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"Too Woke To Fail.” · Pod Save America

• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: I'm Jon Lovett.
• 0:23
  Speaker 3: I'm Tommy Vizor.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: On today's show, Biden steps in to prevent a bank
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: run after the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank. Republicans blame
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: the failure on woke culture. And Senator Cory Booker stops
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: by to talk politics and sample L.A. 's best vegan
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: fast food. That's what happened.
• 0:40
  Speaker 3: You bet it is. Congradulation in terms. No, it isn't. Sure. No,
• 0:44
  Speaker 3: it isn't. Okay. I don't see you finishing anything. It's
• 0:47
  Speaker 3: in the trash can over there. Is it because I
• 0:49
  Speaker 3: had McDonald's on my way in?
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: No one offered us any. Lovett also talks to the
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: trans teen who stumped Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin at last
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: week's CNN Town Hall.
• 0:58
  Speaker 3: And later.
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: We'll run through the week's other top stories with another
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: round of One Line with Cocaine Bear. The bear head
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: is back.
• 1:07
  Speaker 3: More relevant.
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: But first, for everyone in the Los Angeles area, the
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: love it or leave it weekly residency continues.
• 1:14
  Speaker 3: Oh, you're a resident?
• 1:16
  Speaker 4: I am.
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: I have a residency.
• 1:17
  Speaker 5: It's been a long time.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: Do you do surgeries?
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: Stop laughing at me.
• 1:20
  Speaker 3: Can you prescribe? It's a residency.
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: We're a Dynasty typewriter.
• 1:23
  Speaker 5: It's a residency.
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: You and Adele.
• 1:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's my residency.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: Tickets for the March through June live shows are now
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: on sale.
• 1:30
  Speaker 4: That's right.
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: We really cracked this show, by the way.
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: Okay, great.
• 1:32
  Speaker 3: It's been good lately.
• 1:33
  Speaker 5: Good.
• 1:34
  Speaker 3: Good.
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: Everyone should tune in. Lovett has a ton of great
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: shows planned.
• 1:37
  Speaker 5: You bet.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: Featuring all-star lineups of comedians, actors, and journalists, including some
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: of the most famous friends of the pod you know
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: and love. Join Lovett or leave it for a night
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: of hilarious commentary, exciting games, and making fun of whatever
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: bullshit came out of our insane political nightmare factory.
• 1:52
  Speaker 3: Why are you doing a full ad?
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: I just read what's written here. This comes out of
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: your team here.
• 1:57
  Speaker 5: Oh, my team.
• 1:58
  Speaker 3: Oh, now we're just separate teams.
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: My team.
• 2:00
  Speaker 4: Yeah, the love it wing of the Crooked HQ. Just say,
• 2:06
  Speaker 4: all right, let's get to the news. Say, all right,
• 2:09
  Speaker 4: let's get to the news. Light humorous notes for.
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: The PSA housekeeping. All right, let's get to the news.
• 2:13
  Speaker 3: Here we go. I love it when you two fight.
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: All right, let's get to the news.
• 2:17
  Speaker 5: All right.
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: The Biden administration took emergency steps over the weekend to
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: prevent a broader run on the banks that began with
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: the rapid collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, the second largest
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: bank failure in U.S. history, that was then followed by
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: the collapse of New York's Signature Bank, which became the
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: third largest bank failure in U.S.
• 2:40
  Speaker 3: History.
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: On Friday, the FDIC, which is the government's bank regulator,
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: took control of SVB's assets. By Sunday... There was widespread
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: fear that the thousands of startups and small businesses that
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: had money in SVB wouldn't be able to access their
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: deposits for a long time and might never get all
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: their money back, which led customers of small and medium-sized
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: banks across the country to wonder if they should take
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: their money out of those banks.
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: I was outside of Silicon Valley Bank with a shotgun
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: and a wheelbarrow over the weekend.
• 3:11
  Speaker 3: Out of work. You couldn't find a branch of a bank.
• 3:17
  Speaker 3: I know how to bank. I know how to bank.
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: Anyway, to stop all this from happening, to stop a
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: larger bank run from happening, the federal government announced that
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: every Silicon Valley bank customer and signature bank customer would
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: have access to all their money right away. Here's President
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: Biden on Monday.
• 3:33
  Speaker 6: All customers who had deposits in these banks can rest assured,
• 3:37
  Speaker 6: rest assured they'll be protected and they'll have access to
• 3:40
  Speaker 6: their money as of today. That includes small businesses across
• 3:45
  Speaker 6: the country that bank there and need to make payroll,
• 3:48
  Speaker 6: pay their bills, and stay open for business. No losses
• 3:52
  Speaker 6: will be— and this is an important point— no losses
• 3:54
  Speaker 6: will be borne by the taxpayers. Let me repeat that.
• 3:58
  Speaker 6: No losses will be borne by the taxpayers. Instead, the
• 4:01
  Speaker 6: money will come from the fees that banks pay into
• 4:04
  Speaker 6: the deposit insurance fund. Because of the actions of that—
• 4:08
  Speaker 6: because of the actions that our regulators have already taken,
• 4:12
  Speaker 6: Every American should feel confident that their deposits will be
• 4:15
  Speaker 6: there if and when they need them.
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: All right, let's start with this. Tommy, why did Silicon
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: Valley Bank fail?
• 4:21
  Speaker 7: So Silicon Valley Bank, or SVB, as we'll call them
• 4:25
  Speaker 7: going forward here.
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: Too much to say.
• 4:27
  Speaker 7: They built a big business for the last 40 years
• 4:29
  Speaker 7: around catering to tech startups. And for a long time,
• 4:31
  Speaker 7: it was a great business. I want you guys to
• 4:32
  Speaker 7: think back to 2021, a couple.
• 4:35
  Speaker 3: Of years ago. Stock markets making record highs. Companies are IPO-ing.
• 4:39
  Speaker 7: Venture capital, business is booming, interest rates are close to zero,
• 4:42
  Speaker 7: and it was very easy for new companies, startups to
• 4:45
  Speaker 7: raise money. And many of them, I think majority of
• 4:48
  Speaker 7: them actually, deposited that money at SVB. So SVB tripled
• 4:51
  Speaker 7: their deposits from the end of 2019 to the end
• 4:54
  Speaker 7: of 2021. They then did what all banks do with deposits,
• 4:57
  Speaker 7: which is try to use some portion of them to
• 4:59
  Speaker 7: make more money. They can make loans, or in this case,
• 5:01
  Speaker 7: SVB bought, they put something like half of their deposits
• 5:04
  Speaker 7: into long-term bonds like treasuries. Gets you a yield of
• 5:08
  Speaker 7: a slightly higher interest rate. But the challenge is you
• 5:11
  Speaker 7: don't get the money you put in back until the
• 5:13
  Speaker 7: bond matures or you sell the bond. So that is
• 5:16
  Speaker 7: where they made a huge mistake. Because the Fed, as
• 5:19
  Speaker 7: we now know, in November of 2021, I believe, started
• 5:22
  Speaker 7: raising interest rates to manage inflation. That reduced the value
• 5:26
  Speaker 7: of all these long-term bonds that SVB had purchased. And
• 5:30
  Speaker 7: at the same time, the Fed interest rate increase cooled
• 5:33
  Speaker 7: down the economy. It What happens is more companies start
• 5:39
  Speaker 7: pulling out their funds. They deposited at Silicon Valley Bank
• 5:42
  Speaker 7: to pay bills, pay staff, et cetera. And two, fewer
• 5:46
  Speaker 7: new companies start depositing money at SVB. That created a
• 5:49
  Speaker 7: crisis for SVB. Depositors want their money back, but they
• 5:52
  Speaker 7: had bought these long-term bonds that didn't mature for a
• 5:54
  Speaker 7: while and they'd gone down in value.
• 5:56
  Speaker 3: So SVB had to.
• 5:57
  Speaker 7: Sell $ 21 billion worth of bonds at a 9% loss.
• 6:02
  Speaker 7: And then they very stupidly said, hey, this just happened.
• 6:05
  Speaker 7: Now we're going to create some new stock and sell it.
• 6:08
  Speaker 7: to close the gap. And everyone said, what?
• 6:12
  Speaker 3: What are you talking about?
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: Hey, we're short on some cash.
• 6:15
  Speaker 5: Just letting everyone know.
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: Everybody be cool about this. Be cool about this. We'll
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: get you. We're good for it. Everybody chill out.
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: We're in a tough spot right now, but I just
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: want all of our customers to know things are going well.
• 6:27
  Speaker 7: My favorite anecdote about this is there was like a
• 6:29
  Speaker 7: Silicon Valley Titan group chat, apparently, where they all started
• 6:32
  Speaker 7: talking about what was happening. And then people like Peter
• 6:35
  Speaker 7: Thiel said, Venture capitalists all said to their portfolio companies
• 6:38
  Speaker 7: that they'd invested in, get your money the hell out
• 6:41
  Speaker 7: of SVB and do it right now, which led to
• 6:43
  Speaker 7: a bank run. And now the 16th largest bank in
• 6:46
  Speaker 7: the country does not exist.
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: And now this is different than the crisis and the
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: financial crisis in 2007, 2008, in part because this isn't
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: a situation where all of a sudden SVP let everyone
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: know like, hey, this thing we thought was worth $ 5
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: billion is worth nothing, right? Oh, it turns out these
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: derivatives are fake. This situation where their money just was
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: not accessible to them or it would have to be
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: accessed at a huge loss.
• 7:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 7:10
  Speaker 7: Well, what happens is when interest rates go up, the
• 7:12
  Speaker 7: prices of bonds go down. So they basically had to-
• 7:15
  Speaker 7: Especially these long-term bonds. These long-term bonds. So they had
• 7:17
  Speaker 7: to sell the bonds that were on the books to
• 7:20
  Speaker 7: be able to give the depositors the money they wanted.
• 7:22
  Speaker 7: The 2008 financial crisis was a credit crisis. You had
• 7:25
  Speaker 7: these mortgage-backed securities were a bunch of shitty mortgages where
• 7:29
  Speaker 7: people weren't paying and they were going bust, bundled up
• 7:32
  Speaker 7: and sold as if they were AAA-rated bonds. And obviously
• 7:35
  Speaker 7: that was not the case. And those stopped being able
• 7:37
  Speaker 7: to be used as collateral for loans. We're getting a
• 7:39
  Speaker 7: little wonky here, but.
• 7:40
  Speaker 3: This is very different.
• 7:41
  Speaker 7: This is just like they bought long dated bonds and
• 7:45
  Speaker 7: they needed money.
• 7:45
  Speaker 3: In the short term.
• 7:46
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: One more wrinkle here.
• 7:48
  Speaker 3: Pundit, stop eating.
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: The vegan food that Cory Booker threw out. Pundit.
• 7:51
  Speaker 3: Pundit, no vegan food.
• 7:53
  Speaker 5: Good girl.
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: All right. As part of the 2008 Dodd-Frank reform, Wall
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: Street reform, um, banks are supposed to have a certain
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: level of capital and liquidity. And then there were supposed
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: to be periodic stress tests, which is the government looking
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: at the bank's balance sheets to make sure they're okay. Well,
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: in 2018, a bunch of Republicans in Congress, along with
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: a good number of Democrats, too many Democrats, um, decided
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: that they wanted to exempt a lot of banks, small,
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: medium sized banks, though, uh, Silicon Valley Bank they tried
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: to say was a small bank which is the 16th
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: largest bank in the country it was not but anyway
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: they all got exempted from these requirements now would If
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: they were still getting stress tests, if they still had
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: certain capital and liquidity requirements, would this have happened? We
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: don't know.
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: We don't know in part because what caused this is
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: not some fundamental fact about how stable they were as
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: a bank. There was a bank run. There was a
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: bunch of people who got themselves all pretty fucking spooked
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: on a group text with a bunch of Elon Musk's friends.
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: Literally a group of people. And it's not like 200 people,
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: like 20 people could have caused this.
• 8:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Look, I'm no bank regulator. I'm no Dodd.
• 9:02
  Speaker 5: I'm no Frank.
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: Neither Dodd nor Frank here.
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: Frank's not Frank anymore either since he was on the
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: board of Signature.
• 9:08
  Speaker 3: Really?
• 9:11
  Speaker 7: And picking up after a joke we had to cut
• 9:13
  Speaker 7: because Lovett made it. So yeah, I mean, John, to
• 9:15
  Speaker 7: your point, they raised the threshold for the tougher stress
• 9:18
  Speaker 7: tests from $ 50 billion to $ 250 billion. One of those
• 9:24
  Speaker 7: stress tests was asking banks to undergo a look at
• 9:27
  Speaker 7: what would happen if there was a big spike in
• 9:29
  Speaker 7: interest rates.
• 9:31
  Speaker 3: Seems like that would have been useful.
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: And you said to $ 250 billion, guess what Silicon Valley
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: Bank had? $ 200 billion. Just missed the cutoff.
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: Well, what's ironic about all this, too, though, is that
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: one of the reasons even these banks pushed to be
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: exempted is so they'd have the freedom to make more
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: money and make more profits. Part of the claim being
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: they're not as risky or they're not as systemically risky
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: as Bank of America or the giant banks in this country.
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: They're just regional banks. But the second this regional bank
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: was threatened, any person who had huge amount of money
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: in there and the banks themselves started claiming, oh my God,
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: this is systemic.
• 10:04
  Speaker 3: This is so dangerous. All caps, Twitter freak outs from
• 10:07
  Speaker 3: every venture capitalist.
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: And by the way, it was a pretty, like a
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: lot of these people that had a ton of money
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: locked up in Silicon Valley Bank, basically spending the weekend
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: wish casting that on Monday there'd be a larger bank
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: run across the country so that they could claim how
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: needed it was for them to be bailed out.
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: Which, by the way, would probably have precipitated a bank run.
• 10:28
  Speaker 5: Yes.
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: Right? Because this whole thing is built on confidence.
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: And we should say, Cricket Media had a little cash
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: in there.
• 10:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we did. They had our credit cards.
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: They had our credit cards.
• 10:35
  Speaker 3: Now our credit cards work.
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: But we had, but like, this is interesting because, you know,
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: a lot of people, oh, these VCs made all these
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: portfolio companies do it. And that is true. But there
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: were 40,000 customers, 30,000 customers at SVB all across the country.
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: It wasn't just like tech startups and VCs. Like we,
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: we put our, we use that bank just because it
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: was a bank.
• 10:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: That's where we go.
• 10:55
  Speaker 3: We pay our credit cards. Just like use any bank.
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: Now my credit card doesn't work.
• 10:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: Now I can't get the massages I'm used to.
• 11:00
  Speaker 3: I'm not helping the cause. Those are corporate massages.
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: Those are good for the business.
• 11:05
  Speaker 3: That is helpful. The David Sachs tweet right there.
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: Anyway, everything's fine now.
• 11:11
  Speaker 3: But love it. Some people get the money back.
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 11:14
  Speaker 3: I think so. I didn't check this.
• 11:15
  Speaker 5: Are we good?
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: Okay. Some people have argued, love it, that most of
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: SVB's customers would eventually get most of their deposits back
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: once the government sold all the bank's assets. So even
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: if the government had never stepped in, people are saying, like,
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: we should have just let the process go. Usually when
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: a bank fails, eventually there's a process with the FDIC
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: and the depositors over $ 250, 000, which in this case were
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: mostly businesses and start-ups. would get their money back eventually.
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: So why did the government step in to do what
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: they did?
• 11:46
  Speaker 3: So two things.
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: First of all, that was an open question over the weekend, right?
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: How much would they be able to actually return to
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: people if they just started selling off all these assets?
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: But part of the issue is that.
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: A lot of- And basically, so people know this, just to,
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: so like, there's a bunch of people who ask for
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: the money. The bank's like, I don't have your money
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: right now. And then the FDIC takes it over. And
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: this process would be the FDIC selling off all of
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: the assets of the bank, wiping out all the uh, it,
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: all the, uh, investors wiping out the board, looking at
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: how much money they do have, looking at wherever else
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: they invested in selling them all, and then using that
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: money to pay.
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: Back people kind of relatively fairly, as opposed to what
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: would have otherwise happened, which is just the people who
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: got there first, got their money out and then everything's chaos.
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: And then people who get a hundred percent and people
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: get 0%. So the, So at some point over the weekend,
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: what people thought might happen is starting on Monday, basically
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: half of the money might have been returned. And then
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: over the next few months, the rest of the assets
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: would be sold off and people would slowly be made
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: as whole as possible. I think, first of all, there
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: was a lot of fears that that would cause a
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: bunch of businesses to go under, right? There's a lot
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: of companies that rely on lines of credit from this bank.
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: There's a lot of companies that rely on the money
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: they had in this bank just to function. Companies going
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: from having the ability to pay six months or a
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: year of payroll to having two months, three months or not,
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: or maybe not enough.
• 13:02
  Speaker 3: At all or zero.
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: And again, a lot of people were saying, well, you know, the,
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: then the VC should help the, their portfolio companies.
• 13:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: If you're a company that has a venture capitalist that
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: can help you out. But again, there's a lot of
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: companies there that didn't have that now.
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: And look like, yeah, so right. There's a lot of
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: companies that didn't have that. And then look, if, if,
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: If what you're talking about is a situation where a
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: really strong and good business suddenly finds that all their
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: money is either half gone or locked up in some way,
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: and they're going to have to shutter, they may go
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: to their investors or some big backer and say, hey,
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: find some way to help get me through this period.
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: Give me a low interest rate loan to cover my payroll.
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: Put more money into this business just because you believe
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: in the company and don't let this moment cause the
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: company to evaporate. That might have saved some, but I
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: think the The issue there is, first of all, you
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: would have seen regional banks across the country have people
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: pull their money out and put them into the big
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: banks that are backed basically by the federal government. You
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: would have seen a ton of people losing their jobs.
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: And because it does seem as though the assets that
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: this bank has over time are enough to make people whole,
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: if this bank is then sold to some other bank
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: and those deposits are in some way guaranteed, Basically, none
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: of that has to happen and it doesn't cost the
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: taxpayers anything because the assets are there. They're just locked up.
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: That's my understanding of it.
• 14:25
  Speaker 7: It's also just worth noting that SVB provided financing to
• 14:28
  Speaker 7: over half of the companies that do residential solar energy.
• 14:32
  Speaker 7: So if SVB just collapses, a bunch of these companies
• 14:36
  Speaker 7: wouldn't have had a way to pay the men and
• 14:39
  Speaker 7: women who go on your roof and install solar panels.
• 14:41
  Speaker 3: And those companies could have just failed.
• 14:43
  Speaker 7: Or like the custodian who cleans the office at night, right?
• 14:47
  Speaker 7: I think that's the connection people have to understand that
• 14:51
  Speaker 7: this wasn't just the VC companies, the venture capitalists making
• 14:54
  Speaker 7: the investments.
• 14:55
  Speaker 3: It wasn't just the CEOs. It would have harmed all
• 14:57
  Speaker 3: the workers at these companies.
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: And again, 1,500 companies that were customers of SVB were
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: climate and renewable energy startups. So it's a huge amount
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: of companies there. And they were companies like like Etsy, Roblox,
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: like there was just, there was a big breadth of
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: companies there. And again, like if it had happened, if
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: they hadn't stepped in, like we would have been fine,
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: but there's a lot of companies that just wouldn't have
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: been able to make the payroll in the time that
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: they had to wait to be made whole again.
• 15:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it'd be a mad day.
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: It'd be a scramble for businesses that might have a
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: real path to being successful, having this moment where they
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: would just disappear and those jobs would be gone. I
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: will say like, that doesn't make this any less fucking galling. Like,
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: it is absolutely true that like that the reason that
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: this bank wasn't held to higher standards because because the
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: the leaders of these institutions, their executives campaigned against stricter regulation.
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: It is galling that a lot of these VC people
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: that spent the weekend. begging and demanding that the government
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: save them are the very people that decry regulation and
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: claim that the government is overreaching and claiming that.
• 16:00
  Speaker 7: Some of them specifically told their portfolio companies to get
• 16:03
  Speaker 7: their money out. They precipitated a bank crisis, then whined
• 16:06
  Speaker 7: all weekend on Twitter about getting made whole.
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: In part because they were just late on the list.
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: They were too late in the order of people trying
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: to get their money out, as were we.
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 16:16
  Speaker 3: Well, yeah.
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: Just for the record. We tried to get our money
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: out on Friday. We're no dummies.
• 16:20
  Speaker 3: Because we saw it happen on Twitter like everyone else. Oh,
• 16:22
  Speaker 3: my God. We got in. That asshole Peter Thiel tweeted.
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: I think if it had just been the jobs lost
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: and the businesses shuttered, the government might not have stepped in.
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: I think why they finally stepped in was this risk
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: that you brought up about the systemic risk, about a
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: run on all small and medium-sized banks. Because if the
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: government just made all these startups and small businesses wait
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: months to get their money back and they shut down
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: as a result... If you're another small business who's a
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: customer at another bank that's SVB size or smaller, you
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: probably would have said to yourself, like, why would I
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: keep my money in this bank anymore if there's a risk.
• 16:56
  Speaker 3: That I lose it all if this bank shuts down?
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: Why not move it to a big bank that is
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: heavily regulated like JP Morgan or Bank of America? So
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: then basically what you would have had is. a move
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: to all, like the four huge banks in America, and
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: all these small and medium-sized banks would have shut down.
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: It wouldn't have been, or at least were at risk
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: of shutting down. That's what the government thought.
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: And, you know, these big banks have gotten bigger by
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: dint of their size. They're basically like quasi-governmental in that
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: their failure would be so cataclysmic it can't be allowed
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: to happen. That gives people an implicit promise that their
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: money will be safer there than at regional banks, and
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: all of a sudden there's no more regional banks.
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: Do you know how many clients JP Morgan and Bank
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: of America have gotten over the weekend?
• 17:33
  Speaker 3: They can't intake them all. That's the other thing. They
• 17:35
  Speaker 3: can't take the input.
• 17:36
  Speaker 7: It's also just important to point out that the bank
• 17:38
  Speaker 7: itself was not saved. SVB is a publicly traded company
• 17:43
  Speaker 7: on the stock market. If you own stock in SVB,
• 17:45
  Speaker 7: it is now worth $ 0. All the employees, I think
• 17:48
  Speaker 7: they have 45 days to get paid to finish out
• 17:51
  Speaker 7: sort of the the orderly taking down the company, basically,
• 17:55
  Speaker 7: and then they're all fired.
• 17:56
  Speaker 3: The assets are getting stripped. They're getting sold. The bank
• 17:58
  Speaker 3: is gone.
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: There was a very funny, I will say this, there
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: was something, basically there's this insipid debate about whether or
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: not this counts as a bailout. And I did think
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: it was funny that someone said, it's only a taxpayer
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: bailout if it's from the AIG region of Manhattan.
• 18:10
  Speaker 3: It's such a semantic.
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: Let's get into that. So people are arguing on Twitter
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: about whether or not the action actually constitutes a bailout.
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: Nikki Haley's campaign put out a statement saying, with the headline,
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: Nikki Haley slams Biden bailout. This is one flavor of
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: criticism shared by some on the left as well. Meanwhile,
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: the MAGA wing of the Republican Party is actually blaming
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: woke culture for SVB's failure. Here's Ron DeSantis.
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: Maria, it just appears to me, I mean, this bank,
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: they're so concerned with DEI and politics and all kinds
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: of stuff.
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: I think that really diverted from them focusing on their
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: core mission. What do you guys think of the MAGA
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: position that SVB collapsed because it had too much diversity?
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: Silicon Valley Bank changed their fucking pronouns. That's the problem.
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: These liberal woke banks.
• 19:05
  Speaker 7: The board was 12 people. 10 are white. It's majority male.
• 19:09
  Speaker 7: The average age is 63. So I don't know that
• 19:11
  Speaker 7: they spend a ton of time.
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: We all know only people of color and LGBTQ Americans
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: invest in long-term bonds.
• 19:22
  Speaker 7: If you unpack what they're saying, it's like, I'm sorry,
• 19:25
  Speaker 7: people of color, women don't understand the most basic premise
• 19:29
  Speaker 7: of banking and risk.
• 19:30
  Speaker 3: Give me a break. Here's the thing.
• 19:32
  Speaker 7: SVB didn't have a chief risk officer for eight months
• 19:36
  Speaker 7: last year, from April of 2022 to January of 2023.
• 19:39
  Speaker 7: That might have been a bigger problem. Then the couple hours,
• 19:43
  Speaker 7: a quarter, the CEO was spending on DEI initiatives.
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: Silicon Valley Bank threw the first brick at Stonewall.
• 19:49
  Speaker 3: It's just.
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: This was from the Wall Street Journal. One of their
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: opinion honchos said this. SVB notes that besides 91% of
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: their board being independent, 45% women, they also have, and
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: this is the quote, one black, one LGBTQ plus, and
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: two veterans. I'm not saying 12 white men would have
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: avoided this mess. but the company may have been distracted
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: by diversity demands.
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: It's funny, you know, we never used to have financial
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: panics when it was all work.
• 20:15
  Speaker 5: Famously.
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: I just have every confidence that the gay person they're
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: referencing was an absolute cutthroat fucking banker.
• 20:28
  Speaker 7: I first saw this woke bank line of attack from
• 20:31
  Speaker 7: Charlie Kirk, the little baby-faced TPUSA fascist, and I thought,
• 20:35
  Speaker 7: You know, like you can always count on Charlie to
• 20:37
  Speaker 7: make the kind of dumbest, most racist argument in every instance.
• 20:41
  Speaker 7: Then it hopped to Don Jr. Then the contagion spread
• 20:44
  Speaker 7: to Ron DeSantis. And it's so stupid that it should
• 20:47
  Speaker 7: be disqualifying. Of course, we live in a world where
• 20:50
  Speaker 7: the dumbest argument gets the most time on Fox News
• 20:52
  Speaker 7: or anywhere else. But it is incredible that these guys
• 20:55
  Speaker 7: settled on this argument. Cory Booker refused to engage with me.
• 20:58
  Speaker 7: He scolded me for even bringing it up.
• 20:59
  Speaker 8: Really?
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So stay tuned for that.
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: I hope all the tech bros and all the finance
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: bros who have fallen in love with Ron DeSantis because
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: they don't think it's appropriate to say that they like Trump, right?
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: But they still want the free market conservatism part of
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: the Republican Party. So they're all Ron DeSantis fans now.
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: And then they were all screaming over the weekend, hoping
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: that the government would step in. Well, Your Republican heroes
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: like Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley all think it was
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: a bad idea to step in. And Ron DeSantis is
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: saying that the bank failed because it was too fucking woke.
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: So just remember that when you start supporting Ron DeSantis
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: and Nikki Haley and the rest of them.
• 21:36
  Speaker 3: David Sachs.
• 21:37
  Speaker 5: I'm sure they will.
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: I'm sure they'll be very humble.
• 21:39
  Speaker 3: Very humble.
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: Very humble.
• 21:41
  Speaker 7: Well, they're all saying this bill is different and there's
• 21:43
  Speaker 7: no moral hazard here. But David Sachs, the sort of
• 21:46
  Speaker 7: right-wing tech investor goober who came up with Peter Thiel,
• 21:50
  Speaker 7: I think has signed up to maybe be finance chair
• 21:52
  Speaker 7: for Ron DeSantis, or at least to raise money for
• 21:54
  Speaker 7: him has come out in support of him.
• 21:55
  Speaker 3: So yes, I duly noted as well. All right.
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: So let's talk about this argument that this was just
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: a government bailout for big banks and rich venture capitalists.
• 22:03
  Speaker 7: I think that's mostly true. I mean, certainly like the
• 22:06
  Speaker 7: bank itself was not saved. SVB was not saved, right?
• 22:10
  Speaker 7: So that's not accurate. It is true that if the
• 22:12
  Speaker 7: government had not come in and protected depositors, I'm sure
• 22:15
  Speaker 7: a lot of rich venture capitalists would have gotten screwed.
• 22:17
  Speaker 7: SVB was unique in that 93% of its deposits were
• 22:22
  Speaker 7: not insured by the FDIC, meaning that the vast, vast
• 22:25
  Speaker 7: majority of its deposits were.
• 22:26
  Speaker 3: Over $ 250, 000.
• 22:27
  Speaker 7: The normal bank has about half of its deposits to
• 22:30
  Speaker 7: be FDIC insured.
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: But it's not- But again, the vast majority of those deposits,
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: uninsured deposits, were not from individuals.
• 22:36
  Speaker 3: They were from companies. Startups, small businesses.
• 22:38
  Speaker 7: SBB does a lot of stuff. They have a lot
• 22:40
  Speaker 7: of companies there. They do private wealth management. They do
• 22:43
  Speaker 7: M & A business. It's a weird, big, sprawling bank.
• 22:46
  Speaker 7: But I do think the- If the government hadn't come in, yes,
• 22:50
  Speaker 7: a lot of rich venture capitalists would have gotten screwed,
• 22:53
  Speaker 7: but so would, as we talked about earlier, tens of
• 22:55
  Speaker 7: thousands of employees who just work at these companies, like
• 22:59
  Speaker 7: the people installing the solar, et cetera. Then there was
• 23:01
  Speaker 7: the broader contagion problem, where if you have people yanking
• 23:05
  Speaker 7: your money out of SVB and then other small and
• 23:07
  Speaker 7: medium-sized banks, those fail. That's where it becomes a systemic,
• 23:11
  Speaker 7: broad problem.
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, guaranteeing the uninsured deposits of businesses... huge
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: numbers of their customers with far more than 250,000. It
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: is a way of protecting the jobs of regular people
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: who had nothing to do with this crisis. It is
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: also a way of protecting those wealthy people. And it
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: is a way of protecting the other regional banks that
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: were at risk of failure. So like, yes, it's actually
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: a much less ghastly version of what happened in 2008, 2007,
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: which is you know, basically these giant corporations at the
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: risk of failure basically say, help rescue us or a
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: lot of people that aren't responsible get hurt. And by
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: the way, you'll help us too.
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: But the other, you know, the administration is saying that
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: it is not a bailout and it's also not going
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: to be borne by the taxpayers. And there's been some
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: disagreement there. Here's what's going on with that argument. So
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: first they will sell off all the assets to the
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: bank and then they will try to make the depositors whole, right?
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: And if they can't make the depositors whole, based on
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: just selling off the assets, they will dip into what's
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: called the deposit insurance fund, which is run by the FDIC.
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: And that fund is a private insurance provider that is
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: funded exclusively by the banks. They have a fee on
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: the banks that goes into the deposit insurance fund. And
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: then if they need it, it will go to make
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: depositors whole. In fact, that is the fund that helps
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: make people whole under $ 250, 000 right now. That is a
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: fund that is backed by the Treasury in the event
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: that it suddenly runs out of money. But the fund
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: currently has more than $ 100 billion. They don't expect to
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: use much of it at all. In fact, they might
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: not need any of it if they just sell enough assets, right?
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: But if it does run out and Treasury has to
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: step in, Treasury is then repaid by charging the banks
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: even higher fees. So I don't, like, yes, it is
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: backed by the taxpayers, but taxpayers are not going to
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: be paying for this.
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I think taxpayers are not going to be
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: paying for this, but it is basically taking the risk
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: that this bank incurred to make more profits and distributing
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: the cost of it across a huge part of the economy,
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: rather than making it be borne by the people who
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: had money in that bank. I mean, it is just distributing... Look,
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: the term bailout, who cares? Whether you want to call
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: it a bailout or not, that's a pure political... question.
• 25:36
  Speaker 3: It's, you know, one person's terrorist is another person's freedom fighter.
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: But yeah, like when something like this happens, basically we
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: are saying, you know, Silicon Valley Bank said to its customers,
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: heads you win, tails you win. And in the event
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: of tails, we will make sure that a bunch of
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: people else that had nothing to do with this help
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: back and protect you.
• 25:59
  Speaker 3: I think that's right.
• 26:00
  Speaker 7: But also that's kind of like the conceptually how the
• 26:03
  Speaker 7: FDIC always works. The risk is borne out. But up
• 26:08
  Speaker 7: to 250. Under 250, it's still socialized losses.
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: But that's a deal we've all made.
• 26:13
  Speaker 3: That's why you understand.
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: They've changed the rules on this. You can't buy fire
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: insurance after your house burns down. This is a bunch
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: of people whose houses are on fire and they're saying,
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: if you don't insure me, I will burn down your
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: entire neighborhood.
• 26:27
  Speaker 3: No, no, no. It's not their house.
• 26:29
  Speaker 7: It's the The banks, SVB's house, the depositors are the
• 26:32
  Speaker 7: ones getting helped out, right? In 2008, the bankers who
• 26:35
  Speaker 7: screwed up everything kept their jobs.
• 26:37
  Speaker 3: I think my analogy is good. The banks continued to exist.
• 26:39
  Speaker 3: I like my analogy, listener. It didn't really work.
• 26:41
  Speaker 7: The banks, those bankers kept getting bonuses. The rest of
• 26:44
  Speaker 7: the economy is getting crushed, right? And all these banks
• 26:46
  Speaker 7: that got huge capital injections, right? svb no longer exists
• 26:50
  Speaker 7: the people who work there will be fired the people
• 26:52
  Speaker 7: getting catered depositors not customers no that's but that's what
• 26:56
  Speaker 7: but the depositors aren't buying you know i just think
• 26:59
  Speaker 7: no i don't care i don't want to focus on
• 27:01
  Speaker 7: your analogy i'm just saying i think it's a little it's.
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: A distinction i'm not claiming well i'm just saying like
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: when yes of course i think it's like it's not
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: it's this is.
• 27:08
  Speaker 3: Not depositors aren't a homeowner there are people that are
• 27:11
  Speaker 3: renting space there sure fine but it's still anyway.
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: I look there's some um policymakers, including some very progressive
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: policymakers that have said, look, the solution here is that
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: the cap, the FDIC cap of $ 250, 000 is too low
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: and that it should be higher, right? It is a
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: change in the rules. Like that is fair. But I
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: think the moral case here and the reason why it's
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: different than 2008 is in 2008, it was, you know,
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: people were making risky bets and mortgage-backed securities and stuff
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: like that. This is like, if you are a depositor,
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: if you are just a customer of a bank, you
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: cannot be expected to go around and look at the
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: books of every single bank around the country and be like, well,
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: I'm going to put my money in this bank, but
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: I don't know if it, if I, if the bank
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: goes down, I'm going to lose it. You know, that's
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: why I think it's a, of course, I mean, look,
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: this is a different, I'm saying there's a lot of
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: argument out there about this.
• 27:57
  Speaker 3: I'm just laying that out. I'm not arguing with you.
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: I'm not claiming the people who are having their, who
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: are at risk of losing the money they put in
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: that bank are really at fault here. Like it isn't, it,
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: I'm not saying that the bank, I'm not, I'm not
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: taking the side of, I'm not saying they.
• 28:11
  Speaker 3: Are culpable as the bankers.
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: Some people are.
• 28:13
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: But but I will say that this is a situation
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: where people, you know, put their money in a place.
• 28:17
  Speaker 2: It turns out it wasn't as safe as they had hoped.
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: And they are trying to be insured for after the fact. Right.
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: That is what this is. And when you insure something
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: after the fact, you're basically just saying to everyone, hey,
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: chip in. I would like to have had insurance this
• 28:29
  Speaker 2: whole time and I didn't.
• 28:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: Well, I think this I mean, this goes to the
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: what some of the questions that are going to be
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: asked now, which is what else can the Biden administration,
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: Democrats and Congress do to prevent this from happening again?
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: make it clear they're not on the side of big banks.
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: I mean, the questions that we're just debating right now
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: raise the, it raises the issue, like, if there are
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: a lot of these banks that could, if they're a
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: failure of a large bank, right, maybe not as big
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: as one of the big, big banks, but as large
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: as Silicon Valley Bank, if a failure like that could
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: spark around the banks and sort of jeopardize the entire
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: banking system, then, like, Should we insure more than $ 250, 000
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: for people? I mean, because individuals are one thing, like
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: some rich person that has $ 10 million in the bank,
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: who cares? But if like businesses are all over the
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: place and they're putting their money in banks, like, yeah, maybe.
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there's there's I do think there's like a lot
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: to figure out. Some of it is that, right? Should
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: there be better liquidity? Should they basically do the reforms
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: Elizabeth Warren wants and undo the repeal that they did
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: in 2018?
• 29:30
  Speaker 3: I mean, that's.
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: Number one, right? Should the cap be raised? Seems like
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: a good idea based on what some of these experts
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: are saying.
• 29:38
  Speaker 3: Fine.
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: But there is another problem here. which is this is
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: a bank run that really may have been set off
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: by Twitter, but not even.
• 29:45
  Speaker 5: Just by Twitter.
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: Okay, Twitter.
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: Assholes on Twitter. Sorry.
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: But like before they even got to Twitter, five people,
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: 10 people, 12 people on a chat. Now that's a
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: very specific thing about this bank. But the fact that
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: like That conversation and a sudden run on this bank
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: could have possibly triggered a larger run on a bunch
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: of other regional banks. The speed of it and the
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: ability of these people to communicate and try to get
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: their money out all at once is very scary.
• 30:12
  Speaker 3: It is very dangerous.
• 30:14
  Speaker 7: Yeah, I would say those people acted greedily but not irrationally.
• 30:19
  Speaker 7: You know, they saw this systemic problem of these long
• 30:23
  Speaker 7: dated illiquid bonds and the near term problem of people
• 30:26
  Speaker 7: wanting their deposits back. And they were like, oh, God,
• 30:28
  Speaker 7: something bad is going to happen.
• 30:29
  Speaker 3: And they were right.
• 30:30
  Speaker 7: But they also precipitated that bad thing happening. Every single
• 30:33
  Speaker 7: bank on the planet is kind of a confidence game
• 30:35
  Speaker 7: like that.
• 30:36
  Speaker 8: Yeah.
• 30:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 30:37
  Speaker 7: Every bank is susceptible to this kind of event happening.
• 30:41
  Speaker 7: Like the higher capital requirements, the stress tests, they're all
• 30:44
  Speaker 7: put in place to to prevent that.
• 30:45
  Speaker 3: But like.
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: But ironically, it's not they don't prevent it. Because if
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: the run were to happen, it would prevent the run
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: from doing damage. They try to prevent it by giving
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: people enough confidence to believe their money is safe so
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: the run doesn't take place. The run could kill any bank.
• 31:00
  Speaker 3: Absolutely.
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: Well, and that's ultimately the purpose of the action that
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: the administration took was to shore up confidence in the
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: system because this whole thing is built on confidence. And
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: if there's a bank run and it starts spreading.
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: You know, that's... And to be clear, I want our
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: money back.
• 31:16
  Speaker 3: The most important thing the Fed did... And that's important
• 31:18
  Speaker 3: to me.
• 31:18
  Speaker 7: The most important thing the Fed did, though, was set
• 31:20
  Speaker 7: up this emergency lending program to make sure that all
• 31:22
  Speaker 7: the other banks out there, not SVB, are able to
• 31:25
  Speaker 7: get the liquidity they need to meet depositor needs. Because
• 31:28
  Speaker 7: I assume, look, if these bank risk compliance officers didn't
• 31:33
  Speaker 7: see that zero interest rates weren't going to last forever
• 31:37
  Speaker 7: and bought a bunch of 30-year treasuries to get 25
• 31:42
  Speaker 7: basis points of extra yield, they're morons. But it does
• 31:44
  Speaker 7: seem like a lot of other banks sort of made
• 31:46
  Speaker 7: that problem too. And they need to have a way
• 31:48
  Speaker 7: where they're not writing down huge losses on these bonds
• 31:51
  Speaker 7: that people will then see and then withdraw their money
• 31:53
  Speaker 7: fearing another SVB happening. So that is like the key
• 31:56
  Speaker 7: thing they did.
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: And that is important because there were certain factors that
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: made Silicon Valley Bank a specific problem here. But it's
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: a problem with other banks too. It's not just an
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: SVB problem.
• 32:06
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 32:06
  Speaker 7: I mean, Silicon Valley Bank, you know, I think they
• 32:08
  Speaker 7: served half of venture-backed companies and 44% of venture-backed tech
• 32:14
  Speaker 7: and healthcare companies that IPO-ed last year. So they were very,
• 32:17
  Speaker 7: very tied to the tech industry, which was also very,
• 32:21
  Speaker 7: very tied to low interest rates in their ability to
• 32:25
  Speaker 7: fundraise because people couldn't get yield anywhere else.
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it is also, I do think it also, it's funny,
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: after the fact, you look back on it and you're like,
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: that is obviously an inherently risky proposition to have an
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: entire industry, a famously risky industry, concentrated in one bank.
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: And I imagine over this weekend, there were people that
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: were trying to figure out if they could be a
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: business on Monday, calling backers who also have their money
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: tied up in this bank, trying to figure out what
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: they were going to do come Monday morning.
• 32:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 32:54
  Speaker 7: And SVB was known for providing what's called venture debt
• 32:58
  Speaker 7: to companies, which is just another way of getting financing.
• 33:01
  Speaker 7: And I read that some startups had to keep their
• 33:04
  Speaker 7: money at SVB because they borrowed venture debt from SVB.
• 33:08
  Speaker 7: So they were kind of stuck in this system. very
• 33:10
  Speaker 7: risky kind of self-perpetuating system.
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: Well, I wonder how many, like what the Biden administration
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: could do on its own, because I would bet that
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: the chance of legislation to solve this from all the
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: Republicans who are yelling about this bank bailout, don't think
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: they'll be on board with regulations to make sure this
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: isn't happening again. This is going to be on the
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: Fed and the FDIC and the Treasury.
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: It is just like another reminder too. It's like, man,
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: you have this crisis that plays out over the weekend
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: that reveals a bunch of like really serious policy questions
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: that we need Congress to address. And these fucking dummies
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: are like, oh, it's woke capitalism. They spend all their time.
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: So unserious.
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: So unserious. You have Ted Cruz railing against Biden for
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: a completely non-mandatory rule on just If a retirement fund
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: wants to invest in environmentally friendly or socially responsible investments,
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: they should be able to do it. They call it
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: fucking communism and attack it. Meanwhile, this is a real problem,
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: but we won't be able to do anything about it.
• 34:13
  Speaker 3: It's actually worse than that.
• 34:14
  Speaker 7: The Intercept just reported that two of Kevin McCarthy's top
• 34:17
  Speaker 7: aides were among the lobbyists who helped SVB get rid
• 34:20
  Speaker 7: of those higher capital requirements.
• 34:21
  Speaker 3: So it got us into this mess in the first place.
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, their CEO was lobbying Congress the whole time.
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: Elizabeth Warren was talking about trying to claw back.
• 34:28
  Speaker 3: Okay, great.
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: We're going to wipe out this bank. We're going to
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: wipe out the people that own the bank.
• 34:33
  Speaker 5: What?
• 34:33
  Speaker 3: Wipe out the people.
• 34:36
  Speaker 2: Wipe out the people that were trying to profit off
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: of all this. But these huge, huge payouts to their
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: top executives for all the profits they were earning on
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: this risky scheme.
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: Let's see if we can claw those back.
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: Last week, CNN's Jake Tapper hosted a town hall with
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin about the, quote, war on education,
• 34:59
  Speaker 2: end quote. The town hall started with a transgender teen
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: asking Governor Youngkin about his anti-trans bathroom and locker room policies.
• 35:06
  Speaker 8: Governor Youngkin, your transgender model policies require that students play
• 35:10
  Speaker 8: on the sports teams and use the restrooms that correspond
• 35:12
  Speaker 8: with their sex assigned at birth.
• 35:14
  Speaker 3: Look at me.
• 35:16
  Speaker 8: I am a transgender man. Do you really think that
• 35:19
  Speaker 8: the girls in my high school would feel comfortable sharing
• 35:21
  Speaker 8: a restroom with me?
• 35:22
  Speaker 2: Joining us now, is that very student, Nico, welcome to
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: the pod.
• 35:25
  Speaker 8: Hi, thanks so much for having me.
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: Thanks for being here. First of all, in asking that question,
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: you weren't officially out, right?
• 35:35
  Speaker 8: No, I mean, I transitioned in sophomore, like right before
• 35:40
  Speaker 8: sophomore year, but my freshman year was totally online. So,
• 35:45
  Speaker 8: you know, some people knew, some people didn't. And that
• 35:47
  Speaker 8: was definitely like doing that. I realized like, oh God, like,
• 35:52
  Speaker 8: you know, not only does, is it like, you know,
• 35:54
  Speaker 8: people around the country, around the world finding out, but
• 35:57
  Speaker 8: like people in my school are finding out. And that was,
• 36:00
  Speaker 8: you know, a decision I made that I'm living with.
• 36:04
  Speaker 3: And it's been okay. So it's been okay. How's the
• 36:07
  Speaker 3: response been?
• 36:08
  Speaker 8: I mean, on my end in person, I've gotten nothing
• 36:11
  Speaker 8: but positive, you know, feedback. So hopefully that it stays
• 36:16
  Speaker 8: that way, but I've gotten nothing from, but love, you know,
• 36:19
  Speaker 8: in my personal life.
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: So So one thing that's so striking about you asking
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: that question is it's rare to see a Republican politician
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: confronted face to face by a person who would experience
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: the harm of what they're trying to pass of the
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: policies they're supporting. Why did you want to talk to
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: him directly? And what did you think of his answer?
• 36:43
  Speaker 8: Well, I think that a lot of politicians, especially Republican politicians,
• 36:49
  Speaker 8: as they're the ones that are really pushing these kinds
• 36:50
  Speaker 8: of bills, see quote unquote transgenderism as a concept, a movement,
• 36:58
  Speaker 8: an ideology, whatever. And because they're not often faced by
• 37:04
  Speaker 8: these people, these kids, these adults, whatever, face-to-face, they don't
• 37:08
  Speaker 8: see them as people. And so I think that being
• 37:11
  Speaker 8: able to really stand there and look them in the
• 37:14
  Speaker 8: eye and say, here's who I am, this is a
• 37:16
  Speaker 8: person you're affecting, helps not only them, but people around
• 37:21
  Speaker 8: understand that this has a real consequence it has a
• 37:23
  Speaker 8: personal consequence that these policies are personal right um and
• 37:32
  Speaker 8: i mean i won't lie his his answer was not
• 37:34
  Speaker 8: really an answer i i yeah he never addressed my
• 37:38
  Speaker 8: question and um he clearly had something rehearsed that he
• 37:43
  Speaker 8: wanted to say and he found a way to say
• 37:46
  Speaker 8: that right um and one thing that struck me about
• 37:49
  Speaker 8: his answer is that That's just not what his policy is, right?
• 37:53
  Speaker 8: He was talking about how we need to get more
• 37:54
  Speaker 8: gender neutral bathrooms, you know, that makes everyone feel safe.
• 37:58
  Speaker 8: And that is just not something he's pushing in Virginia.
• 38:02
  Speaker 8: It is absolutely not something he's putting funding towards. What
• 38:05
  Speaker 8: he is trying to do is force kids to transgender
• 38:09
  Speaker 8: kids to use the bathrooms that align with their sex
• 38:12
  Speaker 8: assigned at birth. And he clearly didn't have an answer
• 38:16
  Speaker 8: whether that was something that I should be doing. But
• 38:19
  Speaker 8: he's still pushing a policy that would force me to
• 38:20
  Speaker 8: do that.
• 38:22
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: That was what it is striking, right? Because you're like, well, hey, man,
• 38:25
  Speaker 2: what do you what do you what are you trying
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: to do? Like, where do you want me, a human
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: being to go? Why is it that you want me
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: to go into a room that doesn't match my gender?
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: Why is that good for anyone? Why is that what
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: you want? And he really couldn't answer. He really couldn't
• 38:39
  Speaker 2: answer the question at all. And it does seem like
• 38:42
  Speaker 2: the question is on some level, like, do you want
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: it to be safe for someone like me to go
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: to the bathroom?
• 38:47
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 38:48
  Speaker 8: I mean, gender-neutral bathrooms are awesome, right? It's not something
• 38:53
  Speaker 8: that I need, but for a lot of people, that
• 38:55
  Speaker 8: is something that they want. That would be awesome. But
• 38:58
  Speaker 8: if not every bathroom is gender-neutral, right? If every bathroom
• 39:02
  Speaker 8: was gender-neutral, that would be one thing. But this sort
• 39:04
  Speaker 8: of like, we're going to make some whatever ends up
• 39:06
  Speaker 8: with a situation that could be forced outing of trans
• 39:10
  Speaker 8: people in public, at school, at work, whatever. And In
• 39:16
  Speaker 8: many ways, you know, this might be an extreme statement
• 39:18
  Speaker 8: to make, but what he's really proposing is a separate
• 39:21
  Speaker 8: but equal solution, right? Which we know is not okay.
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: So Glenn Youngkin was really trying to be very nice
• 39:29
  Speaker 2: to you. He was trying to be all buddy-buddy. Did
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: you talk to him after? Did he try to continue
• 39:36
  Speaker 2: his sort of evil policies but nice-to-your-face sort of energy?
• 39:42
  Speaker 8: So during the commercial break before I asked my question,
• 39:45
  Speaker 8: he came around. He was shaking hands with people. He
• 39:48
  Speaker 8: said hi to me and my dad. He did not
• 39:51
  Speaker 8: reach out again during a later, you know, commercial break
• 39:54
  Speaker 8: or after the show. And I wasn't going to track
• 39:57
  Speaker 8: him down and try and have a conversation with him.
• 40:00
  Speaker 8: So there was, you know, we were cordial. And then
• 40:03
  Speaker 8: I asked the question and then we went our separate ways,
• 40:07
  Speaker 8: so to speak.
• 40:10
  Speaker 2: What year are you? How old are you?
• 40:11
  Speaker 5: I'm a junior.
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: You're going to college? You're a junior? Have you applied
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: to college yet? What are you doing? What's happening to you?
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: Where do you go from here?
• 40:19
  Speaker 4: In life?
• 40:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, in life.
• 40:22
  Speaker 3: I don't know.
• 40:22
  Speaker 8: I mean, it was kind of surreal, actually. I was
• 40:27
  Speaker 8: at that town hall on Thursday. Saturday morning, I took
• 40:29
  Speaker 8: my SAT.
• 40:33
  Speaker 2: That was all this week? You took the SATs this week?
• 40:36
  Speaker 8: I took the SATs less than 48 hours after doing that, yeah.
• 40:41
  Speaker 2: Do you feel better about the math part or the
• 40:43
  Speaker 2: English part?
• 40:45
  Speaker 8: I find the English part easier, for sure. But, you know,
• 40:48
  Speaker 8: I thought I did okay on the math section.
• 40:50
  Speaker 3: OK.
• 40:51
  Speaker 4: OK.
• 40:52
  Speaker 3: All right. All right.
• 40:53
  Speaker 2: Well, Nico, thank you so much for being here. Thanks
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: for being willing to face off with Glenn Youngkin, you know?
• 41:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah, of course.
• 41:01
  Speaker 8: And thank you so much for having me and letting
• 41:02
  Speaker 8: me use my voice.
• 41:13
  Speaker 2: Joining us in studio is a senator from New Jersey.
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: And an all-around friend of the pod. Welcome back, Senator Booker.
• 41:18
  Speaker 2: It is good to see you.
• 41:20
  Speaker 5: It is good to be at your table here. I
• 41:24
  Speaker 5: don't know if this is, you know, Pesach table or.
• 41:26
  Speaker 3: Sure, yeah.
• 41:27
  Speaker 5: I feel closer to Winsperum.
• 41:29
  Speaker 2: So we are sitting... Also, we're sitting like Kim Basinger
• 41:36
  Speaker 2: and Michael Keaton in the Batman movie, where they sat
• 41:39
  Speaker 2: very far apart.
• 41:39
  Speaker 3: But it's okay, we're going to get through it.
• 41:41
  Speaker 2: So Senator Booker has graciously agreed to sit down for
• 41:44
  Speaker 2: an interview. But as we do it, we do have
• 41:45
  Speaker 2: a bunch of vegan food options because you are a
• 41:49
  Speaker 2: A world famous vegan.
• 41:51
  Speaker 5: I don't know about that, but I am definitely a
• 41:54
  Speaker 5: vegan for many years now. Vegetarian since 92.
• 41:57
  Speaker 3: Since 1992.
• 41:58
  Speaker 5: Yes.
• 42:00
  Speaker 3: Since Bill Clinton was on the hustings.
• 42:04
  Speaker 2: Since the question, yeah, since whether Jerry Brown could make
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: a comeback, he's been a vegetarian.
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: We are going to rate several vegan burgers.
• 42:12
  Speaker 5: And what inspired this? I mean, I'm pretty stoked right now.
• 42:15
  Speaker 3: Uh, we're trying to monetize YouTube.
• 42:17
  Speaker 5: Okay.
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: The other thing is they're, they're really cool vegan options
• 42:23
  Speaker 2: now like that, that are really innovative and delicious. And,
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: and so we're going to, we are going, as we
• 42:28
  Speaker 2: discuss a range of topics, we are going to, uh,
• 42:31
  Speaker 2: sample a few, uh, vegan sandwiches and burgers.
• 42:34
  Speaker 3: We're going to rate them from one to 10.
• 42:36
  Speaker 5: Yes.
• 42:36
  Speaker 2: Uh, with one being will sustain life, uh, and 10
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: being good enough to trick a middle-aged Republican who thinks
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: sushi is for queers.
• 42:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 42:46
  Speaker 5: Ouch. Can I just say something, though?
• 42:48
  Speaker 4: Sure.
• 42:49
  Speaker 5: Two things, two points I want to make. They're important
• 42:50
  Speaker 5: to this.
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: I feel, I think it will be.
• 42:53
  Speaker 5: One is, this is vegan junk food. Yeah, I knew
• 42:55
  Speaker 5: you were going to point that out. Yes, you could
• 42:56
  Speaker 5: be a very unhealthy vegan, and I have been that
• 42:59
  Speaker 5: person before. When I first became, I was vegetarian since 92,
• 43:03
  Speaker 5: became a vegan in 2014. When I became a vegan
• 43:06
  Speaker 5: in 2014, people were sending me, you know, cupcakes and
• 43:09
  Speaker 5: vegan pancake mixes, and I just, I ballooned, it became
• 43:12
  Speaker 5: a lot heavier, and Was not healthy. So I want
• 43:16
  Speaker 5: to say net-net, these people who say there's a better
• 43:19
  Speaker 5: diet or work, there are definitely things we know about
• 43:22
  Speaker 5: health and well-being. That said, the carbon footprint, if you're
• 43:25
  Speaker 5: concerned about climate change and issues like that, the number
• 43:29
  Speaker 5: one reason for deforestation in our world right now is
• 43:34
  Speaker 5: animal agriculture to clearing lands for grazing purposes. There are
• 43:38
  Speaker 5: a lot of effects. If you're just a climate activist
• 43:41
  Speaker 5: and you're not talking about the food system, then you're
• 43:44
  Speaker 5: not talking about one of the top causers of global
• 43:48
  Speaker 5: climate change.
• 43:49
  Speaker 2: So I can see that this is vegan junk food,
• 43:50
  Speaker 2: but you want to try this. This is called Guess
• 43:52
  Speaker 2: What Chicken Butt.
• 43:53
  Speaker 5: Guess What Chicken Butt. This looks amazing.
• 43:57
  Speaker 2: This looks really good.
• 43:58
  Speaker 3: I'm into this. I'm into this.
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: Now, when is the last time, as you chew, I'm
• 44:02
  Speaker 2: going to ask a question until you seem to be
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: done chewing. Um, I was born on Long Island.
• 44:07
  Speaker 3: That's unrelated. I'm just trying to give you time.
• 44:09
  Speaker 5: I love Long Island. It's like the New Jersey of
• 44:11
  Speaker 5: New York. Yeah.
• 44:13
  Speaker 3: I don't know.
• 44:14
  Speaker 2: That's true. That's just the reality of the situation. When
• 44:16
  Speaker 2: is the last time you had a chicken sandwich that
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: was chicken?
• 44:20
  Speaker 5: So this is going to freak you out. At least
• 44:23
  Speaker 5: it freaked me out. I'm sorry. This is not going
• 44:24
  Speaker 5: to freak you out. It freaked me out.
• 44:25
  Speaker 2: It might freak me out.
• 44:26
  Speaker 5: Today was the first day. Today. The first day that
• 44:31
  Speaker 5: I ever ate chicken, 30 something years. But the reason
• 44:34
  Speaker 5: why is I, I, went to a company that does
• 44:36
  Speaker 5: lab grown meat.
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: Oh, cool.
• 44:39
  Speaker 5: And so I was kind of freaked out. I wasn't
• 44:42
  Speaker 5: sure when they take a cell biopsy and they grow it.
• 44:46
  Speaker 5: And so I finally agreed to try it.
• 44:47
  Speaker 2: Hell yeah.
• 44:48
  Speaker 5: And I was blown away.
• 44:50
  Speaker 2: I am so excited about, we got to, I've been,
• 44:53
  Speaker 2: we got to figure out the branding. We got to
• 44:54
  Speaker 2: figure out the name. People are not going to want
• 44:55
  Speaker 2: lab grown meat. They're not, the word biopsy should not
• 44:58
  Speaker 2: be anywhere near a chicken sandwich, but I am so into,
• 45:01
  Speaker 2: because here's the thing, you know, At first, it's like, okay,
• 45:04
  Speaker 2: I'm going to rate this chicken sandwich.
• 45:06
  Speaker 3: I will let you rate.
• 45:07
  Speaker 2: Remember, one is just sustains human life. Ten is fool
• 45:11
  Speaker 2: a Republican who doesn't believe in sushi. How delicious is this?
• 45:15
  Speaker 5: So I'm going to tell you right now, chicken nuggets
• 45:17
  Speaker 5: and fried chicken sandwich, you cannot tell the difference.
• 45:19
  Speaker 3: You can't tell the difference.
• 45:20
  Speaker 2: You cannot. You can't tell the difference.
• 45:21
  Speaker 5: It's like if you want to cut your– there's no
• 45:23
  Speaker 5: cholesterol in plant-based anything.
• 45:27
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 45:27
  Speaker 5: If you have some issues, you can't tell the difference
• 45:30
  Speaker 5: between them.
• 45:30
  Speaker 2: I agree. Are you saying 10? Are we saying it's
• 45:33
  Speaker 2: a 10?
• 45:33
  Speaker 5: I'm saying a 10.
• 45:33
  Speaker 2: We think it's a 10.
• 45:34
  Speaker 5: It could fool somebody. And I've done these tricks before
• 45:36
  Speaker 5: with my friends fooling them.
• 45:38
  Speaker 2: But so I am so excited about the lab-grown meat
• 45:40
  Speaker 2: because I think a lot of vegan and vegetarian, I
• 45:43
  Speaker 2: don't know how you feel about this, but sometimes there's
• 45:47
  Speaker 2: vegan and vegetarian food that tries to recreate. And then
• 45:50
  Speaker 2: there's some that just try to be its own thing
• 45:52
  Speaker 2: and its own version of delicious. But the thing about
• 45:55
  Speaker 2: the lab-grown is, here's my dream. Here's what I think about.
• 45:59
  Speaker 2: Here's my North Star. Filet mignon steaks the size of
• 46:03
  Speaker 2: pizza boxes coming off a conveyor belt.
• 46:08
  Speaker 3: Possible?
• 46:09
  Speaker 5: It is. But, you know, when we hear something like
• 46:12
  Speaker 5: lab-grown meat and biopsies, we get grossed out. But if
• 46:15
  Speaker 5: you saw the way factory farming works in America.
• 46:18
  Speaker 3: No, I'm with you.
• 46:19
  Speaker 5: Literally, if you just said, I'm going to go out
• 46:20
  Speaker 5: and look at how my pork, my bacon, you would be,
• 46:25
  Speaker 5: I would use a word for some Americans who are
• 46:27
  Speaker 5: without meat eaters that I would never want to try
• 46:28
  Speaker 5: to shift, but you would be traumatized that seeing what
• 46:32
  Speaker 5: happens to these animals compared to how our grandparents raised livestock.
• 46:36
  Speaker 5: We cram these animals in on top of each other,
• 46:39
  Speaker 5: that the majority of the antibiotics we use in this country,
• 46:44
  Speaker 5: the majority are used prophylactically, preventatively injected into animals. And
• 46:50
  Speaker 5: what that's creating is antibiotic resistant strains that are killing
• 46:55
  Speaker 5: the Americans. We are now up to tens of thousands
• 46:58
  Speaker 5: of Americans that are dying every single year because of
• 47:01
  Speaker 5: antibiotic-resistant strains. And so I was one of the people
• 47:05
  Speaker 5: fighting against the wet markets in other countries that allow
• 47:09
  Speaker 5: these things to gestate and potentially lead to pandemics. But
• 47:13
  Speaker 5: the way we are raising agriculture, such a perversion of
• 47:15
  Speaker 5: what our grandparents and great-grandparents did, is creating a Petri
• 47:20
  Speaker 5: dish that to cultivate antibiotic-resistant strains that could threaten human existence.
• 47:27
  Speaker 5: So this is such an aberration of the way we've
• 47:30
  Speaker 5: raised livestock for millennia that we're creating, again, another threat
• 47:35
  Speaker 5: to human health and to this country.
• 47:37
  Speaker 2: Let's talk about another topic. You have Silicon Valley Bank.
• 47:42
  Speaker 2: Thursday and Friday, everything gets shut down. Over the weekend,
• 47:46
  Speaker 2: you have a bunch of venture capital people saying, it's
• 47:50
  Speaker 2: going to be everywhere, it's going to ruin everything, it's
• 47:52
  Speaker 2: coming after all the banks, you have to do something,
• 47:54
  Speaker 2: you have to do something. The same industry leaders that
• 47:57
  Speaker 2: were railing against the kind of regulations you were trying
• 48:00
  Speaker 2: to deregulate, who were railing against the regulations that the
• 48:04
  Speaker 2: Trump administration repealed in 2018, which you opposed. Where are
• 48:07
  Speaker 2: we today? What did you think of the Biden announcement
• 48:09
  Speaker 2: this morning? What's your response to what happened to this bank?
• 48:12
  Speaker 2: So again, first of all, it's not shocking. What happened
• 48:15
  Speaker 2: in 2018 was lifted the stress testing and the transparency
• 48:22
  Speaker 2: that could have allowed people to realize there was a
• 48:25
  Speaker 2: crisis before the people who are incentivized to hide the
• 48:28
  Speaker 2: crisis or who are doing the bad behavior. And so
• 48:33
  Speaker 2: this is to me a logical outcome of when you,
• 48:36
  Speaker 2: and by the way, all regulation, we can say regulation
• 48:39
  Speaker 2: is as if it's all one thing. In this case,
• 48:42
  Speaker 2: it was to prevent what we saw during the global
• 48:46
  Speaker 2: financial crisis. And this is a natural, almost expected, especially
• 48:51
  Speaker 2: when things are supercharged now by social media and online banking.
• 48:57
  Speaker 2: With the regulations, if the regulations that were in place
• 49:00
  Speaker 2: until that law was signed by Trump, if those were
• 49:03
  Speaker 2: in place, would this have not happened?
• 49:04
  Speaker 5: So everything that I'm seeing is the answer to that
• 49:06
  Speaker 5: is that this would have been a preventative safeguard that
• 49:11
  Speaker 5: could have exposed the vulnerabilities of this bank at the time.
• 49:15
  Speaker 5: That's everything I'm seeing and I'm moving to hopefully get
• 49:18
  Speaker 5: support on both sides of the aisle to reinstate, and
• 49:22
  Speaker 5: Elizabeth Warren and others of us that fought hardest against
• 49:25
  Speaker 5: what the Trump administration did, to reinstate those 2018 safeguards
• 49:30
  Speaker 5: to prevent this from happening again. Because what you kind
• 49:32
  Speaker 5: of see now is, remember those too big to fail? Well,
• 49:36
  Speaker 5: these aren't the big banks that These are regional banks
• 49:39
  Speaker 5: that are showing that they too possess contagion if they
• 49:42
  Speaker 5: are able to spread. I think the Biden administration did
• 49:45
  Speaker 5: the right thing to step up. This is not costing
• 49:49
  Speaker 5: taxpayer dollars the steps that they're taking. But if we
• 49:51
  Speaker 5: don't learn from this, then we are setting ourselves up
• 49:55
  Speaker 5: to have more crises in the future.
• 49:57
  Speaker 2: It is a strange situation because this isn't like 2007, 2008,
• 50:02
  Speaker 2: because this isn't a situation where all of a sudden
• 50:05
  Speaker 2: this bank had much less– had much less in assets
• 50:11
  Speaker 2: than it did two days before, three days before. It
• 50:13
  Speaker 2: wasn't that they were sitting on top of these sort
• 50:15
  Speaker 2: of complicated, poorly understood derivatives. They have the money. It
• 50:19
  Speaker 2: was just they were not able to access it, right,
• 50:22
  Speaker 2: because it was in bonds and it was in these
• 50:23
  Speaker 2: sort of longer-term investments. And all of a sudden, Peter
• 50:25
  Speaker 2: Thiel and a few VC guys are telling everyone that
• 50:28
  Speaker 2: has money in the bank, go get your money, go
• 50:30
  Speaker 2: get your money, and they just can't get it out
• 50:31
  Speaker 2: in time.
• 50:31
  Speaker 3: Is that right?
• 50:32
  Speaker 5: Well, first of all, that's what I mean by we're
• 50:34
  Speaker 5: living in a different era where social media spreads rumors
• 50:38
  Speaker 5: and misinformation, but also fear. So this is a new
• 50:42
  Speaker 5: part of the combustible atmosphere we live in. But I
• 50:46
  Speaker 5: think we're drawing conclusions about the culpability of the people
• 50:49
  Speaker 5: that ran this bank. You have interest rates in the
• 50:52
  Speaker 5: Fed moving interest rates up. That does affect the balance
• 50:55
  Speaker 5: sheets of these banks. We're The banks should be taking
• 50:58
  Speaker 5: responsible action, seeing that interest rates are going up. So, again,
• 51:02
  Speaker 5: I don't want to create any conclusion. But there is
• 51:05
  Speaker 5: enough evidence to see that– to suspect perhaps that these
• 51:11
  Speaker 5: folks who should be soaked, shareholders should be accountable, board members,
• 51:18
  Speaker 5: the people who are running this institution should have had
• 51:21
  Speaker 5: enough information. Again, this is what it's pointing to, to
• 51:26
  Speaker 5: prevent this from happening. But again, add to that the
• 51:29
  Speaker 5: fact that fear was injected into this, legitimate concerns were
• 51:33
  Speaker 5: injected into this, that created this process and this problem
• 51:37
  Speaker 5: that then spread to people's concerns about First Republic, about
• 51:42
  Speaker 5: Signature Bank and others. And so again, we have to
• 51:45
  Speaker 5: learn from this. And that's why I get very bothered by,
• 51:49
  Speaker 5: and I was with somebody recently, simplistic conclusions like, oh,
• 51:53
  Speaker 5: we need less government regulation. Oh, we need more government regulation.
• 51:57
  Speaker 5: We need to be smart. We live in an interwoven,
• 52:00
  Speaker 5: interconnected society in which the job that somebody might have
• 52:05
  Speaker 5: for a company is directly affected to banking systems or
• 52:10
  Speaker 5: actions taken by the Fed. This is all a far
• 52:14
  Speaker 5: more interrelated system that we need, taxpayers deserve, Americans deserve
• 52:19
  Speaker 5: safeguards on this system. So irresponsible behavior by bank shareholders
• 52:24
  Speaker 5: in California is not affecting the job prospects for people
• 52:27
  Speaker 5: in New Jersey.
• 52:28
  Speaker 2: Now, into this very complicated situation.
• 52:30
  Speaker 5: And can I just interrupt you for a second?
• 52:31
  Speaker 3: Please.
• 52:32
  Speaker 5: Yeah, let's grab these shakes. No, but I want you
• 52:33
  Speaker 5: to taste this one in particular.
• 52:34
  Speaker 3: Oh, this one in particular?
• 52:35
  Speaker 5: Yeah, because I know that that is, it looks like
• 52:38
  Speaker 5: either an Oreo shake or cookies and cream shake. I
• 52:42
  Speaker 5: know this is, it looks very vanilla-esque, but I want
• 52:46
  Speaker 5: you to push that straw in there, my friend. Cause
• 52:49
  Speaker 5: have you ever had a vegan shake before?
• 52:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I've, I've, I've lived a full life, you know,
• 52:54
  Speaker 2: I've had a vegan shake.
• 52:55
  Speaker 5: So you're not one of these kind of anti plant-based person.
• 52:59
  Speaker 3: No, no, no, no, no, no.
• 52:59
  Speaker 2: I have a, I have an, I have a, um,
• 53:02
  Speaker 2: what would be the word? I have an, I, I
• 53:04
  Speaker 2: love food and all its kinds. I love your crossroads,
• 53:08
  Speaker 2: but I, I like, I like a steak. You know,
• 53:10
  Speaker 2: I eat it all. I love, I eat high, I
• 53:12
  Speaker 2: eat high end. I eat low end.
• 53:14
  Speaker 3: Okay. Cheesecake factory. I have to say.
• 53:17
  Speaker 2: What's that restaurant where the chef was abusive in Finland
• 53:19
  Speaker 2: or something?
• 53:20
  Speaker 3: Noma?
• 53:21
  Speaker 2: I'll eat there, but I haven't.
• 53:23
  Speaker 5: Okay.
• 53:24
  Speaker 2: You know, one of those Michelin places.
• 53:26
  Speaker 5: Yes.
• 53:26
  Speaker 3: All right.
• 53:27
  Speaker 5: But you'll go to Benihana's too.
• 53:28
  Speaker 3: You bet I will. You bet I will. Wood and half.
• 53:30
  Speaker 3: I respect that.
• 53:31
  Speaker 5: And please just give people the same ranking.
• 53:34
  Speaker 3: I will.
• 53:34
  Speaker 5: Because a lot of my friends, again, don't understand how
• 53:36
  Speaker 5: good that is.
• 53:39
  Speaker 3: All right.
• 53:39
  Speaker 2: This is some sort of vegan Oreo shake.
• 53:43
  Speaker 5: And if you don't want to give the brand away,
• 53:45
  Speaker 5: say cookies and cream.
• 53:46
  Speaker 3: It's cookies.
• 53:46
  Speaker 2: Oh, okay.
• 53:47
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you're right.
• 53:48
  Speaker 2: Cookies and cream.
• 53:48
  Speaker 5: Yes.
• 53:49
  Speaker 2: It could be Hydrox.
• 53:50
  Speaker 3: We don't know.
• 53:51
  Speaker 5: But Oreos are very vegan, I should tell you. They are.
• 53:53
  Speaker 2: They're vegan, right?
• 53:53
  Speaker 5: Yes. Yes.
• 53:54
  Speaker 2: And very good.
• 53:55
  Speaker 3: And they're constantly coming up with new Oreos.
• 53:57
  Speaker 5: It's unbelievable. I walked into a supermarket and I just
• 54:00
  Speaker 5: saw a wall of every imaginable types of Oreo from
• 54:04
  Speaker 5: red velvet cake to like, you know, I think there
• 54:07
  Speaker 5: was like Lady Gaga Oreos or something like that.
• 54:11
  Speaker 2: I'm going to say, I'm going to give this a nine.
• 54:13
  Speaker 2: I'm going to give this a nine.
• 54:14
  Speaker 5: Oh, I love that.
• 54:15
  Speaker 2: I think it's great. But, you know, I wouldn't be
• 54:21
  Speaker 2: upset if a cow had gotten involved.
• 54:23
  Speaker 5: You wouldn't be upset if a cow had gotten involved.
• 54:25
  Speaker 2: Well, I just think it might have improved. I'm just
• 54:26
  Speaker 2: being honest. I'm saying it's a nine out of ten.
• 54:28
  Speaker 5: But you are, I know your heart. All jokes aside,
• 54:30
  Speaker 5: you're a man of empathy and compassion. So if this
• 54:33
  Speaker 5: cow was a free-range grazing cow, regenerative farm, that's great.
• 54:39
  Speaker 5: But if you knew the sort of the darker side
• 54:42
  Speaker 5: of the industry that they don't want consumers to know,
• 54:44
  Speaker 5: you would be concerned about factory farming.
• 54:47
  Speaker 3: I know, I know.
• 54:47
  Speaker 2: But we all know, and yet we all continue. Isn't
• 54:50
  Speaker 2: that the reality? Isn't the reality that a lot of
• 54:53
  Speaker 2: people know and continue? That's part of it too.
• 54:56
  Speaker 3: You know that.
• 54:57
  Speaker 5: I think.
• 54:57
  Speaker 2: You know it's true. You know that we, a lot
• 54:59
  Speaker 2: of people know how bad it is. A lot of
• 55:01
  Speaker 2: people will see Food Inc. and they will go to
• 55:03
  Speaker 2: McDonald's on the way home, right? We know that that's
• 55:06
  Speaker 2: going on. So there is a, There is an ability
• 55:08
  Speaker 2: we have to put this problem out of our minds,
• 55:11
  Speaker 2: myself included.
• 55:12
  Speaker 5: So I'm a big believer that empathy is the most
• 55:20
  Speaker 5: necessary agent, ingredient in change. That you have to get
• 55:26
  Speaker 5: people to know first, to confront the moral urgencies. This
• 55:30
  Speaker 5: was the brilliance of the civil rights movement. You had
• 55:33
  Speaker 5: them saying, there's no way. Birmingham, Alabama will never get
• 55:36
  Speaker 5: rid of segregation. and these creative artists of activism in
• 55:41
  Speaker 5: one day, really two days of demonstration in front of
• 55:44
  Speaker 5: Bull Connor, brought the national spotlight to people who understand this.
• 55:48
  Speaker 5: And all of a sudden, 12 days later, segregation fell.
• 55:51
  Speaker 5: So I believe that is the case. The challenge we
• 55:53
  Speaker 5: have is trying to expose to all of us. You
• 55:57
  Speaker 5: don't know who made that T-shirt. You have no knowledge
• 56:00
  Speaker 5: whether that was fast fashion with child labor or was
• 56:04
  Speaker 5: it made in a way that resonates more with your values.
• 56:06
  Speaker 3: So I just want to go back to Silicon Valley
• 56:08
  Speaker 3: Bank for a second. I'm so sorry.
• 56:11
  Speaker 2: No, no, no, no.
• 56:12
  Speaker 5: I know it's way afield. No, no, no.
• 56:13
  Speaker 2: I'm glad you did. But it is about it is related.
• 56:15
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 56:15
  Speaker 2: Because I think one of the allegations now is that
• 56:21
  Speaker 2: Silicon Valley Bank, the reason it failed is that it
• 56:24
  Speaker 2: was too woke. You have Ron DeSantis saying it's it
• 56:27
  Speaker 2: might be in part because of DEI. I want to
• 56:29
  Speaker 2: read you a quote from The Wall Street Journal of
• 56:31
  Speaker 2: the minds of The Wall Street Journal. SVB notes that besides.
• 56:33
  Speaker 5: Hold on, let me just make the assumption. This is
• 56:35
  Speaker 5: their editorial page, not their news side.
• 56:38
  Speaker 3: This is an opinion piece.
• 56:39
  Speaker 5: As an avid reader of their news side.
• 56:41
  Speaker 2: I know that this.
• 56:41
  Speaker 3: Yes, yes.
• 56:43
  Speaker 2: By one of their opinion writers. SVB notes that besides
• 56:45
  Speaker 2: 91% of their board being independent and 45% women, they
• 56:48
  Speaker 2: also have one black, one LGBTQ +, and two veterans.
• 56:52
  Speaker 2: I'm not saying 12 white men would have avoided this mess,
• 56:56
  Speaker 2: but the company may have been distracted by diversity of demand.
• 56:59
  Speaker 2: Senator Booker, do you think, quote, one black... may have
• 57:02
  Speaker 2: been responsible for this crisis, or might it have been
• 57:04
  Speaker 2: one lesbian? Are you prepared to decide? Will you tell
• 57:09
  Speaker 2: us now if you believe this was caused by a
• 57:10
  Speaker 2: black person or a lesbian?
• 57:12
  Speaker 5: Could be one person. Right, the absurdity of that is plain.
• 57:14
  Speaker 2: Could be a black lesbian.
• 57:15
  Speaker 5: The absurdity of that is plain. And you and I
• 57:18
  Speaker 5: can sit here and continually, and I get rankled. I
• 57:27
  Speaker 5: turned on to hear Governor DeSantis's speech. He won the
• 57:32
  Speaker 5: election pretty sizably in his state. And I expect it
• 57:36
  Speaker 5: to be what executives need to do, which is remind
• 57:40
  Speaker 5: people of our... We just come out of a partisan election,
• 57:42
  Speaker 5: remind people of our common cause, our common mission. And
• 57:46
  Speaker 5: I was surprised to see how hard he went against
• 57:48
  Speaker 5: this idea that I still don't fully understand of what
• 57:51
  Speaker 5: it means to be woke. But I'm warning us, because
• 57:55
  Speaker 5: I imagine you and I are members of the same
• 57:57
  Speaker 5: political party, I worry us that if we spend our time, again,
• 58:03
  Speaker 5: my father used to tell me when I was a kid,
• 58:04
  Speaker 5: there's two ways to go through life, a thermometer or
• 58:06
  Speaker 5: a thermostat. If we spend our time as a thermometer
• 58:09
  Speaker 5: just reacting to them and not working hard on being
• 58:13
  Speaker 5: a thermostat and setting the temperature, we perpetuate the dynamic
• 58:17
  Speaker 5: that is dividing our country.
• 58:18
  Speaker 2: So I think what I'm interested in on this topic,
• 58:21
  Speaker 2: jokes aside, is I hear you, right? We need to
• 58:24
  Speaker 2: fight on the ground together. We think where we can
• 58:27
  Speaker 2: do the most good and bring the most people along
• 58:29
  Speaker 2: and persuade the most people. I agree with that. But
• 58:31
  Speaker 2: what we see now is there is an effort, DeSantis
• 58:34
  Speaker 2: is part of it, which is to paint basically anything
• 58:39
  Speaker 2: they disagree with or anything that involves change as woke.
• 58:41
  Speaker 2: That involves going after schools, teachers, parents of trans kids.
• 58:47
  Speaker 2: It involves going after Disney.
• 58:49
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 58:49
  Speaker 5: And by the way, that's where words hurt. We have
• 58:52
  Speaker 5: a suicide rate. Amongst LGBTQ kids, that is the result
• 58:58
  Speaker 5: of creating environments of which they're not safe.
• 59:01
  Speaker 2: So, but, but here's what the reason I'm bringing it
• 59:02
  Speaker 2: up is I hear you. We should, we, I hear
• 59:06
  Speaker 2: what you're saying about not getting dragged and not being defensive.
• 59:10
  Speaker 2: But we need to have an argument when Republicans try
• 59:14
  Speaker 2: to take on the mantle of going after corporations, which
• 59:17
  Speaker 2: is laughable, right? When they say, oh, we're going to
• 59:19
  Speaker 2: hold these big, when they do that kind of right-wing populism.
• 59:22
  Speaker 2: What do you find, before you say, I'd rather be
• 59:24
  Speaker 2: talking about the child tax credit, I'd rather be talking
• 59:26
  Speaker 2: about baby bonds, I'd rather be talking about gun control,
• 59:28
  Speaker 2: whatever it may be, before you get there, what do
• 59:30
  Speaker 2: you find is the most effective way to fight back,
• 59:33
  Speaker 2: to win, rather than change the subject, but to win
• 59:36
  Speaker 2: the argument when it comes to Republicans claiming, when it
• 59:40
  Speaker 2: comes to Republicans launching these sort of myriad attacks on
• 59:43
  Speaker 2: basic freedoms, bodily autonomy, the right of parents to raise
• 59:46
  Speaker 2: their kids, doctors to prescribe medicine?
• 59:48
  Speaker 5: Right. So first of all, I just want to say
• 59:50
  Speaker 5: that one of the best pieces of advice for wellbeing
• 59:55
  Speaker 5: is that you do not have to attend every argument
• 59:57
  Speaker 5: you're invited to. To me, it's very important that you're strategic,
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 5: that you don't let people own your emotional state and
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 5: you fight and apply your energy to things that will
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 5: advance good for people. That's really got to be the
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 5: bottom line. And I'll give you a great example of
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 5: my frustration. I'm not telling you that I'm some Zen master,
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 5: but I will tell you Let's take Washington, D.C. and
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 5: their autonomy, their ability to access what is a fundamental
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 5: ideal in America, representative government. One of the instigators for
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 5: a revolution you might know about called the American Revolution
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 5: was ideas like taxation without representation. We have a body
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 5: of population in the continental United States of America that
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 5: is– A larger population in at least two states commensurate
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 5: with three or four states that pays more in federal
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 5: taxes than I think any state, if I have my
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 5: data right, that serves in the federal military at some
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 5: of the highest rates in the country. This is a group, Washington, D.C.
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 5: is a community of some large size, but they have
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 5: no ability to escape the ability of Congress to tell
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 5: them what to do. So last week, it really was
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 5: a two-week buildup, they finish a 16-plus year process to
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 5: overhaul their criminal code that wasn't done by politicians. It
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 5: was done by an advisory board and a commission. The
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 5: commission had prosecutors, had a lot of criminal justice, and
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 5: they came back unanimously The commission unanimously– and they sent
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 5: it to the city council, which was unanimous endorsing this.
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 5: Very smart politicians, not policy people, exploited that criminal code
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 5: change to say that they're lowering penalties.
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 2: Penalties for carjacking.
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 5: Thank you. Thank you very much. I'm emotional about this
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 5: because it was one of my lower points in the
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 5: United States Senate to watch all this happen. And by
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 5: the way, when I read those headlines, I was like,
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 5: you know, I live in a city that we battled
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 5: crime for a long time. Why would they be lowering
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 5: penalties on carjacking? Again, the Republicans presented this in a
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 5: way that would excite people on both sides of the
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 5: aisle who are concerned about safety and say, oh, this
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 5: is some kind of woke, far-left, radical undoing of crime.
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 5: So my team looks, you know, God forbid, reads the
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 5: actual legislation, and I'm stunned. This legislation didn't just increase
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 5: penalties for significant numbers of crimes. It doubled, tripled, and
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 5: quadrupled penalties for certain crimes. It created new criminal penalties
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 5: that didn't exist before to protect vulnerable people, victims of
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 5: child exploitation. They closed the loophole that every state has
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 5: closed now, except for South Carolina, to criminalize choking and
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 5: domestic violence. They actually put things in two new crimes
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 5: to protect police officers from harassment. And then they did
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 5: actually lower penalties for carjacking and a number of other crimes,
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 5: but they brought them in line with other states. I
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 5: do not understand how the Democratic Party, that we, can
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 5: be on the defensive about crime when in the last Congress,
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 5: we approved more money to support local police officers than
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 5: than any single administration going back to Bill Clinton. I'm
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 5: ready now to try to fight to head off what
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 5: the Republicans are trying to do on a police reform bill.
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 5: And yet again, for the second time in 30 years,
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 5: have D.C., have their elected representatives be overrun by people
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 5: that don't have anybody representing Washington, D.C. in their body.
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 2: Senator Booker, before we let you go, can you please
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 2: write that shake on a scale of one to 10?
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 5: We gotta do one more. We gotta do one more.
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 5: You're like... I feel like anything you put enough sugar...
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 5: I know, it's pretty good.
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 2: It's pretty good.
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 5: And fat in is gonna be a good shake, but....
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 3: What do you think? I think it's like 11.
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 2: It's an 11.
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 3: Nobody's gonna turn.
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 2: It's an 11.
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 5: Nobody's going to turn this down. It's so good.
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 2: This is what we have to get in front of people.
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 2: This is what's gonna change hearts and minds. I don't... Again,
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 2: if we as Americans could say, these are our values...
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 2: This is where our food system is. Let's try to, together,
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 2: bring our values together. Let's elevate farmers who are going
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 2: out of business at alarming rates, have suicide rates around
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 2: three times higher than us. Let's help empower farmers to
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 2: lead on climate change, incentivize cover crops. Let's take care
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 2: of farm workers and food workers. If we can just
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 2: create a food system that reflects our values, everybody would win,
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 2: from rural America... to the kids in the bodega will
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 2: have better choices and better access to healthy food. New
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 2: York strip steaks, the size of ping pong tables.
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 3: That is possible.
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 2: That's a world that we can live in. Senator Booker,
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 2: thank you so much.
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 5: You are a prisoner of hope, and I appreciate that.
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 3: People need to imagine. And you're on such a high note.
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 2: Yes, absolutely. Thank you so much.
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 5: Thank you always.
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: All right, before we go, we thought we'd cover the
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: week's other top stories in another round of One Line
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: with Cocaine Bear. Here's how it works. The producers compiled
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 1: a list of news stories that are all written down
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: on slips of paper in this bear head in front
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: of me. Please watch us on YouTube if you can't
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: see this, if you're just listening. And we will draw
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: the pieces of paper out one at a time and
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: offer a quick reaction. Tommy, you want to kick us off?
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 7: Sure, and I do promise we will turn the bear's
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 7: head over so it looks more like a bear.
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 3: Drum roll, please.
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 7: Mike Pence at Gridiron dinner. So during a speech at
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 7: the Gridiron dinner on Saturday, former Vice President Mike Pence
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 7: addressed Donald Trump saying, quote, history will hold Donald Trump
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 7: accountable for January 6th. Make no mistake about it. What
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 7: happened that day was a disgrace and it mocks decency
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 7: to portray it in any other way. President Trump was wrong.
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 7: His reckless words endangered my family and everyone at the
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 7: Capitol that day. My take on this is like, thanks
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 7: for stating the obvious, Mike Pence. Why would you do
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 7: this at the gridiron dinner? Which for everyone back home
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 7: who doesn't know, it's the most pompous.
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 3: Everyone back home.
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 7: It's like this white tie tails, super stuffy establishment media
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 7: event where reporters like literally do skits and sing each
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 7: other fucking songs and things. And of all the people
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 7: you need to convince that Trump endangered everyone on January 6th,
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 7: like everyone in that room knows.
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 2: And he does it in a room with no video.
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 2: There's no video of this thing.
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: Well, so there was, of course, a Politico story like
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: inside Mike Pence's decision to attack Donald Trump. And they
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 1: have this line. His team also believed it would help
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 1: Pence win over his most skeptical audience these days. Washington
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: insiders and journalists who've given him short shrift in the
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 1: early 2024 primary.
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 4: I don't remember Gloria Borger trying to hang him on
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 4: the Capitol lawn.
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 3: Did I beat you? Yes, yes.
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: That's what I was about to say.
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 3: We got a joke up.
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: I was in the middle of a sentence.
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 3: All right, you do your sentence. No, no, no. It's okay.
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 3: It's okay.
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 1: No, I want you to do it.
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 3: Hey, what was your.
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 2: Sentence going to be?
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 3: You got it. All hopped up on vegan food over here.
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 3: You got it.
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 1: You got it.
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 3: You're up, Bear.
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 5: Go ahead.
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 3: DeSantis in Iowa.
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 2: Florida Governor Ron DeSantis visited Iowa last week for his
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 2: book tour, prompting the New York Times headline, A Glimpse
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 2: of DeSantis in Iowa, Awkward but Still Winning the Crowd.
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 3: There's a paragraph that's worth reading from this article. Oh, God.
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 2: The interaction underscored both the promise and the potential pitfall
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 2: of a presidential bid for DeSantis. His preference for policy
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 2: over personality can make him seem awkward and arrogant or
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 2: otherwise astonishing in person, depending on the voter and the
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 2: success or failure of his one-on-one exchanges. Many Republicans view
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 2: his style as an antidote to the character attacks and
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 2: volatility that have underscored Republican politics during the Trump era.
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 2: I love this because it is the most, I would
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 2: say that it is the most generous description of a
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 2: person who has the charisma of an old hat.
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: I loved the bit of color in this piece where
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: he was doing an event with Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds.
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: She was supposed to be asking him a bunch of questions.
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 1: He went out on stage and before he could sit
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: down with her, he spoke for 30 minutes. And then finally,
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: at the end, she said she put out her hands
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: and said, come over here to come sit and talk
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: and do questions.
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 3: And this is like a roadshow they've been doing. She
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 3: was also at his Florida event. Like, he should know better.
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 3: You don't insult the Republican governor of Iowa when you're
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 3: going to run for president.
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: And then she asked him a question about his family,
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: and he responded by talking about policy.
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 3: So, you know, who knows? Some of this stuff may
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 3: not matter to these people. May not matter.
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: May not matter, but it's a thing.
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 3: All right.
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 1: Let's see what we got here. Manhattan DA close to
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: indicting Trump.
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 4: Okay.
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 1: Here we go. The New York Times has reported that
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: the Manhattan District Attorney's office has signaled to Donald Trump's
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: lawyers that he could soon face criminal charges for his
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 1: role in the payment of hush money to Stormy Daniels.
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: And they gave him one last chance to testify, which
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: he has declined.
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 2: But.
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: Trump's former fixer Michael Cohen testified in the case on
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 1: Monday and said to reporters before the trial that Trump, quote,
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: needs to be held accountable for his dirty deeds.
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 3: We got him. We got him.
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: We got him. It does sound like he really is
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: going to get indicted here.
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah. They're going to do a fine.
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 2: Give him a stick. He'll pick up some trash on
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 2: the side of the road. He'll be president in no time.
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 1: I'll tell you, every time I read these stories, though,
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 1: they say, It would be, it's a novel legal theory.
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 5: It's untested.
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 1: An untested legal theory or a novel legal theory. There's
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: something about falsified records and then the other charges he
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: had to knowingly break election law, which is by, you know,
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: by shutting up Stormy Daniels, it would be an, you
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: have to prove that it's an in-kind contribution to his
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 1: campaign by, you know, preventing the bad press that would
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 1: come from the Stormy Daniels story.
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, listen, we got it. We got Capone on taxes.
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 3: Get him however you want.
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 2: Go for it.
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 3: Have at it.
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 2: If it works, great.
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 3: If it doesn't, I'm not hoping for it. I'm not
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 3: expecting it.
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 1: We got a bunch of other indictments to choose from.
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 2: But I do remember from the John Edwards days that
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 2: there is this thing, when you try to pay someone
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 2: off for sleeping with you, it's sort of a damned
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 2: if you do, damned if you don't situation. If you
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 2: do it from your personal funds, it's an in-kind contribution.
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 2: If you do it from the campaign, it seems kind
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 2: of illegal too. I feel like there's no good way
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 2: around it. And that's not Trump's fault.
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 3: That's complicated.
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 2: Just saying. That's a take.
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 1: Where can I pay? If I want to shut someone up,
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: where should.
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 3: The funds come from?
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 2: You can't give her $ 100, 000 from your personal funds. You
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 2: can't do it from your campaign funds. It's got to
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 2: be a rock and hard place. SVB could give you
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 2: a lot of credit.
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah, what about SVB? Just saying. Let's see what we
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 3: got here.
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 7: Randy McNally on Instagram.
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 3: Oh, there you go. Okay.
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 7: So Tennessee Republican Lieutenant Governor Randy McNally, real name, has
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 7: confirmed that for a little while, that's a quote, he
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 7: has been liking and leaving comments on social media photos
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 7: of an openly gay Tennessee man who often poses nearly naked.
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 7: I just want to say words don't really do this
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 7: one justice.
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you got to look it up. You got to
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 3: see the pics because there's– Intensely naked.
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 2: It's they are. They are like you brighten up my room.
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 2: It's a it's a hyper sexual photo of a basically
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 2: naked young queer man. And the the anti-gay, anti-trans lieutenant
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 2: governor of Tennessee responds. Good luck on all your future endeavors.
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 2: You get your rainbow and sunshine to me. From his
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 2: official Instagram account.
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 1: A little blue.
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 3: Check next to it.
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 7: And the individual who posted the photos said that they
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 7: had also DM'd, but he wanted to keep those private.
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, which is interesting. That's the other thing. The lieutenant
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 2: governor constantly calls him Finn, but Finn is not a
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 2: name he uses publicly, which means it's from their private relationship.
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 2: He says they never met.
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 3: Star-crossed lovers.
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 1: Randy.
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 3: That's an easy mistake to not make.
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 1: All right, love it. I'm so glad you got this one.
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 2: It says here, all right, Warren apologizes to Harris. Last month,
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 2: Elizabeth Warren went on a local Boston radio show and
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 2: avoided endorsing Vice President Harris on the Biden 2024 ticket, saying,
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 2: I really want to defer to what makes Biden comfortable
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 2: on his team. She immediately called VP Harris to apologize,
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 2: but CNN reports that Harris still hasn't returned her call.
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 2: CNN reports that Democratic leaders are urging folks to stop
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 2: the Harris pylon and unite for the campaign ahead.
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 1: You tell Warren to do that just like the DNA test?
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 3: All right, yeah, excuse me.
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 2: Excuse me. How fucking dare you? I want you to
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 2: know that that is retribution because I interrupted his little
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 2: Gloria Borger joke earlier.
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 3: Don't be a cocaine square. That was a funny joke.
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: That's not retribution. I'm really excited I came up with
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 1: that joke.
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 3: It was good.
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was good and deserved. Look, I think obviously
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 2: this is a very sensitive topic, which is why I'm
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 2: going to focus on congratulating everything everywhere all at once
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 2: for winning its Academy Awards.
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 3: What a success.
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 2: I don't like it that they're not talking. I think
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 2: they should talk it out. I think they should go
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 2: get a brunch, sort.
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 1: It out, I totally believe that, like, Warren said it
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 1: was a mistake. And what she was trying to say was, like,
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: I don't want to tell Joe Biden what to do.
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: It was a mistake. But, like, I don't think, I
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 1: do not think that was intentional.
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 2: I think this is a situation where, are we mad at,
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 2: are we mad at Elizabeth Warren or are we mad
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 2: at the situation?
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 4: You know?
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 7: I think Warren just said she kind of, like, garbled
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 7: her words and made a mistake and immediately called to
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 7: try and fix it. I don't think she was trying
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 7: to start a new VP news cycle.
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 5: New take.
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 2: I'm calling this whole story sexist.
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 3: I wonder what Boston Radio Show was. Probably not Howie Carr.
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 1: It was probably not Howie Carr.
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. Her mistake was answering the question. She
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 2: just said, go Sox, and then she got out of there.
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 3: That's how you get out of everything in Boston. All right,
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 3: that's all the news. That's it. That's all the news.
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: Thank you to Cory Booker for stopping by. Thank you
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 1: to Nico for joining.
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 3: And giving it to that Glenn Youngkin man.
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 1: And giving it to that Glenn Youngkin man. And we'll
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: talk to you later this week. Bye, everyone.
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 4: Bye.
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 3: Bye.
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 1: Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. The executive
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 1: producer is Michael Martinez. Our senior producer is Andy Gardner Bernstein.
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 1: Our producers are Hayley Muse and Olivia Martinez. It's mixed
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 1: and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 1: sound engineered the show. Thanks to Hallie Kiefer, Ari Schwartz,
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 1: Sandy Gerard, Andy Taft, and Justine Howe for production support.
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 1: And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Phoebe Bradford, Milo Kim,
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 1: and Amelia Montuth. Our episodes are uploaded as videos at youtube.com
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 1: slash podsaveamerica.