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Bethany McLean on the Pandemic's Big Fail · Masters in Business

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: This is Master's in Business with Barry Ridholds on Bloomberg Radio.
• 0:09
  Speaker 2: This week. On the podcast, returning for her third time,
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  Speaker 2: Bethany MacLean, author of such amazing books as The Smartest
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: Guys in the Room about the incredible saga of Enron
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: and how it became one of the most respected companies
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: in the world, and then blew up her new book,
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  Speaker 2: The Big Fail What the Pandemic Revealed about who America
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  Speaker 2: protects and who it leads behind with her co author Jonasara.
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  Speaker 2: First of all, I know Bethany for a long time,
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  Speaker 2: and I felt very comfortable really pushing back on some
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  Speaker 2: of the things she says in the book, but you know,
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  Speaker 2: to be honest, I couldn't really damage her thesis very much.
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  Speaker 2: The book is deeply researched and relies to a large
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  Speaker 2: degree on some nuance and a lot of science and
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  Speaker 2: a lot of the tropes that we all think about
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: the pandemic. She's and Joe have thought deeply about and
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  Speaker 2: their approach is, Hey, this is not black and white.
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  Speaker 2: This is very complex. There were mistakes made at every level,
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  Speaker 2: from the White House to the CDC, and a lot
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  Speaker 2: of what went wrong during the pandemic predated COVID by decades,
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  Speaker 2: So a lot of nuance, a lot of subtlety, really
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  Speaker 2: very fascinating. She takes me to school time and again
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  Speaker 2: I found our conversation about the book fascinating, and I
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  Speaker 2: think you will do as well with no further ado.
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  Speaker 2: My discussion on COVID nineteen with Bethany MacLean.
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  Speaker 1: Thank you for having me on, Barry.
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  Speaker 2: My pleasure. So those books they're all about I guess
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  Speaker 2: giant mistakes, blunders seems to be your stock in trade,
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  Speaker 2: Enron Fracking, GFC, Fanny and Freddy, and now COVID nineteen.
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  Speaker 2: Where does this passion for disasters come from?
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  Speaker 1: Porn right? I don't know. I swear I'm a happy person.
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  Speaker 1: Maybe this is my way of unleashing my enter demons. No, seriously,
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  Speaker 1: I always think when something goes wrong, there's always a
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  Speaker 1: story about how and why it went wrong, And it's
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  Speaker 1: a story that is so much more than numbers. It's people,
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  Speaker 1: it's history, it's predilections, it's all these things. And I
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  Speaker 1: think trying to figure out what that mix is and
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  Speaker 1: what has happened is just a fascinating puzzle.
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  Speaker 2: So let's talk about the COVID nineteen puzzle. I found
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  Speaker 2: the book infuriating, just one unforced error after another. When
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  Speaker 2: you first sat down to write this, did you have
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  Speaker 2: any idea what you and Joe wanted to say? Or
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  Speaker 2: did it kind of develop as you progress?
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  Speaker 1: We had some loose ideas that ended up becoming part
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  Speaker 1: of the book. But I'd be lying if I said
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  Speaker 1: that it all hung together from moment one. I mean,
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  Speaker 1: I was passionately interested in the spring of twenty twenty,
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  Speaker 1: in the healthcare system and the effect of private equity
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  Speaker 1: and healthcare. I was interested in the Federal Reserve and
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: how we thought about the Fed's response, And we were
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  Speaker 1: both interested in globalization and supply chains and what that
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  Speaker 1: had done to Ppe. So we had these loose ideas,
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  Speaker 1: but as to how they were going to come together
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  Speaker 1: into a coherent book, which which I hope we've produced.
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  Speaker 2: No, Oh, no, it's coherent. It's too coherent. And the
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  Speaker 2: coherence is pretty much everybody is grossly incompetent in an emergency.
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  Speaker 2: Kind of makes you nervous if, like what goes down
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  Speaker 2: when there's a really terrible earthquake or other disaster, lots
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  Speaker 2: of people seem to not have their act together.
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  Speaker 1: Yes, and no. I think the book probably does convey that.
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  Speaker 1: But then I think there are people that very much
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  Speaker 1: have their act together. I happen to think in the book,
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  Speaker 1: I think expresses that Operation Warp Speed is a tremendous
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  Speaker 1: success and a tremendous act of competence.
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  Speaker 2: So let me rephrase my criticism. Lots of people rose
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  Speaker 2: to the occasion, Yes, but it seemed like lots of
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  Speaker 2: institutions failed.
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  Speaker 1: I think lots of institutions did fail, and I think
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  Speaker 1: there are multiple reasons for that. I think one part
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  Speaker 1: of it is that pandemics had largely bypassed the US
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  Speaker 1: in the past, and we just simply weren't thinking that way.
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  Speaker 1: But I think a lot of our structures were also
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  Speaker 1: breaking even before the pandemic hit, such as our healthcare system,
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  Speaker 1: such as the way inequality has taken a toll on
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  Speaker 1: people's health and left people with pre existing conditions that
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  Speaker 1: made them more vulnerable and then made us all more vulnerable.
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  Speaker 1: And I think before the pandemic you could say that's
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  Speaker 1: them and this is us, and the pandemic made you realize.
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  Speaker 1: There's this great, great quote from Lyndon Johnson when he
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  Speaker 1: enacted Medicare and Medicaid, and it was basically, the health
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  Speaker 1: of our country is everything, because without a healthy population,
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  Speaker 1: what can we hope to achieve? And I'm butchering it
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  Speaker 1: a little bit, but that's the idea that if we
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  Speaker 1: aren't all healthy, we don't all have access to health,
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  Speaker 1: then what can we hope to achieve as a country.
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  Speaker 2: You spend a bit of time talking about our two
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  Speaker 2: tiered healthcare system. We'll get to that in a bit.
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  Speaker 2: Let's sort of flash back to the pre pandemic period
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  Speaker 2: and you talk about previous pandemics where we did pretty well.
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  Speaker 2: But it raises the question why were we so unprepared
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  Speaker 2: and why does it seem like nobody but Bill Gates
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  Speaker 2: really saw this coming.
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  Speaker 1: I think because it is beyond the human capacity to
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  Speaker 1: imagine that these things could actually happen. And I was
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  Speaker 1: thinking about this because I've said in the context of
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  Speaker 1: business disasters in the past that the old lesson from kindergarten,
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  Speaker 1: use your imagination is one of the most important lessons
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  Speaker 1: you can possibly learn, because if anybody ever says to you, oh,
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  Speaker 1: that can't happen, well, actually it can. And just look
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  Speaker 1: at the last couple of decades for instruction and to
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  Speaker 1: this idea that yeah, it can happen. And so I
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  Speaker 1: think we all have a failure to use our imagine
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  Speaker 1: and I think we're not good in this country at
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  Speaker 1: any kind of long term anything. And so we used
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  Speaker 1: to be, we used to be, and we exist from
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  Speaker 1: day to day driven by politics and polarization, and it
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  Speaker 1: makes it very difficult to have anything that involves the
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  Speaker 1: long term. And I think that's broadly true, not just
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  Speaker 1: about pandemics, but we saw that come home to roost
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  Speaker 1: in the pandemic.
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  Speaker 2: So you mentioned Operation warp Speed, arguably the greatest success
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  Speaker 2: of the Trump administration. It seems like he was almost
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  Speaker 2: embarrassed to be associated with a giant medical win.
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  Speaker 1: Well, I think it's I think it's it's more nuanced
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  Speaker 1: than that. I think Trump did support warp Speed, but
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  Speaker 1: somebody who was close to it said to me that
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  Speaker 1: Warpsbeed could never have succeeded in any administration but under Trump,
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  Speaker 1: precisely because Trump was so hands off and he just
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  Speaker 1: left it to run itself. And warp Speed wasn't really
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  Speaker 1: I mean, it was the Trump administration, but it was
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  Speaker 1: run by people who had either been marginalized in the
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  Speaker 1: Trump administration or really were not Trump supporters in any way,
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  Speaker 1: shape or form. So to see this as somehow a product,
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  Speaker 1: a Trumpian product, it wasn't, although it might have been
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  Speaker 1: enabled by some of the things that made Trump such
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  Speaker 1: a problematic president during during the pandemic, which I think
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  Speaker 1: is a fascinating a fascinating thing. You also have to remember,
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: though Trump was supportive of the vaccines when they first
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: came out, he was. It was as he started to
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  Speaker 1: realize that his constituents had become not supportive of the
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  Speaker 1: vaccines that was when he flipped. Even Trump got booed
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  Speaker 1: at a rally where he talked up the vaccines, and
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  Speaker 1: after that he never talked them up again. Really, yeah,
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  Speaker 1: So he followed the polarization in the country around the
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  Speaker 1: vaccines rather than necessarily driving it. Leadership leadership, right.
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  Speaker 2: You know, it's funny you said, I can't picture another
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  Speaker 2: administration doing it. Think about what Kennedy did with landing
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  Speaker 2: on the moon and setting up NASA and promoting it
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  Speaker 2: on a relentless and ongoing base. I can imagine a
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  Speaker 2: president of a different character and a I don't know,
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  Speaker 2: I don't know what the right word is. More serious maybe,
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  Speaker 2: but you more institutional I think.
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  Speaker 1: I think that The only counterpoint in it's so difficult,
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  Speaker 1: you can't go back and hit rewind and see how
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  Speaker 1: things could play out differently. The only counterpoint to that
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  Speaker 1: is that a different president might have been all over
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  Speaker 1: warp Speed from the beginning and might have made it
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  Speaker 1: very difficult for warp Speed to function because politics might
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  Speaker 1: have been injected in it. And Trump, because he was
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  Speaker 1: so hands off, actually allowed warp Speed to be run
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  Speaker 1: by monsef Slowie in general perna and that it worked.
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  Speaker 1: And so there, Oh, you don't see.
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  Speaker 2: You don't see either George Bush or Obama handing it
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  Speaker 2: off and saying do you They were both pretty good delegators.
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  Speaker 2: They might be unfairly respectful of the institution of government,
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  Speaker 2: at least outside of.
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  Speaker 1: I hope, so, I hope.
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  Speaker 2: So it just looks like I mentioned unforced eras Hey,
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  Speaker 2: the US had all these excess deaths. When you look
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  Speaker 2: at US on a per capita basis against comparable economies Germany, Switzerland, Japan, France,
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  Speaker 2: I mean they all did much better than US, obviously
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  Speaker 2: through countries like Italy that did poorly and China didn't
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  Speaker 2: do so great. We'll talk more about China later, but
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  Speaker 2: it seems like we were at the bottom of the
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  Speaker 2: Western industrialized democracies on a per capita death basis.
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  Speaker 1: We were. The economist has done a very good log
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  Speaker 1: of keeping track of excess deaths, and I think a
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  Speaker 1: couple of things account for that. I think our two
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  Speaker 1: tiered healthcare system, and I think some of what happened
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  Speaker 1: in COVID was that coming home to roost in the
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  Speaker 1: sense that COVID preyed upon people with pre existing health conditions,
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  Speaker 1: and pre existing health conditions are in some ways a
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  Speaker 1: byproduct of a healthcare system that doesn't take care of
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  Speaker 1: a lot of people.
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  Speaker 2: You mentioned diabetes and high blood pressure in particular. Yeah,
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  Speaker 2: and you know, a bad diet tends to be associated
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  Speaker 2: with lower economic strata. And if you don't have good
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  Speaker 2: healthcare and you have diabetes and you get COVID, not
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  Speaker 2: great outcome.
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  Speaker 1: Yep. It's also excess death captures things other than deaths
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  Speaker 1: from COVID too, And the deaths of despair in this country,
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  Speaker 1: and the desk from opioid to overdoses and lack of
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  Speaker 1: access to healthcare for other conditions not COVID are some
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  Speaker 1: portion of that too, we are a sicker country.
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  Speaker 2: So one of the more fascinating little tidbits you drop
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  Speaker 2: in the book, Most California cities end up pretty much
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  Speaker 2: in line in terms of per capita deaths with the
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  Speaker 2: rest of other large urban areas, the exception being the
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: San Francisco. When you point to all the infrastructure put
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  Speaker 2: in place during the AIDS crisis that led San Francisco
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  Speaker 2: to a much better outcome, tell us a little bit
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  Speaker 2: about that.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was fascinating, and this was highlighted our first
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  Speaker 1: written about in a really good New Yorker piece about
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  Speaker 1: what San Francisco was doing and why it's numbers were
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: so low. And the idea was, you can't just lock
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  Speaker 1: down and leave the most defenseless parts of our population
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  Speaker 1: defend for themselves under a lockdown, meaning essential workers who
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  Speaker 1: still have to go out and do their jobs and
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: then potentially bring the illness home to their communities. And
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  Speaker 1: because San Francisco had this infrastructure that was put in place,
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  Speaker 1: they knew how to reach all these marginalized populations. And
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: because they knew how to reach them all, they were
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: able to keep them healthier. And I think what that
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: pointed at to us was you. Lockdowns were in many
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  Speaker 1: ways both an example of inequality and of furtherance of it,
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  Speaker 1: and that the very people who could lock down were
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  Speaker 1: the well off.
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  Speaker 2: So you throw pretty much everybody under the bus. Trump, Cuomo, Desanti's, Deblasio,
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  Speaker 2: cushn or Pence, even Fauci and lots of others. Will
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  Speaker 2: get into personalities later. But who came out of the
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  Speaker 2: pandemic with their reputation intact.
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  Speaker 1: Well, I think I don't think anybody intended to do
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: a bad job, and people were placed into a difficult situation.
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  Speaker 1: It was hard when you look back at the terrible
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  Speaker 1: beginning of this in January and February of twenty twenty.
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  Speaker 1: If anybody had told you up until it happened that
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  Speaker 1: this was going to be a global pandemic and we
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  Speaker 1: would be living with this for years, you would have said, no, no, no,
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  Speaker 1: that can't happen, that can't possibly be true. We'll figure
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  Speaker 1: out a way around this. The United States always figures
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  Speaker 1: out a way around this. I think a lot of
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: unheralded people came through this with their reputations intact, a
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  Speaker 1: lot of doctors and nurses who made things so much better.
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  Speaker 2: Than private citizens doing their.
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  Speaker 1: Private, private citizens doing job, but that official. But that
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  Speaker 1: whole list is all public officials. And I think some
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  Speaker 1: part of it is just a failure of leadership, a
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  Speaker 1: failure of anybody to really want to be accountable and
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  Speaker 1: to say the buck stops here in the way that
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  Speaker 1: General Perna actually did during Operation Warp Speed. And it's
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  Speaker 1: why I love the story of Operation Warp Speed so much,
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  Speaker 1: because I think it stands as a contrast to so
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: much that happened elsewhere. It's an example of competence. It's
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  Speaker 1: an example of people saying the buck stops here, this
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  Speaker 1: is it, this is me, I'm the one responsible for this,
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  Speaker 1: and I'm going to make it happen. And when you
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: look at so many other people, it wasn't that. It
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: was deferral of responsibility, pushing things off on other people,
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  Speaker 1: or a failure to putting out there of rules and
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  Speaker 1: then a failure to live by them yourself.
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  Speaker 2: Let's talk about another giant fail China, not exactly the
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  Speaker 2: world's most responsible member of the global community. Tell us
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  Speaker 2: about some of the things China did that range from
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  Speaker 2: merely irresponsible to utterly reckless.
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  Speaker 1: Well, I think China, I don't think there's much question
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  Speaker 1: now that China understood what was happening and did not
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: want to let the rest of the world know. And
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  Speaker 1: it's really frightening because the whole system relies on countries
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  Speaker 1: being honest when they've discovered some so that the rest
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  Speaker 1: of the world has a chance of protecting itself. But
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  Speaker 1: particularly I think the part that was the most devastating
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  Speaker 1: to me was the idea that China had a pretty
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  Speaker 1: good idea from the beginning that there was human to
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  Speaker 1: human transmission taking place, and even the who because China
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: told them that it wasn't happening or there wasn't evidence,
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  Speaker 1: and so it took us a much longer than it
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: then was necessary to understand that human to human transmission
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: was happening.
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  Speaker 2: We figured out pretty quickly when someone came home from
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: abroad and then their husband who hadn't traveled. God, it's like, oh,
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  Speaker 2: obviously it's human to human. Why the delay? It seems
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  Speaker 2: like the whole US National Institute of Health is designed
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: for this information to bubble up to the top for
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: a little commandment, control and communication. That didn't seem to happen.
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  Speaker 1: No, and the doctor and Wuhan, who was on the
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: front lines of this alerted her superiors, and I think
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: late December that she thought human to human transmission was happening.
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: And so you think about that and how the whole
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: course of the pandemic have been different if that knowledge
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: had been out there from the very beginning.
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  Speaker 2: So let's talk about some of the broad policies that
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: could have been in place on a timely basis but
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: seemed to be mishandled. Testing, lockdowns, vaccines, personal protection equipment,
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: PPE masking, social distancing. What in that list wasn't mishandled.
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: It seems like across the board nothing was done right anywhere.
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  Speaker 1: So I think testing is a top the list of
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  Speaker 1: the things that were mishandled, and there was the CDC
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  Speaker 1: took control of the test and could not design a
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  Speaker 1: test that worked.
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  Speaker 2: You write in the book that they tried to manufacture
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: this themselves. They have zero manufacturing expertise. What the hell
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  Speaker 2: were they thinking?
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  Speaker 1: I think the CDC has a culture that is arrogant
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: and perfectionist and believes that they should be in charge.
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  Speaker 1: But even more broadly than that, even if the CDC
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: test had worked, that should never have been the sun
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: and moon and stars upon which America is testing strategy
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: hung because we needed tests to be broadly available everywhere.
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: And I think there's an intersection of interesting things there
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: that we turn to the private market in a situation
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: like this, and so part of one of the deeper
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: themes of the book to me is when the private
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: market works and when it doesn't. And we turned the
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: private market in a situation like this and say, well,
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: aren't companies going to manufacture test because they can sell
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: them without any awareness of a couple of factors, which
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: are the times in the past where companies have rushed
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: a manufacture test only to have demand not materialize, and
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: then they have to explain to their shareholders, oh, we
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: invested all this money in this and it didn't actually happen.
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: And then in modern day capitalism, the ongoing need for
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: sustainable earnings such that if you do rush to develop
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: tests and you sell them, but then demand goes away
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: in two years, you don't get rewarded for that. And
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: so I think a lot about where I thought a
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: lot in the process of writing this book about where
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: capitalism works and where it doesn't work. I'm a little
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: more nuanced than maybe the book conveys about whether lockdowns
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: could have been done anymore swiftly or the extent to
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: which they should have been done. And I think the
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: book conveys that second point very very well. I'm not
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: sure if you had told Americans in February in January,
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: we need to stay at home, nobody would have listened
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: to you. Nobody would have believed you. Lockdowns can only
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: be effective if you locked down before the virus is
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: widely seated, right, That's the only way it works. But
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: yet locking down before people know that the virus is
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: how do you possibly pull that off, especially in a
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: country like the United States. And so while that may
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: seem like a failure, I'm not really sure it could
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: that could have been done any differently. I think the
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: bigger problem was the ongoing use of lockdowns, even without
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: a clearly defined endpoint and without a clearly defined what
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: are we doing this far start?
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  Speaker 2: So I'm going to come back to lockdowns in a minute.
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: Let's stick with testing and masking, which I thought was
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: kind of fat. We hadn't even rolled out tests, and
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: you mentioned South Korea was doing some ungodly number of
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: tests a day, one hundred thousand tests a day. They
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: very quickly were able to figure out who to quarantine
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: and who not to and had a much better outcome
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: than we did. Various state institutions had the ability to
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: create a test and have it outsourced and manufactured, but
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: the CDC would not allow it. It seems like they
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: were just the dumbest turf battles going on while the
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: pandemic ramped up exponentially.
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: I think that's a very good way of putting it,
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: and I think there was also a failure to realize
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: that things that we had put in place then made
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: it difficult to roll out testing. So once an emergency
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: was declared, then the FDA has to approve test. It
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: is put in place so that you don't have shoddy
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: test manufacturers running around selling tests that don't actually work.
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: But when you need to get tests out the door quickly,
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: the things that are put in place to protect people
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: can backfire.
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: So let's talk about PPE and MASK. Speaking of shoddy
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: the government could have used one of the defense accent
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: right to ramp that up. Instead, the White House led
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: the states all compete with each other, absolute disaster profiteering, fraud.
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: It was just again I'm reading this and just getting
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: infuriated because all you needed was some leadership at the
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: top to say, Okay, we're going to make sure that
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: there's personal protection equipment for every doctor, every nurse, and
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: every patient to help slow the spread of this that
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: never happened was a free for.
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: All, Yes, And to be clear, I'm not sure. So
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: part of the theme of the book is that a
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: lot of the problems were put in place before the
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: pandemic even hit. Even if you had had that incredibly coordinated, sophisticated,
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: competent response, we had outsourced so much of the manufacturing
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: sharing of these critical things to China and elsewhere that
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: we were left defenseless. And so I think the pandemic,
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: as it has in many aspects, from semiconductors to PPE,
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: it has to raise a question about what competence needs
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: to remain in America and how much globalization, what the
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: limits of globalization really should be, because it turns out
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: when a global supply chain is stressed, it breaks down
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: really really quickly, as we all know now. That said, yes,
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: the stories about doctors and hospitals individually and states just
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: scrambling to try to get PPE, and the number of
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: frauds that so quickly sprung up, and these people trying
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: desperately to get their hands on ppe and finding that,
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: you know, paying this money and finding a box of
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: dirty gloves would arrive and that was it. Just the
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: profiteering really was utterly insane.
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: Right, life and death at stake, And people like I
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: can make a book on this. Yes, interesting story within
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: the book about a small mask company that tried to
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: set up in the United States and in the past
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: had every time there's a potential pandemic by American even
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: though it's a little more expensive, it doesn't go anywhere,
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: and then starts ramping up fifty one hundred, one hundred
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: and fifty million masks. But if you bought from this company,
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: you had to sign a seven year contract. You figured out,
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: you know the company I'm decrying too. And so now
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: we actually have capacity to make masks in the United States,
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: which really we didn't have pre pandemic.
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: Right, And you just hope that there's a lesson taken
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: from that. And again it's something that we just don't
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: do well because I think we have this blind belief
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: in the market and that the market forces are going
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: to take care of issues like this without the recognition
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: that there are a couple things that can go wrong
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: in modern day capitalism, that the focus on profits, on
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: pleasing shareholders, and on profits that can be sustainable, means
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: that the response in a pandemic isn't going to be
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: what you think. And then, because of this need to
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: minimize costs in order to boost profits, this ongoing pressure
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: for outsourcing of all sorts of critical infrastructure, that then
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: makes it really difficult when you actually need something when
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: the rest of the world needs it too.
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: Last question on masks in want to just spend the
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: whole two hours talking about this. Seems like there was
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: a lot of confusion on masking early on, when it
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: should have been the easiest thing to get right. You know,
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: you go in for surgery, everybody in the operating theater
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: wears a mask. It's pretty obvious it slows, if not stops,
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: the spread of anything that's respiratory based. How did we
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: screw that up?
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: Well, I think there was a lack of recognition early on,
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: a lack of knowledge. I won't call it recognition because
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: I don't think it was there to be known about
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: how the virus actually spread, So I think that's part
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: of it. I think Fauci has explained his initial comment
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: about against masking as an attempt to preserve ppe for
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: doctors and nurses. But I do also think even as
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: the pandemic war on, the communication about masking was not great.
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: There was this for a long time, we all believed
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: that those terrible little paper and cloth masks that people
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: wore protected us, and they don't. Not really, a better
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: mask protects you more. And it wasn't until a long
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: time into the pandemic that everybody was finally clear, Yeah,
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: if you really want to protect yourself, were can ninety
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: five and if you really really need to protect yourself
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: wearing it ninety five? These little paper masks that we wear,
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: and we take them on and off, and we don't
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: do what people in hospitals do, doctors and nurses, where
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: you take them off with clean hands in a clean
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: room and put them on. That's why it brought this,
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: That's why they protect people in hospitals. They're not taking
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: them on and off and using dirty hands and removing
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: them to take a bite of something. And so to
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: extrapolate from to extrapolate from whether or not masks work
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: in a hospital setting to whether or not they work
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: in a population at large, you can't it's two different things.
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: So let me ask you the obvious question, how did
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: this get it's so hopelessly politicized so quickly.
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's fascinating, right, because there is no way that
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: in any kind of logical world, your beliefs about how
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: you respond to a pandemic should have nothing to do
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: with your political beliefs. In other words, it should be
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: possible to be anti lockdowns. It could even be possible
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: to be anti masking and to be a strident Democrat.
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: And yet we conflated everything, and it became that if
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: you were a good Democrat, then you believed in masking,
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: in lockdowns, and if you were a good Republican, then
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: you did not believe in any of this. And it's
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: an insane example of how we're searching for polarization and
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: we're searching for ways to turn against each other instead
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: of ways to learn from each other and respect each other.
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: The crazy thing about vaccines, and I've had this conversation
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: with other people. The anti vass movement really was kind
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: of a you know, California granola and nuts sort of
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: left wing. Oh, I don't trust the government to give
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: me a vaccine. That this is a giant experiment on
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: the left to operation warp speed. The m RNA vaccines
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: became Bill Gates is putting a chip in me on
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: the right, and there's nothing that anybody can do to
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: get the furthest outliers to recognize just some basic science.
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: But what was shocking was how it went from the
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: extremes of both parties and sort of moved to like
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: center right and Senate left. It was genuinely shocking.
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah. One of the things we chronicle in the book
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: that is that I found interesting is that the anti
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: VAC sentiment did start under Democrats when they were when
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: they were the Trump vaccines, and so you had Democrats
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: like Cuomo saying, I don't know about these things being
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: rushed by Trump, and you had a lot of skepticism
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: about the vaccines being generated by Democrats before the vaccines
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: were even produced, and then once they were produced, and
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: once the Biden administration started pushing them, it's as if
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: as soon as Biden said that these vaccines are good,
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: the anti VAC sentiment shifted to the right, because look,
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: heaven forbid that Biden was saying and Democrats were saying
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: something was good, then it had to be bad, and
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: it just it really is just profoundly depressing and upsetting.
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: You know, if you want to say, the first five
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: hundred million vaccines, all right, this is a new vaccine,
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: let's see what comes out of it. I don't agree
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: with that, but I can follow the logic there. But
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: when we're at the eight, ten, twelve billion shots with
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: really very little side effects at that point that that
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: argument seems to go away.
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I think though the government has shot itself in
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: the foot once again. And one of the other themes
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: in our book is this loss of trust broadly speaking
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: that had been taking place before the pandemic happened, of course,
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: but the pandemic really exacerbated it. And I think the
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: government public health officials did not do themselves any favors
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: by overselling the vaccines. The original vaccines miracle basically a
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: miracle of science.
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: Right in like a decade. This wasn't done overnight, This
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: was a decade, was worth.
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: More than a decade in the works. But the clinical
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: trials that proved the efficacy of the original vaccines did
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: not measure whether or not they affected transmission. And so
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: when public health officials went out there and said, if
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: you take this vaccine. You can't pass this on, you
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: won't transmit this is a pandemic of the unvaccinated. It
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: was wrong. And so when you overseell to people based
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: on something you don't know that you just hope is true,
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: and then it turns out that's not true, you cause
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: a lack of trust that then broadly undermines everything else
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: you're saying. So again another unforced error on the part
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: of the government. They could have sold the vaccines as
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: doing what they did miraculously. Well, they protect you against
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: severe outcomes. They protect most of us against hospitalization and death.
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: Isn't that phenomenal, Instead of saying you won't get this
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: if you take this vaccine, Yeah, that was kind.
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: Of a big snaff foo. And to be honest, so
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: I'm fully vaxed. I'm fully boosted. If the government said
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: to me, well, we don't know if this will stop
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: you from getting it, but it means that you're not
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: gonna die. Okay, way do I sign up exactly? You
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: didn'tumb for that.
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: You didn't you didn't have to oversell it. But there
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: was this belief that we wanted to get to her immunity,
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: so you had to encourage everybody to take the vaccine
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: and so overselling it and say you wouldn't saying people
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: wouldn't get it. It was wishful thinking that in the most
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: generous of interpretations, it was wishful thinking. But I think
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: it did damage.
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: I think you're right, And in fact, one of the
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: groups that came up for criticism in the book is
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: the Red Dawn Team highlighted in Michael Lewis's book The Premonition.
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: You guys seem to be a little critical on some
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: of their emphasis on Hey, this means the result in
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: Italy means we could do lockdowns here.
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I think critical is too strong a word. I
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: think the idea that the Influenza Playbook would work with
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: COVID is it was flawed and I think it did
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: a lot of damage.
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: Leane, Why is a coronavirus so different from an influenza infection.
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: The biggest reason, and this is not a scientific answer,
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: it's a practical answer. The biggest difference is that influenza
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: schools are super spreading zones right with the coronavirus, they
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: are not. In fact, it's been documented over and over
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: again that the skip spread in schools is lower than
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: that in the community, and so that playbook became I
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: think part of the excuse for keeping schools closed in
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: the United States in a way that did not happen
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: in other countries.
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: Point out in the book, and I thought this was
• 29:48
  Speaker 2: a fascinating detail. In the pandemic of nineteen eighteen, thousands
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: and thousands of young people died in the COVID nineteen pandemic.
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: Young people seem to do fairly okay with this.
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: They did. Young people with pre existing conditions did.
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: Terribly, but everybody with pre existing.
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: Everybody did, but very very few, a vanishingly small number
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: of healthy young people got sick from COVID, And as
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: I said, the spread in schools was lower than in
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: the communities. That's why other places played in Europe, for example,
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: open their schools. And I think the fact that we
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: kept our schools closed has probably done more damage than
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: just about anything in the pandemic, because you've lost a
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: generation of young people who have lost their hopes for life.
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: And I think, will you think it's that severe you
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: have kids that are school aged, I think that's listen.
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: I know lots of kids that miss proms, they missed graduations,
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: they miss Barr and Bob mitzvahs and sweet sixteens and confirmations.
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: So it was a rough year or two, obviously, nothing
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: like World War two. But that those are formative years
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: tell us a little bit about But these.
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: Are but these but these are the privileged kids you're
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: talking about, the ones with parents who could homeschool them,
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: or who had a parent at home so that they
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: could at least have supervision computers in high school while
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: they did zoom schooling. It's the least privileged kids in
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: our society, the very ones that were supposed to protect
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: who got the most screwed by this. The ones whose
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: parents were essential workers and had to go to school
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: and had to leave the kids at home to try
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: to manage on zoom. The many inner city kids without
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: access to high speed internet and without a computer to
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: do zoom schools. I mean, the numbers are shocking in
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: school districts like New York and Chicago and LA. The
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: percentage of absenteeism, the kids who just dropped out the
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: test score showing how far behind kids are. You can
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: argue kids are going to catch up. They're resilient. Maybe, Really,
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: that's a very tough proposition to put on a twelve
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: year old, Hey make up two years make or or
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: or the kids who dropped out now somehow come back,
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: and the kids who lost their path in life. And
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: I think it's just devastating.
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: Really very sad. And I learned a lot going through
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: the book about the impact on that. The Red Dawn
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: team talked about how close the desks are in school,
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: how close the seats are on a bus. They're like,
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: there's no social distancing in grammar schools. If this was
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: a vector for transmission, you would think there'd be a
• 32:19
  Speaker 2: lot more kids that were infected. How did the numbers
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: shake out for the under twenty cohort versus the twenty
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: to fifty cohorts.
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: I think it's hard to know what the numbers were
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: on infections because so many kids who got COVID were asymptomatic.
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: I think you can look at the desks which are
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: vanishingly small for people under twenty, and so that's the
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: key measure that this was not influenza, which again back
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: to your point about unforced errors. It is very hard
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: to be prepared for a pandemic because every pandemic is different,
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: and so if you followed an influenza playbook, you would
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: have done things that didn't make sense in COVID. So
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: it's just it's really hard. You have to maintain a
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: degree of flexibility and a degree to see what's happening
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: and react to what's actually happening. I happened to believe
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: the Red Dawn groups emphasis on lockdowns that if only
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: we had locked down sooner. H there's some truth to that.
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: If we had locked down before the virus got here,
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: maybe we could have prevented it from ever coming. But honestly,
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: but if there was no will and if the rest
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: of the world didn't lockdown, then at some point, what
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: are you going to do? I mean, once this virus
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: was broadly seated, it was trans it was broadly It's
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: a highly infectious respiratory disease. And so what has always
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: irritated me about the lockdown mantra is what's the endgame?
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: Is the endgame minimizing the strain on hospitals? Okay, then
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: let's do that until hospitals aren't strained. Is the endgame?
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: Getting eradicating COVID not gonna happen. Not gonna happen. And
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: guess what, as soon as you lift the lockdown, COVID
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: comes back, look at what happened in China, and so
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: and so that right, and so that's another example of,
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: to me, a failure of leadership and a failure of
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: government to articulate why exactly are we doing this and
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: what's the endgame? And if you had done that, I
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: don't think there would have been the same resistance to
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: lockdowns that there was if it had been articulated what
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: the endgame was.
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: And to be fair to read Dawn, because I'm throwing
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: them on the bus a little bit, they predicted eighty
• 34:17
  Speaker 2: one percent of the US population would eventually be effected
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: and as many as two million in the US would die.
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: Those numbers turned out to be pretty dead on, right.
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: So we're talking about catching this early. The one person
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: in the Trump White House that was jumping up and
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: down about this early on was Peter Navarro, who was
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: widely yelling this is a giant pandemic threat. But he
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: was also ignored. Yeah, why was that?
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: Well, So there's this great quote in the book that
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: the battle in the Trump administration was between those who
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: wanted to do everything and those who wanted to do nothing.
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: And unfortunately, and Navarro is the best example of this.
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: Sometimes those who wanted to do everything had lost credibility
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: for other reasons, and so Navarro had become known as
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: kind of its, kind of aloney, and so he wasn't
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: taken seriously on the thing that he should have been
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: taken seriously on. It's a little bit. It's a version
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: of the boy who Cried Wolf. And so you had that.
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: You had that broadly speaking throughout the administration, where you
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: had Bob Cadlac, for instance, coming up with this plan
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: to distribute masks to every American household, but he too
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: had lost credibility within the administration, so his plan to
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: distribute masks went nowhere. The Trump administration was very adamized,
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: and so you had these loyalties that existed and that
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: dictated what could get done and who would be listened
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: to in a way that is far more extreme than
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: a normal administration, and a lot of undermining of political
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: rivals and leaking in an attempt to establish one's superiority
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: over one's rivals. And because Trump was known as a
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: president who what was said and the press made it true.
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: If you could get a story that was about arrival
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: that was leaked to the press, and the press went
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: with it. Then that became de facto truth, and so
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: it was such a That's why you saw a volume
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: of leaks and the Trump administration that Man, isn't it
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: striking to you to look at the contrast between the
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: Obama administration and now the Biden administration on the number
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: of leaks, very very few, and the ones that come
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: out of the Biden administration are clearly orchestrated.
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: So let me invite a little maga hate mail. And
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: I don't think I'm going on a limb when I
• 36:29
  Speaker 2: say the Trump White House appointed a lot of people
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: that just weren't perceived as serious players in the various institutions.
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: But you can't help but look at the Trump White
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: House and say, hey, if they were a little more
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: serious and if they had put together a better team,
• 36:51
  Speaker 2: this might have gone better.
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: So I'm going to protest that a little bit. I think,
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: for one thing, that a lot of very competent people
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: did start off in the Trump administration. They just did.
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: They just didn't last, but they did start right. I
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: think there were competent people in the Trump administration even
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: when the pandemic, like alluisays are I think they just
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: they were fighting so many battles on so many fronts,
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: and there was so much internescing warfare that it made
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: it difficult for competence to rise to the top.
• 37:22
  Speaker 2: And I think it's fair to hold the president and
• 37:25
  Speaker 2: accountable for how is White House operates and who gets
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: appointed to key roles.
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: I do, but this is going to make you mad.
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: But I think a point that's in the introduction that
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: I think is important is that I think it's magical
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: thinking to believe that the course of the pandemic would
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: have been radically different had we had a different president
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: in the White House. And all you need to do
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: to see that is to see that more people died
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: in the first year of the Biden administration than they
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: did under Trump. So I don't I don't think it
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: was it was It would have been that easy for
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: any president. And I think a lot of that is
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: are these pre existing conditions that we're talking about. Not
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: just that the virus hit people with pre existing conditions
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: particularly hard, but it hit a country, the United States,
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: with pre existing weaknesses very hard in a way that
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: would have been difficult for any president to snap his
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: or her fingers and fix those.
• 38:14
  Speaker 2: I totally agree with you. Why the White House just
• 38:17
  Speaker 2: didn't take control of First it was Kushner, then it
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: was Pence, and nobody could get that under control. You
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: could have gone to the guy who ran Operation Warpsbeed
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: and said, hey, who should we put in charge of PPE?
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: You have beenwidth for that, or find us a guy
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: in the military to do this, and that would have
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: had a big difference. It just seemed, you know, so silly.
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: And then the opportunism. That's the other thing in the
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: book that was so infuriating. Political opportunism does not care
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: about anything life, death, money. It will rise to the
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: occasion every time.
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: So I'm not, to be clear, I'm not defending Trump.
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: I think his failure of leadership was massive. And even
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: if you are a Trump supporter and you hate Fauci,
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: then you have to look at that and say, well,
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: then why did Trump allow Fauci to attain the preeminence
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: he did? Because Trump didn't want to take responsibility. It's
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: terrible across the board. So I'm not But at the
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: very same time, it's possible to both believe that and
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: to also believe what I do strongly, which is that
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: it's magical thinking to say, oh, if only we had
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: had a different president, everything would have been great, because.
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: That reduced those one point.
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: Perhaps could have could have made it better. I still
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: think the United States outcomes would have been terrible, and
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: I think we need to look at these underlying conditions
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: in order to in order to have a chance of
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: making it better the next time around. And so I
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: think it's not only magical thinking, it's dangerous thinking to
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: just say, oh, it's just all about Trump, because that
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: then because then you miss you miss the real problems.
• 39:54
  Speaker 2: Right to me, the most interesting part of the book
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: was the hands that we were dealt coming into and
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: when I not to make this about me, but when
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: I was working on bailout Nation. As much as I
• 40:07
  Speaker 2: wanted to blame George Bush, when you look at everything
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: that took place before Bush took office, he was one
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: of many, many players that led to that disaster. And
• 40:20
  Speaker 2: all the people who said this is Bush's fault, it's like,
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: what are you going to ignore twenty years of deregulation
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: and radical low rates at the FED? And so I
• 40:29
  Speaker 2: got very much got the same sense here the parallels
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: to the financial crisis was, Hey, this wasn't anyone mistake.
• 40:37
  Speaker 2: This was decades in the making, although truth be told,
• 40:41
  Speaker 2: it seems like there was just one bad decision after another.
• 40:46
  Speaker 2: I don't know if Obama would have done better or
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: George Bush would have done better, but I can tell
• 40:50
  Speaker 2: you this much, they couldn't have done work.
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: That is probably true.
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: Right, So let's talk a little bit about our broken
• 40:59
  Speaker 2: ci and I mentioned earlier you throw everybody under the
• 41:03
  Speaker 2: bus from Cuomo DeSantis de Blassio. You kind of focus
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: on Cuomo and DeSantis throughout the books as two governors
• 41:12
  Speaker 2: are a Northern Democrat a Southern Republican. What made you
• 41:17
  Speaker 2: choose these two governors to focus on.
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: Well, because their policies were so different in the pandemic,
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: although they actually personality wise they might be more alike
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: than they are different. I would be both dropped the
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: ball right. But DeSantis obviously was the most prominent person
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: who came out against lockdowns and Cuomo was very pro
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: locking down, and so we thought it would set an
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: interesting contrast. When we started the book, we didn't know
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: what the answer would be and whose answer would turn
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: out to be right, And as it turns out, it's
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: pretty murky. Actually, who was right. But there's also there's
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: a progression during the course of the book too, because
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: I actually admired DeSantis for his stance early on in
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: the pandemic. He I think he did follow this, and
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: I think he did do the work himself, and I
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: think it was not political. And then as he began
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: to mount his presidential run, he became increasingly political and
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: increasingly what I think, I like to believe he once
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: would have not liked these things done solely for the
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: purpose of politics, rather than things done because they're right.
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: And he pushed the vaccines early on, and then he
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: became the governor who wants to sue the vaccine manufacturers.
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: It's just it's a disgusting example of how the desire
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: to win at politics can take on a life of
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: its own and overcome common sense.
• 42:36
  Speaker 2: All right, So I have a ton of criticisms on Cuomo,
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: But before we get to my form of governor, let's
• 42:43
  Speaker 2: talk a little bit about DeSantis. Starting with spring Break
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: twenty twenty, there was a move to close that down
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: that became a super spreader event. You sent COVID back
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: to fifty to other states. From there, he said, we
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: don't want to shut it down because this is a
• 43:00
  Speaker 2: big boom for our local business. How do you excuse
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: putting one hundred thousand college students together twenty something college
• 43:09
  Speaker 2: students together. How is that not going to send COVID
• 43:12
  Speaker 2: back home?
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: Well, I'm not sure the extent to which that was
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: a super spreader event. I also think that some of
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: what DeSantis insisted on early in the pandemic, which was
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: that the evidence shows that it's safer outside and that
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: it's safe to have the beaches open, he was right,
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: and the people criticizing him were safer.
• 43:31
  Speaker 2: Not safe, but safer, but safer.
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: And by the way, some of the terrible things that
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: happened in the pandemic came from keeping people cooped up
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: in their houses, elderly people who didn't get out for years,
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: whose dementia exacerbated. So you have to weigh, if you're
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: a leader, you have to weigh some of these things
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: against each other. Safer to be outside, yes, worth it
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: to get people outdoors exercising, being able to see other
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: human beings. Yeah. Maybe I'm a little less opposed to
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: that aspect of DeSantis than you are.
• 44:02
  Speaker 2: All Right, so let's talk about some of the other
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: things Ron did. Governor Ron did he stopped reporting COVID data.
• 44:09
  Speaker 2: Now I've heard the excuse. We didn't want to focus
• 44:13
  Speaker 2: on this, we didn't want to panic people. But let's
• 44:15
  Speaker 2: be honest, their numbers were terrible and he just didn't
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: want to see it represent him. Come on, push back
• 44:23
  Speaker 2: on that.
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: I'm not sure that's true. I mean, some of the.
• 44:27
  Speaker 2: Stuff Florida did terrible on a per capita basis your own.
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: Justin Fox did an analysis of the desk coming out
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: of Florida and California, and when you adjust it for age,
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: which you have to because COVID kills the elderly, the
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: numbers aren't that.
• 44:40
  Speaker 2: So let me let me push back on this. And
• 44:42
  Speaker 2: that's an email I sent to Justin said differently, Hey,
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: we have a lot of elderly people in our state,
• 44:49
  Speaker 2: and we did a terrible job protecting them.
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: I'm not sure that's fair. So I think that the
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: risk of dying from COVID goes up so dramatically when
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: you were over sixty five? What does what does what
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: does taking care of your elderly mean? DeSantis moved aggressively
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: to try to protect people in nursing homes in a
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: way that, by the way, New York in a way that,
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: by by the way, by the way, New York did not.
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: I think it remains an open question about COVID and
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: protecting the elderly what you can actually do, because look,
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: we all know people who lock down, who stayed home,
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: who didn't do anything, who didn't who still got it.
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: So if you're elderly and you're gonna get it, and
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: then you're probably gonna die from it because you're elderly.
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: To then blame the governor of a state with a
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: lot of elderly for not being able to save I'm
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: not sure about that. I blame I blame Dessantis for
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: a lot and for how crazy he's become. I'm probably
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: more pro his original strategy than you.
• 45:44
  Speaker 2: Are, so let me blame her.
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: Let me take that back. I'm not probably more pro
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: his original strategy. I'm definitely more.
• 45:49
  Speaker 2: So let me blame him for things that are unambiguous. Okay,
• 45:53
  Speaker 2: he stops reporting the data, he fires his director of
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: Health and Human Services, He points a surgeon general for
• 46:02
  Speaker 2: the state who doesn't believe in vaccines and is a wacked.
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: That comes later, That comes later.
• 46:08
  Speaker 2: I'm looking at the continuum of him starting out with
• 46:11
  Speaker 2: spring break, which there is there's a decent amount of
• 46:15
  Speaker 2: evidence that suggests lots of people either got COVID, there
• 46:18
  Speaker 2: a lot of hookups. You're not always outside at spring break,
• 46:22
  Speaker 2: and then went back to their state and managed to
• 46:25
  Speaker 2: spread it there to the live stream of the Health
• 46:30
  Speaker 2: and Human Services director having her door kick down by
• 46:34
  Speaker 2: a swat.
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: Team that she turns out to be. And so if
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: you read not only a little wacky, the whole thing
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: turns out to be made up. And by the way
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: that the press was all over that celebrating her glowing
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: articles everywhere without ever and this is when you without
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: ever looking at some of the facts underneath them. Should
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: we really be celebrating this person? And so there was
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: such an effort to get DeSantis early on, what about
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: his in general, and then that contributes to some of
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: his to some of some of the crazy.
• 47:04
  Speaker 2: But she was not the person to.
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: If you want to hold somebody up as being ill
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: treated by DeSantis, Rebecca Jones, it's not the person.
• 47:14
  Speaker 2: So let's talk about his surgeon general, who doesn't really
• 47:18
  Speaker 2: think of VC like the CDC was regularly correcting some
• 47:23
  Speaker 2: of his mistakes.
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: So right and let's let's I know, you don't want
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: to put things on a continuum. I'm going to put
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: things on a continue that came later, and I am
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: There's there's nothing about DeSantis' current stance on the vaccines
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: that I think is defendable. I think it's morally reprehensible.
• 47:39
  Speaker 2: So let's all right, so we're on the same page. Now,
• 47:41
  Speaker 2: let's throw Cuomo into the bus a little bit. And
• 47:44
  Speaker 2: similarly started out thinking, oh, okay, he is the guy
• 47:48
  Speaker 2: on the ball, and then goes off the rails. He
• 47:51
  Speaker 2: begins with these press conferences that kind of reminded me
• 47:56
  Speaker 2: of Giuliani during nine to eleven, where there's this leadership
• 47:59
  Speaker 2: var and somebody not the president steps up to fill
• 48:03
  Speaker 2: the void. Were those conferences required viewing?
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: They were absolutely required viewing. And I think that points
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: to two things. I think it points to the earlier
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: part of our discussion where we talked about Trump's failure
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: of leadership. Had Trump been providing that leadership, there wouldn't
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: have been a void that Quoma needed to fail, or
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: that Cuomo could fail. But I think it also points
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: to something else, which is the appearance of leadership versus
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: actual leadership.
• 48:29
  Speaker 2: So let's get into it, because he really so what
• 48:32
  Speaker 2: he started out looking like, Oh my god, this guy
• 48:36
  Speaker 2: is going to be president one day. Then let's talk
• 48:38
  Speaker 2: a little bit about his feud with Mayor Deblasio in
• 48:42
  Speaker 2: New York City, which was very much a hotspot in
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: the beginning of the pandemic. What were the impacts of
• 48:48
  Speaker 2: this childish feud on the healthcare of New Yorkers.
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: So that even after the New York Department of Health,
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: which is in the city's department, which are really well
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: respected institutions, we're saying, we're seeing these upticks and all
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: these measures that are alarming. This feud between Cuomo and
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: Deblasio kept either from doing anything for a way too long,
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: and so and then and then, of course, on top
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: of it, Cuomo's policy of sending sick people back to
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: nursing home that's my next which he blamed on the
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: federal government. But look, if this were a federal if
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: this were a federal government requirement, then it would have
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: happened in every state.
• 49:23
  Speaker 2: So let's clarify exactly what you're talking about, because it's
• 49:26
  Speaker 2: literally my next question. There are elderly people who get
• 49:30
  Speaker 2: sent from nursing homes to hospitals where they are identified
• 49:34
  Speaker 2: as having COVID, and Cuomo's policy was to take them
• 49:39
  Speaker 2: out of the hospital and send them back to the
• 49:40
  Speaker 2: nursing homes where I have no idea what the thinking was.
• 49:45
  Speaker 2: Maybe you could lock them in their rooms and not
• 49:48
  Speaker 2: have the people who serve meals and go from room
• 49:51
  Speaker 2: to room, not spread them around. It seems totally reckless
• 49:54
  Speaker 2: and irresponsible.
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: There is one possible reason for it, which is they
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: were really worried about hospital space. Right, So there's this thinking,
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: we'll free up hospital beds when I'm on an ice flow.
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: But then two things have to happen. One, you have
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: to be able to protect those people and protect the
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: people around them when they get back to the nursing home.
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: And secondly, you don't lie about it. And so those
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: were the two big problems. And that's that old adage, right,
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: the cover up is worse than the crime. If Fomo
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: had just told the truth, right, I don't, I mean,
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: he still would be where he is. The other.
• 50:29
  Speaker 2: Accusations talk about rolling downhill. He just started out good,
• 50:34
  Speaker 2: went off the rails and just man was it was
• 50:37
  Speaker 2: like a wily coyote hitting the bottom of the Ravine.
• 50:41
  Speaker 2: Let's talk about a few other people who may or
• 50:44
  Speaker 2: may not have distinguished themselves. Anthony Fauci, How well did
• 50:48
  Speaker 2: he perform?
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: So my cauthorne I might have a little bit of
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: a split on this. I'm probably more sympathetic to Fauci
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: then Joe might be. I view any criticism Ofauci as misplaced,
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: because it was the job of the president not to
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: have Fauci in that role if he didn't want him
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: in that role.
• 51:07
  Speaker 2: But he got great media.
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: But he got great media. And as if you're putting
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: someone out there whose views you don't agree with, and
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: then and then sort of ducking and saying, oh, look
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: at what that guy's saying. I mean, it's just it's
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: it's terrible, be accountable, say then I'm going to be
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: the person speaking to the American public. It makes me.
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: It makes me angry because putting someone in a role
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: that maybe they shouldn't be in and then criticizing that
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: person for being in that role seems to me to
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: be one of the most hypocritical things you can do.
• 51:37
  Speaker 2: I mean, but Trump seems to do that with every
• 51:38
  Speaker 2: single person he appointed, and nobody ever says to him,
• 51:42
  Speaker 2: why are you criticizing this person, Why don't you criticize
• 51:45
  Speaker 2: the person who hired them? Oh wait, that's you. And
• 51:49
  Speaker 2: at least with Fauci, we got the Curb your Enthusiasm
• 51:52
  Speaker 2: memes we did, and which was to me the highlight
• 51:55
  Speaker 2: of the past.
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: I think you sent me one of those early on,
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: and I think it might have been the highlight of
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: the pandemic.
• 52:00
  Speaker 2: Just like because you just see him drop his head
• 52:03
  Speaker 2: into his hand when when Trump was talking about AMV
• 52:06
  Speaker 2: was bleach or light or something and the music just
• 52:10
  Speaker 2: it was chef's kiss? What about Jared Kushner?
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: How did that back to Fauci?
• 52:16
  Speaker 2: Me?
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: I think there there are a couple of things that
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: I don't understand why why Fauci did them, Either to
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: say the least, the mask thing, the shutting down of
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: any inquiry about the origins of the pandemic, which in
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: a way, I don't really care where this thing came from,
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: but the fact that we weren't allowed to discuss where
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: it came from reflects well on nobody. The idea that
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: you couldn't say that it might have been from inside
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: a lab without being accused of being racist. And Fauci
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: was part of shutting down that line of questions, Well.
• 52:46
  Speaker 2: Whether it came from a lab or a Chinese wet market,
• 52:49
  Speaker 2: I mean, he's still.
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: China cares, but we should know and I.
• 52:54
  Speaker 2: And we, so let me ask you that question. Since
• 52:57
  Speaker 2: you references, where do we think the virus came from?
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: I don't have a clue. But what I do know
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: is that because the lines of inquiry were shut down
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: early on, we probably never will know for sure. And
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: I think that that's not a great outcome. And I
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: think shutting down lines of inquorey are shutting down people
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: with different opinions. Is just there's a line between that
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: and quote misinformation, and I'm not really sure in a
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: free society what we want to label misinformation. I detest
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: that word. I think the other thing she tried to
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: shut down were the scientists behind the Great Barrington Declaration.
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: And again, I happened to be a believer in most
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: forms of free speech, and.
• 53:34
  Speaker 2: They walk that way back though the meta study, there
• 53:39
  Speaker 2: were subsequent articles that said, well, this isn't exactly what
• 53:42
  Speaker 2: we're saying. The whole mask thing. I think, if you're
• 53:46
  Speaker 2: going into an operating theater, don't you check that box? Yes,
• 53:50
  Speaker 2: I want everybody wearing surgical masks in there.
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: I mean, I don't think the Great Bearrington Declaration said
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: much about mask It was about it was about. The
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: Great Barrington Declaration was about focused protection for the elderly.
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: It was against lockdowns.
• 54:05
  Speaker 2: The other stuff.
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: And I think, and I think in a free society
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: where polarization doesn't dictate what one is allowed to say
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: and one is not allowed to say, there should have
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: been a debate about that. And the scientists behind the
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: Great Barrington Declaration were not French scientists, epidemiologists carverd epidemiologists
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: at Stanford, epidemiologists at Oxford, highly respected people. Why is
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: it so offensive to listen to them and to listen
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: to what their plan is? It shouldn't be And so
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: I don't love that Fauci was part of shutting that
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: down and trying to discredit that.
• 54:34
  Speaker 2: So let's talk a little bit about misinformation, because that
• 54:40
  Speaker 2: leads to a couple of questions. Hydroxy chloroquin ivermectin bleach
• 54:46
  Speaker 2: heard immunity. It seems like there was some really crazy
• 54:50
  Speaker 2: nonsense coming from to some degree from social media. Also
• 54:56
  Speaker 2: spread by social media, Facebook, Twitter, etc. Not so much
• 55:01
  Speaker 2: LinkedIn as far as I could tell, and far more
• 55:05
  Speaker 2: on the right wing than the left wing, other than
• 55:07
  Speaker 2: the anti vax stuff which eventually morphed over. How do
• 55:11
  Speaker 2: we judge our ability to deal with misinformation and how
• 55:16
  Speaker 2: do we judge the performance of the US media?
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: I think it's really difficult because the line between misinformation
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: and information that we don't want to hear is can
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: be a very fine line sometimes, and sometimes things that
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: we label misinformation in a moment come back to perhaps
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: maybe be something that we should have listened to. I
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: guess my view on free speech is that if we
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: believe in free speech, we should believe in free speech.
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: Hate speech is a different matter, So I'm going to
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: put that aside, okay, because I think all you need
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: to do is look at the run up to World
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: War two to see that that old adage that sticks
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: and stones can break my bones, but words will never
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: hurt me. It's words that create the sticks and stones. Right.
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: But that's besides this conversation about.
• 55:58
  Speaker 2: Yelling fire in a crowded theater. At what point is
• 56:02
  Speaker 2: don't get vaccinated. It's a chip that will track you.
• 56:06
  Speaker 2: How close is that to yelling fire in a theater?
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: I think it's I think it's a long way away.
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: And I think that when there is so much information
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: out there to the counter about that, you actually do
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: more damage by shutting people down and saying you can't
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: say that than you do by saying, go ahead and
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: say it. Sound crazy.
• 56:24
  Speaker 2: People people literally Barber Streis and effect people.
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: People, people can figure out their own their own information.
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: There's enough out there running counter to that, so I
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: don't I think it's a really tricky issue. But I
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: think the pandemic, if anything, made me feel that we
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: are very very quick to label things misinformation and we
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: just don't like.
• 56:43
  Speaker 2: It if we just disagree with it, all right, so
• 56:44
  Speaker 2: we did Fauci. Let's talk about Jared Kushner and Mike Pence,
• 56:49
  Speaker 2: who each took turns heading a task force on PPE.
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: How those guys do I think Kushner, I don't think
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: the task force that he set up to get PPE
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: did that much. However, it's worth noting that some of
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: the people running warp Speed, who were utterly opposed to
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: Trump and too Trump's administration, came away supportive of Kushner
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: because they thought that it was Kushner's support that guaranteed
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: warp Speed's success, and it was Kushner who ultimately protected
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: Warp Speed and both Monsoff Slowie, who is about as
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: far from a Trumpian Republican as one could possibly be,
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: actually said that he came away from this with a
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: lot of respect for Kushner. So I think that it's
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: possible to look at him as a mixed bag.
• 57:35
  Speaker 2: So Chok went up for Jared Kushner. What about Mike
• 57:38
  Speaker 2: Pence kind of that just went nowhere.
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: I mean when Mike Pence, when Alex Azar was kicked
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: off basically running the task force and Mike Pence was
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: put in charge. It's hard to think of anything that
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: happened at the Coronavirus Task Force after that other than
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: Mike Pence's op ed in the spring of twenty twenty
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: saying there won't be a second way. I think most
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: people see him as the ultimate poly Titian, and that
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: he was more focused on his own chances for a
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: presidential run than he was on actually doing anything about
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: the pandemic. That said, you have to have a little
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: bit of admiration for Mike Pen's post.
• 58:11
  Speaker 2: James tell us about Azar. I think a lot of
• 58:14
  Speaker 2: people have no idea who he is or was during
• 58:18
  Speaker 2: this era.
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: So Asar was a Secretary of Health and Human Services
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: and not a well liked figure within the Trump administration
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: for reasons both good and bad. He developed a reputation
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: for being hierarchical, being thin skinned, being a politician, but
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: he was also he was an old school Republican in
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: an administration where that was a very bad thing to be.
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: I think it is impossible to look at alex Azar
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: and not see a highly principled person who wanted to
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: do the right thing. And at warp Speed is we
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: have Asar in part to thank for warp Speed, and
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: if it hadn't been for Azar getting behind warp Speed
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: and pushing it again, warp Speed had several had several fathers,
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: but Asar was definitely one of them. And so I
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: think if you look at people's performance and you give
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: them some dings but some positives, I think ultimately I
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: came out positive on Asar.
• 59:11
  Speaker 2: So let's stick with warp Speed for a second. Of course,
• 59:13
  Speaker 2: the economy began to recover pretty quickly. He could have
• 59:17
  Speaker 2: stepped up and said I did this, I saved America.
• 59:20
  Speaker 2: Vote for me. I think he could have won if
• 59:23
  Speaker 2: he had made better decisions about the pandemic.
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: Well, I think I'm not sure that's true, because the
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: vaccines weren't approved. The data about the vaccines didn't come
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: out until after the election, because Trump had started to
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: make some noises about having the vaccines ready before the election,
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: and so the FDA pushed back and basically the leaders
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: of the pharmaceutical companies said, this is not going to
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: be political, and all of that was really important, and
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: so to me, one of Trump's biggest failings was starting
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: to make the vaccines political such that then you had
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: to you had to have pushback so that people would
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: try to trust them, absolutely able to trust them. I
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: absolutely agree that if Trump had said these vaccines are marvelous,
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: their life saving, that could have changed some of some
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: of the course it would, but it would have been
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: too late for his election. But that said, you have
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: to ask the flip side of the question, given that
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: you had Democrats including Cuoma and Kamala Harris coming out
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: and saying, I'm not taking these Trump vaccines until they've
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: been tested for safety.
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 2: That's smart.
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: If Trump had pushed them and called them the Trump vaccines,
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: would you have had exactly the response from Democrats that
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: we had said got from Republicans. Given how ridiculously polarized
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: we are, would you then have had Republicans taking the
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: vaccines and celebrating them and Democrats saying I'm not taking
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: a Trump vaccine.
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 2: Counterfactual is it's amazing.
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: It's actually tragic that we even have to ask this question,
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: because why should a vaccine be a Trump vaccine or
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: a Giden vaccine. It's it's insane, it's insane.
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 2: There was a big piece not too long ago, I
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 2: don't remember if it was the Wall Street Journal of
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 2: the Washington Post that showed that if you looked at
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 2: a break the country down by zip code, red zip
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 2: codes had much worse outcome than blue zip codes, And
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 2: you kind of wonder, you can't help but wonder this
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 2: has to be partisan based, whether you took the vaccine,
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 2: got boosted socially distanced, unless you're going to say the
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 2: red districts are just so much worse on the pre
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 2: existing condition side, or some combination above.
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: I think it's some combination of both. And again, I
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: don't think anybody's done the work, nor I think is
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: it possible to actually do the work and break it down.
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: What percent of the problem came from people in Red
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: states being less willing to get vaccinated, and what percentage
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: of the problem came from the fact that pre existing
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: health conditions that led one to terrible COVID outcomes were
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: worse in many of those states, which brings us back
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: and access to healthcare.
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 2: Which brings us back to DeSantis, who has refused to
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 2: embrace Medicaid and is leaving something like one hundred and
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 2: fifty million dollars a year in healthcare aid to his state.
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 2: Now work that out into those pre existing conditions a
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 2: lot more medical care that buys you a decent amount
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 2: of money every year. He has not embraced it. A
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 2: handful of Red state governors have refused to embrace this,
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 2: and I'm always shocked at how their population goes along
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 2: with it. I don't want healthcare. What do I need
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 2: that for? It's amazing, Yeah, it is so last institutions
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 2: I have to ask about, how did the CDC, the
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 2: National Institute of Health and Who perform ranked those three
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 2: institutions who did most poorly? Who did least poorly. Notice
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 2: I'm not saying any of them did especially well.
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: I think that's hard because they all did different things.
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: I think the CDC is at the bottom. I think
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: it's hard and even the CDC, I think would say that.
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: Rachelle Wilenski, when she was running the CDC, came out
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: with this report basically that' said the CDC has failed
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: and lost lost a lot of trust. The NIH not terrible, no,
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: and it's the NIH that funded a lot of the
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: development of mRNA led us to have the vaccines. You know, again,
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: the existence of the vaccines is a long standing collaboration
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: between government and industry. And so one of my key
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: takeaways from the book is capitalism can't do everything. Markets
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: can't do everything. You need a functioning government and functioning markets,
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: and you need the two to be intertwined to have
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: a functioning society.
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 2: You can't get shareholders to say, I'm going to put
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 2: money to this company and maybe in fifteen years we'll
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 2: have a product we can and more.
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: Even more so, you can't get shareholders to back vaccine
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: development because too many times governments are the buyers of vaccines.
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: The profits aren't big enough, and the need for the
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: vaccines comes and goes, and so shareholders don't want anything
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: to do with it because it's not sustainable earnings growth
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: and so you have to be aware of where capitalism
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: works and where it doesn't work. And that's one of
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: the themes of the book The Who. I think initially
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: you would give them bad marks for going along with
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: China's view of the world and not being more independently minded. So,
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: but it's hard to say. Over the course of the pandemic,
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 1: I think the WHO has been able to acknowledge failings,
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: so I'd give them. I'd give them an nih pretty
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: decent marks.
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 2: I'm kind of fascinated and I was like raised an
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 2: eyebrow when I come across the chapter in the book
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 2: on the Federal Reserve. Let's talk a little bit about
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 2: what the FED did and didn't do. Starting with their
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 2: initial thinking was, hey, interest rates don't cure pandemics. Tell
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 2: us a little bit about what's going on at the FED.
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: Well, I think you can't look at the pandemic without
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: looking at the Federal Reserve. And for all sorts of reasons.
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: One is that if it hadn't been for the fed's
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: actions in the spring of twenty twenty, the world literally
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: might have shut down. Markets are not incidental to life there,
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: they're part of our life. That said, some of The
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: problems that the FED had to fix were of the
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: FED zone making, such as what a couple of decades
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: of very low interest rates had done to our markets,
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: such as the ongoing fragility of the system due to
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: the shadow banking system, an ongoing kind of inability to
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 1: deal with instability in the treasury market. One of the
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: scariest things that happened in that spring of twenty twenty
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: was that the treasury market almost stopped functioning. And that's
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: people were aware even before the pandemic hit that there
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: were these structural weaknesses within the treasury market. And then
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: I think you have to look at the FED because
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: of where we are today with inflation, and that's such
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: a critical part of our economic lives now and such
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: a critical part of inequality in terms of who inflation
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 1: affects the most, and that's the FED. And so you
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 1: have to understand that is of looking at the pandemic.
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 2: So let's explore that a little bit more. Following the
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 2: financial crisis, FED takes the rates down to zero, keeps
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 2: him there, can't get inflation up to two percent a
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 2: decade no inflation. We really haven't talked about the Cares
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 2: Act and what a massive fiscal stimulus that was that
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 2: we didn't see during the financial crisis. So let's put
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 2: some numbers on that. CARES Act one under President Trump
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 2: two point two trillion dollars, right, ten percent of GDP.
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 2: You describe it as the biggest fiscal stimulus in US history.
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 2: CARES Act two, almost another trillion dollars. Also under President Trump,
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 2: CARES Act three another eight or nine hundred billion dollars.
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 2: Under President Biden four trillion dollars. This is a huge stimulus.
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 1: It's insane, and it has left our has helped leave
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 1: our federal debt in a frightening place. Plus the impact
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: on inflation, and there was a lot of thinking about
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 1: the impact of fiscal stimulus and monetary stimulus right together.
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: And so you're right, we didn't have that in the
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: financial crisis, and I think it was a mistake. We
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: had a very limited amount of fiscal stimulus because the
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: idea was, oh my god, that the deficit and what
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: are we doing? And so there was very quickly the
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: Tea Party and the calls for austerity, and so we
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: didn't do that much fiscal stimulus.
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 2: And so the FED had a mediocre recovery because and
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 2: so the FED.
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: For that decade between the financial crisis and the pandemic,
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: that decade plus felt promote the title of Muhammad al
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: Aarian's great book that they were the only game in town.
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 1: They were the only ones who could try to fix
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 1: the economy. But that, to me is a little bit
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: analogous to Fauci. Just like maybe Fauci shouldn't have been
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: in the position he was in, the FED shouldn't have
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 1: been in the position it was in. That's Congress's job. Again,
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: it's a failure of government. It's a failure of Congress
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: to default to the FED is the people who are
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: supposed to fix the economy. It's not just the Fed's job.
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: They've got one tool They've got the most limited toolbox
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 1: of anybody in Washington to try to fix the economy.
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 1: And yet they were the only game in town. And
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 1: because interest rates were so low for that decade and
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 1: there was so much bond buying, it left the FED
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 1: in a weaker position to counteract the effects of the
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: pandemic than they would otherwise have been in. And I
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: think it's important to understand that again, these things have antecedents.
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 1: They don't come out of nowhere right.
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 2: It's always more complicated. One of the things that I
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 2: think a lot of folks don't realize is when you
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 2: take rates to zero, everything priced in credit and dollars
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 2: is going to benefit from that. And that means stocks, bonds,
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 2: real estate's business and who owns that the wealthier people
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 2: in America. So the most fascinating takeaway from this massive
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 2: fiscal stimulus, aside from the inflation, is hey, it did
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 2: a pretty good job for the middle and lower class.
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 2: They did okay, they still have some savings left over
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 2: from twenty twenty and twenty one. So if you're looking
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 2: at fiscal or monetary stimulus, recognize who is the beneficiary.
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 1: Of yes, exactly whereas monetary stimulus made the rich richer.
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: I mean, people said when the when the Fed began
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 1: throwing everything it could at the wall, basically in the
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: spring of twenty twenty, traders were like, this is the
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: greatest trading opportunity the world has ever seen. And when
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: you look at how staggeringly rich people with exposure to
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 1: the markets got in in the year after the pandemic
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: first hit, it's really I mean, it's sort of disgusting.
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 2: From the lows in March twenty twenty. Till the end
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 2: of the year, the S ANDB five hundred sixty eight percent.
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 2: The following year up on ROMO was twenty nine thirty
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 2: one percent. Every huge, reaching, explosive.
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 1: Boom, everything was a screaming buy. And that benefits the
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: segment of the American population that has exposure to as
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: not the bottom. And then the bottom is left to
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 1: fend for itself when and not to fend for itself,
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 1: but the bottom is left to pick up the pieces
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 1: when inflation kicks in, because guess who inflation hurts more?
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 2: The less well off always. So let's talk. You know,
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 2: it's funny. I'm gonna tell you a quick, funny digression.
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 2: I'm at an event over the summer camp Kotok and
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 2: we're talking about rising interest rates. And someone asked the question, Hey,
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 2: will the wealthy benefit from higher rates or not? And
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 2: three of us in the room, myself included, raised their
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 2: hand and said, of course they will. You know what
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 2: history has told us, the wealthy do just fine in
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 2: all sorts of economies.
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: Well, I agree, And it seems that everything we've done,
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 1: from the financial crisis through to the pandemic response has
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 1: helped the wealthy at the at the expense of the poor.
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: And that's why I very much like the subtitle of of.
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 2: Our boots left Beyond.
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: Of our book, Who's getting left Who's getting left behind?
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 1: And that it's true that the fiscal stimulus has done
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 1: miracles for people at the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum.
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: So I don't want to discount that it was really.
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 2: Reduce poverty for children.
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: It had enormously effective. Nonetheless, a lot of the gains
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 1: and wages have been eaten up by inflation. So once again,
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 1: it's the people at the lower end of the socioeconomic
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: spectrum who are left to who face the most pain
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 1: from just about any policy.
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 2: So one of the things we really haven't spoken about
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 2: very much is the supply chain. I want to focus
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 2: on semiconductors because you specifically write about Taiwan semiconductor and
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 2: the shortage and how it's impacted everything from cars to computers.
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 2: What drove that shortage and how much are we still
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 2: dealing with the after effects of that.
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 1: So it was just it was it was the increased
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: demand combined with the increased time to ship. One CEO
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: of a company told me it just it was like
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 1: lost in translation. You just couldn't figure out where your gear,
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 1: where your stuff was getting shipped from China. And so
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 1: again it's this idea that we could and it's obviously
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 1: stressed by the geopolitical tensions over Taiwan, but this idea
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: that we could just mindlessly outsource everything that was critical
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 1: to a very far away country and not maintain any
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 1: capacity to do it here in the United States, and
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 1: that was all going to be just peachy, kin it
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: just I think the pandemic showed us that it's not
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 1: that simple, and so now we're trying to figure out
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 1: how to deal with that, especially with the geopolitical tensions
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 1: over Taiwan, when you realize the United States literally can't
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 1: break down if Taiwan semiconductor goes away because we've outsourced
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: all of the critical manufacturing of semiconductors.
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 2: So there's this ongoing political debate as to whether it's
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 2: a pipe dream that we can bring manufacturing or critical
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 2: manufacturing back to the United States. Can we bring semiconductor
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 2: or evy battery production or next generation technologies like that here?
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 2: Is this is this a pipe dream or is this
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 2: a viable Hey, we can't leave it five thousand miles away.
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 2: It just doesn't work for us.
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 1: So I think the train has left the station on
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 1: semiconductor manufacturing. When you look even at the a billions
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 1: in the Chips Act, but you compare it to Taiwan
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 1: Semiconductor's annual capbex budget, it's just there's no catching up.
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 1: That doesn't mean we couldn't have manufacturing of some critical
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 1: chips here in the US as a just in case backup,
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 1: But I think the idea that we're ever going to
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 1: become a manufacturing powerhouse of semiconductor chips. Ever, again, I
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 1: think we let that go. And again i'd blame a
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 1: monomaniacal focus on the bottom line. Hey, they can do
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 1: it cheaper over there. Let's go do it cheaper over there,
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 1: without any thoughts about the long term. I also think though,
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 1: it raises another question that to me is interesting, which is,
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 1: do you remember the whole fur in the global financial
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: crisis banks too big to fail They've got tax payer support. Well,
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 1: what about hospitals, They've got tax payer support. What about
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: semiconductor manufacturing? Now with the Chips Act, they've got tax
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 1: pair support. So this whole idea of capitalism in the
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 1: market and it's pure. Well it isn't, and so that
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 1: was one of my big takeaways from this is if
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 1: all sorts of industries have to have taxpayer support when
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 1: times turn tough, don't we need to rethink the contract
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 1: between companies and society.
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 2: You might have thought, and I admittedly this is all
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 2: hindsight bias, that after nine to eleven we would have said, hey,
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 2: we are now dealing with asymmetrical warfare, what do we
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 2: need to do to make sure that just a defense
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 2: department has access to what they need? That never seemed
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 2: to happen, did it. I mean, it was chatter about
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 2: it and then it just kind of faded the following quarter.
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the Department of Defense has done this report, the
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 1: Industrial Capabilities Report, every year, and it's pointed out that
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 1: do to shareholder pressure to generate earnings, that all these
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 1: critical aspects of manufacturing have gone overseas. And so it's
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 1: easy to not pay any attention to that if you're
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 1: just focused on this quarter's earnings or this year's earnings.
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 1: But if you're actually focused on what the United States
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 1: needs to do to be strong, you need to have
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 1: a different set of values at work.
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 2: So Lennon was right. The capitalists will sell you the
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 2: rope to hang you business.
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 1: It might be true. I mean, I'm still going to
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 1: defend capitalism is a version of Winston Churchill's quote about
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 1: democracy the worst possible system with the possible exception of
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: everything else up there. But I do think we need
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 1: to have a discussion about where capitalism is appropriate and
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 1: where it's not, and what's fears of life it should
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 1: be contained, and what its limitations are.
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 2: So I have another four hours worth of questions for you,
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 2: but I know you have a lunch date, So let's
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 2: jump to our speed round and we'll blow through these
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 2: five questions as quickly as possible, starting with what have
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 2: you been streaming these days? What's been keeping you entertained?
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 1: So this is going to make you unhappy. But I
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 1: grew up without a TV set, and I did, and
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 1: I see there's amazing. We might be the only two
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 1: people in the world.
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 2: Who can say that I wasn't allowed to watch Oh.
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 1: We didn't even have one. My parents still don't have one,
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 1: so I don't. I don't stream that much.
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 2: I know it's audio. I have.
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 1: I have some things that i've that I've listened to
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 1: that I love, but I default to a book when
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 1: I'm when I'm left alone audio. I have been loving
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 1: Huberman's podcast on health and longevity. He has a great
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 1: podcast that just came out on meditation that makes you
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: think really differently about meditation.
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 2: Umen. Yeah, I'm going to check out. Yeah. Let's talk
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 2: about your mentors who helped shape your career as a writer.
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 1: So Joon No Sarah, who's my co author on this book,
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 1: and my co author and all the devils are here
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 1: and edited the smartest guys in the room. He was
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 1: my editor at Fortune for a lot of years, and
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 1: he taught me and still teaches me to this day,
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 1: a lot about writing and storytelling.
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 2: Since we mentioned books, let's talk about some of your
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 2: favorites and what you're reading right now.
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 1: So I do a podcast with a guy named Luigi's
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 1: and gallis at the University of Chicago, and I think
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 1: I have to read a ton for that, as you
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 1: do for this. It's a lot of work, right, But
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 1: I think the books that I read for the podcasts
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 1: that have been most influential for me were two contradict
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 1: reviews on meritocracy, one by professor at Harvard named Michael Sandel,
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 1: and the other by a professor at Oxford named Adrian Woldridge,
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 1: and one is kind of a defensive meritocracy and the
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 1: other is skepticism about meritocracy. So Adrian Wildridge's book is
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 1: The Aristocracy of Talent, How meritocracy made the modern world?
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 1: And Michael Sandel's book is called The Tyranny of merit
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 1: Can We Find the Common Good? And I'd say Sandel's
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 1: perspective on meritocracy is quite skeptical, and Wildridge's book is
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 1: more of a defensive meritocracy. And they're a really interesting,
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 1: interesting juxtaposition. And then don't laugh. I am a huge
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 1: consumer of fantasy novels, and so I am also reading
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 1: The Wheel of Time, which has which has just become
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 1: a Netflix series, and I swear I'm going to stream
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 1: that as soon as I finished the books.
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 2: Oh, I didn't know you were a fantasy fan. Give
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 2: me some other authors you like? So, because I go
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 2: back to like Peer's Anthony and.
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 1: Early So do I back back to Tolkien? Of course? Yes,
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 1: that's a gimme game, owns of course. George double R.
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 2: Martin, I would like to read that. I started watching
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 2: it and said, I got to read.
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 1: This I know I read. I read them all, but the.
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 2: Probably as great as everyone says.
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 1: They're as great as everybody says. The problem is now
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 1: I can't watch the show because it's so stressful to
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 1: read those books that you can't relive some of the
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 1: high moments of high stress.
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 2: You know, he kills a lot of people.
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 1: There's there's another So I have a fourteen year old
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 1: daughter and a twelve year old daughter, so I consume
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 1: an inordinate amount of fantasy novels and I can't keep
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 1: all the names straight because that's what my daughter reads.
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 1: But right now I'm in the process of reading some
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 1: by a woman named Rissa Meyer, which are rewrites of
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 1: fairy tales from a different perspective and they are super interesting.
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 2: And the Last kind of Wicked, which is told from
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 2: the witch's perspective.
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, or like Maleficent. But back to things that.
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 2: I love Moens so do I.
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 1: But back to things that I read as a child
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 1: that I think are really interesting to reread. Now I've
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 1: been rereading a lot of Isaac Ossamov.
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 2: Unbelievable.
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 1: I think, in this in this era where we're talking
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 1: about AI, to realize how incredibly prophetic Awesomov was with
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 1: his three Laws of Robots and his and his and
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 1: his thoughts about the world. He's a terrible writer, and
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 1: you have to struggle through his prose, but if he
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 1: read it, yes, he is terrible.
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 2: He's a great storyteller, and some of his some of
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 2: his prose is not the most polished. But his idea
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 2: is everything.
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 1: Well, that's exactly his prose is. His prose is clunky,
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 1: and his characters are one dimensional, but his ideas and
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 1: the fact that he could see all of where we
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 1: are today from when he was writing, I just think
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 1: it's it's fascinating.
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 2: So foundation trilogy. Robert C. J. Serrah Larry Nivin. The
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 2: last question is Anthony I mean to say nothing of
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 2: Philip K. Dick, which is just next.
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 1: Level, Yes, and and the and the greatest of all Dune.
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 2: Right, you know, I've been plowing through the most recent
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 2: and version. It's like every time there's a decade goes by,
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 2: someone reattempts to redo that story and it's just too grand.
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 2: Unless you're going to do Lawrence of Arabia, right, you
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 2: just can't do Dune. And it seems every attempt has failed.
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 2: What sort of advice would you give to a recent
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 2: college grad interested in a career in either investing finance
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 2: or journalism.
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 1: And journalism a career in journalism, I might say, find
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 1: something else where you can make money. And then right
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 1: on the side, No, seriously, I would say to anybody
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 1: interested in anything, just do something. You never know where
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 1: your path in life is going to take you. But
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 1: if you don't do anything, then you know where it's
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 1: going to take you, which is nowhere. And so if
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 1: you're not sure what you want to do, just go
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 1: do things. Go do interesting things. Go try to be
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 1: around smart people doing interesting things. I began my career
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 1: working at Golden Sechs, and I do something very different
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 1: from that now. But I wouldn't have the career I
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 1: have now if I hadn't started working working at Goldman
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 1: And so just do things, and what you do, we'll
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 1: open up other doors that will take you someplace else.
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 2: And our final question, what do you know about the
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 2: world of investing finance writing today? You wish you knew
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 2: twenty twenty five years ago when you were first getting started.
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 1: I wish I had understood that it wasn't just about numbers,
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 1: that it's about people. It's about history. You have to
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 1: understand psychology, You have to understand the past. That makes
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 1: it so much more interesting and infinitely and just interesting.
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 1: And I wish I had understood what we talked about
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 1: earlier on the podcast, which is that that most important
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 1: rule is the thing you used in kindergarten, which is
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 1: use your imagination because anything can happen. And don't ever
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 1: look at the world and say no, no, no, that
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 1: can't happen. And Ron can't be a fraud, it's the
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 1: most respected company in America. Or no, no, no, the
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 1: big banks on Wall Street can't go bankrupt. Look at
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 1: their multi billion dollar balance sheets and their gleaming headquarters.
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 1: This can't happen. Or a pandemic can't shut down in
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 1: the United States for two or three years. God knows
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 1: that can't happen. Everything can happen, So just remember, use
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 1: your imagination.
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 2: William Goldman's is penned my favorite expression of all time.
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 2: Nobody knows anything right.
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 1: That is pretty fantastic.
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 2: Bethany, thank you for being so generous with your time.
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 2: We have been speaking with Bethany MacLean, co author of
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 2: The Big Foul. If you enjoy this conversation. Be sure
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 2: and check out any of the previous five hundred plus
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 2: discussions we've had over the past nine years. You can
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 2: find those at YouTube, Spotify, iTunes, wherever you find your
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 2: favorite podcasts. Sign up for my daily reading lists at
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 2: ridolts dot com. Follow me on Twitter at Barry Ridholt's
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 2: Be sure and check out all of the Bloomberg Family
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 2: of podcasts at podcasts. I would be remiss if I
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 2: did not thank the crack team that helps these conversations
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 2: get done each week. Anna Luke is my producer. Sarah
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 2: Livesey is my audio engineer at Teak of Albron is
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 2: our project manager. Sean Russo is my researcher. I'm Barry Rutults.
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 2: You've been listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio.