 Welcome to the reason roundtable your weekly libertarian podcast from the magazine that has no plans to buy parlor I am Matt Welch joined by Nicholas B. Peter Suderman and a limping Catherine Mankey Ward Heidi ho y'all Howdy, hey Matt. Howdy. Howdy. Wow Monday. How do you know I am Monday happy? Catherine I was just down at before we get sorry. I was just down at Liberty con the annual conference sort of annual conference depending on the pandemic Hosted by students for Liberty and a lot of people were expressing worry and anxiety about you because you were Unexpectedly absent due to a horrific injury. What happened Catherine? Yeah well, so I was I was on an e-scooter Listening to Justin Amash's podcast When I hit a pothole and fell and absolutely broke my kneecap and now I can't walk or do anything I am podcasting from my bed Yeah, yeah Hearing you just if you're retracing your steps Where do you I don't I've no steps now I've nary a where do you see the decision matrix breaking down? Is it like just being in DC and thinking that riding scooters is okay? You know, I actually had an incredible parenting moment about this which is that I Was explaining to my kids what happened and they one of them said Oh, so like the problem is that the government didn't do a good job of paving the road and I was like, yes That is the problem if more roads had been private Maybe I would still have an e-cap It's a stretch, but that's what you know, I'm I'm just working with what I got here the I'm talking about this at Liberty con and we will get to the podcast here in a moment With reason colleagues Robbie Suave and Christian Brits ski And I was making the usual offensive cracks against people who ride scooters in DC They then got to their phones to show me all the damage. They've done to their face Robbie said something like I've been hit by a car five times Yeah, you guys are doing something They're so fun. I will ride again Matt. I will Only Only non-mechanized scooters back in late 1970s, California Like the ones the little kids wear now or blow right now and had tassels red white and blue tassels coming from the handlebars like Man Alright, we're gonna get to talking about voters Stubborn refusal to prioritize what Democrats and the media want them to But first a word from our sponsor donor's trust the tax-friendly way to simplify your charitable giving without compromising your values friends is Cancel culture coming for your charitable giving big banks are increasingly reluctant to allow charitable savings accounts or Donor-advised funds as they're formally called to direct money toward libertarian or conservative nonprofits The list of charities that have been recently rejected by big banks include the Atlas Network National Review Institute the National Rifle Association Foundation Liberty Council and others to help ensure that your dollars support your values Come to donors trust donors trust is built to serve people who want to put money behind their beliefs limited government and constitutional rights to learn more download of Prospectus at www.donorstrust.org Slash reason If you already have a donor-advised fund, please consider opening a rollover account That's www.donorstrust.org slash reason a line you're giving with your values visit donors trust or today You'll be glad you did. Okay. It's not just the waft of pumpkin spice in the air No, that pungent aroma is the smell of flop sweat coming from Democrats With three short weeks between now and the congressional midterm elections. Here's a fresh headline from this morning's New York Times Republicans gain edge as voters worry about economy times Sienna poll finds with elections next month independence, especially women are Swinging to the GOP despite Democrats focus on abortion rights Disapproval of President Biden seems to be hurting his party end quote Or as a more Caustic headline writer might put it this just in midterms are midterm sing There's been a bunch of polls out the past few days including an interesting Harvard Harris survey That can be crudely summarized as saying voters priorities are not the same as MSNBC's Catherine Why don't you lead us off in grabbing the interesting poll nugget of your choice and perhaps maybe Just tell us your level of enthusiasm preemptively as people get ready to blame the ladies once again for enabling fascism Oh, I didn't know I was gonna get the lady question right up top here. Yeah, I mean, you know, it's fair it's fair so I think that You know, I'm always torn on these poor results because on the one hand I love to have voters just generally be mad at whoever is currently in power because they are right to be mad at Whoever is currently in power on the other hand It is not going to be a solution to put this other batch of idiots in power like Republicans are not going to fix inflation Republicans are not going to make your pumpkin spice coffee cheaper and They don't have the power to do that for the most part now Of course policy matters and I did I would say the tidbit I liked the best from this poll Was the fact that all of the Biden Kind of stimulus payments support payments inflation offset payments all of those all of those payments are not polling Well, people are not saying like I that's really what I needed in this moment So they are both not electorally helpful for the people doing them and our counterproductive economically That's a that's a real win great work everybody But yeah, I think I don't think this is gonna be a blame the ladies cycle Do you I think I think it's gonna be I mean we're white women are bad I guess but but I think that this is definitely gonna be much more of a like very very classic The economy is bad the party in power is in trouble and as you say midterms or midterms thing this is The preemptive blame the ladies thing here's a little bit of a verbiage in the New York Times piece from today The biggest shift came from women who identified as independent voters in September They favored Democrats by 14 points now independent women backed Republicans by 18 points So like we're mad about abortion and now we're mad about inflation Yeah, and we're right to be mad about both those things so screw you Peter You brought the Harvard Harris poll to our attention. Thank you very much for that. What interested you there? So in that poll and in the New York Times poll I think what you're seeing is a weird kind of weird, but also in some ways predictable repeat of 1970s inflation politics and so I spent a couple of months earlier this year working on a big piece for the magazine about the The ways in which we are not exactly repeating the politics and policy mistakes of of the 1970s But it does feel like we're in some kind of like Trans synthwave remix of them, right? Like it's like the same stuff just in a different order and with a slightly different beat I mean, there's inflation and oil shocks. There's a foreign policy crisis or maybe several of them global disarray There's this sense that that crime is a real problem big liberal cities are a mess if you remember that dark weird speech that Biden gave where it looked like he was kind of addressing, you know The first order like the Empire in Star Wars and the whole thing was gloomy and kind of inexplicable and people were like What why is he doing this? Right? It was it was kind of sort of a version of the malaise speech It was like hey America We're in a dark place the malaise speech, which notably did not ever actually use the word malaise But the other thing you see looking at the 1970s and the politics of the 1970s the economy of the 1970s That is just really really apparent this morning in particular is that voters really really really do not like inflation and If you go back to the the polling on on issues and the debates that were happening between Carter and Reagan Or the one debate between Carter and Reagan before the 1980 election It was just far and away the number one issue going into the 1980 Presidential election voters were really mad about inflation and then like beyond inflation They would be like well, I'm also mad about the economy and about energy and you know what? Those are there's a kind of all the same thing and when it's when inflation is high It's just very difficult for incumbent politicians to deflect or shift blame and that's what Carter tried to do What Biden has tried you know to do as well. He's blamed Putin's price hikes the pandemic everything but Biden's policies and political leadership and the reason that politicians can't deflect blame is because rising prices are so Plain to see gas and food prices in particular are just incredibly visible on something like a daily basis To so many voters and I think that when people go to the polls in November more than anything else Maybe not maybe that's not the only issue that they're going to be voting on But in some ways inflation kind of captures all of the other issues It's the one data point and that's what is going to is going to decide this election more than any other single thing Nick, what do you see in those polls out there that is of particular interest to you? so in that the cap hair or Harvard cap Harris poll one thing that I found most interesting is less political but They ask people what are the most favorable Institute or what institutions? You have the most favorable opinions of and the top three by a lot are the US military Amazon and the police and and That in itself kind of suggests that like where the people are and where the media is are very divergent And which then has ramifications for a lot of coverage and a lot of the stuff that both Catherine Peter Peter were alluding to the other thing and this is from a summary of polls for ballot from Balapedia Trump and Biden basically have the same Unfavorable ratings or favorable ratings as as the other had at this time in their presidency But the difference was when in 2018 Something like 40% of Americans thought the country was going in the right direction now It's down to like 24% according to their averaging and that's a huge shift because if You know political scientists have have mapped the first term midterms for the president's party If the president is under 50% approval the average loss in the house is something like or the median loss is like 37 seats This is shaping up to be a really really bad house Outcome for the Democrats the Senate It's more interesting because the Republicans really in a lot of kind of walkover states where they should have been able When easily really have gone out of their way to Nominate just complete dumb dumps. So we'll see but it's not looking good for the Democrats It's really notable how much Democrats have just abdicated all of the economic issues to the Republican Party They're not talking about them or to the extent they are it's like I said It's it's Biden just blaming somebody else for problems or sort of saying well look at the the you know unemployment rate Which is which is quite low, but if you look at this poll the top five issues are number one is inflation Number two is economy and jobs number three is immigration number four is crime and drugs and number five is women's rights The first four of those are regardless of what we think you know about Republicans in immigration You know or or Republicans in crime the first four of those are all issues that Give Republicans an advantage and that Republicans have been playing up very heavily in advance of the vote Hey Peter in your research about inflation politics in the 1980 presidential race did Reagan specifically say what he would do to combat inflation or did he merely are you know kind of Say that he would fix it Because one of the things I agree with you know Biden has he's tried to blame everything else But he's also never said what he is going to do to fix it other than kind of will say like I'm going to Give people a lot of money and I think most people understand that that's not going to fix the problem That is the problem, but did Reagan specifically say you know I'm going to cut spending and you know push to increase You know interest rates while cutting taxes or did he just kind of say I would control things better than a mix of the two Somewhere in between I would say so he had an inflation plan that was and an economic plan that was built around tax cuts it was The numbers were honestly kind of dubious when you actually looked into how the plan worked out It was it was however something sort of specific But then when he was on the campaign trail and in particular when he was debating Carter Carter would say well look You know, there are all of these headwinds facing the country. We have you know in particular We've got global economic shocks that are just really messing with the price of oil that sort of thing And he would you know sort of say other you know, well, there are other problems, too We basically say the thing that you can't say as president even if it's kind of true This isn't really my fault and Reagan turned that around on him and Reagan just delivered this It quite effective again. I don't think perfectly accurate I could like quibble with a bunch of the things he said but incredibly effective response to Carter when they went at it on inflation Where it basically said you have blamed just about everything else. You've blamed the Federal Reserve You've blamed, you know Saudi Arabia and oil shocks. You've blamed Republicans you've blamed just what you what you have done what you haven't done is blame the government for The government itself and your policies and his and Reagan's sort of a summarize I don't have the quote right in front of me But what he came in sort of he finished this bit by saying the problem is that the government has been living too large and That that has made it hard for the people to live well And it was again, we could certainly quibble with the specifics I don't think that the inflation plan the economic plan that he put forward is you know, just like it was a Was unimpeachable At the same time What what he did was he turned around the question and said you can't blame everybody else You have to take responsibility for this and my my answer is don't make government the center of the solutions Catherine I want to invite you to react to a couple of quotes from our president Joseph Robin and Biden junior and you know in light of the accusation here from our colleagues that he hasn't really been saying Much of anything about about the economy inflation. So first one comes from a stop at a Baskin Robbins in Portland, Oregon Our economy is strong as hell That's the first one and then the second one is a is a tweet from Sunday That's thank you. That's such a good impersonation Real American genius second one is a tweet from Sunday if Republicans in Congress get their way Prices will go up and inflation will get worse and then a couple of little carriage return spaces and then at the bottom It's that simple. It is not it is not that simple Our economy is not strong as hell and it is not that simple. I don't know he seems wrong The thing about these like off-the-cuff Biden quotes is that they are almost indistinguishable from Carefully crafted Biden quotes like that's the thing that always blows my mind is like the dark Biden speech that Suderman was referring to earlier Had lines of equal poignancy and craft, you know, I mean it was just still Absolutely, like I will just assert stuff and you know what this reminds me of frankly is Donald Trump Who also would just like say things not back them up? Maybe not fully finish the sentence and then just hope for the best Um, it was like he was on a podcast all the time. It was like he was on a podcast all the time I mean we do that here, but like we're not the president of the United States for crying out loud Nick you were talking a little bit about the gap between media and voter concerns flip that a little bit like one of the things media is obsessed with and We frankly haven't talked about it as much maybe as we could have The january 6th hearings, right? Um, every day there's a new thing about This number of republicans half, I think roughly that are campaigning in midterms or for whatever offices are What media frequently calls election deniers and you know, every time you turn on cnn or msnbc You're going to hear the words january 6th and insurrection within the first 10 seconds And that's clearly not front of mind among most voters Um, but is there an argument and you know something like immigration is on the other hand Is there an argument to be made like well Well, it should be more front of mind and we're just doing our jobs to try to tell people what the important issues are Matt, I would love to answer that question But i'm still waiting on the final or actually the first invest investigation of what happened in Benghazi Hmm The permanent yeah, the permanent select committee on Benghazi is still and to be honest january 6th is a lot Like Benghazi where for the people who are into it. It is all that matters and the people who are insisting That this is you know the this rosetta stone of all the perfidy of the previous administration For a thousand years They're just writing themselves out of Relevance to to most americans January 6 was fucked up. It was stupid trump bears Some responsibility. Uh, it was not an insurrection. It didn't work the system held etc Trump shouldn't run for office again. He shouldn't be president. The republicans shouldn't do that all it Well, you can say all of that stuff Nothing is going to come out of that that is going to You know chain make it more important to people I think and and to your larger point. It's just that the media You know and in particular subsets of the media are are obsessed with it because that's where they are But it's not where people are And we've talked about this before this is january 6th continues to be the basket in which You know a certain a certain type of commentator and a certain type of voter Has kind of put all the eggs of like people are going to realize that trump is really bad And we just have to keep talking about this and they're going to realize that this is bad And it was really bad. I will say like january 6th was worse than mangasi definitely in my view But we don't need to we don't need to do that ranking for the most part Because neither of those things are going to make a dent in the views that the other side has about The main character are there. All right, let's shift gears a little bit There's a lot of social media stuff in the news. We like to talk about it here on this podcast There's reporting from the wall street journal just today that the insanely talented and perhaps talented Lee insane rapper entrepreneur and anti-semitic conspiracy theorizer Kanye West is set to buy the freewheeling platform parlor Which fun fact is owned by the husband of conservative grifter kandace Owens Who's been palling around with Kanye West? Where the two of them wearing matching white lives at matter t-shirts and yes every single word I just said in the previous sentences would have been completely Indicivable to me 10 years ago. All this comes in the heels of news last week, which we covered a lot at reason From the internet 1.0 money service paypal Announced that they were going to start deducting $2,500 fines From users who were deemed by paypal To be spreading quote-unquote misinformation After an outcry including from the foundation for individual rights and expression They rebranded the online payments processing company Backtracked somewhat saying well, we're only going to find you and deduct from your accounts if you do intolerance um, peter to uh paraphrase The talking heads what the hell is going on? Uh with social media and is this all just an expression of the beautiful marketplace of private censorship that you've been advocating All along I mean after all the things we've been through I mean after all the things we got into I know some things that you ain't told me I did some things, but that's the old me Wow That happened, huh? Yeah, so that's uh, that's Kanye West over a decade ago in uh, the great song heartless on what is probably my favorite Kanye West album 808s and heartbreak Massively underrated maybe not his actual best, but my favorite. I don't know man I don't what is what what opinion are we supposed to have about my opinion about Kanye West is always and forever? Give me a new album. That's it um The question was about social media uh, peter. Uh, I was wondering if you could reflect on that But he's right. So Kanye West wants to buy a social media company. Elon. What Elon musk is buying twitter Uh, this this if nothing else this shows us that these things aren't That are that the the arrangements of social media power Is not stable right and so we have spent the last decade or so Having debates in congress sometimes and certainly it's pretty sort of major parts of our political and cultural discourse about Whether facebook and twitter are like so big that they will never ever Uh, you know sort of be dislodged from their positions and look facebook is like flailing into the metaverse Mark zuckerberg is really really happy that he added legs This is this is i'm not making this up. There was like a whole like a day-long press conference Yes, katharine. This is for you mark zuckerberg has solved your problem katharine Which is that your avatar needs functional legs and mark zuckerberg is like here functional legs Thanks, buddy. This is this just ridiculous this whole this app this whole thing that's the the political debate We have been having about how these things are monopolies about how they should basically be, you know sort of public utilities quasi arms of the government that like elizabeth warren and josh holly Should get together to decide exactly which posts or misinformation disinformation Or or either just sort of bad speech that they don't like about whether these things should be subsidized Owned by the federal government nationalized whatever it is It's all dumb. It's all dumb because someday elon musk or khanye west is going to wake up and think Maybe i'll just buy one and then what's going to happen after that. We don't know We have no idea at all and that's how the market works is we don't know how it will evolve We just know that it will and so any theory of Any industry but especially one that is so important as as the speech industry as the As the allowing people to say things online industry Any industry like any theory of that industry that says actually we've we've hit The the final form of it, right? This is the end of social media history and nothing will ever come after this That theory is always wrong nick uh first do it commend listeners to go check out your great talk with elie lake about all things khanye Um, I want to play our every podcast Matt and nick talk about do you remember when uh, or i'm old enough to remember when maybe Who's scared who's scared do for uh This better be about my space It's about pay it's about paypal my space We are old enough to remember when paypal was a super libertarian newfangled alternative To all them fuddy duddy payments processing system And who remind me matt who uh, who were the two big wigs of paypal. It was peter teal And then some other dude. Oh some kind of rusky. Whatever happened. I have uh But yeah, uh, can you just sort of reflect on that as like a a symbol of how many institutions Including, you know online only institutions have just absolutely devolved from their original purpose and ethos Yeah, you know another one, uh that came up around the same time was skype Which was going to revolutionize and empower the world Uh with free audio, uh free video calls, uh, which it kind of did but the guys who created skype Uh were swedish originally they moved to estonia, but they um, you know, they Uh put out a manifesto about how this was going to change the world skype is now on by microsoft Um, so not quite and you know, it has gotten its ass kicked by zoom and a couple of other things But I kind of missed that era, you know when paypal was going to bring You know, it was going to be a new form of e-commerce that was going to you know, it had a lot of it It was kind of had a lot of whiff of bitcoin pre bitcoin But it's not that way anymore. I want to introduce into the conversation just the concept Of what rob long who some of us know he does a lot of podcasts. He was the head He was the showrunner of cheers for a while rights for national review and commentary and other places, but He was telling me recently that um, you know, the ambulatory psychotics Uh that we see walking around the streets of cities like new york la in san francisco How would not have now jumped to the highest levels of power and he's talking about like trump biden and kanye west That they are ambulatory psychotics and like he's not sure whether this is like the ultimate triumph of the disabled Or a sign that we're going down the drain, but I like the phrase ambulance. Uh, that's that's that's a keeper kathryn For changing i'm going to read you a tweet. Um, this one comes from Thanks official, uh, the twitter account of the house judiciary GOP Okay, um, so the GOP public and party house judiciary Your committee, uh, this is from october 6th. So pretty recent and it's still up there Three words each with a period at the end ready kanye period elon period trump period How do you respond? First of all great lead dramatic opener. I like it Not sure that that level of literary achievement has previously been seen in that venue Um, right. So I think there's this always always there's this weird thing in this conversation where it's like members of congress Are like Here's the thing we're really worried about a small number of weirdos having a lot of control over things and it's like my guys It's you Like it's literally you I don't like I just don't understand how straight-facedly you can make this argument Like an elite cabal of unusual characters is is going to be in charge of what people can think or do or say Like it's you the call is coming from inside the house But they're a duly elected by up to 25 percent of the people they claim to represent this morning mad about inflation Are going to choose them. So I guess it's fine like I so there's that there's just like my basic, you know if your worry is Elite control like congress is not the place to solve that but also You know, I do I do think though. I actually remain fairly staunchly in the You know the the winds of creative destruction are going to continue to sweep through the social media Sector and we're going to be fine. I do think there is there is a possibility for a bad equilibrium here That we should be trying to avoid and that is one in which We have de facto control over what speech is or isn't allowed, but it is done through the mechanism of the decision makers at social media companies either trying to guess What the politically powerful want them to do or being told informally by the politically powerful what to do Who's allowed to speak on what terms they're allowed to speak? And that all happens sort of one layer of remove from where anyone can see it Either shareholders or the voting public and I think that that is a concern And I think this is like a classic example of a place where We're sort of crossing into Maybe a new ish form of cronyism like it's a new ish form of kind of collaboration between big business and big government in a way that Does harm consumers? I think there are a couple ways out of it One is just to you know to demand that their you know that users demand more transparency And I think that that is already happening You know people can defect from products that they don't like Regardless of their knowledge about where exactly the sources of those bad decisions come from and then also that we should you know Ideally be electing public officials who don't think that it's their business to sort of pressure or ultimately coerce Social media companies about what you know what they're supposed to do, but I think there is a there is a kind of Temporary probably unstable, but nonetheless pernicious equilibrium that we seem to be headed towards and I would like to avoid it I don't exactly know how Your your press release that you just read there is going to help with that problem Because the more that these individuals who own social media companies or who have big decision-making power in social media companies feel targeted You know, they're going to break different ways Like some of them are going to break jack and be like screw you guys I do what I want and then retire and some of them are going to give in for the sake of Maintaining the viability of their commercial enterprise. I would add before we leave the topic Come in people to check out a report by the Kato Institute A week or two ago about What they call jaw boning where the federal government various agencies or politicians Go after try to breathe heavily on Social media companies and other people to try to de-platform various people including pretty famously alex barons and the kind of a coveted skeptic um It was kicked off twitter or other places Both jake obsolom and ravi swab apron about this a lot And it is an increasing and still kind of too little probably a disgust Factor in our political life right now governments telling people to Kick people off their platforms. It's bad. They shouldn't do that. All right We're going to get to our listener email of the week here momentarily but first A word from our sponsor better help friends When you're weary feeling small Depressed by the ever shrinking days overwhelmed by all that life is throwing at you Do you focus more on the problem or on the solution stressful situations often produce fight or flight reactions? But that's no way to get through every day In this thing called life We need instead to train our brains into becoming problem-solving machines That is where better help.com comes in better help is customizable online therapy super convenient and affordable I'm ready right now to set you up with a professional counselor to help organize your noggin To become an organ that assists rather than a system that overloads. Here's what you do Go to betterhelp.com slash round table fill out a brief questionnaire Match up with a licensed therapist and you'll already get 10% off your first month. You don't like your first match You can get another and so on and so on. That's better plp Dot com slash round table go there today. You'll be glad you did okay reminder And and send whatever lend men to your queries to round table ad reason dot com This one comes from jd brennan in seattle He writes Noah smith makes an interesting case which he links below that the tarp bailouts. That's the troubled asset Relief program. See here. Remember that bailouts avoided a second great depression What say you round table kathryn? I don't know. I guess we give those guys a Nobel prize. So that's something. Um, yeah, like this actually is a really hard question because Um Everyone who's smarter than me on this stuff seems to think that that sentence is kind of true Um, which is interesting to me like I take that seriously when there's broad consensus about this sort of thing my um, you know My question is just always what is the long-term consequence? I think that you can both Have saved the world from a great depression and maybe Uh in the long run have done Serious damage that has yet to be fully appreciated But that's me taking refuge in first principles at like a very Cowardly level and I don't have a great answer to this question today Nicholasby, what's your answer? No, I don't think uh, the the choices are in between a second great depression Or the policy was perfect or something like that and there's no question that the tarp Program did not uh, you know, it didn't target the activity that it was intended to do It didn't necessarily save a lot of businesses. It almost certainly hampered the recovery Um, so I think that I think that's wrong, you know, the government did a lot of different things We didn't have the decline. We didn't have the depression that we had in the 30s for a wide variety of different reasons, including the you know, the fact that National currencies are much more linked. They're based against each other and things like that the economy is very different So no Peter, you are both a tarp critic and obviously A dc status. What's your answer? So I think there were a lot of mistakes made in response to the great recession and the biggest to my mind was uh Was actually aura the the obama stimulus the fiscal Policy response, which is just really badly targeted all throughout at very best I think you can make a case that tarp worked in a narrow sense and on its own terms that by injecting liquidity into the banking system It kept the banking system from total collapse from uh from sort of failures spreading from one bank to another And that unlike the obama fiscal stimulus, which was very expensive The cost of taxpayers was basically zero because the money was all repaid Even if you can argue about exactly whether the the rates that it was repaid at should have been higher and some of this sort of thing but I would say to that case Um, I have a couple of responses. First is that counterfactuals are just hard Inherently difficult. We just don't know what would have happened in the absence of tarp. Second is that there are serious legal and sort of Executive branch authority questions about tarp Um, this was at minimum of an extremely novel policy It was put together in like just a couple of days gave treasury the treasury department a kind of Unlimited power with not a whole lot of oversight and that created its own problem So again, not when I say not a whole lot of oversight. I don't mean zero But it wasn't like there were sort of folks from congress in their, you know Watching over day-to-day decisions and so there were congressional oversight reports that were released And I I want to be clear. This is not like the republican congressional oversight Reports, right? Elizabeth Warren was a channel was a panel member and I was looking at some of the reports Over the last day, you know in response to this reader's question and the second one Starts pretty much from the beginning and it just says the panel still does not know what the banks are doing with taxpayer money That's Elizabeth Warren and Jeb Henserling together saying we have no idea What treasury is doing with hundreds of billions of dollars treasury places substantial emphasis in its letter From December on the importance of restoring confidence in the marketplace But so long as investors and customers are uncertain about how taxpayer funds are being used the question They question both the health and sound management of all financial institutions So It was a plan to give the treasury all the power and hope that worked Now maybe Maybe you can say that it worked in this one case that ben Bernanke had studied the great depression And that we got lucky because there was a guy who actually really knew what he was doing there for once Do we think that that's a sustainable plan going forward? Do we have maybe one or two other examples of that sort of plan going badly? So I think at minimum it was sold poorly It didn't really help ordinary homeowners and it set a bad precedent because even if you accept that it worked this one time It created really terrible incentives because it was with the reason it really didn't help ordinary homeowners was at heart It was a bailout for banks and what it basically said was hey banks If you get big enough that your that your continued operations are We consider them sort of like deeply integral to the functioning of the us macro economy Then if you're ever like if it ever looks like maybe you're going to fail The u.s. Government is going to step in and make sure that you don't That is a very bad incentive going forward. I'd like to Provide a little bit of a context that sometimes gets lost as people present this as a Either prevent the great depression or not. This is what george w bush then president believe it or not said in september 2008 I forget whether this is right before the first vote on tarp or before the second but at any rate um People were panicking in washington people like michael bloomberg were saying it doesn't matter what we do We just need to do something Etc etc confidence. This was a you know a widely respected respected opinion the david brooks is the world We're all saying it doesn't matter. We just need to do something. Here's what george w bush said What would happen if we did not pass tarp? Hmm more banks could fail including some in your community The stock market would drop even more which would reduce the value of your retirement account The value of your home could plummet foreclosures would rise dramatically And if you own a business or a farm you would find it harder and more expensive to get credit More businesses would close their doors and millions of americans could lose their jobs Even if you have good credit history It would be more difficult for you to get the loans you need to buy a car or send your children to college And ultimately our country could experience a long and painful recession All of that happened All of the things that we needed to pass tarp to prevent because it wasn't we're going to have another great depression It was we're gonna have that that i'm pointing at my computer that i just read to you We did have all of that In direct answer to the listeners question like kathryn. I don't know um i It's the the counterfactual is impossible to do but i can tell you what Many people including at reason And very thoughtful and detailed ways at the moment struggling with the world going crazier all around Predicted would happen if you do this Predicted that you'd be creating moral hazard. That's true Predicted that such amounts of Of government spending would uh, eventually cause or sooner rather than later Cause the government to grow so high that it would put a drag on long-term growth We'd go from the two to three percent that we'd enjoyed For decades to more like one to two percent and that's a huge difference. That all turned out to be true A whole bunch of of negative side effects including after a brief blip of austerity politics in the tea party wave including that There's basically you had blown to smithereens any sense of the restraints on federal spending which we have If we're being very honest about it that's gone created authorities Just random out of thin air like oh tarp means that we can take over the car industry. Sure Um, even though they specifically, uh tried to pass a bill doing that and it was voted down So those kinds of authorities in the and sense that the federal government could do anything it wants in a moment of crisis Hmm. Has that come up since? Um, yes, it has a couple of times a couple of times we had during the pandemic It's worth pointing out a thousand times for some reason I was at the cdc. I I'm still I can't believe it was telling people that they can't Kick people out if they don't pay their rent kathryn talk over me, please I would be delighted to um, no, I was just gonna say I think there is a counter counterfactual I guess where we would have gotten to that place Whether or not tarp had happened that is the the kind of factors that contributed to our politicians and our political culture being ripe for the Overreach essentially that tarp was If we hadn't done it then we would have done it in the next crisis. Um, that's a very dark vision I suppose from a libertarian perspective, but that basically We were we were already as a country in a place where we were We were one crisis away from just letting loose, you know, infinite spending essentially infinite emergency powers And that we had already done that in many areas including national security And so this was just a natural next step and tarp happened to be it, but it would have been something Um, and that that still puts us in this same bad place, but doesn't necessarily mean that Um, you know tarp was what uncorked it one thing to also watch which we did in real time at reason as well is that um, brock obama after becoming president and you look at the his speech craft in Um, uh early 2009 over and over again. Uh, he would keep saying things like, uh, you know When I took office we were the entire global financial system was on the verge of a meltdown Um, it's not true. He took office in january of 2009 meltdown to the extent of which it was hanging over everyone's head Was in the fall of 2008. It seems like that's a splitting hairs. It's not Because he used that to pass the aforementioned, uh, stimulus And uh, and also to uh, look backwards and bathe in a holy glow the decisions that his administration took or the ones that they kept from the bush Uh administration preceding and make it seem like um, it was more Uh dynamic dramatic, uh At the time than it actually was in real time. Um, the banks weren't melting down in march of 2009 In april 2009. Um, so when people use the framing of we avoided the great reset a great depression 2.0 That really wasn't The stakes being set out at the time. So watch it when people are are kind of uh retrofitting The stakes of a crisis backwards. Um, they might be right. I'm open up to that possibility But they're also rewriting what the stakes felt like at the time It's worth pointing out. All right. Uh, very briefly, uh, before we get to our end of podcast cultural recommendations Uh, I just wanted to Uh highlight the fact that today october 10th. No, it's October 10th 17th. What are these days? Who knows if I don't have my google calendar in front of me nick? I just it's really hard Uh, anyways, it's the uh anniversary of the authorization of the use of military force in iraq 20th anniversary in 2002 Um, which was a mistake At the time we shouldn't have used military force shouldn't have authorized it. Um, and led, uh, it's the legal Justification for the iraq war all of it terrible mistake, um And uh, also it should be repealed and there's more movement of foot uh in the house and the senate To repeal it instead of keeping an open-ended Authorization for force that's used in all kinds of matters that have zilchow to do with its original intent Um all aumf. So there's still ones in the books from eisenhower administration. I think it's like 1957 There's like an open-ended one because we were worried about like communism in the middle east Um, we still kind of can use. Um, there are uh, barbara lee has some peter mayer has some uh various Bills out there to repeal these aumf some rand paul has been in favor of that should be done Congress should do that. That's my editorial for today. All right. Let's go to our, uh, end of podcast what we have been Consuming the cultural arena kathryn besides pain killing drugs. What have you been consuming? You know, i'm gonna just go all in and say uh, the justin amash podcast Which is again What I was listening to when I went as overtake at all. It was not justin amash's It's so good. It hurts. Would you say it's so good? It hurts. I was listening to the Matt Fuller episode actually, which is very good because I was meant to be interviewing amash about the ways in which congress is broken Matt Fuller is a congressional reporter. I thought hey, I missed this one. I'll listen to this one. So Um, but in preparation for this interview, I was listening to several of them and it's a good podcast guys If you like this podcast, you are almost certainly gonna like that one. Um, and uh, you know, this of course Justin amash always and forever represents the greatest challenge to my Uh, my deep belief that all politicians are garbage and will disappoint you in the end Um, I sort of can't help but remain hopeful that uh, that justin amash's story will come out with the happiest of endings Uh, in which he becomes I don't know president of the united states failing that though He has a pretty good podcast and you should listen to it But I mostly want to put a request here. Um, I I'm gonna have some free time to consume some media And I would love recommendations from uh, from podcast listeners You know, I sometimes get these anyway, and I'm always super super grateful for them But I need them now more than ever. Um, my one plan is to consume absolutely everything in the expanse series both books and The show but Suderman has already talked enough about those and so I will not talk about that much on this podcast other recommendations would be Very welcome, especially something that's like a little bit funny. I would like some some funny. Thank you Uh, I recommend Catherine that you can start at any time in your life You should start listening to music music is great. No deal. It's art for the ears Thank you for that very insightful analysis Matt. You won me over for music There's a there's a backstory to that. I'll tell you someday involving communism Catherine were you fiddling with your phone when you uh, or I mean were you distracted while you were No, I mean, I was distracted by Justin and Masha's dulcet tones. I guess but no, I was I it was a little bit It was a little bit damp out And uh, and so maybe um, we can blame puddles, but we cannot blame my phone Nick, what have you been consuming? So you mentioned Eisenhower at least once today Matt, but I consume this great Exhibition in a coffee shop in uh, in new york near town square park night street espresso Which bizarrely is on the intersection of 10th street and avenue b But it's called 20th century artifacts from another timeline by an artist named john tabo And there'll be a link where you can see it in instagram But basically, uh, what the guy does is he imagines a different timeline from the one where you are In where in the late fifties when um, eisenhower had a heart attack As a result his doctor, you know takes care of him and then Suggests that he take lsd in order to kind of calm his anxiety about death after that and then There's an alternative timeline including where he uh, he doses richard nixon as well who becomes president in 1960 because he's no longer like a bitter Horrible man and and things just go off in a different direction. Uh, it's very funny. Uh, it's very clever Um, I disagree with some of you know, the the places where john who I know slightly Wants to go with things, but it's really great and it's an imaginative exercise in you know, imagining an alternative future, which is in fact a way of a man or you know, an Uh, imagining an alternative present, which is a way of imagining a Alternative future matt you'll like this in particular. Uh, you know lsd In the 1950s particularly was used heavily to treat alcoholism And one of the subtexts of this series is that mickey mantel Takes lsd in the fifties and ends up having like a 35 year career As a result and ends up with the houston astros Yeah, um in like the 70s So it's it's it's a very inventive very funny very clever and I think very uh, you know low-key inspiring Kind of way to think about stuff and it it overlapped with the horizons conference, which is the oldest and longest running psychedelic conference, um that it's been going on for about 15 years where Business people are interested in this researchers and then culture critics and what not all get together in new york in the fall So 20th century artifacts from another timeline by john tabo It's really clever funny and inspiring. It sounds like one of my favorite Painting exhibitions I've ever attended about 20 years ago in la and I forget the guy's name. I'll look it up um, but uh, it was uh scenes included really large like, uh, uh very, uh, active Paintings about the war between northern california and southern california Yeah, um, and it's just it's fantastic and then breaks your brain in a lot of different ways There's a shift if I may just quickly uh in new york, and I think I did this two weeks ago Wonderland dreams, which was an immersive art project. This is kind of like that I mean, it's much more interactive than a typical kind of art thing and there's a shift going on I think it's particularly intensified post covet of making art much more of an interactive process and whatnot And I think that's all to the good because that's how we should be consuming all art anyway um, but you know this this kind of um Turn really foregrounds the creation of meaning and possibility and kind of inspiration from art So more power to it. Peter. What have you been consuming? I watched werewolf by night a marvel comics special On disney plus so a comic book guys out there. I know there are some in our audience Uh, we'll remember one shots Uh, which is a just single issue stories not really connected to anything else They're kind of out there often out of uh the continuity or sort of not directly related to the sort of mainline continuity of a comic book Or a character kind of fun little footnotes or side quests typically small ball Stories not big epics, but they were often some of the most fun things that marvel released as a result because they didn't bear the weight of The you know sort of the mainline story and that is what werewolf by night is it's a 50 minute marvel comics one shot In tv movie form. It's in black and white Now they originally shot it in color and like made it black and white afterwards and added digital grain So it looks kind of goofy but It's kind of a tribute to the william castle school of cheesy schlocky horror films and it's it's just really fun Right. So the story is a bunch of monster hunters gathered together to hunt a monster With the blood stone and there's an appearance by man thing You know who also known as giant sized man thing. Although in this case, they only refer to him as ted Because that's he's not called man thing at all in the the show And it's just it's sort of amusing and silly and it doesn't take itself seriously But also isn't like a a self-aware parody of this sort of thing either It's there's just the right amount of comic book Werewolf monster movie schlocky earnestness, you know for a werewolf movie it gets kind of hairy inevitably But it's pretty good So I'm gonna make kathryn feel even worse um, I saw One of the most moving pieces of art um that I I have seen in a long time um, and it's also something that The vast majority of people listening will have zero access to so I'm now exercising my libertarian privilege Um, which is to say uh while I was down in florida. I traveled to the house of american hero bob pool reasons long-standing Saviour Transportation policy Chieftain uh and so forth uh lives over in fort lauderdale. I'm not going to give his address yet um, but bob has been known uh over the years to have an elaborate Model railroad set of his own design. Um, and I'd heard about this I've heard tell whispers But he and uh his now wife lu. Um, they were a contractual arrangement for a long time. Um Uh invited me to their house and uh and after appropriate proceedings And you know, I was made to follow the rules about what happens when you go in three-car garage converted into a incredible like diorama panorama 12d. It's not really Model railroad capturing of the year 1956 on a line That's a steady incline from the glendale narrows part of los angeles to santa barbara including stops in burbank and uh in the simi valley and various places and passes and uh street scenes and and uh Did we go to glendale? I forget if we go to glendale. Um, but in the narrows certainly um, I just words can't describe He's spent 20 they have spent but mostly bob spent 20 years designing Tinkering with creating little Trees with in baking them by hand with little orange trees because there's still some agricultural scenes in the valley Back then uh, just a remarkable feat of engineering of dedication of obsession From someone who like all good libertarian policy analysts advocates heavily against Uh foolish, uh train projects such as the ongoing high speed rail disaster in california Among other places and just loves trains loves loves loves trains and uh, and it it's remarkable If there's any way of those some of you who are listening know bob Um, I would find find yourself in fort lauderdale if I get yourself to miami Sweet talked man It's designed totally for the space. It'll never be seen elsewhere you unless someone You know pays 25 million dollars for a helicopter and just moves it somewhere It's not going to be shown in the museum. It is museum caliber. It's still not finished, but it's getting close Just remarkable Very moving like american ingenuity and folk art at its best. I love it. Nick. Have you ever seen the uh the situation I saw an earlier iteration of it when bob and lou lived in uh, los angeles In the uh early to mid 90s In a house that uh, mr. William shatner who you may have heard of used to um How's the swimming pool speaking of shatner? Yeah, no, you know, I think drained filled with sand As a health precaution. It's not funny, but it's yeah, that's where we are right now. Um anyways shout out to bob and uh, and uh, and and uh, you know ingenuity art and stick toitiveness It's beautiful. Catherine. Do you want to express your sadness that you've made bad decisions? Do you know life? I don't want the podcasters to hear me crying. Fair enough. All right Uh, if you like uh things that we do here at reason go to reason.com slash donate See all of our podcasts including the reason interview with nick gillespie at reason.com Slash pocket's nick. Do you got some live ones coming up anytime soon some speakeasies? Uh, yeah, we do actually on november 3rd We're going to have the great art designer and graphic designer steve heller who wrote a memoir called growing up underground a history of counterculture new york This is a guy who started with the free press new york free press and screw magazine in the late 60s And then devolved into working for the new york times and teaching at the school for visual arts But he's a major uh a major figure in what Art particularly counterculture art and magazines look like But we're going to be talking to him at november 3rd and this week on the reason interview. It's a live Yeah, it's a live interview. We recorded with uh, richard reeves the author of a boys and men a great book from The brookens institution scholar. Beautiful. Thank you for that and thank you for listening. Send us your uh, your Emails, they've been great and interesting to thought provoking a round table at reason.com. Okay. Goodbye