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Federal Reserve Board Governor Chris Waller on Monetary Policy and Payments | Hoover Institution · The Capitalism and Freedom in the Twenty-First Century Podcast

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>> Jon Hartley: This is a live recording of an episode of the Capitalism and
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freedom of the 21st Century podcast, an official podcast of
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the Hoover Institution Economic Policy Working Group where I,
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Jon Harley, I'm your host.
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I'm also a policy fellow at the, at the Hoover Institution.
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It's so great to have Federal Reserve Board of Governor Chris Waller here as my
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guest for this live episode at the Economic Club of Miami,
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which is also being live-streamed on Bloomberg Box Business and C-SPAN.
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Chris, thanks so much for coming to Miami and for coming on the show.
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>> Christopher J. Waller: Thanks. This is my first podcast.
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I'm looking forward to it.
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>> Jon Hartley: All right, well, first question.
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>> Christopher J. Waller: And then. >> Jon Hartley: Let's get started and
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maybe address, I guess the, what some may say is the elephant in the room.
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Some of your colleagues at the Federal Reserve Board are on the news.
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For those who haven't been following the news,
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any comments on the status of this situation?
1:00
I think there might have been a lawsuit dropped today or something like that.
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>> Christopher J. Waller: Yeah, when it comes to this, I,
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I really don't have any comment.
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Things now are in the hands of lawyers in the courts.
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Not, not a poor, simple policymaker like me.
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>> Jon Hartley: Okay.
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All right.
1:14
Well, moving on to our first economic question really
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about the federal funds rate and where it's going to.
1:22
I mean, you gave us a great economic outlook in your speech.
1:25
CPI inflation now is both headline and cores are about 2.7% year over year.
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It's been below 3% for quite a while.
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Unemployment's been around 4.2% for a while.
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And there's still another non farm payroll report that still has to come up
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between now and the next FOMC meeting.
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That could change a little bit.
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But the fed funds rate is currently at 4.25%.
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You said earlier that you'd like to see maybe a 25 basis point cut at the next
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meeting.
1:57
Would you like to see more cuts at further meetings down the road?
2:00
I'm curious, what's your position on the trajectory of the fed funds rate?
2:05
>> Christopher J. Waller: Yeah, that's what I said at the end of the speech was I
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fully expect more rates cuts as the labor market continues to soften.
2:13
Growth is probably still going to be slow in the second half of the year.
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And the tariff effects, any tariff path through effects will probably peak by
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the end of this year, beginning in 26.
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So because monetary policy tends to work with these kind of long lags,
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you don't want to wait and then you're behind the curve.
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So my view is we should start getting ready,
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look through whatever price effects are happening right now.
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I don't believe they're going to be persistent.
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I know I'm a bit of an outlier in the FOMC because of that.
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But this is exactly what economic theory would tell you.
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Look through the tariffs.
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Inflation will flatten out once the tariff effects are passed through and
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then we can continue moving on cutting to protect the, the real side of the economy.
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But the pace and the speed.
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I like to give this example.
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I went to college in northern Minnesota.
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When I would drive home for Christmas, I knew exactly where I was going.
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But how fast I got to Minneapolis, depending on the weather and
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the weather's like your current data in determines whether you can go fast,
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whether you gotta go slow, how much you can.
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So that's the kind of way I think about the rate cuts.
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We know roughly where we're going towards neutral, but
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how fast we get there is going to depend on the data that comes in.
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>> Jon Hartley: So you prefer a pace of sort of success, of potentially success of
3:30
25 basis point cuts, not a bigger 50 basis point cut or more at the beginning.
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>> Christopher J. Waller: Yeah. And it's not a set sequence,
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it's not 25, 25.
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That's what I mean by the data.
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The data will kind of determine how fast we go.
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It could be a sequence of cuts, it may be a couple,
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then you may want to pause if the data is coming in in an odd way.
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So that's, that's what I mean.
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How fast you know where you're going,
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that's the key thing we know we want to head towards neutral.
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It's just a question of how fast we get there.
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>> Jon Hartley: So I'm, I'm a nerdy economist like yourself.
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I want to ask you, I want to ask you about R Star.
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>> Christopher J. Waller: Does anybody know what R STAR is?
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No. >> Jon Hartley: See, for
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those who don't know R Star, it's really the level of the interest rate
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where inflation's either accelerating or decelerating.
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So it kind of tells you where are we at in terms of whether monetary
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policy is tight or accommodated.
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And so the fed funds rate's currently at 4.25%.
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So if you thought that the R was much lower,
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then you'd say it's a very tight stance of monetary policy right now.
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If you thought, well R STAR was at about 4.25%,
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you would think that we're at neutral.
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So I'm curious.
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One, there's a lot of different ways in which people assess R star.
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There's model driven estimates,
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there's a Luback Williams estimate that's about 2.75.
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There's the UBIG Matthews nominal R star, that's around 3.75.
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These are nominal numbers.
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I'm personally a fan of the survey based R STAR estimates.
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The New York Fed has this survey, it's called a survey for market expectations.
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They ask Wall street types or hedge fund or primary dealers, market participants,
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what the Fed likes to call them and ask them what their estimates of R STAR is.
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And you can take the median of that and that's about 3.25 right now.
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And that median pretty closely follows the FOMC median R estimates that are put in
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the summary of economic projections.
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We don't get to see or know who the dots are.
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And these, the famous dot plots, Chris is one of them.
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But I'm just curious, sort of big picture one, where do you think R STAR is?
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How do you think about R star?
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You're a monetary economist.
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How do you think about formulating that in your own mind and
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sort of creating your own dot?
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I mean, do you follow survey based estimates?
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Do you follow model based estimates?
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Do you follow market based estimates, say long run interest rates and so forth?
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How do you think about it as a monetary economist?
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>> Christopher J. Waller: Well, so just the way I think about our STAR is if
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the FOMC or the Fed, if we were hitting our inflation target at 2% and
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we were at maximum employment, where you're, that's your goals for
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the dual mandate and you're hitting them and you're sticking there and
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inflation expectations are anchored, what should the interest rate be?
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That's what we call our star.
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It's like what would it be if you were right on target and
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everybody's expectations were anchored?
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The interest rate is composed of two parts.
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Some expected inflation which should be hopefully 2% if you're on target, and
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some real rate of return.
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And the real rate of return used to be thought of as 2%.
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So if you had a 2% target for inflation and a 2% real return,
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the nominal rate at neutral would be 4%.
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That was kind of standard wisdom for a long time in central banking.
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What we noticed about 10 years ago was it's real, this real rate.
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Even though inflation was anchored pretty much around 2%,
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the real return on safe liquid government debt was falling from
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about four to two to close to zero about 10 years ago.
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So there was something going on that people were willing to pay more and more,
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a higher and higher price for safe liquid US government debt,
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which meant that the yield that they got was going down.
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So this is where this whole debate about Russia, it was falling, falling, falling.
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It's been very low.
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And now the debate is, is it going back up?
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Is it going to stay low?
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I know this is totally geeky.
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If I were sitting in the audience, I'd be shooting myself.
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But this is a serious problem for a policymaker and nerds like Jon.
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So that's kind of where we're at.
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When I was saying 3% was a median estimate, that's what I mean.
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Right now we think if he had a 2% inflate inflation target,
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the median FOMC member would think that the real interest,
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once you net out inflation effects, would be about 1%.
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Which is significantly lower than 2% and
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certainly lower than about 4% early in the, in the mid-80s.
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The question is, is it going to continue?
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Is it going to start rising?
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And it was close to zero, it's up to about one, is it gonna keep going or
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is it gonna stay there?
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And that's where a lot of energy research discussion has tried to
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figure out where do we think this is?
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And as Jon said, these numbers are kind of all over the map.
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If you even look at the FOMC survey of economic projections,
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they run from about two and a half to close to 4%.
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So even on our committee that's how big of the range is and
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how much uncertainty there is.
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So that's basically the way I kind of look at it is it's going to be
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a point estimate that moves around over time.
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And I gave a speech back in May of 24 at the Central bank of Iceland where I gave
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a whole speech on what does it mean about R Star, why has it been falling,
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what did I think caused it and what do I think could cause it to go back up?
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So if you're really bored some night, go find that speech and give it a read.
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>> Jon Hartley: That's very enlightening.
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As a nerd, as a nerd, very enlightening for me, selfishly.
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I do wanna talk a little bit about inflation, but inflation during the COVID
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pandemic and I think a lot of people here probably remember this and I'm
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sure some people may still be upset about it, we did get cumulative inflation or
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a price level increase of 20% that's permanent we haven't reversed any of that.
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I'm curious, what did teen transitory those at the Fed who thought that sort of
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inflation would come back down without Fed fed funds rate hikes at the time,
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what did they get wrong?
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And I'm curious,
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should the Fed have started raising interest rates earlier than March of 2022?
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I'm curious what your theory of the early 2000s inflation is.
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You know, was it supply induced inflation, demand induced inflation by say, you know,
10:06
stimulus and so forth, supply induced by, you know, supply chains and so forth?
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Or was it a supply and demand induced inflation in your mind?
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>> Christopher J. Waller: Yeah, it clearly was both, I mean the whole Covid panic was
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a problem because it kinda hit the whole world.
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And then when everybody's working at home or sitting at home,
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you can't really produce stuff.
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So whatever's being available out there, the prices start being dead up because
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everybody's Sitting at home with nothing to buy the goods.
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So some of it was just the supply chains were restricted, we were all still buying.
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There was a lot of stimulus from the federal government and the Fed as well to
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try to support because we really thought this would turn out to be something like
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the great financial crisis where we have to step in and do a lock.
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So you had both the supply side from supply chains,
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demand from supportive policy.
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And then the economy just recovered faster than I think we thought.
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So I was on throw all the knives you want, but
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I was on team transitory in 2021 because I gave a speech in May of 21, I said,
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look, what are all the reasons people think inflation's going to go up?
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And I walked through every single one of them and said,
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these are just price level effects.
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They don't just cause prices to continue to go up and up and up and up and up.
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My economic reasoning just said it can't happen.
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So that was, I think, a general belief that we had.
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What happened is those price level effects turned out to be much bigger and much more
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persistent than, I know certainly I can't speak about any of my colleagues, but
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for me it was a surprise at how big and persistent these changes were.
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And I gave a speech in Korea back at the end of first week of June
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where I kinda laid out what caused this persistence,
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what was it that caused all these things?
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So I don't want to go through a big hullable about it, but
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those things which was like the COVID
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it wasn't just one wave of COVID it was wave after wave after wave.
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And they weren't synchronized around the world.
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So we would start reopening and somebody else would shut down.
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And every time somebody shut down, they broke the supply chains and
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we still had a lot of stimulus money pouring in.
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Fiscal policy was very accommodative, monetary policy was accommodated for
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too long.
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And that also just led to more persistence in inflation.
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Now why is this important?
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Because from that experience we should have all learned our lesson that you don't
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say the word transitory.
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And what am I doing?
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I am saying whatever tariff inflation you get will be transitory.
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That was a pretty bold thing to say about eight months ago because everybody
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immediately said, you're an idiot.
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But I think we're now starting to see that tariffs are a very different thing.
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It's not clear how much is going to get passed through.
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It's one thing causing it, it's not multiple broken chains,
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fiscal policy monitor.
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So it's to me very clear there's really one thing we gotta worry about,
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those prices if there's any pass through, there'll be some.
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Once they pass through, it's over and
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it won't continue to cause prices to go like that.
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So based on that long standing central bank wisdom is you just look through it.
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Just like if you increase the sales tax in every state,
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that would raise the price what everybody has to pay.
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But no one would say that's going to just cause inflation go taking off.
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And I doubt very much that workers would go to their bosses and say, hey,
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the city just raised my sales tax, I need a raise.
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I don't think your boss pay any attention to you.
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But it's weird with tariffs, that's immediately what people start saying,
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tariffs, prices will go up and it'll be more expensive.
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Like I asked for a raise.
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Well, you don't do it on the sales tax.
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You don't do it if your income tax goes up or any other taxes go up.
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What is it special about tariffs in which you wanna act differently?
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So that's kind of where I'm at.
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I'm back on team transitory.
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We'll see how it all works out.
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Some of my colleagues have some bets against me, but I'm sticking to it.
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That's my line.
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>> Jon Hartley: Very good.
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Well, I want to talk a little bit about Jackson Hole,
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where you were last weekend in Wyoming.
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And there was a lot of discussion about Chair Powell's speech,
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in particular on that framework review.
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So he, I think suggested last week that the Fed from a framework review
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standpoint was potentially returning to the sort of 2012 Bernanke
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symmetric 2% inflation target and kind of abandoning the so
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called flexible average inflation turn your fate regime.
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That was adopted in the last framework review, that was in 2020 and
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sort of a brainchild of Rich Clarita.
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Any thoughts on the 2025 framework review?
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What do you think it should go?
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Where do you think the Fed should go from a framework review perspective
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in your mind?
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>> Christopher J. Waller: So for those of you again who are central bank geeks,
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a framework, we have a goal.
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Our goal is 2% inflation, price stability, which is how we define it, and
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maximum employment.
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Those are great goals.
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How are you going to get there?
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What's your strategy?
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How are you going to act when the data isn't getting you there?
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So that's when, when Jon says our framework, that's what people,
15:31
that's how we interpret the framework.
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It's our strategy for
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how we're going to respond to the data to get us to these goals.
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That's kind of the simplest way to explain what the framework is.
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Now, in our last framework,
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we had spent 10 years with inflation running well below our 2% target.
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And you'd say, what's wrong with that?
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Okay, maybe there's nothing wrong with it, but
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inflation expectations started drifting down away from.
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From 2%.
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And so what that implied is our promise of 2% is not,
16:05
is losing credibility, whether you like it at 2 or 1 or 0.
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But if you pick 2 and its expectations are drifting down, you're losing credibility.
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So there's a lot of things that happened in the 2010s.
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We were at zero, lower bound.
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The economy was recovering from the financial crisis.
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The massive amounts of regulation went in after the financial,
16:28
particularly in the financial sector, and all these things do nothing but
16:32
slow down growth and put downward pressure on demand and prices.
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So we took the 2020 approach, was like, we gotta get inflation and get closer to two.
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So the expectations come back up, our policies are more credible.
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And so one thing that people thought was when you say 2%,
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is it a ceiling where you're happy if it's 2 or less or you really mean it's 2?
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So if it's been low, you let it run above.
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So on average you get to two.
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And that's what Jon was saying,
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that was called flexible average inflation targeting.
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Meaning if we had been running below target for a while,
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we were willing to let it run above target to get it back to two.
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That's as simple as I can explain it.
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The problem is as soon as we adopted this policy of saying we're gonna let inflation
17:18
run above target, guess what happened?
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It went all above target, all by itself.
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We didn't have to do anything.
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So the whole framework kind of got blown out of the water right away.
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And so given that we've been above our inflation target for
17:34
about five years now, it's like, why are we saying we'll let it run above target?
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Because it's been running low, it's not been running low.
17:42
So we had to step back and say, look, that framework was too tied to the 2010s.
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It was, to my view, I'm speaking for myself, it was too backward looking,
17:54
it was too specific, it was too cute in a way of how we were going to manage things.
18:00
Too discretionary, too much fine tuning.
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And I think we've realized, look, we want to go back,
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talk about our strategy, but do it in a more robust,
18:08
less detail, less complicated way in terms of how we approach that is.
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And that's in the end, that's kind of what the new framework does.
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It kind of goes back to where we were roughly in 2012.
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And we're trying to make sure that whatever happens going forward,
18:22
this is a robust framework.
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>> Jon Hartley: Yeah, I think that sort of reflects, I think,
18:25
a broad kind of consensus amongst economists.
18:28
That flexible average inflation targeting was maybe a bit of a misadventure.
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I want to talk more about the balance sheet for a second.
18:35
So think quantitative easing, quantitative tightening.
18:38
This is the Federal Reserve going out buying say long term Treasuries and
18:42
mortgage bonds and so
18:44
forth that they started doing largely after the gold financial crisis in 2008.
18:50
The Fed balance sheet's now at about $6.7 trillion.
18:53
It was at 9 trillion in 2022.
18:57
How does the balance sheet factor into your thinking?
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And is a big balance sheet something that you think we're going to have maybe
19:04
forever?
19:04
Do you think we could ever get back to reserve neutrality?
19:07
And where do you think the balance sheet is going in the future?
19:10
>> Christopher J. Waller: Yeah, so I just gave a speech on the balance sheet about
19:13
six weeks ago trying to explain what our balance sheet is,
19:17
what are our structure of it, how should we, how should we structure balance sheet?
19:22
And I made the joke that most people would rather go to the dentist and
19:25
talk about the Fed's balance sheet.
19:27
I see people starting to walk out already.
19:29
So your audience.
19:30
[LAUGH] But the punchline is we have three major,
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I'll do this all in like a ChatGPT version of the speech.
19:38
We have three major liabilities on our balance sheet.
19:41
We have currency which is about 2.3 trillion.
19:44
The Treasury's checking account is on our balance sheet.
19:48
We're in the bank for the U.S. treasury.
19:49
That's about, normally it's about $800 billion.
19:53
So you're up to about 3.1 trillion.
19:55
And then we have a policy that we want to make sure banks have enough liquidity and
20:00
reserves that we never have a panic where everybody's chasing looking for
20:04
loose coins in the cushions.
20:07
The banks always have the liquidity that they need.
20:10
What the right amount of liquidity that the banks need is an open question.
20:14
And right now we're kind of staring at this and let's say it's somewhere between
20:19
2.7 and $3 trillion to make sure the entire banking system has the liquidity
20:23
that they need so we never have to worry about running around chasing currency.
20:29
That means your balance sheet is close to about 6.2 trillion,
20:35
6.0, anywhere from 5, whatever, to of that.
20:41
That's a large number.
20:43
It just sounds like a big balance sheet but.
20:47
And it's certainly bigger than what we ever had pre global financial crisis.
20:52
But the point is, even if we got rid of all the reserves,
20:54
we went back to a scarce reserve, what we call the scarce reserve system.
20:58
When you had maybe only 25 billion instead of $3 trillion of reserves,
21:02
our balance sheet would still be well over $3 trillion just from currency
21:07
in a treasury checking account.
21:09
So about half of our balance sheet side is out of our control.
21:12
Really.
21:13
Currency we print on demand.
21:15
And there's a good reason for that.
21:17
We never want anybody to doubt when they go to their bank and they want to say,
21:21
I want a dollar bill that the bank says, I don't know if I can give it to you because
21:25
I don't know if the Fed will give it to me.
21:28
The answer is we will always give you that dollar bill.
21:30
Don't worry about it.
21:31
Make sure your customers know they will never have a problem getting currency if
21:35
they want it.
21:36
So there's a good reason.
21:37
We supply it on demand.
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And the Treasury's checking account, you know, that's gotta talk to Scott Best,
21:43
that's his decision of how big they want to carry a balance.
21:46
And just over time that thing has gone for maybe 25 billion 20 years ago,
21:51
up to like 800.
21:53
Part of it is just the fact that we have much bigger government spending and
21:56
bills have to be paid in a larger amount.
21:59
And that requires and generally have a bigger balance in your checking account.
22:03
So in a nutshell, there you go.
22:05
That's the balance sheet.
22:06
Enjoy. I hope you sleep well, Tom.
22:08
>> Jon Hartley: All right, very good.
22:09
Tremaine will be sleeping safely at home knowing that we'll have a big balance
22:13
sheet for quite some time at least.
22:16
So, debt and deficits.
22:19
I want to talk a little bit about this because it's something that gets
22:22
talked about a lot.
22:24
So one, I think the debt to GDP ratio in the US has now passed 100%.
22:29
There's often criticism of continued deficits is more of a fiscal
22:33
policy question than a monetary policy one.
22:36
But in my mind, despite all the haranguing about debt and deficits,
22:40
the 10 year yields maybe 4.2%, the 30 year yields about 4.9%.
22:45
They've been much higher in decades past.
22:48
Do you think the federal debt is something that the American people should
22:50
be concerned about?
22:51
What do you think about?
22:53
>> Christopher J. Waller: Yeah, so I mean, typically the thing is, is with deficits,
22:56
we're running about in the last few years and it looks like this year as well,
23:01
we're going to be running deficits of about 6 to 7% of GDP.
23:05
Typically that number should be closer to 3 to be what we would say as economists,
23:10
as economists, what would be sustainable going forward.
23:15
So if you're running 6% deficits as part of your total national income.
23:19
When I say gdp, it's our national income as a group.
23:23
You're incurring a lot of debt given what your income is.
23:26
That's what the debt to GDP ratio means.
23:28
Now, the thing with the debt is it's gonna be
23:32
potentially paid off hundreds of years into the future.
23:37
We can pay it off as a country.
23:39
End of the life of the country in some sense.
23:43
So you can spread out the repayment of that debt over decades,
23:48
it doesn't have to be all at once.
23:51
But you can't just continue to run these kind of deficits for 100 years, 200 years.
23:56
It just doesn't quite work out.
23:58
So while it's not of Problem per se.
24:01
Today it's not on a sustainable path.
24:04
And at some point they don't have to be reigned in.
24:06
I don't tell Congress how to either rein it in by cutting spending or raising tax.
24:11
That's not my job.
24:12
And I don't, that's, I leave them to do that so
24:14
they don't bother me on interest rates.
24:18
But I mean that's just, this is just kind of arithmetic.
24:21
If you don't get the spending deficit down, your debt's going to grow, grow,
24:25
grow, grow as part of your income.
24:27
And at some point markets are going to stare at it and say, look,
24:31
I'm not financing that anymore, I'm going to, or I'll finance it, but
24:35
at a very high interest rate.
24:37
And that's what we've seen around the world when some countries get to very high
24:41
debt limits.
24:41
The exception always being Japan.
24:44
Japan has a 250% debt to GDP ratio and they have interest rates close to zero.
24:52
So obviously something either people believe Japan will pay this off over
24:56
a thousand years.
24:57
They've been around for a couple thousand years.
25:00
Maybe that's their long civilizations are more tolerant of what they're willing
25:04
to incur.
25:05
So that's just been a position I've taken.
25:08
We're not on a sustainable path.
25:10
It doesn't mean we're in any kind of trouble now.
25:11
But at some point we're gonna have to get some sort of fiscal discipline and
25:15
I don't like Congress figure out how to do that.
25:18
>> Jon Hartley: One question, also non-monetary policy related question,
25:22
really just on payments and I guess finish regulation.
25:25
So for those that aren't aware, on top of managing monetary policy,
25:29
the Federal Reserve also focuses on regulating banks,
25:33
also managing the payment system.
25:35
Chris spends a lot of time in his own capacity managing sort of the payments
25:39
part of the portfolio.
25:40
I'm curious, can you tell us what's been going on in the payments space during your
25:44
tenure and how things, how things have been changing?
25:47
The Genius act was just passed.
25:48
That changed a lot for stablecoins and that space.
25:53
But there's a lot going on in this space.
25:55
Could you explain to the layman here what's going on behind the scenes and
25:59
what you've been working on in the Fed?
26:01
>> Christopher J. Waller: Yeah, if you thought the balance sheet was boring,
26:03
wait till you start talking about payments.
26:06
So I'm the payments oversight governor.
26:08
I oversee the U.S. payment system.
26:10
And 25 years ago if you'd said payments and who's doing payments,
26:14
you'd think of some guy in a green visor and a pad and a pencil.
26:18
But it's actually become one of the hottest tech jobs in the world because all
26:23
of this stuff is moving into more technology and
26:26
it's being handled by non banks, fintechs, everything.
26:30
Stablecoins is a new form of a payment instrument that's come about from
26:35
the crypto world.
26:37
Just cuz I said crypto, don't get scared, it's just a stablecoin,
26:41
which is a promise.
26:42
You give me a dollar, I'll give you this digital dollar, and if you bring it back,
26:45
I'll give you your dollar back.
26:47
It's really no different than a bank account at that point.
26:49
I give a bank a dollar, I come back and ask for my dollar,
26:52
they give me the dollar back.
26:54
But what it does is it opens up a new set of payment rails in
26:59
the US through the crypto world.
27:02
They don't run on Visa, MasterCard, they don't run on the bank rails,
27:05
they don't run on the Fed Rails.
27:08
And that just, for me,
27:09
that just introduces competition in the payments world.
27:11
And what that means is this should drive down payment costs for
27:15
all of us so that we can make payments across each other,
27:18
cross borders, cross everything at a much lower cost.
27:22
And my view is let everybody that wants to get in this business do it as long as they
27:27
follow whatever regulatory structure we put in the Genius Act,
27:30
Banks should be allowed, non banks should be allowed, but
27:33
it all has to fit within the clear regime that we set up.
27:37
The Genius act is a great start, but it's never going to be perfect.
27:41
Right out of the gate.
27:42
We're going to learn there's going to be some issues, some problems, but
27:45
we'll fix them as we go.
27:47
And that's, that's the critical thing.
27:48
We're not going to just shut everything down because we're afraid somebody might
27:52
lose a dollar or somebody might get scammed,
27:54
somebody might lose money in their assets.
27:57
You just have to take risk.
27:59
And that's, that's what we're going to do.
28:00
That's how economy grows and gets better as you take risk.
28:03
If you don't want to take risk, you can become Europe.
28:06
So sorry, my European friends.
28:12
>> Jon Hartley: Well, I know Miami,
28:13
I think in many respects thinks of itself as the capital of, of crypto.
28:17
So I'm sure there's many in the crypto world who, who are very thrilled that
28:20
you're here and talking about payments and, and stablecoin issues.
28:24
My last question for you is, is related to college football this week.
28:29
College football.
28:30
Man, I'm getting.
28:32
>> Christopher J. Waller: Is starting again this week.
28:34
>> Jon Hartley: And it just so happens to be the case that Notre Dame is playing
28:38
Miami University of Miami Hurricanes this week, actually here in Miami this weekend.
28:45
I know, Chris.
28:46
I know you're a big Notre Dame fan, as am I, actually.
28:49
Any thoughts on this weekend's game?
28:51
I mean, how many points do you think Notre Dame for him by?
28:54
And keep in mind here, you've got many Miami Hurricane fans probably in
28:58
the crowd here, but any thoughts here?
29:01
>> Christopher J. Waller: All I ever say when I'm in enemy territory,
29:04
I just hope for a good game.
29:06
>> Jon Hartley: Very good.
29:06
Very good.
29:08
Well, Chris, I wanna thank you for coming to the Economic Club Miami and for
29:12
appearing in the special live taping of the Capitalism Freedom of the 21st
29:16
Century podcast.
29:17
I hope that Notre Dame does better than they did in the the finals last year and
29:22
in 2012 when they played Alabama actually here for
29:25
the the championship then as well, which I think you were actually at.
29:30
>> Christopher J. Waller: I was at.
29:31
>> Jon Hartley: It's painful memories, but
29:32
hopefully this weekend it'll be a good game.
29:34
But Chris, thank you so much for coming.
29:35
This has been an amazing conversation.
29:36
Thank you everyone for coming.