Latest / Hoover Daily Report / Hoover Daily Report | April 27, 2026

Transcript

Hoover Daily Report | April 27, 2026 · Hoover Daily Report

• 0:00
  Welcome to "the Hoover Daily Report". Ideas Advancing
• 0:04
  Freedom. It's Monday, April 27th, twenty twenty six.
• 0:06
  Today, Michael McConnell explains the rise of the Supreme Court’s “shadow
• 0:10
  docket”;
• 0:11
  Amit
• 0:11
  Seru shares research illuminating the financial stability of private credit
• 0:16
  funds; and Bill Whalen and Lee Ohanian discuss the state of California’s
• 0:20
  gubernatorial primary as well as the Golden State’s sluggish post-COVID
• 0:24
  economic recovery.
• 0:25
  The Supreme Court’s Not-So-Sinister “Shadow Docket”.
• 0:28
  At The Washington Post, Senior Fellow Michael McConnell explains that the
• 0:32
  Supreme Court’s “so-called shadow docket” describes “a pejorative label for the
• 0:37
  court’s method of deciding whether a government policy may stay in effect
• 0:41
  while challenges work their way through the system.” McConnell notes that in the
• 0:46
  past, “the court tended to defer to the executive branch’s judgment of the public
• 0:50
  interest and to lower courts’ decisions about these matters.” But today, the
• 0:55
  former federal appellate judge writes, “the court makes its own judgment about a
• 0:59
  challenge’s probability of success on the merits and which side is most likely to
• 1:04
  suffer ‘irreparable harm’ if the underlying policy persists while
• 1:08
  litigation grinds on.” McConnell argues that the best the court can do under such
• 1:13
  circumstances “is to make an educated guess about the ultimate outcome on the
• 1:17
  legal merits and try to minimize serious, irreversible consequences.” He goes on to
• 1:22
  explain why the rise in “shadow docket” cases says much more about “aggressive”
• 1:26
  uses of executive orders under multiple recent presidents than it betrays
• 1:31
  arbitrariness on the highest court.
• 1:33
  Private Credit Won’t Spark the Next Financial Crisis.
• 1:36
  “Every few years, a new corner of the financial ecosystem is dubbed the next
• 1:40
  ticking time bomb,” writes Senior Fellow
• 1:43
  Amit Seru
• 1:44
  at The Financial Times. “Now it’s private credit’s turn.” But are fears about
• 1:49
  private credit warranted? The Stanford finance professor explains recent
• 1:53
  research he’s coauthored exploring “about two-thirds” of the private credit market.
• 1:59
  Seru says that prior to 2008, “the largest financial institutions were
• 2:03
  levered as high as 30-to-1.” Private credit funds today “typically carry a
• 2:08
  leverage ratio of roughly 1.25-to-1,” meaning that “a private credit fund can
• 2:13
  absorb enormous losses before creditors are meaningfully affected.” Acknowledging
• 2:18
  some weaknesses and transparency concerns in the private credit sector, Seru says
• 2:23
  we’ll “probably see some private credit loans go bad in the months ahead.” But he
• 2:29
  cautions that “investors and regulators should be wary of overreacting to
• 2:33
  individual failures or conflating them with a systemic threat.”.
• 2:37
  California Update: Self-Inflicted Pain at the Pump and a Governor’s Race in Flux.
• 2:43
  On the latest California-focused episode of Matters of Policy & Politics, Senior
• 2:47
  Fellow Lee Ohanian and Distinguished Policy Fellow Bill Whalen review several
• 2:51
  ongoing policy challenges in the Golden State: high gas prices, political
• 2:55
  upheaval, slow post-COVID recovery, and a faltering legal cannabis market.
• 2:59
  Evaluating the impact of the war in Iran on California’s already
• 3:03
  supply-constrained fuel market, Whalen and Ohanian ask, how much of the Golden
• 3:07
  State's “pain at the pump” is driven by current geopolitics versus decades of
• 3:12
  arguably misguided state energy policies? The fellows then turn to the state of the
• 3:16
  gubernatorial open primary, recently shaken up by former Rep. Eric Swalwell’s
• 3:20
  abruptly quitting the race following accusations of sexual misconduct. Ohanian
• 3:25
  and Whalen conclude by discussing the policy missteps that have fueled an
• 3:29
  ongoing black market in cannabis a decade following the legalization of the
• 3:33
  controlled substance for recreational use.
• 3:35
  Inside the Fed’s Expanding Balance Sheet.
• 3:38
  The Federal Reserve’s balance sheet may sound technical, but it lies at the
• 3:42
  center of major questions about monetary policy, market function, and central bank
• 3:47
  independence. How large should the Fed’s balance sheet be, and what happens when
• 3:52
  policymakers try to bring it down? In this conversation, Senior Fellows John
• 3:57
  Cochrane and Darrell Duffie examine what the Fed owns, why it matters, and why
• 4:02
  reducing it is more complicated than it looks. Cochrane and Duffie also explore
• 4:07
  why the Fed has found it so difficult to shrink that balance sheet after years of
• 4:12
  quantitative easing. They discuss how post-2008 liquidity rules, supervisory
• 4:17
  pressures, and changes in market structure have increased banks’ demand
• 4:21
  for reserves, making balance-sheet reduction more complex than a simple
• 4:25
  asset runoff. The conversation also considers why the composition of the
• 4:30
  balance sheet matters, especially when the Fed holds mortgage-backed securities,
• 4:35
  and how a narrower role may help preserve central bank independence.
• 4:39
  The Future of Development: Approaches and Partnerships for a New Reality.
• 4:44
  Around the world, development progress has stalled, trade barriers are rising,
• 4:49
  aid flows have plummeted, and private finance remains limited, volatile, and
• 4:53
  dominated by debt. With development funding unlikely to recover soon, the
• 4:57
  challenge for international development efforts is how to drive systemic change
• 5:02
  that delivers greater impact at scale with far fewer resources. To confront
• 5:06
  this challenge, Stanford’s King Center on Global Development and the Hoover
• 5:10
  Institution’s Emerging Markets Working Group are bringing together renowned
• 5:15
  development finance leaders from philanthropy, international financial
• 5:19
  institutions, government, and the private sector for the second of a two-part event
• 5:23
  series about the future of international aid. This event, to be held on Tuesday,
• 5:28
  May 5, will focus on sub-Saharan Africa and will feature Mark Suzman, CEO of the
• 5:33
  Gates Foundation; Ambassador Mark Green (ret), former administrator of USAID, US
• 5:37
  ambassador to Tanzania, and congressman; Gyude Moore, former Liberian minister of
• 5:42
  public works; and Vera Songwe, chair and founder of the Liquidity and
• 5:46
  Sustainability Facility.
• 5:47
  Featured from the Hoover Library & Archives: Conservatism Digital
• 5:51
  Collection.
• 5:52
  The Hoover Institution Library & Archives offers a digitized collection of more
• 5:56
  than 400 items from the history of conservatism. The holdings feature many
• 6:01
  posters from conservative and anti-Communist political groups in Europe
• 6:05
  and the United States. Additionally, numerous episodes of William F. Buckley
• 6:10
  Jr.’s television program Firing Line dealing with American conservatism are
• 6:14
  included.
• 6:15
  That’s your Hoover Daily Report for Monday, April 27th, twenty twenty six.
• 6:18
  Each weekday, we bring you research, analysis, and commentary focused on
• 6:22
  public policy, national security, and the ideas shaping American society and
• 6:26
  government.
• 6:27
  The Hoover Institution at Stanford University is grounded in constitutional
• 6:30
  principles with a commitment to sustaining the safeguards of the American
• 6:34
  way of life.
• 6:34
  Thank you for listening.
• 6:35
  For links to all the articles and interviews mentioned today, visit
• 6:40
  hoover.org slash, HDR.