 to 4% infected. Los Angeles County, new study, again, 2 to 4% infected. New York, huge infections. New York is the one place where the health care system does seem for a few days to have been, if not overwhelmed the people with whom my work gets me in contact, and they are pretty wealthy people, donor, let us say the donor class, have gotten out of New York for this. Oh, sure.

And so I thought to myself— You can walk up fancy neighborhoods and look at the apartment building and fancy brand-new buildings on the river, and those windows windows that every every every floor is dark yes those people are not home so down where you live in the high everybody from the 30th floor up right is gone everybody on fifth avenue is gone and i just thought to myself wow the people who occupy the commanding heights of that town in a worldly sense i've you know yeah i know but uh you mean. But I exchanged emails the other day with somebody who is an investor in New York, and he said, no problem down here in West Palm Beach, Florida.

So the question, of course, is the country, we'll talk to Larry Kudlow in a moment about how quickly the country will bounce back, but you have the feeling that New Yorkers, they're feeling pretty relaxed about the future of the city? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, I'm only talking about just the virus itself. If New York is in New York or the greater New York area is, which it really, really is the greater New York area. If you, if you took all the numbers out of the United States of America and its COVID-19 infection, and you remove from it

the greater New York metro area, it would plummet. It would be incredibly low. It is mostly here. And if that is the case, it is not crippling the healthcare system. There are plenty of hospital beds. There's plenty of doctors. They're working very hard, obviously. It's an infectious disease, so you've got to have to keep people separated. And you have to, you know, it's really, really hard. And there's a lot of people in the hospital. That's true.

But it's not the apocalypse because people in New York City did their thing. You know, they stayed in. They stay in. The streets are empty. I take a walk every night. And it's kind of amazing. It's like I'm trying to describe what it's like. It's like a European city like Paris on a Sunday afternoon in August. It's not empty, but, you know, everything's closed, and it's quiet.

You can cross the street. You know, you don't really have to look both ways. So if that's the case, I think the economic disaster of the city is that it's a huge city with a lot of service workers in Manhattan. I mean, Manhattan swells by some X number of millions of people every day. And they are being told by the government they cannot work. And they're being told by public health officials they cannot go to work. They have not lost their jobs. That's the most galling thing, I think, for people. They didn't lose their job.

The business they were working in or starting or running or whatever, it didn't fold. They have lost their paycheck. That's got to be galling. These are not people who don't want to work, although I think at this point, some people, as we know, are discovering that— It has its pleasures. It has its—and the unemployment benefits, in this case, have their benefits. I mean, there's more than anecdotal evidence to suggest that people are thinking, well, wait a minute, it's not so bad.

But at a certain point, the idea that, well, if we all go back, then we're condemning old people to die is sort of like, that's the kind of thinking that I suspect is culturally prevalent in Washington, in federal government, and in the media, which is that the American people are basically dumb, and they need to be protected, and we need to sometimes exaggerate things the way a parent exaggerates dangers. Don't put your hand out the window, my mother used to say. It'll snap off. Now, it won't, right? But she just didn't want me to put my hand out the window because what if, you know, a truck, I know there are all

sorts of reasons not to put your hand out the window, but I still wanted to do it. And so she had to create this disastrous scenario so I wouldn't do it. And that is what they've done. And they've done it in their perspective. They've done it because they don't think that we can make reasonable, rational, public-spirited, generous decisions for ourselves. And the truth is, Manhattan, New York City in general, California, Georgia, all those states, all those places have proved them wrong. Well, they pride themselves on being the smartest people around and smart people believe in science. Ergo, the more they cling to science, science, science, the, the, you know, the more enlightened

that they are. But you know, when you mentioned downtown New York being peculiar, I walked downtown Minneapolis once a week, I go just to remind myself what normal life is like. The streets are deserted. There's nobody there. You walk around and it is such a change from nothing really, because the streets really aren't that packed on a normal day because everybody's up in the skyway system in the summertime because it's cooler up there in the wintertime because it's warmer up there. There's this whole commercial ecosystem on the second floor that doesn't spill down to the ground floor. But still, you have people going about the Nicollet Mall and the rest of it. You do have, you know, on a normal day. Now it's itinerants, security guards, the odd man standing with a huge aromatic cigar, people with masks, people without. But what I go down to check

is that there's still construction going on. Oh, yeah. And it's always great and strange to wander over to these sites and see all the burly guys without masks, with a safety vest, working. They're working. They're building things. They're putting pieces together to construct this 40-story skyscraper that's going up. There's 25-story building that's going up.

And I assume that they'll be occupied. It's sort of, you know, we've got all this construction going on, but it's a bit, you have this feeling a bit like 1930 when the apotheosis of New York's construction boom resulted in all of these skyscraper city services, Empire State Building and the rest of it, or the empty state building, as they called it when it opened. And then as people went through the 30 and 31, the site of these dark towers was sort of this cast of Paul. What I read about New York is that you have coming online soon, these super tall skyscraper luxury units that are by Central Park. You know the one I'm talking about, Rob? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And if they don't make the date, and I don't know if construction is still continuing up pace in New York, but if they don't make the construction date, all of the contracts that people have, poof, get to vanish. And so all of those Qatar and Malaysian billionaires and Chinese billionaires get out and then wait for the price to drop by 50 percent.

So what you have – who cares about – If that happens. If that happens. If it drops. And then wait for the price to drop by 50%. So what you have, I mean, who cares about it? If that happens. If that happens. If it drops. I mean, the people who may be thinking, you know, dark thoughts about the future are people in commercial real estate. Because what obviously we all know now is that we probably don't need all those offices, right? Because, you know, I can work at home.

If you have kids, if you have whatever, you can work two days at home. It's no bad. Yes, no, and we can get to that. But the point that I was trying to make about the tall skyscrapers is that they embody this class of people who live in New York who yet seem to have no connection to the city itself except as a playground, as a glittering little playground. Right? That is absolutely 100 percent true, especially about those skyscrapers you talked to those skyscrapers actually represent two things one the total and complete corruption of uh mayor bill de blasio who lest you think he's just he's only a marxist he which he is he's also a marxist on the take because of course the property developers people who put up those buildings have are huge supporters

of bill de blasio and they've given him all sorts of goodies. And in exchange, he has given the owners of those units some enormous rebates on their property tax. So you spend $100 million, $200 million, whatever it is, some insane amount of money on an apartment, a two-floor apartment. The value and the purchase price of that apartment would be a whopping property tax bill in the city of New York. But what Bill de Blasio has done is give them all sorts of delays and easements and rebates and discounts and postponements of their property tax, which means that those buildings represent, each one of them, you look at them from afar, they're going to be empty forever, but they're going to be owned

by Chinese billionaires and various other people who have a lot of money, and they live in a country that's a despotic, hugely communist dictatorship, and they've got to put their money somewhere. The Chinese government, the commies who run China can nationalize the banks. They can freeze your bank account. They can do all sorts of things to you, but they can't take your apartment away. And if you spend $50 million, $60 million on that apartment, that is a savings bank. And it's pretty cheap for you if you're a zillionaire and you want to protect it. So what New York used to be when the rest of the country looked to it was the Empire State Building with commercial real estate.

This tower that, you know, Kong. At LiveScoreBet, we love Cheltenham just as much as we love football. The excitement, the roar and the chance to reward you. That's why every day of the festival, we're giving new members money back as a free sports bet up to 10 euro if your horse loses on a selected race. That's how we celebrate the biggest week in racing. Cheltenham with LiveScore Bet. This is Total Betting. Sign up by 2pm 14th of March.

Bet within 48 hours of race. Main market excluding specials and place bets. Terms apply. Bet responsibly. 18plusgamblingcare.ie On top of it, a piece of modern, sleek architecture. It meant something. Even when it was empty, it meant something about our ability to do things.

And now we have these featureless anodyne glass shafts topped off by Chinese billionaires that symbolize New York perhaps more than the spirit of the Empire State Building. But that's just about Manhattan. Well, we can argue. That's just about Manhattan, not the boroughs and the rest of it. But, Peter, I've got to ask you because probably not everybody wants to listen to us chatter about New York as much as we love it. You are at this moment gathering, looking for this podcast to end so you can grab your car keys, go down to the Costco and buy a 55-gallon drum of Lysol to be directly injected into your veins. Because apparently, supposedly, whenever I read a story, the president says everyone should drink bleach. My assumption is that he said something off the cuff

or based on something somebody else said. It was probably maybe not the wisest way to put it, but it's not what these guys are saying, and I should probably go and see exactly what was said so I can figure it out and figure out what everybody's screaming about online. So, Peter, from what you understand now, you believe that the president wants everybody to gargle Windex and go in a tanning booth. I am in the wrong time zone for you to be asking because it's still morning for me out here. All of this seems to have broken overnight. I checked Twitter. What did Trump say now?

And I have to admit, I had work to do this morning, so I did a little work before this podcast. At this stage, the latest Twitter eruption over something that Trump has said, the pattern seems to me so fixed that it isn't really that interesting anymore. Trump said something outrageous, and the Twitter erupts over it. And then here and there, I think our friend Deb Saunders posted a link to something that shows what Trump actually said, and it wasn't nearly as inflammatory. He was asking something. And then I honestly, I say to myself, oh, we've been through this so many times already. It just doesn't shed any light on anything.

So I have no answers, James. Rob, did you hear the Department of Homeland Security guy before Trump talking about sunlight and bleach and the rest of it? Yeah, I know. I heard I read that part. I mean, I can't watch those things. So I read them. And look, the president is the old guy at the end of the bar who can't shut up. He just can't shut up, and he talks. And every dumb idea in his head, he feels like, hey, I'm just going to say it.

I'm just going to say it. Well, whatever. And then when you say to him, I mean, I know people like this. I'm related to people like this. Is he Norm or Cliff? Well, he's neither because both of those guys, when they said something stupid, wouldn't get all bent out of shape. He's considerably less mature than those two. So when he says something stupid or off the cuff or doesn't really think about it, and somebody says, wait a minute, what?

He goes, well, whatever. Like, why are you so mean to me? That's kind of like that's his sort of little, you know, I mean, I've always stunned at people who think of him as a paragon of masculinity and manliness because he's such a little whining, complaining little thing. But he's also the guy at the end of the bar who's like, well, hey, what if you couldn't you drink something? Now, that is dumb, but I have to share another anecdote. This is a month ago, a month and a half ago when I was in Los Angeles and I went to a writer's party I used to go to all the time and every month. And I've always enjoyed it. Just before the shutdown. And I was at this party and I ran into a friend of mine who's a wonderful, incredibly great reporter, very, very smart woman. A lot of just great reporting on Cuba

and various other things. It's really one of the great writers, pro stylists, very smart. And she was telling me that she knows that if you sip water throughout the day, like every five minutes you sip water, you could kill the virus. You'll wash it out of your mouth and into your stomach where the stomach acids will kill it. And that is how you do it. And if you think you have it, the simple test, you don't need, we don't need tests, fellas. You just, if you can hold your breath for 10 seconds without any distress, then you don't have it. And I looked at her like, well, you're a smart person. And those are just two of the dumbest things I've ever heard anyone say. And so in the context of the ranting loudmouth at the end of

the bar, on a one to Trump, I would say this reporter was an eight. So it's not as if he's an outlier. I mean, I wish he wasn't doing it, but I don't think anyone is going to drink bleach because the president told them any more than anybody drank that fish aquarium cleaner. No, we all know that lady fed her husband. She tried to kill her husband. Pretty good idea, by the way. She almost got away with it. Fed her the tigers. Well, it goes to something else.

I mean if we had had – and I know this is a predictable thing, and Rob probably hates when you say that—if this had been a Drembeck rep, if we—I'm not saying if we had a Democratic president who was saying things that did not pass the logic test. If there was a Democrat in charge, I think that there would be much more of the media faith. Because when the progressives are in power, they are the people of science and wisdom, and they are Solomonic in their judgment. They are sober. They are not swayed by ideology. They do the right thing. Obama, we know, I think I put this in a National Review piece, the minute that he'd heard that there had been some sort of virus outbreak in China, would have gotten up from his desk with a steely look, slapped, opened up a bust of somebody on his desk, pushed a red button, and taken the poles down to the Batcave, where he would have gotten up from his desk with a steely look, slapped, you know, opened up a bust of somebody on his desk, pushed a red button and taken the polls down to the Batcave where he would have invented the vaccine right there. We know that because that's Obama. He's great. But the lack of having a Democrat in the office standing up there, not empowers, but leads to this

miserablism that we've gotten from the press corps. Because America is not a good place when a Republican is in charge. America is a good place when a progressive is in charge, because he can lead us out of our benighted state. But it's not a good place when you have a Republican. Hence, this plethora of pieces that you're seeing about America as a failed state, this just reveals that we are a catastrophe. Everything that they want to pour about their hatred of America under Republican rule, they pour into this. And that tone coming out 24-7 from the media centers is exhausting and depressing.

And I think it's not being listened to out here, except by the people who share their opinions. I think I'm right. Do you think, I mean, do you think that actually the way the press has handled this has contributed to national division in the sense that they would have been all of us pulling together America's great, look at the things we're doing, accomplishment after accomplishment with the same set of circumstances, but they can't bring themselves to do that now. They just can't. Wow. Yeah, I, well, this, this is, of course, is an old story, although it's more extreme now.

But the old story, I remember talking to my then boss, Tony Dole. I was outraged. This is Reagan years, in the Reagan White House speechwriting shop. And I was outraged about, as usual, about something that the New York Times had put in the front page. And then I think I was also upset about something that Dan Rather had done or said on the evening news, CBS News the night before. And Tony Dolan, a wise man, a crazy person in many ways, but as we all are, but a very, very wise man, just said, Peter, if the people of this country listened to the press, if they really listened to the press, we'd be communist by now. And so there is that. And that I think is that is there's there is that reserve of I mean, in a certain sense, what you're asking, James, is does democracy work or not? Is there a fundamental common sense among

ordinary Americans that enables them to filter out the crazy guy at the end of the bar, on the one hand, Donald Trump, when he says drink bleach, and on the other hand, the mainstream media, which is still at this boring game. It's not journalism, it's politics. And now it has become such a bore, attempting nothing but gotcha with Donald Trump. And I, you know, my feeling, I'm a long way from Washington these days. And I must say, of course, I haven't been there since the shutdown. I haven't been anywhere since the shutdown. But I was there in February. And I have to say, every time I go back to Washington, I'm a little startled by how even conversations among people I think of as my fellow conservatives are just different.

Topics that interest them are different from out here in what I think of as the rest of it. Yes, they're tiny. Who's up? Who's down? What do you make of whoever is running HHS? What? I don't care. That sort of thing.

So I do think this is a test for democracy, and it's going okay right now. It's going okay. I agree, and I also feel like what people see when they watch those news conferences is just an entire press corps determined to phrase a question so that Donald Trump has to say, maybe I was wrong about that. Right. And he won't do it. And they won't change the subject because they are now believe that this is the most important thing for them to do is to get him to say, maybe I was wrong about that, as if that would be news to anybody in America. What I find so bizarre about it, I mean, just on the other side of it, is that we, you know, the last Republican president they despised was George W.

Bush, and they despised him from the moment he took office because it was a fake election that the Supreme Court handed to him. And right after 9-11, he was at 91% popularity. But the actual truth is that people tend to rally around their leader. They're doing that in Europe. They did that here briefly. But Donald Trump seems absolutely determined to keep his popularity well in the low 40s, high 30s, no matter what. And it is quite a feat for an American president in the midst of a pandemic crisis in which he is the leader, in which everyone wants him to succeed. It's quite a feat for a guy to fritter that away. And, you know, the press is obviously biased and is not doing him any favors. But let's be honest, this is a underhand softball lob pitch that's slow and right in the square. He should be hitting home runs every single day.

Well, now there's strange new respect for George W. Bush, of course, and in the second term of the Trump administration, I have no doubt that the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York will hold a Bush retrospective of his paintings. And now, Larry. No, not Larry Kudlow. Hello, Larry, that famous television show

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And now we welcome back to the podcast Larry Kudlow. Who is he? Why, he's a former Ricochet podcaster. He was a financial analyst at the New York Federal Reserve once, you know, CNBC commentator. And yeah, he's the director of the United States National Economic Council. He's been in that role since 2018. But we like to think of him always as our former Ricochet podcaster. Larry, welcome back to the podcast. How are things in D.C.? Thank you. How are my favorite Never Trumpers?

Not entirely sure we deserve the term. It's a spectrum here. Shades of gray. I know, but it's so much fun, though. You guys are the most fun. I keep trying to remind you, we're not Never Trumpers. We're never Kudlowers. Hey, Larry, listen, Peter Robinson here. So let me go first. I talked not long ago to our mutual friend, Kevin Warsh. Kevin knows everything there is to know about finance. He's a fellow here at Hoover.

He was on the Board of Governors of the Fed. And the question was, Kevin, when the moment comes, how quickly does the economy turn back on? And Kevin said, Peter, that is the wrong metaphor. It's not a light switch. The way to think about the economy is as a living organism, and it has been badly, badly wounded. It will take time to heal. Quarters, not weeks, not years, but quarters to heal. What do you think, Larry? When it finally ends, how quickly can we get back to something that feels like an economic normal?

Well, I like the idea of quarters, not years. I think that's a constructive thought. These things are very hard to predict because we've never been through this before. And we are in a very painful economic contraction and there's a lot of hardship with it. It's not the fault of businesses, it's not the fault of the workforce, it isn't even the fault of economic policy, it's the fault of... At LiveScore Bet, we love Cheltenham

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Terms apply. Bet responsibly. 18plusgamblingcare.ie COVID-19 virus and its exponential takeoff that nobody could have foreseen. So it's a very difficult story. And I don't want to sugarcoat it at all. But I will say this. I think that we've gone through this what I call rescue phase where we poured liquidity, cash liquidity, Federal Reserve loans into the economy. been recipients in one way or another through the payroll protection plan and the unemployment

and the direct checks and the deferral of business payroll taxes, the deferral of income taxes, the deferral of student loans, and so forth, and the Federal Reserve's lending programs. I think all in, it's about probably $7 or $8 trillion of assistance. Quite remarkable. Really quite remarkable. And it's about 35% of GDP. Yeah, it is astounding, I know. And so having said all that, I think if the numbers continue to decline as they have, and you know the reopening guidelines are data dependent, and the idea is within 14 days, you've got to have a significant decline

in the new cases, the infection rates. So they have been declining. They're hovering now about, this is from the CDC, they're hovering at about a 3% growth. That number was about 42%, 43% roughly one month ago. So the trends are very, very positive. And the mortality rate, I don't like that phrase, death rate. That might be, I just don't like to say that, but it's following suit. So if this thing, you know, we get reopening May as a transition month, I think that we will see a positive economic growth number, perhaps a good positive one in the third quarter ending in September and an even better one in the fourth quarter, ending in December. That's what I think.

I don't think, to Kevin's point, or perhaps your point, I don't think we're going to regain all the lost output and employment in two quarters. I certainly don't think so. It's going to take a year longer. But we can get a head start on it. And I might add just one last thought. Economic policies from here are going to be very important because we must maintain the kind of economic incentives on tax and regulatory relief, for example, better trade deals, those incentives will become more and more important to the success of the rebound in the economy, which I do think we will have.

Hey, Larry, it's Rob Long in New York. Thank you for joining us. I tell you, I have a TV on, sound off every time I glance at it and I see your face, I breathe a sigh of relief that you're there. Thank you, Rob. But I got to ask, how are you feeling? I need you to be well. Just me personally, I have a retirement coming up and I got retirement savings here. So how are you feeling? Thank you, Rob. I feel great. I feel fine. We test every week. So I've gone three weeks of negative testing. You kind of get tested every day because when you come into the campus here, you get a temperature test or if you're going into the Oval, you get one. So, so far, so good. I wouldn't mind a week or two vacation at your place in Palm Beach or wherever it happens to be. You can't leave. You're stuck in there. No one's letting Palm Beach or wherever it happens to be.

No, you can't leave. You're stuck in there. No one's letting you out. You got work to do. So here's my question. I follow as close as I can the Kudlow School of Economics, which is optimistic and a feeling that if we're the right policies, that there's no stopping America. People I have surrounded, of course, I live in New York City, by pessimists and people think dark thoughts. Here's what I tell them. You tell me if I'm right or wrong. And Peter. And Peter. So you tell me if I'm right or wrong.

I say to them, we didn't lose jobs. We lost paychecks. All those businesses that were forced to close had already passed the most important test ever, the market test. So it isn't as if this is not a depression, it's not a recession. It may feel like a slowdown afterwards because obviously we're not going to go from zero to 60. But the fundamentals of the economy the day before were not only sound but getting better, and there's no reason to expect that anything – this pandemic has revealed any structural problems with our economy. Am I too optimistic? Am I – No, I think you're on track.

I mean you're making a couple of really important points. One of them is, yes, in January and February, the Atlanta Fed's GDP Now measure showed that the first quarter was coming in at 3.1% at an annual rate. That's how strong it was in Q1 now. Obviously, it plunged in March. But that's how good it would have been, I think, the best quarter in about a year. So you're right about that. And I add to that that basically the supply-side policies of President Trump have been working very nicely in the first three years plus of his term. I mean, this stuff was right. A second point, a friend of mine, Jim Bullard, who runs the St. Louis Fed, was talking at some forum someplace, and I read the reports of it. And he said, look, you can't compare what's happening now with other big events in macroeconomic history.

And the reason is, as you inferred, the reason is it's a virus, and it's a very infectious virus. It's not an insolvent banking system. It wasn't like the 20s when we raised taxes and tariffs and interest rates. It wasn't anything like that. It just has no parallel. And I think that's a very important point. Now, look, in honesty, in fairness, and being realistic, businesses who will come back online, both large and small, are going to have to make a lot of adjustments with respect to the guidelines to continue to mitigate the pandemic. I mean, social and physical distancing is one, and testing is another. And there'll be a number of do's and don'ts consistent with federal and state

guidelines. So it'll take several weeks to get back into the groove, if you will. But after that, Rob, I think you're right. I think the ingredients are there. President Trump rebuilt the incentive structure to work and invest in small businesses, you know, and a 3.5% unemployment rate. And that's all going to be there. In fact, my point of view is I would like to refresh those incentives in a number of key areas to go forward. So we have this interregnum period and the transition period, but I'm still optimistic that we will show pretty good growth rates in the summer and the fall quarters and into 2021. I think it's very doable.

So, okay. So are you worried at all about the, and now just still anecdotal evidence, but anecdotal evidence nonetheless, that some people are finding it more attractive to collect unemployment rather than go back to work, that if given a choice, um, they would much rather get the unemployment benefits are too generous? Is that something we should be worried about? Or is that something you think is just, you know, it's a given when you do something this big?

Well, it's both, Rob. I mean, it's something we should keep an eye on because it's a four-month period. So it ends in, this was the plus up in benefits, $600 plus-up in benefits by the federal government. And it ends in July. So yes, you do read anecdotes. And in some cases, I suppose people would rather work. I don't really think that's the American psyche. I mean, I think work is a godly virtue, and I think work brings us to life and opportunities. So if the economics are there. Now, if we extended that $600 or worse for long periods of time, which, by the way, is what happened following the last recession, that will be a problem because it's a disincentive

to work. There's no question. I don't think that's going to happen. I don't think that the Trump administration or the Senate will want that. So I think they'll try to put an end to that plus up. But I also think a lot of these—you've got this peculiar—because we've put in a lot of relief measures, which I think were very important, a lot of people have been laid off, Rob, but they weren't laid off, laid off. They were furloughed. You follow me? They were furloughed. That's different. That means they still have a job, although they may be home and not working. Okay.

And in some cases, you may have a furlough whereby you're not getting paid. You're collecting unemployment insurance, but you still have the job. Now, that is peculiar to this situation, to this virus situation, you know, because of the physical distancing. That's what that's all about. And this is one of these variables, if you will, that you can't model what it means because we've never had it before. So how do you address a nation now that has discovered another thing that divides us, that there are roughly 60% of Americans can work from home? I mean, it's inconvenient and it's not optimal, but you get on Zoom and you can do it. And Zoom and the internet

and all sorts of the connectivity that we've developed over the past couple of decades seems to be working really, really, really well. So that's a surprise. So 60% of American workforce can work at home. 40% can't. And that 40% has almost nothing financially in common with the 60% that can. And that 40% has almost nothing financially in common with the 60% that can.

And that 40% is hurting, and hurting in a much more deeply financial, economic, and existential way than the 60% that's at home on Zoom. How do you address the concerns of those people for a minute, just the people who are, hey, I'm in a service job or close to a service job. I can't make any money at all. And I don't know if I'm going to be able to, even when they reopen everything. How do we address those issues, that workforce? Yeah, that's hard. I mean, I don't, Rob, honestly don't know the sociology of this. I haven't gone through numbers yet. My guess is it's just way too soon to conclude

anything here. I mean, I get the working at home. I've done my Zooms. I had my first Zoom about three weeks ago. I kind of liked it. In fact, I Zoomed with a group of lefties. It was great fun. It's the best way to do it. And I've Zoomed, and it's cool, but I don't know that that's going to take over actual physical working. I don't know that. I mean, so let's say March and four weeks in March and three weeks in April, seven weeks. It just doesn't make a complete story for any kind of decent empirical analysis yet. Right. I just kind of don't want to go there because I just don't know. I just don't know. If you were going to project, though, a year from now, just say a year from now, it's kind of we're all back to normal, economic growth is back. What are the one or two things that you would say to the committee designed to prepare for

COVID-20 or COVID-22? What would you say, what are two things we should have in our piggy bank, a set of principles, economically, I mean, not in terms of public health, but in terms of public economic health? What do you think is good public economic hygiene for us going forward? Well, look, I don't think the basic market-oriented supply-side principles change, not at all. In fact, they may be more important as we recover. But I do think the public health impact on the economy will be significant. I mean, again, I'm not a health expert, and we've never done this before. It reminds me a little bit – go back all the way to 9-11 and think about this and how airports changed, right? So metal detectors went up.

But we didn't know. Maybe it would be temporary. And then you wake up, and there's a whole new federal agency bureaucracy, and the metal detectors have become more elaborate and technologically advanced. And it became a gigantic part of our life, either for better or worse. Well, there's going to be things like that. There's going to be physical distancing. There's going to be testing. There's going to be swabs. There's going to be testing. There's going to be swabs. There's going to be temperatures. There's

going to be, you know, hand cleaning, Purell things. There's going to be diagnostics. There's going to be whole carve-outs in hospitals to deal with this. There'll be new drugs on the marketplace. A lot of things are going to change. I can't really predict it, but I know it's going to change. I mean, I think, look, I have changed. I mean, I go home and go to work. I'll go home and go to work. That's it, our whole life. My wife, my saintly wife said the other day, I won't name the restaurant, but there's a restaurant that she can't stand. And she says, I'm so desperate I'd even go there just to go back to a restaurant. And you guys probably know the restaurant, which is why I'm not going to say it. But I'm just saying all of us will welcome better social interaction, even if we have to stay three to

six feet apart for a long, long time. I'm kind of a huggy guy. I just can't do that anymore. And I understand. But in all seriousness, things are going to be different. I don't think economic, look, it has to pay more after tax to work hard, to run a business, to make an investment, to take a risk. Those are, to me at least, timeless economic principles, you know? But the surroundings, our environment, will change a lot. Okay, so Larry Peter here. What, follow-up question on that.

On the one hand, I think I can anticipate your answer to this, but if the question is, we know all kinds of things are going to have to change, what's the best way for those changes to take place? Larry Kudlow is going to say you let the free market operate. People will figure it out. Enterprises will emerge to supply the new things that need to be supplied, the new services. Let the market operate in this new circumstance. On the one hand, we've got that. On the other hand, do we already know, can we

already name half a dozen industries that are going to be just permanently changed and may require, for sure their investors will come to you, hats in hand, may require some kind of aid? Airlines. If you have social distancing in airlines airlines that means you rip out every second seat and the whole economics of that business is just transformed hotels the hospitality crew the cruise industry disney's getting walloped right now i actually still think of it disney is an entertainment company but i look at the news and oh oh, no, it's an amusement park. It's a theme park company, and it's a cruise company, and they're getting killed. So on the one hand, we want to let the market—this is half speech, half question, and then over to you to respond to both. On the one hand, we want to let the market—

I'm slumped over the table here. I know there's a question, Peter. I know it. So, okay. So the question is, have you guys— Too much fun. Have you guys—is there some sort of task force? Have you got some assistant who's trying to figure out there's maybe 10, 15, 20 percent of the economy that's really going to be disproportionately hard hit?

And what do we do about those guys? Well, look, the simple answer is we're helping them. I mean, that's what the rescue package is all about. You can't have an economy without an air transport channel, nor for that matter, without an auto transport channel. I mean, there's some basic things in agriculture. I mean, we could go through that. We are, as a matter of policy, but as a matter of need, we are helping them. And they'll get through this. I don't know that every airline will, but the ones we're working with, certainly the big three or the big four or five. My colleague, Steve Mnuchin, has made what I think are good corporate financing,

government financing deals. And I might add the taxpayer will take a piece of that deal. So when they recover, we will be rewarded for it. We'll try to help them.. Listen, to me, in broader terms, as public health conditions change and social conditions change, the economy is going to follow, I believe, the old dictum from my mentor, Joseph Schumpeter. There will be gales of creative destruction. There will be technological advances that no one can possibly foresee. I certainly couldn't. And that's a good thing. And as you note, that's the benefit of a market economy. The governments can't do this. Only spontaneous decisions and risk-taking can do it. So I couldn't predict, but we know there are certain elements we've got to help out in the short run and might not be anybody's first choice fiscally, but in order to survive this and get through it, it's temporary. I mean, I always, it was always weeks and months, not years and years, and I still believe that's the case.

So we'll get through this, and there'll be a lot of changes, but there are always changes. In our lifetime, Peter, when we were children working for Reagan, the whole communications business has totally changed, right? In our lifetime. I mean, it's kind of cool. Think about it. I'm not being sarcastic. I mean, look what's happened before the virus. Yeah.

So, Larry, last question from me, and then James Lollux wants to come in here. This is a really crass point to make, but it is a fact. There's an election in seven months. There's an election in seven months. Do you have any idea what campaign themes will be? I mean, it would have been obvious before this thing that the president would run on the strongest economy we've had in, by some measures, in decades. It's gone, and it'll come crawling back. As you said, it may take a full year or longer before we get back where we were. You may see, you're hopeful, you outlined there will be recovery, but it won't be what it was. What are you guys going to run on? Well, first of all, I think he's going to run on leadership. I think that despite all the sniping and so forth in our modern political world, he's done a very good job, a superb job. He's been a

bold leader. Nothing is ever perfect. I mean, it's not as though the country was set up for the coronavirus. It wasn't. It had to be built, and it had to be built in real time. And I think that he has done a great job. I want to give a big hat tip to Mike Pence also for heading up the task force and the people. I think he's getting high marks. I just saw, I mean, I don't live and die by polls, but our friend John McLaughlin just released a poll of likely voters that covers these areas. And President Trump does extremely well on that poll. So I think the public will see his leadership skills and business skills and give him a lot of credit

for getting us through this. Secondly, I think before and after the virus, the economy is still a big plus for Trump, a big plus for Trump. And I don't think people want to go back or go to a far-left agenda—and the Democrats make no bones about this—of significant increases in taxing and regulating, I mean, closing down whole industries like energy, taking over entire industries. I mean, here's the case in point. Look at the healthcare industry. Now, the Democrats want to essentially nationalize the healthcare industry, okay, Medicare for all, et cetera, et cetera. In the processes that we've had, and I sit on this task force. I'm not a health guy, but I have sat on the task force for too much. We have engaged the private sector in significant parts of our efforts. I mean, like the production of testing and the machinery and the respirators and the ventilators and the face masks and the gowns and all that stuff and the effort to find remedies and therapies and vaccines.

What President Trump did is not run a total government-controlled central planning operation. He called in the business people, called them in. I mean, I was in the meetings. And never forget the one in the Rose Garden a few weeks ago. You had the heads of the big retailers, and they're the ones that are going to, you know, remember the tests in the parking lot or the drive-through tests. That stuff is invented by the private sector. You've got gigantic American industrial companies who cut back on their automobile production, which we didn't need so much with demand and everybody inside, and instead have been working at test kits and other medical equipment. That is private sector stuff. That is

Donald Trump at his best, and that will come out in this campaign. Rather than the vision of Bernie Sanders, which is being adopted more and more by Joe Biden of a socialist government, actually what President Trump just showed you is how free enterprise works hand in hand with government to make everybody's welfare better. I mean, think about that. That's a theme that needs to be elaborated on. And I've watched it. I've met so many CEOs. These guys are literally giving up what they do in order to turn their factory over into something to beat the virus. Think about that. And we didn't twist their arm. We may have issued a few warnings across the bow, but frankly, even the administration of the Defense Production Act has been very mild,

and it's all moved in the right direction. I mean, it's a hell of a thing. This is not—you know, look what the Chinese did versus what we did. The Chinese just locked them up, locked them up and let them die. And we had a completely different—we used our free enterprise sector, and it's not over yet. So that's why I can't help myself. I just am very optimistic. I don't think I need to say this, but I will vote for Donald Trump, and I will support Donald Trump for re-election. I don't really think that's breaking news, but if you care to, fine.

Yeah, they're not going to break into the soap operas in the afternoon with that, I got to say. That's not a big banner headline. Larry James Lilacs here in Minneapolis. A couple of quick questions before we let you get back to saving Western capitalism. First, commercial real estate. Rob talked about how we know we can work at home now. I've always known that. Don't like it.

I like to go to an office place, meet people, mingle. Yeah, you can shake hands and get viruses, but there's something essentially social and communal about working. The effect on commercial real estate is going to be what? We weren't really having the boom you usually have in the go-go years. There's probably a lot of class A space to sop up. Maybe some projects will be shelved, but what's the short and long-term effect of this on commercial real estate? Oh, I don't want to get too much into the business of picking industries or stock market picks or whatever. Look, the commercial industry, commercial real estate industry took a while after the great recession of 2008, 2009. But it depends on the rate of growth. Okay.

As if this scenario is generally correct, remotely correct, and we reopen and then we start seeing growth rates and we pursue good policies that incentivize work and investment, commercial real estate will do fine. It'll all do fine. It'll all do fine. Some will do better than others, I have no doubt. We're going to be taking a look at making sure that the 100% immediate expensing provisions in the 2017 Tax Act will be continued because a lot of them are scheduled to phase out starting in 2022, and we don't want that. So that may impact commercial real estate. It may not. I'm just saying all these related, I would just anticipate all these related questions about this sector and

that sector and so forth will depend on the ability of the economy to resume growth. And I do remain optimistic about that. And I do think that the current president will be reelected and will continue his policies, which have spurred growth. So, you know, it'll all work itself out in the end as long as the economy is expanding. That's what we want. We want an economy that's expanding. Well, Dr. Atthaluk, because I had 47 distinct sectors of the economy, I wanted your opinion on it. I knew that was coming. I knew that was coming.

Just buy the Spiders, the S&P 500, and just hold it for the next 50 years. Well, in the long run, we'll all be dead. Wealthier, but dead. But dead, but wealthier. Larry, we're going to let you go. And we thank you so much for joining us here on the podcast. We can't wait until the next time. Good luck.

Stay safe. Stay healthy. Take care. Thanks, Larry. You know, Rob, I was going to ask the question about the banks, but it probably would have got the same right. Yeah, I think probably so. I mean I think the question really is can you – is there arm-twisting available to banks to be generous with mortgage delays, mortgage abatement, mortgage, all the things that banks collect from us monthly. Is there a way to get them to not collect that? And what levers do you pull?

Did you see the video of the guy, you know, the video of that guy in his car talking? It was this great YouTube rap of this guy who's talking about the fact with a good, nice, profane New Jersey language or perhaps New York, where he's saying this idea of giving people a three-month furlough abatement on their mortgage is ridiculous because at the end of the three months, you've got to pay it again. You've got to come up with three mortgage payments in addition to the fourth. How are people going to do that when they don't have a seller? Why don't you take those three months and put them at the end of the mortgage? It's a great sort of common sense idea. And given that YouTube and Twitter and the rest of it have a nasty habit of taking some things and flagging them and making them unavailable to you, have you found that to be the case? I was just waiting for this guy to be flagged and deplatformed or demonetized because somehow he expressed an idea that was contrary to sensible financial advice as far as –

Well, it would be nice to have some kind of security online that's impossible to find. Well, Rob, it really wasn't security. What? No, I wasn't going there at all. I was going roundabout to do something that was going to refer back to the previous spot and talk about how sometimes

you need to use alternate means of accessing the internet to get information that is denied to you on a local basis. For example, some people have had their Twitter's, their tweets, not deplanted, but sort of flicked off the table because they violated laws in Germany, because Twitter is very sensitive to what people say in Germany. That's ridiculous. There's a lot of localization, in other words, that goes on the internet. And sometimes, you know, you got to get around it. You do. And that's where ExpressVPN comes in. ExpressVPN, VPN, you know what that is, virtual private network, protects your privacy and it protects

your security online, right? Something you might not know, however, you can also use Express's VPN to unlock movies and shows and content that are only available in other countries. Wow. Who knew? Yeah. You know, so many of us are stuck at home right now. It's only a matter of time until you run out of stuff to watch on Netflix. It is theoretically possible. So this whole week, you know, VPN has helped me to binge, oh, say, Doctor Who on UK Netflix. Is such a thing possible? What necromancy is this? No, it's not magic at all. You just need ExpressVPN. Simple to do.

Fire up ExpressVPN app, change your location to the UK, refresh networks, and there it is. All of a sudden, you're practically English. See, ExpressVPN, it hides your IP address and lets you control where you want sites to think you are. You can choose from almost 100 different countries. So think about all the Netflix libraries you can go through. And yes, this is completely legit and legal. Do you like anime? You can use ExpressVPN to access Japanese Netflix and be spirited away. If you get the reference, well, you've probably seen that movie and you want more, right?

But it's not just Netflix, no. ExpressVPN works with any streaming service, Hulu, BBC, iPlayer, YouTube, you name it. There are hundreds of VPNs out there. You've probably heard, seen the ads, which one do I get? Hey, the reason you want to use ExpressVPN to watch shows is that it is ridiculously fast. There's never any buffering or lag, so you can stream in HD. HD, no problem. ExpressVPN is also compatible with all of your devices, the phones in your hand, your media consoles, smart TVs, and more. So you can watch what you want to watch on a personal device or on the big screen wherever you are. So here's a special link right now,

expressvpn.com slash ricochet, expressvpn.com slash ricochet. You can get an extra three months of ExpressVPN for free, for free, three months for free. So support our show. Watch what you want to want from the vast Alexandria libraries of other nations and protect yourself as well with ExpressVPN at ExpressVPN dot com slash Ricochet. And our thanks to ExpressVPN for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. So, yeah, that's essentially basically where I was going. But, yeah. Well, but I like you.

You went around. You actually wove two spots in in kind of an elegant thing. I don't think we've experienced that before. Not the weaving. Sort of the braiding of it. Yeah, the braiding. That's a better way to put it. The DNA, if you will. You braided more plot lines than the finaliding of it. Yeah, the braiding. That's a better way to put it. The DNA, if you will.

You braided more plot lines than the final episode of Bosch. Wow. That's a very specific reference. It very is, and I haven't seen the last episode of Bosch. Oh, you haven't? Well, no, but I— It's spectacular. I imagine that it is.

It's the best television. It's just spectacular. That's what Connolly always does. He always does that. There's always a couple of—it's a two-stroke's what Connolly always does. He always does that. There's always a couple of, it's a two-stroke engine going in most of his books. And sometimes they wind up in one book and sometimes they end up in another.

And it's great. It's never fantastic writing. I'm reading one of his books now and I'm just always struck by how the writing is never showy. And it's often banal, but not in a way that he can't write. It's just the tone that he gets is excellent, and it's all in the plotting and what you know about the characters. I mean, it's a remarkably good series of books. But the TV show is different because it's diverged in

several ways. Bosch is younger. Some of the characters that disappeared are still around, and that's okay. We've kind of accepted that, and we've accepted Titus Williver as Bosch is younger. Some of the characters that disappeared are still around. And that's okay. We've kind of accepted that. And we've accepted Titus Williver as Bosch, even though he's younger, because Williver is just so good. He acts almost exclusively with the position of his head. The way he tilts it. There's a wariness and a watching to it. And in about episode six, I saw him get out of a car that he'd been sitting in for a stakeout, and he rolled his shoulders. And it was a gesture

that you realize you've never seen him do that sort of thing. He's so controlled and tight that he said so much in that. So he's really good to watch. There was an interview with Daniel Craig, who plays James Bond. And of course, his final James Bond,

the release has been pushed. It was going to be in theaters now. And now it's not going to be in theaters until October. But somebody was saying in his first, I think it was one of his first appearances as Bond, he jumps through, maybe it's the last movie, he jumps through the roof of a train and lands. And he's bloody and he's been beaten up and he's beating

up the guy and he's fighting for something. He lands in the center of a train car. And as he stands up, he just kind of instinctively shoots his cuffs. You know, he straightens up the cuffs of his shirt. And it was described by, I guess it was the director, Sam Mendes, who described, he said, you know, in another Bond, Roger Moore Bond, which is a different Bond, that would have been kind of like, well, kind of a British elegant, I'm going to carry Grant move. I'm going to look good. But with Daniel Craig, it somehow meant

it was sort of a message. He was sending the message to himself, collect yourself. James Bond, collect yourself. You've still got work to do. And there's a very interesting thing, like how two different actors, how a certain actor can do, like, your shoulder roll. Like, it's just a different, it's when an actor's really good,

you don't notice that stuff until you really think about it. And then when you notice it, you think, wow, that is really, really good. There's a scene in Diamonds Are Forever where I believe James Bond is on an exterior elevator going up the side of the circus to meet Willard, whatever his name is, Howard Hughes' character. And he checks the flower in his lapel. And it was a very Connery Bond-like moment.

So every one of the Bond guys has that moment of checking his fine wardrobe and what it means about them. So there we have it. I think we just did the what are we watching post of the week, which would mean it's almost now time for... The James Lylex Member Post of the Week.

You know... No, wait a minute. I think that was unfair, and here's why. Because I'm looking at our Slack. We have Slack open during these podcasts so we can communicate with each other. And you know how Slack has this, like, iMessage has a little, like, thing saying,

so-and-so is typing. And it said, so-and-so is typing, and that's when you started giving the cue. So he was typing, or Yeti was typing something, and then suddenly he heard the thing and he had to do something else. So that was not a fair indication of his cue tightness,

I have to say. No, that's true, but I'm also telling you that in professional radio, it either is or it isn't. It's either on time or it's not. It's either black or it's white. Well, thank God it's not professional radio. Professional radio? What was that, by chance? Professional radio. Like I said,

it is or it isn't. It's either black or it's white. You know what else is black and white, Bill? Yeah, go. A zebra. A zebra is both black and white. Zebra is kind of like the idea of the way the Yeti hits the spot. It's there, it's not there, it's where it should be, it isn't should be. You know, you don't care the lines. But a zebra is black and white, Zebra is kind of like the idea of the way the Yeti hits the spot. It's there, it's not there, it's where it should be, it isn't should be, you know, you don't care the lines.

But a zebra is black and white, but it's also something else. And a zebra never quite seems right. It's never quite right. Like a zebra's like, ah, it's neither. It always seems like a mistake. I've never really been bothered by zebras in that way, Rob.

Is this because you have a... Pick a lane. Pick a lane. You have trouble with such stark dichotomies contained in one beast, is that it? We contain multitudes, as Walt Whitman said. I don't think we really do. Yep.

When it comes to the zebra, when it comes to the post of the week, though, we'll get to this after that. We'll get to that after this. The zebra I mean is something else. It's zebra.com. It's been reported that Americans are overpaying on car insurance. Car insurance. Think of your car. Does it now have black and white stripes? Yeah, it does. They've been overpaying for

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Start saving at TheZebra.com slash ricochet. That's TheZebra.com slash ricochet. Spelled T-H-E-Z-E-B-R-A dot com slash ricochet. And our thanks to The Zebra for sponsoring this, the Ricochet spelled T H E Z E B R a.com slash Ricochet. And our thanks to the zebra for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. And now back to our post of the week. I like the idea of sticking up. That's now seared in my brain.

So I'm going to, I'm going to have that a dream. I'm going to wake up tomorrow morning and hit the James Lilac post. It's going to be like an airworm. I wake up screaming my favorite Laird Krieger movie. All right. It is from Southern Pessimist, and it's called Who Are You Going to Turn To? Little quotes in these times of stress and uncertainty. Who are you going to turn to?

Well, for me, says Southern Pessimist, I've decided to put my hope for sanity into the wise, simple instructions on how to create succulent comfort food by America's best chef, Chef John, at allrecipes.com. Not a sponsor spot here. Oh, this is the post of the week. Shouldn't have said that. Oh, phew. Okay, he didn't play the sounder. Chef John's recipes and videos are truly amazing, says Southern Pessimist. Why not create a memorable meal each night?

As the wise man asks, what do you got to lose? Why did I choose this as the post of the week? Because yes, we're talking about COVID, Wuhan flu. Yes, we're talking about economic disposition. Yes, we're talking about tyranny and liberty and break on all of that stuff. Of course, but in the membership area, there's conversations on every aspect of life. And of course, food has got to be one of them. We're all eating a little bit more or less, maybe not. You guys, what are you cooking? Apparently, according to the news,

comfort foods are making a comeback. Comfort foods are always making a comeback. But during this time in the coronavirus age, I guess it's now assumed that everybody's making bread. The real thing now is to be making sourdough bread. That's what the next level should have moved on to. Peter, Rob, what are you making? Well, I hate the phrase comfort food

because it implies that there's other kind of food that's uncomfortable. Like I prefer, I'm going to go to an uncomfortable food. I'm cooking a lot and I've never made my own sourdough starter, but it is kind of a fun thing to do. I hear, although, because, you know, these yeasts in the air,

you can kind of make it yourself. I do know like serious baker types who go to a wine growing areas in October, September, October, when the yeasts are really thick in the air because of the, around the wine, the skin of the grape and, um, and they, they can collect and, you know, a starter can last for years and years and years, There are people – there are bakers. There's a baker in France, Lionel Poilin, who's now dead. His daughter is doing it, who's had I think 50 years of a sourdough starter. And it's really – Fifty years? Fifty years, yeah.

It lasts 50 years. You just keep eating. What an hors d'oeuvre. I had a pizza in London. The sourdough was supposedly from the 17th century. I mean, I'd gone back to the reign of the kings, but go on. I would want to have that proof. But so, yeah, so I'm cooking, and I kind of like it.

And, you know, in New York, it's easy to go out all the time. So this has been kind of an amazing—I mean, my American Express bill at the end of this month is going to be zero. I mean, I haven't gone out, which is what I usually do. I go out. And it's kind of fun to cook again. And I'm sort of rediscovering how much I enjoyed it. Peter? Peter's not cooking a damn thing.

Of course I'm not cooking, but I am eating. And so there's a restaurant, a seafood restaurant supply operation where my wife has a friend who knows a friend who knows a friend. And of course, the restaurant business has stopped. And so a bunch of us have gotten together and said, look, give us, we'll take it. If you come to our neighborhood, a delivery a week, and he's selling it to us at off cost, off price, certainly, just to help keep the company going. And it has been just spectacular. All kinds of, actually, it's not even, is trout, is there such a thing as a saltwater trout? Because trout is one of the things we've had. Trout, scallops, salmon is spectacular. We had haddock, haddock? No, cod, the other. So it's one of these weird little things that's happening only because of the coronavirus, but in a strange way has made life better, not worse.

Just to go on a conservative rant for a minute. Go. One of the reasons why these things can happen is because they absolutely, they lifted these strange and absurd restrictions on this and that and delivering things and what you could sell and portioning and all that stuff. They sort of threw out. So they did it in New York City. And if a regulation is too stupid or onerous to be enforced during a pandemic, then it's too stupid or onerous to be enforced at any time. Yes. And the truth is that people – like, you know, like you can now order

a cocktail delivered to your door and you can go down to Dante, great, great bar down here in the village. Dante on McDougal Street makes an incredible, makes actually 37,000 different kinds of Negronis,

but a really terrific classic Negroni. And you can walk up there and they will make you a Negroni and put it through the window. And you're not supposed to drink it on the way home, but if you do, you'll be fine. It'll be okay. And I'm starting to think of like, maybe we all need to be a little bit more like New Orleans when it comes to alcohol and a little bit more like France when it comes to food. You get to order your food, you're on your own, figure it out. That's my conservative rant. You're right. And there's not an industry that hasn't been making this point and probably

won't want to make it public as soon as we get back to talking about these things, especially people in health care who are realizing that there's all kinds of ways they're being stifled by the federal government. They've known this. But now, all of a sudden, those things that were tremendously important aren't important anymore. And Rob says, Rob's right. If it doesn't have to be there now, we can probably do without it later. I've been cooking lots of stuff myself, having fun, ordering in to keep the local restaurants. But I got to tell you, I have guilty pleasure the other day. I walked into Lund's and Byerly's, which is the great, wonderful high market grocery store here in the Twin Cities. And I had in the front case a BOGO, which is a term that's always bothered me.

You know BOGO, right? Buy one, get one free. Well, Peter's right. Buy one, get one free. So it should be BOGOF. BOGO, buy one and get one, is basically every transaction that you have. That's right. That's the baseline transaction. Right. So it's got to be BOGOF, but they always say BOGO. So I walk up and the BOGO is two corn dogs, the most beautiful corn dogs I've ever seen in a plastic container for $2. And that means that if I get four of them, there's four of us, me, there's me and the gorls now here in the house. So there's four of us. That means 50 cents a corn dog. Now the state fair, they go for 550 a throw. And I looked at this and I realized, I don't know if we're going to have a state fair this year.

They're on the cusp. They don't know if they're going to cancel it. It's a big thing for Minnesota. There's a whole bunch of people who say, we got to have this. It means everything. The end of summer will be okay by then. And then there's all the people we were talking about at the top of the hour, the science people who are saying,

no, you can't do this. It'll spread a death and disease everywhere. We can't have the fair. So right now, the whole, just how you stand on the fair practically tells you where you are in the political spectrum. But still, that's all out there. Everything is uncertain.

Life is uncertain. They have a corndog. So I bought them, and I had one for lunch today in the microwave, which, again, is not the most exquisite matter of preparation. No. But, I mean, a corndog is meant to be dipped and eaten. That's it. You dip it in the side, and you hand it over, and you eat it. So the fact that I've reheated it a little bit may transgress against the purists' ideas, butically separated and pressed into a tube and then slathered with a cornmeal,

is as American and wonderful as hopeful it could get. So, yeah, that was the comfort. What I love about the idea of the corn dog is that it pairs so well with the idea of ice cream and that these are two delicious foods that really can't be improved upon, but both are incredibly dangerous physically. I don't think I've eaten a corndog ever, I mean a really good one, that has not at least burned a third of the surface of my tongue. And I don't think, at least initially, that initial bite, and I don't think on a summer day I've ever eaten ice cream and not gotten a little bit of an ice cream headache. You know, it's like these are the pure pleasure, but they also have a

little kick to them like, hey, slow down, tiger, slow down. But you have to eat it quickly because like, well, summer's going, everything's going. They're not going to have these next week. It's going to get cold. Slow down. Enjoy it. That's mine. Rob's right. We yearn for the day when nothing but a slightly burned upper part of your mouth, which later will hang in ribbons, as we all know, or a little tinge of a headache is the greatest discomfort that we can fear. As for now, we've got other things down the road, but I think we're going to be okay. And I think week after week we keep coming back and we're still okay, guys, aren't we? And it's been getting better. Hasn't it?

It's been getting better. Itn't it? It's been getting better. It has. Right? It has. And it's damned important to remember that and say it when necessary. So don't listen to anybody but those of us here at Ricochet. That's my advice for remaining sane and well-informed and the rest of it. And well-fed, if we can get Rob to do that coronavirus cooking at home show that we've been asking him to do. You can Zoom

it, Rob. We know how much you love to Zoom. Yeah, because the problem with Zoom in the kitchen is that it's a small kitchen, and it just ends up being impossible to see everything. Although there are some great chefs doing fantastic, really idiosyncratic

Instagram cooking demonstrations. I know we have to go, but we should probably put them in the show notes if you want to see them. One of them is a guy named Christian Constant. I don't know if I talked about this already, but Christian Constant, who's a chef from Paris. The guy has had a three-star restaurant for years, and then he basically said, I don't want to do this anymore. I want to have

a little local place. But the local place is so good, it instantly got two stars. But he's just a big, really kind of fun, gruff guy from, uh, from the South of France, big rugby player. And all he's making is like stuff that you really want to eat like chocolate mousse and little Madeline biscuit, not complicated. Actually, he keeps saying, this is really easy. And then there's a famous three-star French chef named Guy Martin, who runs this beautiful restaurant in Paris was in the Palais Royal. And he is at home making fantastic, classic, you know, what they call in French cuisine grand-mère, you know, your grandmother's food.

It's so good. Jose Andres here is the one with his two daughters on Instagram. He's, like, throwing everything in the pan. He's having a lot of fun. Actually, I love seeing those guys because they're home and they're eating what they want to eat, which is like cheeseburgers. Like, you know, Jacques Pepin is making a cheeseburger and he's tucking into it. And that kind of is refreshing. And I made cheeseburgers last week and I don't think I've made a cheeseburger in the home in, I don't know, maybe a decade. And man, they're good. Peter, your assignment for the next week is to go on Instagram

and to post videos of yourself carefully removing an Oreo, the little counterclockwise, clockwise motion to separate it into two. Show us your dunking technique. Show us exactly how you remove the frosting. Do you use the incisors or do you use the lower incisors? And then we'll compare that to Rob's cooking where he's making creme brulee or something like that. Exactly. I would make creme brulee, but I'd put an Oreo crust under it. That's what I would do. Well, we could go on like this forever, but unfortunately, we've got to go.

It's been great, guys. We'll see you next week, and we'll see everybody. Oh, did I tell you the podcast was brought to you by Arrow, by ExpressVPN, and The Zebra? I did, and I just will again, but you'd better go there. Support them. Support them, support us. It all works out for everybody. And I don't want you to go to Apple Podcasts and leave a five-star review. I really don't, because I don't want the show to become more popular, and I don't want more people to get to listen to it, and I don't want Ricochet to survive. So there,

I'm being contrary this week. Otherwise, yeah, everything I just said, do the opposite, except for going to ExpressVPN and Zebra. Do that. And go to the comments at Ricochet 4.0, where we'll see you. And next week, gentlemen. Next week, fellas. Once I had a pretty girl Her name, it doesn't matter She went away with another guy

Now he won't even look at her hats off to Larry he broke your heart just like you broke mine when you said we was part he told you lies

now it's your turn to cry cry cry, cry Now that Larry said goodbye to you I know this may sound strange I want you back, I think you'll change But there's one more thing I gotta say Hats off to Larry. It may sound cruel, but you laughed at me when you said we were through.

You told him he lies, so it's your turn to cry, cry, cry. Now that Larry said goodbye to you. Ricochet. Join the conversation. Hats off to Larry. It may sound cruel, but you laughed at me when you said we were. Wow, Larry's good. These are always good, man.