The Fed, Inflation and Our Uncertain Economy — The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart

[00:00:00] John Stewart: but what is the track record over 30 years and in other words generally speaking the people that were setting monetary policy in the 90s in the 80s the projections that they're using to base these on [00:00:12] Austin Goolsby: are they generally accurate what's the what's the margin here they're the cleanest dirty shirt we have okay so i would say there actually is evidence that the feds forecasts were better than the private sector forecast but that doesn't make them good you know that doesn't make them [00:00:33] John Stewart: good then why us why are they all such dicks about it why hey everybody welcome to the weekly show uh podcast my name is john stewart i'll be hosting this week's episode it is tuesday july 14th we are heading into the semi-finals of the world cup uh coming uh tomorrow is going to be two i think incredible matches uh we are back at war with iran so the world is if the world is is stabilizing becoming uh more normal now the iran war will just be a a low-level fire that is just uh burning for years and years underneath the surface of the earth's mantle uh it is tuesday obviously lindsey graham passed over the weekend this won't air till wednesday who knows how many more of the assisted living facility we call our united states government how many more will fall till then but we're not going to talk about that this you know uh the new cpi report the new inflation report came out and it's uh creating ripples about what the fed might possibly do and it occurred to me that i have no idea how they do that what they do and how they do it and so i am very excited we are going to get inside scoop ladies and gentlemen not from a fed observer not from a bloomberg analyst no my friends from someone inside the belly of the beast inside the room where it happens a president of a regional fed chicago no less the great city of chicago they my friends have sent us one of their best representatives did he get to go see mulaney at wrigley field he might not have but a hell of a show that was if you were there but ladies and gentlemen let's get to our president of the chicago fed right now ladies and gentlemen what an exciting day on the weekly show podcast we welcome back an old friend a long lost pal uh a king of the world of economics austin goolsby who is now beyond all expectation the president of the federal reserve [00:02:47] Austin Goolsby: bank of chicago austin goolsby how are you sir john you thought they built the walls of the vault to keep [00:02:54] John Stewart: people like me out of here but it didn't work listen i thought for sure they did and to see you elevated to have uh uh to see you in the hallowed halls of the federal reserve of chicago how many presidents what is there 12 of you guys how many presidents of of regional feds are there oh i thought you meant [00:03:15] Austin Goolsby: ever at chicago yeah there's 12 reserve banks spread around the spread around the country did you run for president were you appointed how did this how did this work i was chosen each of those reserve banks is not a government agency they're a not-for-profit and they have a board of directors that's made up of kind of local ceos and civic leaders and bankers and the the non-banker board [00:03:43] John Stewart: members choose the presidents at each of the so this is what let me tell you something this is i can't even believe we've jumped in so hot and so fresh we're you know what we're not even dipping our toes [00:03:55] Austin Goolsby: we haven't even gotten to the federal reserve act of 1913 but when when we get to eccles the whole [00:04:02] John Stewart: place is going to explode uh we are we are diving right in so you've got this 12 uh regional feds and they're chosen by local leaders civic leaders and then that mixes with the board of governors and that is a more probably uh i not political but appointed by politically appointed those are [00:04:23] Austin Goolsby: politically by the senate and and each of those governors the thing that's confusing is those oh it's all awesome it's all confusing dc political appointees their their title is governor but they're kind of more like senators and the presidents are more like governors because we we're we're out and have a region the those those governors that are political appointees are appointed to 14-year terms and they're staggered because from the beginning they were trying to be as much as possible in a democracy they were trying to keep it independent from political interference and the feds independence is is a [00:05:08] John Stewart: necessary because why austin why well because people hate inflation that's the main reason that if you [00:05:17] Austin Goolsby: just look around economists before i have you you knew me before i was ever at the fed economists are basically unanimous that the central bank of the country needs to be independent from political interference because the incentives of the sitting government for the setting of interest rates you know what it is they're like cut the rates let the inflation come in the future that's right so they don't care if you just look at countries or times in this country when the central bank is not independent inflation comes raging back the job market is worth growth is worse and that's why fed independence is important it's not it's as i say it's not like we're the the fed is not getting a pirate flag or like putting a snake on there and and don't tread on me right we want to have our own stamps or something it's only because if you don't have central bank independence from from interference in setting the interest rate you get a lot of inflation and people hate inflation and the case study of that as always as is the case [00:06:26] John Stewart: study in any uh political discussion here richard nixon richard millhouse nixon uh you know what the tapes that kind of giving richard millhouse nixon he he said to the the veggie hey man i have an election coming up one that he was going to win by the way like 49 states to one yeah i don't even think mcgovern got his own state something crazy yeah no exactly but but the thing is [00:06:56] Austin Goolsby: that's the u.s test case i guess i would say there are a lot worse test cases sure um you know as you look around the world argentina that informs yeah look argentina weimar germany sure there there's not if the if this central government basically insists that the that the central bank monetize the debt uh to to pay for what the government's doing that that ends in tears and that that's why fed independence [00:07:29] John Stewart: matters and it does matter and but you bring up an interesting point monetize the debt and we'll get into that uh in a little bit because that got a little tricky in 2008 we're running through it all awesome we're we're hitting all the i haven't talked to you in so long and it's it's so exciting uh we're gonna we're gonna grab all the hits there uh so they establish this now now the fed independence i don't even know if you're allowed to talk about this because you're as one of the presidents but obviously right now every president is going to try and influence at some level monetary policy and also congress is going to try and influence it through legislation let's let's face facts congress could change the dual mandate if they wanted to could they not isn't wasn't it a congressional act that made it so that the fed uh had those two mandates one to control inflation and one uh for maximum employment is that was that yes look everything you said is true now [00:08:22] Austin Goolsby: now you now you're out front you're dragging me as a caboose the dual mandate the whole thing come on baby let's do a mandate this all right the look the constitution says in there i'm not a constitutional expert but it says congress is the one who coins money so i kind of think that at the the root of the federal reserve act which is started in 1913 is the idea that congress coins the money and and is in charge of that they created the system the law says that what the fed does when it's setting the interest rate and that's all the when we go for monetary policy what the fed does at the federal open market committee is we go in a big huge table room giant table they does shade really down fomc fomc sits or literally sits around a big table literally around the biggest table how often every six weeks what and yeah every six weeks we go to washington dc the shades come down so nobody can spy it's like the situation room you got to leave your phone outside there's no devices in there and then it's the if you're econ nerd john it's the coolest room in in the world they're gonna just literally go around the table and they're gonna be like okay jay powell what do you think about the economy day one it goes two days now he's not fomc though isn't he board of governors or is board of governors part of fomc they're on it they're on it the fomc is a collection the 12 of us and the seven of them fomc is the [00:10:03] John Stewart: board of governors seven appointed members and then the 12 presidents uh of the regional feds that have been selected by regional uh civic and business leaders yes okay but now i'm gonna add one in the [00:10:18] Austin Goolsby: weeds and i already feel like punching myself all right for doing it but not all of the 12 are voting at any one time how many are only five of the 12 are voting so that it adds up to an even number which i still don't understand austin are you kidding me there are 12 voters at any given moment five from the banks and seven from the governor now do they do that to lessen the influence of the [00:10:48] John Stewart: non-political actors i think so i think so and who decided that it was that was that a congressional act [00:10:56] Austin Goolsby: yes yeah that's that's uh the banking reform act or 1934 or something like that but the the what's important is the idea so not to go back in the financial history but andrew jackson kills the second bank of the united states we have a national bank he kills it along with thousands [00:11:18] John Stewart: and thousands of other people but that's beyond that's beyond uh we're not going to talk about [00:11:22] Austin Goolsby: that with andrew jackson yes go ahead look i'm not disputing that and and and i thought you were saying by killing the national bank it killed a lot of people and that might be true because the panic of 1837 follows the shutdown of the national bank we then go for 70 years without a national bank panic of 1907 now that's where we went to morgan that's where we went to morgan exactly jp morgan himself yes in the panic of 1907 basically steps in as the lender of last resort to prevent the the what would be a great depression he backstops the united states government who who [00:12:09] John Stewart: has uh what you would consider there a liquidity crisis they have no money they have nothing to lend [00:12:14] Austin Goolsby: the government but it's more the i i think the story is kind of has an interesting wrinkle because he doesn't do that out of just gratitude for the nation sure they never do he backstops a series of financial institutions and he chooses his friends when he does it okay so and when the crisis comes you have to decide no no you guys are doomed it's we're not going to throw good money chasing after bad so he chooses the people that he likes and he's like okay i'm going to give you the loans and the ones he doesn't like they die wow congress creates the federal reserve act a because they want to have a lender of last resort and b they don't want to be beholden to one private individual choosing winners based on whatever criteria they want to choose the way jp morgan they want to choose they should get to you know in a way but they but they outline that it vested in a federal reserve system and importantly they're deeply uneasy in 1913 just as people are today that washington dc plus the banks on wall street are going to control the entire financial system of the united states with no input from the rest of the country and that is why they create 12 reserve banks spread around the country to represent and and and we have boards of directors made up of these regions and we aren't political appointees and we come to these fomc meetings with a totally different perspective than political appointees and and that actually even though it's kludgy even though yes we got five votes and they rotate in and out that actually was a stroke of genius and it's and it's a reason why the central bank the fed has existed for a hundred and whatever for 13 years and it wasn't shut down like the first and second banks of the united states were [00:14:33] John Stewart: folks i'm going to tell you something i i know a little secret about a lot of the folks that listen do you like animals i'm not going to stereotype you i'm not going to put 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for a limited time because you are a weekly show listener gets 60 off your first order plus free shipping and free treats for life when you head to smalls.com slash tws holy i don't even like saying this it's such a good deal one last time that's 60 off your first order plus free shipping and free treats for life when you head to smalls.com slash tws so let's say you go to this meeting it's every six weeks yes uh austin goolsbee is the president of the chicago fed so i'm assuming your purview is kind of the manufacturing center of the united states so to that point so you've got a san francisco uh fed and they're in charge of i guess growing weed i don't know what they do out there but something san francisco-y uh st louis uh yeah [00:16:57] Austin Goolsby: all all the the the boston new york there's kind of some crazy i guess that's the the speaker of the house and the majority leader were both from missouri and the federal reserve act i think kind of came down to one vote st louis and kansas city two of the 12 are in missouri right st louis kansas city atlanta so [00:17:18] John Stewart: they've got it it's it's all spread around so austin goolsbee's uh purview is now i would say all those uh probably what michigan is that do you represent the interest of manufacturing we got most of [00:17:32] Austin Goolsby: 90 percent of the economies of iowa michigan illinois indiana wisconsin heart of the midwest now importantly if you go look at the economy most of the economy in any place is kind of macro is the same everywhere it's the the the thing that is distinctive of chicago's district it is the most manufacturing intensive of all the districts you're quite right but manufacturing is still not the majority of the economy you're taking a macro view we're taking a macro view but it doesn't form when we've got into all the tariff discussions and liberation day of the seven most affected states by tariffs four of them are in my district in chicago so when i'm out talking to business people talking to civic leaders their hair is on fire i'm impervious to that but their hair is on fire and they they want to talk about supply chain they want to talk about if tariffs apply to their to their components and supplies how it's going to end up turning into inflation because their costs are going to go up and so i'll try to bring that when i go to the meetings i'll try to bring that that [00:18:53] John Stewart: perspective that the different research that that you've done so now everybody i'm assuming is doing that maybe not at the level that austin goolsbee is doing it because your your diligence and your tenacity is second to none and i am in the greatest of all the fed districts of all the fed districts and missouri is doubling up on everything everybody's but everybody is trying to do that everybody's trying to do that so so they all uh get together and it's every six weeks so i imagine the the nuance of it because economic conditions over every six week period are probably not that uh not that different certain storms can come in certain others but you're getting together the thing i want to ask is so everybody's got all this incredibly nuanced information about the economic conditions that are affecting their general regions but the fed really only has kind of the the more broad-based [00:19:51] Austin Goolsby: sledgehammer tool of interest rates no totally yes totally yes and only one one small part of interest rates so we set a overnight rate which affects short-run interest rates but okay okay a mortgage is like a 30-year mortgage and the determination of those long rates as they call it the market has a lot to say about that so what we do is important but as i described it's kind of like we're this big of the universe but oh boy in this part of the universe what the fed does makes a huge difference but there are a lot of things that are outside the feds purview so what is downstream [00:20:34] John Stewart: of the feds because that's all anybody talks about nobody talks about the variety of other interest rates that may be raised at other levels and i guess we can get into who raises those or who closes those or if those are just downstream of the overnight interest rate that the fed would open up they [00:20:53] Austin Goolsby: are downstream of the overnight interest rate so when the fed does things it does affect those but okay one of the most important things that affects mortgage rates or 30-year treasury rates or all of this if if we get down in the weeds are what do people think the inflation rate is going to be over the next 30 years wait are people really trying to figure that out over 30 years they're trying to figure out the inflation rate whoever owns the 30-year mortgage that you got that person cares a lot about what inflation is going to be over the next 30 years because if they lend to you at six percent and then inflation is going to be nine percent for 30 years they're going to lose money every year for the entire time so the fed does a thing on these shorter rates that influences longer rates but other influences include what do people think are going to be inflation how do people think growth is going to be what do they think is going to be productivity all of this these are all projections all and all of those involve a projection let me ask you a [00:22:04] John Stewart: question how accurate because this is this is the thing about economics that i'm never quite sure about my sense my sense when i talk to economists is that they think they're arithmetic but they're really probability calculators they nostradamus kind of thing they think that that they are doing a strict science as opposed to an art science yeah i'm more on the art science yeah i think i think you're right [00:22:36] Austin Goolsby: that it that it's art science and most most researcher academic kind of economists basically don't think forecasting is is doable they think it's it's extremely hard and a fool's errand you know a bit of a fool's aaron and yet we have to we have to make decisions every six weeks but what is the track record over 30 [00:22:59] John Stewart: years and in other words generally speaking were the economists in 2000 or i would say now what 1995 were they in the arena of where we are now in other words the people that were setting monetary policy in the 90s in the 80s in 2000 i won't go with volker because that obviously was a crisis situation and and uh you know and we'll take 2008 out of it but the projections that they're using to base these on [00:23:33] Austin Goolsby: are they generally accurate what's the what's the margin here they're the cleanest dirty shirt we have okay so so i would say there actually is evidence that the feds forecast right were better than the private sector forecast but that doesn't make them good you know that doesn't why us why are they all such dicks about it why why is that awesome look the anybody who's overconfident i i can say this because i wasn't a forecaster so i came in so i'm i'm inherently skeptical of black boxes to begin with um and i i have this theory about about human beings that like dates back to caveman times that's they're kind of like you either believe in magic or you don't believe in magic and there and this plays out in many venues in in academics if somebody came and presented a paper that was so complicated that no one could understand it there are some academics who are like that person is so impressive i couldn't even understand it and others like the nobel laureate uh gene fama who was at the university of chicago his thing inherently doesn't believe in magic so he'd be like this whole thing is i can't understand one word that guy said and i'm more i'm more sympathetic to that yeah i think that's i think that's the correct interpretation but that makes you skeptical of forecasting in general and yet and yet it has to be done it's better than it has to be done it's been better than random and for all the for all the criticisms for all the criticisms of the people who say look you missed this one you screwed that one up it's not like their forecasts were better i kind of love [00:25:29] John Stewart: the idea though that uh economic textbooks there should be a title of an economic textbook and the [00:25:34] Austin Goolsby: title is better than random say hey i'm the author of a textbook i'm gonna make that the subtitle i'm [00:25:42] John Stewart: gonna make that the subtitle better than ran four years of school to be better than random i think that's that's the highest bar that we can try and aspire to yeah so you've done this everybody sits down and and it's only that and and what it seems like when you're in the meeting and you've got your 12 uh uh members of the regional boards only five of which vote you've got your seven board members and they're gonna decide 25 basis points up 25 basis points down we're gonna hold we're gonna put we're gonna we'll do a push we're gonna all these different things right but what almost matters more than that yeah is what everybody thought they were gonna do yeah that's fair that that's fair and the [00:26:27] Austin Goolsby: expectations and the communication and like how are we talking about it correct all of that stuff i get impatient with the funhouse mirror nature of this well we're we think that they think that we think that this is going to happen i i don't like that paul as you know uh paul volker was an old friend of mine do you guys talk about that in the meeting sometimes in the meeting you'll say that they think we're going to do this yeah there are some okay that people come from different backgrounds and some people are markets people that came from a finance background i was an economist they're business people it feels like we're we're only ever supposed to talk about what we ourselves think not what the committee thinks or what anybody else's opinion is but you live in the world but you live in the world and my observation is that some people put a higher weight on what does the market expect and for myself i was old protege of paul volker went through the financial crisis working very closely with him for those who [00:27:39] John Stewart: don't remember volker was he came in after the nixon debacle where they lowered rates artificially inflation got really sticky in the late 70s there was the oil shock and volker came in and raised rates what to maybe record levels literally to 20 20 20 you know the and and it was brutal and it was [00:27:56] Austin Goolsby: a brutal terrible recession yeah and it was the only way that we got rid of inflation and so and got reagan elected basically in central bank circles they look back at paul volker as the as this the superhero of central banking and he was like six foot eight he was a giant in every way he used to say our job is to act the market's job is to react and let's not get the order mixed up and and i try to carry that that's interesting to the so i i do think it matters the psychology of the market matters but there's nothing in the federal reserve act the law says that we are to maximize employment and stabilize prices and that those are the two jobs there's nothing in there that says make sure the stock market is happy make sure nobody's disappointed and i don't know we've had this conversation we we had it 15 years ago and let's have it again today the stock market is not the economy and the the ultimate evidence that that's true is you remember that day at peak coven that they announced the job numbers for april they announced it on my mom's birthday in at the beginning do they always do it on your mom's birthday it just happened to be my mom's birthday that's how i remember what the what the day was it was they announced that the united states had lost 20 million jobs in a single month that's right it was the worst that was the worst day in the history of any of the job market the stock market went up that day of course they thought it would be worse who knows why but like the stock market is not the economy everybody need to remember that you know [00:29:57] John Stewart: why because what they thought it's it's always i mean this happens just recently there was a in the midst of this difficult economy i think it was maybe last month or two months ago there was a really good jobs report and in the really good jobs report the market went down or no i'm sorry reverse that it was a terrible jobs report and it shot up and the market goes up the thinking of it i think is oh shit they've got a dual mandate so if they're not worried about hiring right they'll be more likely to do what we want on interest rates and therefore we won't have the competition of treasuries and other things people will think the stock market is our best avenue maybe but look just be careful [00:30:44] Austin Goolsby: getting trying to get into people's heads okay in the in the market why would it go up what what would that would be why well i mean it could be two reasons it could be hey they think it means the fed is going to do something or it could be they had already priced in what they thought it was going to be and actually this was better or worse than what they thought it was going to be another expectation game yeah like and so okay so that's why you just got to be careful about that yeah i have a friend who's a pretty famous uh doctor down at the university of chicago and she started her first job before medical school she was working at the wall street journal who had some kind of a tv program and her job was to call the people in the market and say you know copper's up five percent this this uh this week why is that and she would get the explanation and then she had to run over and they would record it on the tape and then they'd send out the the tapes to all of the to to the branch affiliates or something and she said she decided to go into medicine when she came she came in and they said gold is down five percent why is that and the guy said well it's because the traders think that this and the fed is going to move so she runs in and just as they're about to hand it somebody says wait a minute gold is not down it's up go back and call the guy so she she runs back down and she calls him up and she says well he said you told me why gold was down but actually gold is up why is gold up and the guy said same reason at that point she said i'm out of here i'm going to become a doctor i'm going [00:32:36] John Stewart: back into where not as many people will die at my hand than would if the economy tanks down that is that that that's phenomenal folks you know i am nothing if not a generator of ideas that may never work obviously we've talked a little bit on the show about the crumple which is the portable dog bed that you throw on the ground that makes a different topographical shape uh each time you do it or maybe i'll make an app maybe i'm always thinking of different apps or maybe i'll make an app that helps people create and run their great business ideas oh wait i don't need to do that because it's already existing shopify somebody probably sat around having a shopify idea about an app that would help people bring their ideas to fruition like the crumple and then they made that and the damn thing's brilliant it makes the whole process easy everything you need it's easy to design your shop it's easy to get paid they handle the checkout process you might think to yourself like oh how how are they going to complete their purchase the shopify handles it gets them to come back as repeat customers setup and checkout are all handled so you get to live your life grow your business which they help you do too i'm be perfectly honest with you i'm not that happy with them that they stole my idea even though obviously they had it first and and did the work you needed to do to make it come to fruition so get shopify for god's sakes with shopify nothing stands between your idea and a real business so go make it one start your free trial at shopify.com slash tws start your free trial at shopify.com slash tws so now let's get into so the fed is is charged with this idea of you know if employment if we're in a deep recession they might say we're going to cut rates because that will stimulate the economy and then hopefully as the money pours into the economy people will start hiring again uh if employment is steady and looking good but inflation is sticky and above that two percent mark which it is now like although the the the new i guess cpi came out it was lower a little bit than they thought it had cooled a little bit but if that's the case they might raise interest rates because employment looks robust but they need to bring down the problem is when they get into where employment doesn't look great but inflation is still up and then you're in that weird i guess they call stagflation stagflation right [00:35:18] Austin Goolsby: look look at you john like you got the you got the whole thing wired i read the synopsis the basic the basic idea is that the the most cyclical parts of the economy whether they're durable goods manufacturing autos stuff like that business investment construction of data centers or what have you these parts of the economy also tend to be the most interest rate sensitive so that's why the fed kind of becomes the tip of the spear why use the interest rate to counteract the business cycle because these really cyclical if the economy is overheating then you raise the interest rate to try to cool it down and ease inflation if it looks like you're teetering on recession then you reduce the interest rate and try to get people buying more cars building more houses doing more business investment when it goes wrong the the economists call that the divine coincidence of course it's only a coincidence nothing to do with the unit well the coincidence part is usually those two the dual mandate they aren't in conflict okay but when the divine coincidence starts going wrong is when both things start getting worse at the same time and we're somewhat in that cycle now not like we were in the 70s but somewhere kind of in that cycle because things like oil prices going up they drive down employment and up prices at the same time supply chains getting interfered with and wrecked anything that on in our language is happening on the supply side right that's a stagflationary direction shock and that's the nightmare of the central bank that was the 70s that was the oil shock now it's the 70s now it's the 70s though as i say it's not the 70s this is stagflationary direction but if you could pull out your magic crystal eight ball and call the 1970s and say hey you guys dealt with stagflation what do we do they would say oh man it's a nightmare what's your unemployment rate and you're gonna say well it's a little over four percent oh they'd be like what they're gonna be like what's your inflation rate well you know it's it's it's up to four percent yeah they're gonna hang up on you and say like why are you bothering us we we have unemployment you're doing great yeah exactly they're gonna be we have unemployment that's almost 10 and inflation is 14 and so let us never go back to the 70s but but this this dilemma of what do you do when both things go wrong that's a tough spot so in those [00:38:18] John Stewart: meetings so so you're in that place now where it's managing like you say it's creeping up because of a variety of things whether it's the russian war or the iran war the strait war moves or anything else people are suffering at these higher grocery prices uh inflation is weirdly steady but not seemingly moving in in any real direction yeah it's not coming down right employment same it's kind of steady but not really you're not seeing robust other than data centers and ai you're not really seeing the rest of the economy having much uh being very robust in the way that it's creating yeah look that's what i i describe [00:39:03] Austin Goolsby: that as the job market is stable without being good and right there's a weird combination that people throw around this phrase low hiring low firing it's worth taking a second to realize that's extremely unusual usually if there's low hiring there's a lot of layoffs or if there's low layoffs and low firings there's a lot of hiring that both of those are low at the same time is really weird the hiring rate is so low it's characterized if if i told you we're in the depths of a recession that's what you would think by how low the hiring rate is but if i told you the layoff rate you'd think we're in a huge boom that's how low the the layoff rate is so it's stable without being good do you have a sense of why that [00:39:54] John Stewart: is is that because the economy is being boosted by one particular sector to the in other words it's got a high ceiling but it's really shallow interesting i was going to say something totally different i [00:40:09] Austin Goolsby: attribute that combination to a lot of uncertainty that businesses say yikes i don't know what the rules are going to be i don't know what the tariffs are going to be okay i'm not going to get rid of anybody because i might need them yeah right away but i'm not going to hire anybody so that's where my head is now your idea is smarter than mine by the way no no no actually your idea is a i i do think we should think through if the let's call that a sector sector specific just if it's all data centers this could be a this could characterize it if it's kind of like we've got a bunch of workers that are trained for one thing and now it's going to take a while for them to get retrained and shift us somewhere else we better think that through but the uncertainty plays into that as well because [00:41:00] John Stewart: people i think are also not sure is the promise of this ai going to be a boon for us yes or is it [00:41:07] Austin Goolsby: going to be a disaster where and if you talk to young people it's kind of like hey should i even invest in this skill set what what was a great job you know i'm trained to be an accountant in eight years are there not going to be any accountants like it's all going to be done in the computer so so that that might also be a part of it honestly i think the economy the uh future is [00:41:32] John Stewart: just all of us kind of trading health care with each other it's all you know you're 100 it's all [00:41:38] Austin Goolsby: just going to be us changing each other's bedpans for money and that's it exactly so the thing is that that health part of the economy just gets bigger and bigger as a share of the uh of the gdp over time so they they used to have this joke but it wasn't even really a joke in the job market there were more and more economists coming and presenting their papers about about health economics and somebody said god in 20 years everybody is going to be a health economist but that's because the entire economy right will be health that's right so it would make sense i i think there's something to that [00:42:23] John Stewart: now when you guys so when you're in the meeting and you're talking about the various uh uh nuances of things that are going on and you say to yourselves well our only option is that 25 basis points up 25 basis point down holding it steady and you're feeling the political pressure because you're humans and you live in the world and a president is using his bully pulpit to do whatever he's doing and the guy sitting at the front of the table is somehow being investigated for mortgage fraud and the other woman is being investigated for more like so you're feeling all those pressures you have to be do you ever think i wish we had different tools i wish we had other options [00:43:04] Austin Goolsby: yes but also no in the following sense in the following sense i'm gonna explain that sounds like a cop-out but it's not but it's not the answer is yes and no the answer the answer is more like no okay but but it's uh but but it's for a weird reason that's why it's yes and no okay it is frustrating but a let let me start by saying my experience at the fomc is that i consider this now the world's greatest deliberative body it's definitely not the u.s senate anymore i mean turn on c-span turn on c-span that's for sure my experience is that everybody sitting around the table takes the job extremely seriously that we're out of the business look you know i was i was in the political elections business you're out of that business you've joined the night's watch you're you're out of that everybody around the table my experience is they're taking extremely seriously the dual mandate it's all about the economy and whether it's the president or the markets or others there are these pressures but people are really around the data is there a predictability [00:44:23] John Stewart: of how people will tend to vote given the who appointed them in other words if a democrat appointed [00:44:32] Austin Goolsby: somebody or a republican appointed somebody that's a good question only seven only seven of the 19 people [00:44:39] John Stewart: worked were chosen right but you worked for obama i imagine the experience that other people have has touched upon the political world at some point [00:44:51] Austin Goolsby: kind of not okay i i would say you're gonna get it comes out with a leg okay they released the word for word transcripts of the meetings right but nobody understands any of that it's all none of it makes sense but but you're gonna see it's not about it's not about partisan politics it's absolutely not and so i'm pleased by that right now the other thing i'm thinking my very first meeting i told you you got to leave all the phones everything it's very secretive i come in i've been in the room for five minutes and i'm like this is the coolest thing this is the coolest room i've ever been in and then i hear dude and i'm like what idiot has brought their phone dude and i realize it's in my pocket it's in my pocket because i've just started at the fed and i now have two phones so i had left my phone but i didn't forget my other phone not your fed phone so so i'm like oh my god i'm gonna be arrested i've been there five minutes i pull it out it says spam likely i'm like oh god so i've [00:46:03] John Stewart: never made that mistake again did did anybody did like did janet yell and turn and go what the [00:46:08] Austin Goolsby: ghoulsby it was j pal they all looked at me everybody gave me this stink eye beyond belief but i i deserved it i deserved it understood i've never made that mistake again so this is a deliberative body uh that they do deliver the body and people are not people are not responding my my experience [00:46:29] John Stewart: even the new guy even warsh who you knew i did know but trump clearly appointed him to do a job [00:46:36] Austin Goolsby: uh if if kevin warsh yeah look i went through the financial crisis he was at the fed when i was at the council of economic advisors right i felt like we were kind of wartime foxhole buddies right 2008 yeah 2009 10 i think he left in 2011 maybe it was 2012. right i saw him in a moment of very high economic stress and he was level-headed and if he comes to the job which he has seemed to with the seriousness of purpose that that the kind of the room demands is it's going to be fine as i always say we're the fed is technical and is rooted its founding was rooted in conspiracy so i understand why sure why the and collusion and and collusion monopoly i understand that and oligarchy but now the fed is not the bad guy we are the guardians of the galaxy whoa slow your roll magneto listen listen in this part and we're not even the raccoon one you know we're we're the good ones we're the good ones we're all coming down there trying to do the job as best we can right and we're not magicians we each come from different perspectives and different parts of the country and that we hash it out and those independent views is really critical and we're back to this thing about fed independence that the more uniformity and the more that outside voices got to dictate here's what the decision should be that would be a mess if you want inflation to come back right that's that's how you would do it inflation come roaring back if you if you don't have independence [00:48:33] John Stewart: oh you know i like to sleep because i'm old uh that's a new song i've been working on you know i'm in a band we we do original songs i have not presented this song yet to the band to see what they think of it but i might it's called i like to sleep because i'm old when you get older you got to have yourself a little bit of the comfort and that's where uh the avocado green mattress comes in man and unlike most mattress brands they'll only sell you online they do have stores too you can go 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thought were very instructive of how the government handles these types of crises we're not going to go all the way back to 1907 or 1913 or any of those things we're going to go 2008 you were you were there so you understood how the government reacted to that and then we'll go to covid and the pandemic because i thought those those were two really different responses from the government and i certainly know which one i prefer and i'm curious what you think of both 2008 uh the response comes in uh that the world liquidity is an issue throughout the the whole system it's about to seize up uh these banks are the mortgage-backed securities are failing uh and and everything's about to collapse and the fed actually takes on a much more robust role than they had in the past they not only were they uh just about the interest rates they started taking on loans right they they sold treasuries i guess to take on [00:51:19] Austin Goolsby: uh they started loan they they started buying a bunch of of bonds the equivalent of making loans but they [00:51:29] John Stewart: they they they're buying up these assets right and i guess they offset that with treasuries would that [00:51:34] Austin Goolsby: be the the way that they would hold on to that or no no not exactly yeah they're allowed to to expand the balance sheet in the same way they would be allowed to print money but they're doing it beyond [00:51:50] John Stewart: where they had ever previously oh for sure yeah for sure well beyond and and by expanding their balance sheet now they've got an issue with somebody's got to pay the interest on their own balance sheet would [00:52:01] Austin Goolsby: they not if they expand it yes and no i mean in a way it feels like you're getting better than random no but i should have completed the thought of when you said do you wish you had other tools the reason why overall yes it's frustrating but no i kind of don't is the fed is not the policy process the fed is not politics we're not doing fiscal policy that should in my mind be decided by the congress the president the american people all the really important things should be decided in that and the more they try to put that on to the fed and it was my fear i wasn't in the fed when when covet struck but my fear on the fed's behalf in covet where if you remember the the congress said we're gonna spend trillions that's right all kinds of loans and who's gonna run this who's gonna run this they were like well the only people competent enough to run it are the fed let's have the fed do it i was really nervous on behalf of the fed because having been through 2008 if anything goes wrong with the program you know they're gonna blame whoever ran the program so i thought it was an effort to cut for congress to kind of be like oh oh let's have the fed do these loans and then if people can't pay them back or if if it costs more if there's fraud if whatever then we'll say ah the stupid fed we asked them to do it and they screwed it up so so that makes me nervous in the fomc context if we had more if we had more tools that were literally fiscal policy tools like taxes or stuff like that right then we would be congress you know like the fed under shouldn't have that we we there is no bad weather there is only bad clothing that's our motto and our thing is the fiscal those are just the conditions you tell us the conditions we get the right [00:54:18] John Stewart: jacket but the difference is in 2008 the fed gave the jackets to the big boys they they basically existed their their money hose that they were doling out at went to the financial institutions correct not the [00:54:34] Austin Goolsby: individuals and you correct use highlighted this at the time every you highlighted it at the time so mad but you remember what you you asked me why not bail out the homeowners and then wouldn't they by domino effect wouldn't that save the mortgage-backed securities why right save the mortgage-backed securities and i said that that would be viable yes if you remember the thing i said well you weren't in charge though i wasn't in charge but you you remember you remember what i said if we had done that we would never get back the money and you said what do you mean get back the money i said we if we had used the 800 billion and put it into mortgages it would be very hard to get people to pay back the money but the banks were putting it in and we're taking warrants and you incredulously said do you honestly believe that the they're going to pay back this money and i said yes i think we it's designed so that they will pay back the money and and they did it's not to say it's free let's not do that again we gave them extraordinarily valuable life insurance at a crucial moment like when the mafia said we're coming to kill you we then we're like we'll give you life insurance right um but it's still worth thinking about that context of if financial crises if you look around the world right financial crises usually cost the taxpayer in the country five to ten percent of gdp lost money to to save it that the tarp ends up costing the u.s government close to zero the u.s government let me let me let me push back [00:56:28] John Stewart: a little bit on this yeah do so when you you're you're looking at it through the lens of what it costs the government but the government is not an entity that is disassociated from the needs of its people so i agree with in 2000 i agree with that they that was horrible they push horrible recession they push all this money out to the big banks now you're right a lot of that came back to them after they paid back those loans but what didn't come back were the people's homes that they lost and the job i agree and the foreclosures right i'm i'm totally sympathetic to to to that view let's go to pandemic yes you're right the government may not have recouped some of that but the economic activity of doing demand side stimulus rather than supply side rather than the fed pumping money into the big boys but the fed helping to pump money into the individuals helping to run that program that economy did not have the unemployment that you would think of it bounced back much more quickly people didn't lose their homes so isn't that what the government the government is not there to run a zero balance sheet it's there to respond to the needs of the people in crisis i i made that now you're fully in the fiscal [00:57:51] Austin Goolsby: policy space so as a as a fed as a fed person i have no opinion on that before i was at the fed i agree with you the government you as somebody described you wouldn't want to lose world war ii because oh we needed to had to run a zero yeah no exactly like ah let's let's have a zero deficit the debt has exploded since the tarp anyway yes yes that that's there's there's no question that's true um come on at the same time that's not the fed come to team canes golesby come to team canes just do it that's not the fed the fed doesn't doesn't decide that we just set the short-term interest rate you know what i mean so what as you come to the say should that be in the fed's toolkit for example so who [00:58:47] John Stewart: decided for the fed to start uh that program of zero interest rate windows like was that not was that [00:58:55] Austin Goolsby: congress zero interest rate windows yeah tell me more didn't they allow the big banks to come in and take out oh oh the discount window correct so that that's that's the lender of last resort right and that's created by congress congress creates that but they have discretion over who [00:59:14] John Stewart: they are lending to and i'm assuming they have discretion over the kinds of kind of not really [00:59:21] Austin Goolsby: they have to outline a criteria okay it's that we're back to the old jay pierpont morgan days we're not supposed to be expressing like hey here's a bank i like and let's give you money but that is [00:59:37] John Stewart: what they did and they they did choose to give it to the big boys instead of the people so my question to you is in hindsight couldn't do that it would have to be congress to do right the congress decided okay we're gonna get the fed to run that program and they do that which do you think was a better use of the powers of the fed and the government because i have a very clear uh you keep wanting this to be [01:00:02] Austin Goolsby: the fit now the the word better you're right is no no no that's that's very fair that's you're that's very fair the better is doing the work because here's the only difference here here here is a here's a big difference between the covet times and the and the great financial crisis times that was bank driven crisis part of the thing that infuriated me infuriated everybody about the bailouts is wait a minute we're bailing out exactly the people who are at fault right for creating this right and that made for a dynamic that was a wait a minute even if you told me this thing would be better for the economy i don't want you to give these people money and then the tea party's rise was i don't want you to bail out the homeowners because i think they're at fault they were over their heads they were buying houses they never had any business buying so that conflict was a little different when it came to covid because it wasn't anybody's fault so i feared with the ppp loans and the unemployment insurance and a whole bunch of stuff i was like whoa geez when we when we were going through the financial crisis and this the stimulus following the financial crisis we had massive monitoring to make sure there's no fraud because everyone perceived if there is a lot of fraud the legitimacy of all of these programs are going to be undermined somehow because it was biology or you know spreading people just kind of wanted to say let's not speak of this again let's just like let's get on with our lives i think there's no question that you're read of the evidence that the unemployment rate went higher under covid but came down right like pretty quickly and we recovered very quickly and we recovered quickly to the extent that that's a lesson for dealing with other massive monumental shocks it came a different way it went it went from the bottom up not not from the top down that's the point [01:02:26] John Stewart: and you can go bottom up with less money than than top down it always it always works that way and it [01:02:32] Austin Goolsby: didn't turn into a financial crisis which it easily could have that's right um and by the way that the [01:02:38] John Stewart: caveat to all of that the coda is what they told me because i you were not the only person i complained to about that about about why aren't we bailing out the homeowners why are we bailing out aig and all these idiots that did it and what they said to me the toughest pill to swallow in all of this was we couldn't bail out the homeowners because of moral hazard yeah and then you'd be like hey what about the moral hazard of the bank well that's what i that's what i said and the answer to that was we had to [01:03:09] Austin Goolsby: land the plane yeah look my i my thing wasn't rooted in moral hazard and i still to this day despise that we got to i understand why we had to do the bailouts once the everything's on fire but we shouldn't be happy about it i mean it's still awful i still think it could have worked the other way around i still think it could have worked the other way and i do think it could i do think it could okay but we would have had to have had a kind of a national commitment to we want to spend the money to do this in a way that we did have when when it came to covet everybody was could see let's not lose world war ii for the sake of balancing the budget well austin ghoulsby let me tell you something you know there's nobody i like [01:03:58] John Stewart: talking about this more than you you you know i love this this is i could do this forever we're [01:04:03] Austin Goolsby: going to get way into weeds just remember yeah go ahead the fed doesn't just set interest rates we're also six trillion dollars a day of the payment plumbing when anybody's doing wire transfers and making payments all the cash in the economy is printed by the bureau of engraving and printing it's getting distributed by the reserve banks and if you ever come out to chicago i'll take you down we'll go see the vault and we got tens of billions of dollars in there we're pulling out the counterfeit it's [01:04:36] John Stewart: awesome oh you know i'm doing that and the qe days are over we're not the qe days are over we're not printing it we're just handing it out well this is fabulous and by the way thank you for giving i think the most cogent and clear explanation of what goes into uh the decisions and the meetings of how these interest rates are decided and what their uh particulars are and when it was that was very [01:05:00] Austin Goolsby: very uh illustrative for me and thank you for that hey john i know this is technical but this the fed matters the economy matters we're going to maximize employment and stabilize the prices and if we [01:05:13] John Stewart: do that everything will be okay or no we're just going to go back to the jp morgan days and just let let musk take care of it all uh austin ghoulsby you're the man great to see again john always a pleasure president of the federal reserve bank of chicago austin ghoulsby thanks for joining us take care i love a nice cereal morning lunch dinner if i'm having a particularly uh spectacular night of insomnia i'll pop a nice bowl of cereal three in the morning what's better than a bowl what's better than cereal what's better than magic spoon nothing my point is that magic spoon makes healthy cereal you could still eat it out of a bowl but you won't get that crazy up and down crap 13 grams of protein no sugar zero five grams of net carbs per serving that's perfect for breakfast late night snack post workout fuel it keeps you from those crazy ups and downs comes in great flavors fruity frosted frosted cocoa cinnamon crunch look for magic spoon on amazon or at your nearest grocery store and there are plant-based versions of the cereal too even vegans get to feel like they had a childhood you'll find vegan options at whole foods or get five dollars off your next order at magicspoon.com slash tws that's magicspoon.com slash tws for five dollars off [01:06:50] Speaker 3: i love talking to that dude i could tell i didn't know economists were allowed to be that fun right or [01:06:57] John Stewart: that caffeinated he's like talking to a normal human being about the economy and he's an economist and when i don't understand something he's not a huge dick about he's just like look technically your terms are not quite correct but this is what it really and then you can like actually have the [01:07:14] Speaker 3: conversation yeah and he actually seems like a really curious person too and like a really animated person by what he does and i think that that's kind of like what you would want for somebody in that [01:07:24] Speaker 4: role he loves it it was the most excitement filled episode that i think we've ever done and it was on [01:07:31] John Stewart: economics well you know part of that is so i've known him for years and we did used to have in 2008 2009 like i had so many arguments with the economists that were in that administration about what we were doing and so they were they were all just like every time they would just be like shut up no and then we would and so reliving that and relitigating that is is one of the true pleasures of uh that era because i was so mad yeah and i i can't remember i there were like certain even terminology that i was trying to make happen during that time like like wealth incumbency like i kept i kept trying to make wealth incumbency a tagline for what the economic crisis of 2008 was doing and that those banks had a wealth incumbency that uh gave them an advantage over the individual homeowners and if what was the other oh i i used to say them all the time i go you're bailing them out at a geometric level when you could bail out the homeowners at an arithmetic level and save us trillions of dollars and they'd be [01:08:44] Speaker 3: like you don't understand i feel like the term top down existed then we were top down and we were [01:08:51] John Stewart: trickled down in it yeah uh but what was so odd about it was they were all democrats yes and so that my frustration was always because it was all this was all when my dislike of larry summers began to bubble because he was kind of the you know the the central i think yoda-like figure of it all he was the one that they spoke about as like this is the unassailable guru and nostradamus kind of like what we were talking about earlier about how you know the economist would project but with an air of mathematical certainty that doesn't exist in the world of probability or even larry only recently [01:09:35] Speaker 3: stopped making those types of predictions and nobody knows why yeah i don't know i think um he just decided to take up a different hobby yeah that's so weird he just sort of dropped out of the public [01:09:48] John Stewart: discourse and nobody knows why well i think some people when they retire they like to go down to a caribbean island yeah and just hang out or now i wonder if he's going the opposite way now he's just like i will only ski i will no longer go to warm climates he's in scandinavia as we speak and what's so funny about that is if you remember like whenever there's like uh an economic crisis they'll always go to him as the expert and he's always in an island in like yes oh my god palm trees in the background how are regular people going to get through this uh crisis and he's just down there with like a pina colada and his culottes on sitting in a big chair from margaritaville i don't think we should bail them [01:10:32] Speaker 3: out at the demand level massage me it would be so reckless to bail them out yeah so while they're like [01:10:41] John Stewart: handing in piña coladas unbelievable uh but fabulous i i i ghoulsby is one of my favorites just like and when and whenever the arguments were they were never ill-spirited they were always like uh you [01:10:56] Speaker 3: know i really liked him yeah i mean i think part of that is him being such a curious person like you could tell he was really interested by the points that you were making because it's not the typical [01:11:07] John Stewart: like uh economic framing necessarily i and i think he wasn't bound by we have to have certainty that he was always willing to grant there might be a different way in a better way and all that which is always helpful speaking of which britney what what do the what do the kids want from us this [01:11:22] Speaker 4: week okay john do you think news networks should carry the president's remarks live on thursday night or wait until they can fact check oh they're not going to fact check anyway they're not gonna that's [01:11:33] John Stewart: what what what difference does that make i think there should be a c-span camera on the president at all times every every remark he makes should be carried live uh including whatever uh ketchup splattering tantrums he might be throwing behind the room when his gold-plated new phones came out late like whatever it is i don't think we should have to live with the that he spews out there whenever he feels like doing it i think you want to be ubiquitous be ubiquitous yeah he's still [01:12:04] Speaker 3: def he's still deciding the terms yeah we have like this like 24-hour news cycle that's right he can't get enough attention like and yet we're still just like hanging on whatever words he selects that [01:12:16] John Stewart: we pay attention to at any given moment do you feel like and this maybe gets us into the relationship portion of our uh podcast i feel like the country is in an abusive relationship with a with a narcissistic partner yeah yeah and i don't you know i'm not fluent enough on the issues of the psychology of a relationship to know how do we heal how do people heal from that first of all how do we get rid of them and how do you break up with a narcissist and and how do you not let the specter of the narcissist cloud and and begin to rule your life that's the problem here is the narcissist isn't thinking about us he's only thinking about himself so we're left with the churn and and bad feeling years of therapy [01:13:08] Speaker 3: i think is the only solve yeah we got to go on couples therapy on showtime baby would orna would [01:13:14] John Stewart: orna do it or to help us could orna sit down with the country and trump so that we can expose what a narcissistic ass because those are the best orna episodes yeah is when like the person thinks they're being clever and tricky and like orna's just sitting back letting them expose the narcissistic asshole that they are do you watch that you ever you ever watch yeah yeah she's fantastic i haven't no oh but oh britney i'm gonna love it you're in for a treat you are there's there's guys that are just like you never listen to me you don't do what i do you don't treat me like the king that i am [01:13:53] Speaker 3: it's like crazy though and then they look at her like right and she's right no right then then she'll [01:14:00] John Stewart: always turn and she'll look at the woman and go like i'd like to hear where you're at right now how you know what how how are you receiving his comments about how mistreated he is you know saying that uh you know you really began to mistreat him after he had all those other [01:14:20] Speaker 3: people yeah he's uh he's saying that he won the 2020 election how are you how are you receiving [01:14:27] Speaker 4: that he won't get over it can't move on all right what else they want uh john what's the deal with [01:14:34] John Stewart: fetterman can't a man wear board shorts to work without everybody wondering um i think it's the deal with the a lot of things which is um you know you tend to embrace the side that flatters you and i think there's very little of his you know his whole socialist panic is bananas for a guy who ran on working class bona fides like yeah like what does he mean by socialism like social security health care like what the are you even talking about i think the israel thing also has affected him grandly but i also think there's a lot of people that can't help be flattered by the other side coming to you and saying you're the only one you're the only one that makes any sense on that side you're the you're the guy [01:15:33] Speaker 3: come join us one of us one of us and it's so weird from where he started too like you wouldn't maybe it was because he was getting the praise from the left or i don't know it's like i guess we [01:15:44] John Stewart: were talking about but the praise from the left though made sense yeah that's what i mean is it's [01:15:49] Speaker 3: like right i just don't i mean i don't want to speculate about anybody's health or anything but [01:15:53] John Stewart: it's been a it's been a real heel turn i i think it's also there is a power and cinema did this and mansion did this to some extent there is a power in being the controlling interest you know and and i think that that tends to go to certain people's head of being you know i'm the contrarian that can change the republicans are pretty good about making a performance of that with the freedom caucus and those kinds of guys but when push comes to shove they still get their 215 to 214 vote or they're 50 to 49. uh you know they don't get that but they keep saying like he's gonna switch over to their side and you're like on what ground like on what policy ground would he be over there i don't [01:16:43] Speaker 3: but also like how would it meaningfully be different it's like if i guess get a nicer office get a much nicer office and if the democrats actually had a majority it would matter somebody flipping if that you lost the majority for any reason but like right now he's voting for all their nominees he's you know doing everything he can to make their lives easier so i don't i just don't see how it's meaningfully different at this point except blanche apparently no it's [01:17:06] John Stewart: seems to be that he seems to be embracing the caricature of democrats as opposed to the reality of what you know a more populist economic platform would look like but i have no idea to be honest with you i mean i think he just he might just like iconoclastic status yeah i think he likes the attention and he's getting a lot of it yeah they're flat i mean they're you know they're they're courting him [01:17:32] Speaker 4: from the media too though oh sure everyone keeps going to him if you remember cinema what like that [01:17:38] John Stewart: was her thing like i'm the one and and it's all couched and pretend principle i'm the one who stands on principle and integrity and you're like what principle exactly are we talking about yeah more more guns more religion more like less social safety net like what exactly are you embracing on their side in terms of issues other than i think the left is a little too angry at israel right now like well if you're not angry at israel right now i really don't think you're watching the news i don't think you're [01:18:11] Speaker 3: seeing what's happening yeah and there's also like there's this benefit to being a sort of swing vote because you can kind of get more for your state like look what murkowski did with alaska oh but what [01:18:20] John Stewart: is fetterman doing for pennsylvania right now that's an excellent point jillian i really the murkowski example is is a great one she's leveraged it into and she'll still support the bill generally on her side but she leverages provisions i don't know that he's that he's done that to be like you can make the [01:18:40] Speaker 3: case that murkowski has done well for her state in some regards like i would argue not well for the woman of any state but right she you know has managed to get these carve outs right right yeah [01:18:52] John Stewart: and it's funny collins in the same position doesn't have the same efficacy and maybe that's by the way that alaska has a slightly uh you know less mainstream sort of need matrix but i think you're i think you're dead on right there fine analysis last one oh one more all right come on what do we [01:19:12] Speaker 4: got did john find that going vegetarian led to an increase in farting i fear for my marriage [01:19:25] John Stewart: what a pivot this is the kind of pivot you only get on this show as as someone as someone who's uh i don't wear i don't have wearable tech so i'm not i'm not tracking it to the extent that i don't have a fart aura ring that is giving me a a statistical uh analysis i can tell you that uh i it's very difficult to separate aging from diet when it comes to your ability to digest anything i mean the idea that eating cheeseburgers would somehow calm the the gaseous nature of of your colon seems not quite but i do understand if she's gone full cruciferous like there is you know there is an argument to be made that beans and broccoli like you have to spread it out a little bit with a variety of you know you got to throw a couple of slices of pizza in there to calm the waves beautifully put eloquent the only thing i will say about that is the idea that that would hurt her marriage it's the key to a happy marriage is two people remember it's in health but also in sickness yeah two people comfortable enough with their own standing with each other to let them know that their body is slowly dying from the inside and decomposing whatever has been put in it and it's got to get out somehow i think orna said that i think thank you for bringing that around that's that's what we know as a callback uh britney how can they get a hold of us to ask us more of these truly insightful questions um twitter we are weekly show [01:21:20] Speaker 4: pod instagram threads tick tock blue sky we are weekly show podcast and you can like subscribe and comment on our youtube channel the weekly show with john stewart fine and dandy thank you very much as [01:21:30] John Stewart: as always couldn't do it without producer britney memetovic producer jillian spear video editor and engineer rob vitola audio editor and engineer nicole boyce and our executive producers chris mcshane and katie gray we will see you all next week the weekly show with john stewart is a comedy central podcast it's produced by paramount audio and busboy productions