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Speaker 1: This is Master's in Business with very rid holds on

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Speaker 1: Bloomberg Radio.

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Speaker 2: This week on the podcast, I have an extra special guest.

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Speaker 2: Matt Levine, writes the Money Stuff daily newsletter for Bloomberg.

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Speaker 2: Matt has become this fascinating character in the world of

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Speaker 2: Wall Street research and analysis and commentary. He brings an

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Speaker 2: unusual background as both an m and a attorney and

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Speaker 2: a derivative specialist at two of the best firms in

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Speaker 2: the world for those spaces, and so he has this

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Speaker 2: unique way of taking these very complicated, sophisticated ideas and

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Speaker 2: making them both accessible and amusing to both finance professionals

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Speaker 2: and lay people. Nobody in the world writes about markets, finance, derivatives,

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Speaker 2: hedge funds, you name it, the way Matt does, and

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Speaker 2: and it's why he has such an amazing following. Over

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Speaker 2: three hundred thousand people get his daily missive. I found

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Speaker 2: this conversation to be really intriguing, and I think you

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Speaker 2: will as well. With no further ado, my conversation with

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Speaker 2: Money Stuffs, Matt Levine.

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Speaker 1: Thanks for having me. I walked all the way across

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Speaker 1: this floor to get here.

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Speaker 2: Not easy right to not easy to get to the broadcast.

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Speaker 1: Weirdly, I went upstairs and then came downstairs.

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Speaker 2: That's right, So let's talk. This is really the only

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Speaker 2: kind of odd question I'm going to ask, and everything

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Speaker 2: else is all very career oriented, so hopefully this isn't

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Speaker 2: too embarrassing. But let's ask this. So you're undergrad at Harvard,

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Speaker 2: where you majored in classics, and you list your activities

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Speaker 2: as quad whiffle ball and tequila Tuesday, which doesn't strike

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Speaker 2: me as you take it very seriously. You were valed

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Speaker 2: victorian Harvard. You never mentioned your Ivy League education.

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Speaker 1: You're quoting my LinkedIn, which probably my proud of social media,

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Speaker 1: since is my LinkedIn is I would like to think

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Speaker 1: a little bit funny, And yes I was. I was.

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Speaker 1: I was, I believe, the co commissioner of quadwiffle wall very,

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Speaker 1: which is neither like prestigious, neither prestigious nor nor athletic

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Speaker 1: nor organizationally impressive.

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Speaker 2: But I had to dig that up. I had to

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Speaker 2: dig up that you evalid Victorian.

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Speaker 1: I wasn't really Validictori, you were not. I didn't give

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Speaker 1: a speech.

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Speaker 2: I like, okay, so you you were. You just didn't

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Speaker 2: accept the.

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Speaker 1: No, no, no, there's there's not a thing called valedictoria and

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Speaker 1: I want a prize.

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Speaker 2: For So where where is this coming from? You? Not

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Speaker 2: the first time you've heard no.

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Speaker 1: No, no, I did win a prize for having the

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Speaker 1: highest GPI. So there's like a technical sense, but not

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Speaker 1: the most technical sets. That was not the validatory Yeah, editory.

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Speaker 2: I never hear you talk about the Ivy League. You

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Speaker 2: go to law school at Yale. It's almost as if

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Speaker 2: you're embarrassed by the whole bruhaha around the IVS.

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Speaker 1: Uh. I don't know, it's like a little embarrassing to say.

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Speaker 2: That you, Well, the old joke is right.

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Speaker 1: How do you tell someone however, they'll tell you.

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Speaker 2: They'll tell you, But you're the exception to that rule.

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Speaker 1: There are a lot of exceptions, but I do I

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Speaker 1: will say that like in my in my column, I

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Speaker 1: fairly regularly have occasion to disclose that I worked at

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Speaker 1: Goldban because I'm often writing about Goldman and it feels

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Speaker 1: like somehow dishonest not to mention that I worked at Golvin.

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Speaker 1: So I get a lot of my bragging in that

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Speaker 1: way because because it used to be and it's less

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Speaker 1: true now, it used to be that like there is

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Speaker 1: a lot of like you could be like, oh, I

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Speaker 1: worked at Golvin. I was like, oh, you worked at Goldvin.

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Speaker 1: Now like that's a little tarnished, but there's still some good.

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Speaker 2: All right. So you go to Yale law school, you're

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Speaker 2: on the Law of You given your current career as

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Speaker 2: a writer, did you did you publish a lore of

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Speaker 2: you artcle?

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Speaker 1: You know? I did? I published it what it's called

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Speaker 1: the Comments, like a very short one about this great

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Speaker 1: tax law case with this guy who like won the

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Speaker 1: lottery and then wanted to get his lottery winnings treated

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Speaker 1: as capital gains. He lost, But I thought that was

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Speaker 1: so funny, and then it had nothing to do with

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Speaker 1: like anything I did for the next like seven years

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Speaker 1: after law school. But it's like, you know, like it

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Speaker 1: could have been a money stuff section, Like it was

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Speaker 1: pretty close to what I.

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Speaker 2: Do now very much. So, so we'll skip you teaching

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Speaker 2: Latin because my brain can't wrap my head around.

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Speaker 1: That that was fun. It's pretty bad.

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Speaker 2: So you say, I know, I'll become an M and

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Speaker 2: a attorney at Walktail Lipton, perhaps the most infamous M

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Speaker 2: and a law shop.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, like the normal thing to do with

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Speaker 1: a classics degree is conclude that you should not continue

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Speaker 1: to be a class assistan and therefore go to law school.

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Speaker 1: So that was pretty pretty straight forward decision. But yeah,

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Speaker 1: then I went to walked out afterwards because it seemed

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Speaker 1: like because like, you know, you're you're a law student,

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Speaker 1: you don't know what a law firm is. And then

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Speaker 1: like you can spend your second year summer at a

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Speaker 1: law firm, and if you spend your second year summer

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Speaker 1: at most law firms, they take you out to fancy

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Speaker 1: lunches at the end of the summer, not knowing what

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Speaker 1: a law firm is. But if you go to walk tell,

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Speaker 1: they just put you to work, and so you end

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Speaker 1: the summer knowing what a lot from us. And I

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Speaker 1: was like, I might as well find out.

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Speaker 2: So I imagine it's endless hours focused on minutia.

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Speaker 1: What was your experience, Like, there's some of that, but

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Speaker 1: like you have to like like, yeah, you're like writing

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Speaker 1: merger agreements and then the other side is marking up

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Speaker 1: the merger agreement, and like you're arguing over commas and stuff,

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Speaker 1: and I love that. I thought that was really fun.

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Speaker 1: So I was very interested in that stuff. But there's

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Speaker 1: also a lot of like at way Tel. You know,

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Speaker 1: I was at Wachtel in two thousand and five to

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Speaker 1: two thousand and seven, so really mirror the peak of

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Speaker 1: a big merger's boom. And so I saw a lot

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Speaker 1: of deals and it was very much you know, I

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Speaker 1: read Barbarians at the Gate when I was like in

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Speaker 1: high school or whatever, and I was like, this seems cool.

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Speaker 1: And then you had to an MNA law fram being

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Speaker 1: like I'm gonna do like like MNA stuff, and like

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Speaker 1: it really did. I tell people like there's this time

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Speaker 1: when we you know, we had like two sets of

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Speaker 1: bidders for some company, Like I'm in conference rooms on

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Speaker 1: different floors and they'd be like, you know, uh uh,

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Speaker 1: they'd be like, this is our final effert, but don't

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Speaker 1: shop to the other side. And we're like, h We'll

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Speaker 1: go to the bathroom, shop to the other side. It's real,

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Speaker 1: like you know, like the sort of like high drama

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Speaker 1: of of of like the highest drama in finances and

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Speaker 1: like big ticket M and A and as a junior

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Speaker 1: m and a lawyer like I was, you know, doing

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Speaker 1: a lot of marketing up mergergrounds, but I was also

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Speaker 1: like kind of exposed to the highdrama like I was

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Speaker 1: in like these board meetings I was in, like I

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Speaker 1: got to see a lot of cool stuff.

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Speaker 2: So how do you how do you shift from m

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Speaker 2: and a legal work to structuring derivatives at Goldman?

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Speaker 1: Uh So I worked in this very weird desk at

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Speaker 1: Goldman that uh it was corporate equity derivatives. And so

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Speaker 1: the thing we were doing was sort of solving like

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Speaker 1: often securities law or tax or accounting problems for people

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Speaker 1: with like derivatives. So like a component of it was

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Speaker 1: like the standard deriv his math right, and so like

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Speaker 1: you know, I got there and I learned through it

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Speaker 1: as math right. But a component of it was also

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Speaker 1: like thinking through all these like legal and regulatory and

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Speaker 1: quasi legal regimes, like the you know, like the counting standards.

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Speaker 1: And I said that everyone on that desk was a

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Speaker 1: good lawyer. Some of us had a lot of degrees,

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Speaker 1: but like the other people, the people who didn't have

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Speaker 1: a lot agrees, who just like were Goldman lifers, were

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Speaker 1: like would have been really good lawyers because it was

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Speaker 1: a very like, you know sort of there was a

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Speaker 1: practice that was like spotting issues and sort of thinking

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Speaker 1: through rules and thinking like how we could get through

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Speaker 1: the rules in a way that advantage us. In addition

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Speaker 1: to like sort of standard financi stuff.

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Speaker 2: Seems very legalistic. What led you to leap from Walcktail Goldman?

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Speaker 2: Was it the hours? Really?

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Speaker 1: I tell people I'm the only person who went to

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Speaker 1: Goldman for the hours.

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Speaker 2: I was for lowering your billable work week.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I was working. I loved walktaut. I thought it

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Speaker 1: was really fascinating and interesting. But it was you know,

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Speaker 1: it's like notoriously the hardest working law firm, and this

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Speaker 1: was in like a big m and a boom, and

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Speaker 1: so I was just working all the time. And I

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Speaker 1: got a call from a guy who actually had left,

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Speaker 1: walked out and gone to Goldman, and he said, do

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Speaker 1: you want a job here? And I said, is it

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Speaker 1: better than this job? And he said, it's a little

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Speaker 1: better than this job. And I was like, walk me

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Speaker 1: through your week, and he like walked me through. I

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Speaker 1: was like, yeah, that's a little better than this job.

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Speaker 1: So I left for the hours.

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Speaker 2: So you stay at Goldman for a couple of years.

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Speaker 1: For four years, the longest I've been at a job

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Speaker 1: until this job.

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Speaker 2: So you're there right into the teeth of the financial crisis.

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Speaker 2: What was that.

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Speaker 1: Like I was just telling someone a friend is going

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Speaker 1: to Sonoma for a vacation, and I was like, I remember,

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Speaker 1: I like woke up in Napa. I took this vacation

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Speaker 1: where you know, I was worried I wouldn't be able

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Speaker 1: to go because with this deal going, and I wrote

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Speaker 1: this long memo to people being like, this is what's

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Speaker 1: going to happen if the deal goes because I was

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Speaker 1: trying to be a responsible citizen at the desk, and

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Speaker 1: then by the time I got to Napa, I was like,

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Speaker 1: I don't think this deal is going to go. And

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Speaker 1: then I woke up in lehmanhead filed, and you know

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Speaker 1: it's like this is a cliche and in finance says this,

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Speaker 1: but like I remember walking around the day Lehman had

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Speaker 1: filed in Napa looking at people who are being normal

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Speaker 1: and thinking, how are you not freaking out? Because like

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Speaker 1: I was freaking out, you know I was. It seemed

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Speaker 1: like the end of the world. But no, it's wild.

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Speaker 1: I Like the thing that I think back on now

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Speaker 1: a lot is what did I do because there was

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Speaker 1: you know, we had this we had this spreadsheet of

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Speaker 1: just like every deal that that like one thing. One

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Speaker 1: aspect of what I did in my job was convertible

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Speaker 1: bond underwriting, and so I had the spadsheet of every

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Speaker 1: convertible bond deal that we or anyone else in the

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Speaker 1: market did. And it stopped in like September of two

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Speaker 1: thousand and eight, and it restarted in I want to say,

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Speaker 1: March of two thousand and nine, but like only a

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Speaker 1: little bit. And so for six months there were no deals,

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Speaker 1: Like we did not like print any revenue, We did

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Speaker 1: not do any deals. And I don't like, I didn't

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Speaker 1: take six months off, Like I came into the office

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Speaker 1: every day, I didn't leave early. I didn't like take

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Speaker 1: long lunches. I don't know what I was doing for

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Speaker 1: six months. I think it was just like sort of

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Speaker 1: walking around panicking, but like you know, like scraping sticks

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Speaker 1: together and like trying to find deals to do. But

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Speaker 1: like we didn't do anything, Like we could have just

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Speaker 1: taken the six months off. And I think back on

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Speaker 1: that time and think, you know, it wouldn't have been

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Speaker 1: nice if we're just not gone to work, But no,

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Speaker 1: it was. It was a scary time, and it was

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Speaker 1: you know, there were there were like a number of layoffs.

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Speaker 1: You know, there were a couple of rounds of layoffs,

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Speaker 1: and you know, within my first two years at goldbun

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Speaker 1: and I didn't get laid off, and I was like, oh, okay,

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Speaker 1: I'm probably safe for a while.

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Speaker 2: You said about that job, I felt both that the

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Speaker 2: job was bad and I was bad at it.

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Speaker 1: Over time, I mean, I I liked, I like learned

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Speaker 1: a lot from that job, and it's like really helped

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Speaker 1: me to what I do today because it really touched

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Speaker 1: on a lot of elements of the bank. You know.

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Speaker 1: It was all this like structuring and like tax and

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Speaker 1: legal and accounting stuff. It was derivatives math. It was

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Speaker 1: like working with the traders on like risk management. It

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Speaker 1: was underwriting, you know, it was like doing investment banking

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Speaker 1: and underwriting public offerings. It was dealing with like the

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Speaker 1: sort of guts of the bank and like new product

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Speaker 1: development and capital and balance sheet. So I learned a lot,

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Speaker 1: but like early on, I was really learning a lot

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Speaker 1: because I was sort of like building stuff and learning

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Speaker 1: how to like build you know, like learning how to

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Speaker 1: use Excel and just like sort of just kind of

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Speaker 1: like figuring out all this stuff. And then over time

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Speaker 1: the job more says you get more senior into just

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Speaker 1: like getting on planes and flying around and giving market

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Speaker 1: updates to corporate treasures, and that I found less fulfilling.

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Speaker 1: I was learning less and I was bad at that,

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Speaker 1: Like I was good at the like sitting in the

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Speaker 1: lab during up to Rhotis, I was okay with that,

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Speaker 1: but like I was bad at the like getting on

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Speaker 1: planes and sweet talking corporate treasures, and so over time

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Speaker 1: it was a less and less good fit for me.

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Speaker 2: So what inspired the pivot to writing.

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Speaker 1: I don't have a good answer. I like could always

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Speaker 1: vaguely imagined myself as a writer without doing anything about it,

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Speaker 1: and I really I didn't want to be a corporate

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Speaker 1: equity to ride as a banker anymore. And you know,

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Speaker 1: in general, when you have jobs like these, it's very

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Speaker 1: hard to find a new job because you're working all

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Speaker 1: the time. And so my plan was actually to quit

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Speaker 1: and not do anything and figure out what my next

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Speaker 1: step was. And I like went to my very nice

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Speaker 1: boss and I was like, I'm quitting, and he said,

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Speaker 1: what are you going to do it? And I was like, nothing,

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Speaker 1: I'm going to figure out my next step. And he's like, well,

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Speaker 1: don't quit now, like take some time off and figure out,

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Speaker 1: and you know, it's very sweet, like like sort of

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Speaker 1: thoughtful response. And then he was like, we'll give you

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Speaker 1: a bunch of time off, but for now, go back

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Speaker 1: to your desk. And so I went back to my

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Speaker 1: desk and I worked for like three more weeks, and

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Speaker 1: then I saw the deal breaker, the great like comedic

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Speaker 1: financial blog was hiring, and so I shot it in

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Speaker 1: an application and they hired me, and I was like, Okay,

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Speaker 1: I'm gone. But there was really very little thought to it.

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Speaker 1: You know. I had not been like blogging on the side,

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Speaker 1: or like practicing at night or anything like that. It's

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Speaker 1: just like I had this vague itch that I was

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Speaker 1: going to be a writer. I was at a point

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Speaker 1: in my life where I was very willing to gamble,

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Speaker 1: you know. I was, I didn't have kids. I had

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Speaker 1: saved a bunch of money at Goldman in part because

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Speaker 1: I really did think I was going to take time

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Speaker 1: off and figure out what my next thing was. And

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Speaker 1: so it felt like a fairly lowist time to take

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Speaker 1: a gamble on something that would pay a lot less

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Speaker 1: and uh, and that I didn't know that i'd be

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Speaker 1: good at, you know, but I figure i'd give it

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Speaker 1: a shot.

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Speaker 2: So making a lot of money at an investment bank

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Speaker 2: that you leave to take a much lower paid job

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Speaker 2: as a writer sounds a little parallel to Michael Lewis

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Speaker 2: and Salomon Brothers. Ever, think about that as as someone

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Speaker 2: who blaze that trail before you.

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Speaker 1: Oh, of course, I mean I wouldn't like go around

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Speaker 1: saying that because like, you know what, you know what

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Speaker 1: I mean, like, yeah, eleven, You're not gonna leave Goldman

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Speaker 1: and be like I'm going to go be Michael Lewis, right,

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Speaker 1: because like that's a little that's a little implausible. But no,

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Speaker 1: I mean, of course, like and I don't think I

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Speaker 1: even thought about it at the time. I just like

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Speaker 1: it's just like in the background of what you think of,

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Speaker 1: like how you perceive the possibilities of like the financial

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Speaker 1: writing world. But yeah, no, I actually talked. I was

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Speaker 1: on his pod the other week and I talked about that,

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Speaker 1: you know, we talked about that exact point. Yeah, in

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Speaker 1: some ways there were parallels between his career.

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Speaker 2: Really really intriguing. So let's talk about some of your

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Speaker 2: favorite subjects. Everything is securities, fraud.

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Speaker 1: Explain if a bad thing happens at a public company

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Speaker 1: public company, does a bad thing. This is ceo sexually

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Speaker 1: harassed to someone. If the company gets hacked, if it's polluting.

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Speaker 1: Usually what happens is like the stock drops, and when

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Speaker 1: the stock drops, the shareholders and sometimes even the sec

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Speaker 1: will sue the company saying, essentially, you didn't tell us

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Speaker 1: about this bad thing, and then when it came out,

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Speaker 1: the stock drop, so we bought the stock before at

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Speaker 1: this inflated price because we were deceived. You were lying

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Speaker 1: to us. You were saying that you had a code

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Speaker 1: of ethics, but then your CEO is sexually asking people,

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Speaker 1: or you were saying that you like were careful at

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Speaker 1: the environment, but you were like dumping pollution, or you

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Speaker 1: were saying that you like used good passwords, but used

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Speaker 1: bad passwords and you got hacked. Right, So, anytime like

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Speaker 1: a bad thing happens and the stock goes down, there

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Speaker 1: will be a lawsuit of over securities, fraud and interesting

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Speaker 1: because like often the bad thing has like diffuse victims

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Speaker 1: or unclear victims, or it's unclear how to quantify the harm. So,

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Speaker 1: like you have a sexual harassment scandal, there will be

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Speaker 1: some number of people at the company who are victims

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Speaker 1: of that, and they will have different stories if they

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Speaker 1: were to sue, you need a lawyer to kind of

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Speaker 1: get all of their stories. And then like the company

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Speaker 1: would say, well, these stories are different, and like you know,

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Speaker 1: will argue them separately, and like how do you quantify

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Speaker 1: their damages? And it's it's kind of a mess. Whereas

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Speaker 1: if the stock goes down by a billion dollars, then

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Speaker 1: like some securities lawyer will say, well, the shareholders lost

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Speaker 1: a billion dollars, will bring a very straightforward class action

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Speaker 1: on you half the shaholders. And so you see these

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Speaker 1: cases where like the company pays a big securities settlement

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Speaker 1: because like it's not that like the shareholders of the

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Speaker 1: company are the most direct or the most harmed to

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Speaker 1: victims of whatever the bad thing is, But they're the

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Speaker 1: easiest victims, right, They're the easiest victims for a plaintiffs

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Speaker 1: lawyer to like round up, file a class action on

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Speaker 1: behalf of quantify their damages, settle it for ten cents

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Speaker 1: on the dollar. And so it's just like a fascinating

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Speaker 1: development in American securities law, where like there are so

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Speaker 1: many bad things get litigated as securities fraud because it's

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Speaker 1: like an easy way to litigate.

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Speaker 2: It and let's do the related topic, is everything insider trading?

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Speaker 2: Because if you're selling stock as an insider and there's

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Speaker 2: some everything is securities fraud going on, seems that that

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Speaker 2: would naturally follow one follow the other.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and I've read about that. Yeah, I mean, like

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Speaker 1: you can. Definitely it is unusual for like a CEO

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Speaker 1: to like get arrested for selling stock while he was,

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Speaker 1: you know, doing sexual harassment or whatever, but like it's

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Speaker 1: not unheard of, and there are private lawsuits that do

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Speaker 1: sort of express exactly that theory that everything is also

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Speaker 1: insider trading.

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Speaker 2: So you wrote a lot about all the meme stocks.

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Speaker 2: What was your biggest takeaway from that era.

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Speaker 1: I was struck by, like the ability of retail investors

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Speaker 1: collectively to move stock wises right, Like I was not

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Speaker 1: expecting that, I was. I mean, I think people confidently

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Speaker 1: declared it on Reddit and I was like, sure, but

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Speaker 1: it's retail. And then like, in fact, these stocks went

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Speaker 1: up and stayed up for very long periods through like

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Speaker 1: the actions of retail investors and like people creating gamma

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Speaker 1: squeezes by buying options, And I was like, yeah, sure,

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Speaker 1: like that works in theory, that's not really gonna work,

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Speaker 1: and they kind of did work. The other takeaway that

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Speaker 1: I think is interesting is like just from the corporate

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Speaker 1: finance side, I think like there are some companies where

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Speaker 1: they were like, we're going to make our investor relations

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Speaker 1: and corporate finance strategy be about retail investors. And I

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Speaker 1: think that that was never a thing that people did

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Speaker 1: for you know, the last like twenty or thirty years,

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Speaker 1: because you know, everyone sort of understood that the money

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Speaker 1: was in was in institutional investors, and like there's not

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Speaker 1: an efficient way to reach and like rely on retail

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Speaker 1: investors for funding. And in the meme slack craze, AMC

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Speaker 1: very early on was like, oh yeah, we can do that,

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Speaker 1: Like we can we can raise money, we can do

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Speaker 1: tons of at the market offerings to retail investors. We

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Speaker 1: can offer popcorn to our shareholders to keep our stock

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Speaker 1: price up, and we can like really, you know, do

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Speaker 1: our financing in rehail markets by being a memestock. And

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Speaker 1: I think like the way to do memestock investor relations

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Speaker 1: like had to be kind of invented on the fly,

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Speaker 1: and it's fascinating the way people did it now. I

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Speaker 1: don't think it's like permanent, right if you're a CEO.

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Speaker 1: Now you can't be like, let's become a memestock and

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Speaker 1: rely on retail investors because I think it's like it's

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Speaker 1: always been a crapshoot, and you know, it's much less

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Speaker 1: common than it was two years ago. But I think

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Speaker 1: it was like a fascinating like lesson from that.

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Speaker 2: And some of these companies managed when the stock price

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Speaker 2: went went meteoric. We're able to do secondaries, We're able

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Speaker 2: to do refinancings. They took me full advantage.

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Speaker 1: AMC, like you know, was like recapitalized, like filing going

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Speaker 1: concern warnings like we're going to go bankrupty, you know,

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Speaker 1: we run movie theaters in a pandemic. We have all

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Speaker 1: this debt. And then they just refinanced their debt and

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Speaker 1: like and you know, bought a lot of it down

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Speaker 1: because they could sell stock at very high prices. They

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Speaker 1: had an asset that was not you know, that was

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Speaker 1: a very untraditional you know, like we have this ability

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Speaker 1: to tap retail investors to refinance, and they played it

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Speaker 1: really fascinatingly.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and it seems like it was clearly not the

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Speaker 2: sort of thing buy and hold investors want to play with.

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Speaker 2: Off the highs. Most of these stocks are down. The

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Speaker 2: meme stocks are down seventy eighty ninety plus percent. They've

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Speaker 2: all gotten taken a big hit.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it was. It lasted much longer than

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Speaker 1: I expected, but it didn't last forever.

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Speaker 2: Let's talk about another subject that you come back to regularly,

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Speaker 2: which is the philosophy of active versus passive investing. It

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Speaker 2: seems like active managers, who have been underperforming according to

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Speaker 2: the academics for a long time, are constantly throwing novel

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Speaker 2: new theories at the passive worlds, trying to take them

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Speaker 2: down a notch. You cover this on a regular basis,

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Speaker 2: tell us a little bit about that space.

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Speaker 1: So my favorite part of it is not really about

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Speaker 1: active passive. My favorite part is right now, is this

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Speaker 1: notion that like, owning all of the companies is bad.

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Speaker 2: Owning all the companies in a sector because you're an

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Speaker 2: index investor somehow leads to price fixing.

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Speaker 1: So's the That's like the starting point of it. But

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Speaker 1: I think it's like a bigger theory than that, right,

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Speaker 1: I mean, I think it's that, And sometimes my headline

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Speaker 1: is sometimes like should index ones be illegal?

435
00:20:11,920 --> 00:20:12,200
Speaker 2: Right?

436
00:20:12,320 --> 00:20:15,360
Speaker 1: The basic idea is that if all of the companies

437
00:20:15,400 --> 00:20:18,199
Speaker 1: in a sector, or all of the companies in the

438
00:20:18,320 --> 00:20:20,200
Speaker 1: country or in the world, you know, all the company

439
00:20:20,240 --> 00:20:24,040
Speaker 1: if they are all owned by twelve people. Right. John Coates,

440
00:20:24,040 --> 00:20:26,119
Speaker 1: the Harvard law professor, has a book out called The

441
00:20:26,119 --> 00:20:28,920
Speaker 1: Problem of Twelve where he's like, yeah, there's like twelve

442
00:20:28,920 --> 00:20:31,119
Speaker 1: people and the people are like, you know, the people

443
00:20:31,160 --> 00:20:34,679
Speaker 1: who run Black Rock, Vanguard, you know, State Street, but

444
00:20:34,720 --> 00:20:36,600
Speaker 1: also like Fidelity, Right, Like, this is not really a

445
00:20:36,640 --> 00:20:40,520
Speaker 1: passive question. This is a very large diversified investor question. Right.

446
00:20:40,800 --> 00:20:43,919
Speaker 1: If like twelve people control you know, fifty one percent

447
00:20:43,920 --> 00:20:46,600
Speaker 1: of the stock in all of the companies, then it

448
00:20:46,800 --> 00:20:50,000
Speaker 1: sort of stands to reason that those people will want

449
00:20:50,080 --> 00:20:52,879
Speaker 1: stuff to happen that is broadly good for all of

450
00:20:52,920 --> 00:20:55,359
Speaker 1: their companies, rather than for one company to compete against

451
00:20:55,359 --> 00:20:59,800
Speaker 1: another company, and that the CEOs of those companies who

452
00:20:59,800 --> 00:21:02,320
Speaker 1: are for douce shares for these shaolders will think like, yeah,

453
00:21:02,359 --> 00:21:04,080
Speaker 1: I got to do what is right for these shareolders.

454
00:21:04,240 --> 00:21:05,840
Speaker 1: And so that happens in a lot of ways, and

455
00:21:05,880 --> 00:21:08,199
Speaker 1: the alleged to happen in a lot of ways. And

456
00:21:08,200 --> 00:21:10,919
Speaker 1: like the starting point for all of this is some

457
00:21:10,960 --> 00:21:13,760
Speaker 1: papers that people published about price fixing. Like the idea

458
00:21:13,840 --> 00:21:16,159
Speaker 1: is that if all of the airlines are owned by

459
00:21:16,200 --> 00:21:19,560
Speaker 1: the same dozen investors, then the airlines will not compete

460
00:21:19,600 --> 00:21:21,800
Speaker 1: hard on price, and like they will try to divvy

461
00:21:21,880 --> 00:21:24,640
Speaker 1: up roots in a way that keeps prices high. Because

462
00:21:24,680 --> 00:21:27,400
Speaker 1: if you compete on price, you're essentially, you know, mostly

463
00:21:27,440 --> 00:21:29,760
Speaker 1: taking a dollar away from your competitor, and like that

464
00:21:29,800 --> 00:21:32,479
Speaker 1: dollar ends up in the hands of your shareholders anyway.

465
00:21:32,600 --> 00:21:34,360
Speaker 1: So why would you compete. Why wouldn't you just try

466
00:21:34,359 --> 00:21:37,439
Speaker 1: to grow the pie for everyone? And it's like super controversial,

467
00:21:37,440 --> 00:21:39,600
Speaker 1: and like the empirical evidence where it is not super clear, and.

468
00:21:39,560 --> 00:21:42,440
Speaker 2: Like especially focusing on airlines as opposed to tech or

469
00:21:42,440 --> 00:21:45,760
Speaker 2: industrials or they cherry pick that sector, which kind of

470
00:21:45,760 --> 00:21:50,760
Speaker 2: reveals how bankrupt the argument is. But keep going, like.

471
00:21:50,720 --> 00:21:52,720
Speaker 1: They are fascinating stories about like this is not in

472
00:21:52,760 --> 00:21:54,679
Speaker 1: public companies, this is not the problem as well. But

473
00:21:54,720 --> 00:21:57,720
Speaker 1: like ride sharing startups, like soft Bank was financing all

474
00:21:57,720 --> 00:21:59,480
Speaker 1: these ride sharing startups and then like the kind of

475
00:21:59,560 --> 00:22:01,720
Speaker 1: didn't feeding against each other, and they kind of like

476
00:22:01,800 --> 00:22:03,840
Speaker 1: divvate up the world, you know, and it's like, well, yeah,

477
00:22:03,880 --> 00:22:06,560
Speaker 1: they're like subsidiaries of SoftBank, right, And if you think

478
00:22:06,600 --> 00:22:09,680
Speaker 1: about the world as being like all companies are subsidiaries

479
00:22:09,680 --> 00:22:12,640
Speaker 1: of black Rock, then it's just like an interesting analytical framework.

480
00:22:13,320 --> 00:22:17,720
Speaker 2: But you but you need that leap, which is inally

481
00:22:18,280 --> 00:22:21,159
Speaker 2: the part that nobody talks about is, hey, we're running

482
00:22:21,160 --> 00:22:24,560
Speaker 2: a ten trillion dollar company. I know, let's put that

483
00:22:24,640 --> 00:22:28,240
Speaker 2: at risk to reduce competition in the airline section. Okay,

484
00:22:28,280 --> 00:22:29,959
Speaker 2: but such an absurd argument.

485
00:22:30,040 --> 00:22:33,440
Speaker 1: Okay, But but like here's where it is universally accepted

486
00:22:33,440 --> 00:22:36,320
Speaker 1: to be true, which is ESG think about like what

487
00:22:36,320 --> 00:22:39,800
Speaker 1: black Rock is, right, Like, they don't really gain from

488
00:22:40,200 --> 00:22:43,359
Speaker 1: one company like improving its competitive position against another company,

489
00:22:43,359 --> 00:22:44,359
Speaker 1: because they own all the companies.

490
00:22:44,440 --> 00:22:47,159
Speaker 2: What they get, that's their business. Their business is to

491
00:22:47,200 --> 00:22:49,840
Speaker 2: own all the companies, and they gain when they run

492
00:22:49,880 --> 00:22:50,760
Speaker 2: that business better.

493
00:22:50,880 --> 00:22:54,119
Speaker 1: Yes, and so like broadly speaking, competition is good for

494
00:22:54,160 --> 00:22:57,040
Speaker 1: them because like competition sort of you know, does ultimately

495
00:22:57,040 --> 00:22:59,359
Speaker 1: grow the pie. But like there are places, and like

496
00:22:59,400 --> 00:23:01,560
Speaker 1: the place that I think is sort of obvious is

497
00:23:01,560 --> 00:23:03,880
Speaker 1: like Blackrock has and they do less of this now

498
00:23:03,960 --> 00:23:07,520
Speaker 1: because of political pressures, but they have put up papers

499
00:23:07,600 --> 00:23:09,800
Speaker 1: and they put out you know, strongly worded letters to

500
00:23:09,840 --> 00:23:13,200
Speaker 1: CEOs saying you need to take climate risk seriously because

501
00:23:13,200 --> 00:23:15,439
Speaker 1: climate risk is a systemic risk that affects all of

502
00:23:15,480 --> 00:23:18,840
Speaker 1: our companies, and like that strikes me as straight forwardly true.

503
00:23:19,080 --> 00:23:21,960
Speaker 1: And Blackrock is saying, you know, we have to care

504
00:23:22,000 --> 00:23:25,000
Speaker 1: about not just like year to year bottom line of

505
00:23:25,040 --> 00:23:27,600
Speaker 1: these companies. We have to care about like the systemic,

506
00:23:27,720 --> 00:23:31,200
Speaker 1: like long run sustainability of like the entire capitalist system.

507
00:23:31,000 --> 00:23:33,440
Speaker 2: Which by the way, is their way of doing business.

508
00:23:33,600 --> 00:23:37,080
Speaker 2: Vanguard hasn't done that, statement hasn't done that. Yeah, I agree,

509
00:23:37,119 --> 00:23:40,560
Speaker 2: And the competition amongst the three of those is why

510
00:23:40,560 --> 00:23:43,560
Speaker 2: there's no real price fixing. If I don't think it's

511
00:23:43,600 --> 00:23:44,560
Speaker 2: going the other way.

512
00:23:44,560 --> 00:23:46,639
Speaker 1: I don't want to argue for like there's price fixing

513
00:23:46,640 --> 00:23:49,399
Speaker 1: in airlines because of Blackrock, But I do think that, like,

514
00:23:50,080 --> 00:23:53,679
Speaker 1: if you are a broadly diversified, enormous asset manager, you

515
00:23:53,760 --> 00:23:58,240
Speaker 1: do have to think about your portfolio primarily in systemic

516
00:23:58,280 --> 00:24:01,600
Speaker 1: ways and not in like competitive decisions that your individual

517
00:24:01,640 --> 00:24:04,280
Speaker 1: companies are making. And if you're thinking about your portfolio

518
00:24:04,280 --> 00:24:08,240
Speaker 1: systemically like that creates different incentives for you and for

519
00:24:08,359 --> 00:24:12,400
Speaker 1: your portfolio companies managers. Then if they all had shareholders

520
00:24:12,440 --> 00:24:14,640
Speaker 1: who only owned their company and they were just trying

521
00:24:14,640 --> 00:24:18,280
Speaker 1: to maximize their company's share all sorts of like ESG

522
00:24:18,480 --> 00:24:21,240
Speaker 1: stuff is about externalities, right, It's about a company saying,

523
00:24:21,600 --> 00:24:24,560
Speaker 1: we can make more money by doing bad stuff that

524
00:24:24,600 --> 00:24:27,040
Speaker 1: causes externalities to other companies, but we're not going to

525
00:24:27,119 --> 00:24:28,600
Speaker 1: do that. I think part of why they're not going

526
00:24:28,640 --> 00:24:31,960
Speaker 1: to do that is because like their shareholders absorb those externalities, right,

527
00:24:32,000 --> 00:24:34,160
Speaker 1: and like that's like the simplest form of the story, right,

528
00:24:34,200 --> 00:24:36,080
Speaker 1: and like then you can be like, well, one thing

529
00:24:36,119 --> 00:24:38,600
Speaker 1: that causes externalities is like airlines cutting prices, and like

530
00:24:38,640 --> 00:24:40,840
Speaker 1: that seems bad, and stopping them from doing that it

531
00:24:40,880 --> 00:24:43,840
Speaker 1: seems bad. Another thing that causes externalities is like pollution,

532
00:24:44,080 --> 00:24:45,720
Speaker 1: and stopping them from doing that is good. Right, Like

533
00:24:45,760 --> 00:24:47,280
Speaker 1: there's all sorts of things, and some of them are

534
00:24:47,280 --> 00:24:49,359
Speaker 1: good and some of them are bad. But like this

535
00:24:49,560 --> 00:24:54,280
Speaker 1: notion that like a systemic shareholder is doing systemic stewardship

536
00:24:54,320 --> 00:24:56,080
Speaker 1: and that it wants its companies to act in a

537
00:24:56,119 --> 00:24:58,760
Speaker 1: way that benefits all of its portfolio rather than just

538
00:24:58,760 --> 00:25:00,960
Speaker 1: that one company, I think like makes total intuitive sense.

539
00:25:01,080 --> 00:25:03,200
Speaker 1: And then like you're gonna have questions about the individual cases.

540
00:25:03,359 --> 00:25:06,680
Speaker 2: So I wanted to bring it up because you bring

541
00:25:06,720 --> 00:25:10,360
Speaker 2: it up every couple of months, there's always some crazy

542
00:25:10,880 --> 00:25:14,840
Speaker 2: law review article or some wacky that that are at

543
00:25:14,960 --> 00:25:19,040
Speaker 2: the outer limits of how the world really works, how

544
00:25:19,160 --> 00:25:22,680
Speaker 2: how indexing works, and how big asset managers like black

545
00:25:22,760 --> 00:25:26,000
Speaker 2: Rocker vangor to state street work. But if we pretend

546
00:25:26,200 --> 00:25:29,640
Speaker 2: that they're colluding, well maybe index funds are illegal.

547
00:25:29,880 --> 00:25:32,040
Speaker 1: I don't really think they should be illegal. But there

548
00:25:32,040 --> 00:25:33,800
Speaker 1: are people, and I I've made fun of the people

549
00:25:33,800 --> 00:25:35,480
Speaker 1: who like really strongly believe they should be illegal.

550
00:25:35,680 --> 00:25:37,440
Speaker 2: Now do they really believe that or are they just

551
00:25:37,560 --> 00:25:40,680
Speaker 2: hired by active managers to push them facility because I

552
00:25:43,280 --> 00:25:46,000
Speaker 2: ideal going on, hey push the fish.

553
00:25:46,359 --> 00:25:47,840
Speaker 1: I don't think most of them even believe that index

554
00:25:47,880 --> 00:25:49,680
Speaker 1: fund should be leg I think they I think that,

555
00:25:49,840 --> 00:25:51,960
Speaker 1: like me, they find they find this like an interesting

556
00:25:52,000 --> 00:25:54,959
Speaker 1: sort of theoretical point. And I agree with you that

557
00:25:55,000 --> 00:25:57,760
Speaker 1: like a lot of them feel like empirically sort of

558
00:25:57,800 --> 00:26:01,000
Speaker 1: pushing the limits of what is plausible, but like there's

559
00:26:01,000 --> 00:26:04,680
Speaker 1: some nub of it that like just seems uncontroversially true,

560
00:26:04,680 --> 00:26:06,400
Speaker 1: and then it's just about like sort of figuring out

561
00:26:06,400 --> 00:26:09,520
Speaker 1: like what the like, how to frame it and understand.

562
00:26:09,119 --> 00:26:10,879
Speaker 2: It, where's the line how far you could take it?

563
00:26:11,000 --> 00:26:11,119
Speaker 1: Right?

564
00:26:11,200 --> 00:26:15,160
Speaker 2: Last topic that you talk about on a regular basis derivatives,

565
00:26:15,560 --> 00:26:19,160
Speaker 2: high frequency trading, hedge funds, and down and short selling.

566
00:26:19,440 --> 00:26:22,120
Speaker 2: Let's talk a little bit about SPACs, which you covered

567
00:26:22,280 --> 00:26:26,600
Speaker 2: pretty aggressively during the SPAC frenzy over the past couple

568
00:26:26,640 --> 00:26:29,119
Speaker 2: of years. Yeah, it's over, it's done, right, Are you

569
00:26:29,160 --> 00:26:31,439
Speaker 2: going to see this again or is this another another

570
00:26:31,480 --> 00:26:33,800
Speaker 2: ten years have to go by before this pops up again?

571
00:26:33,840 --> 00:26:36,400
Speaker 2: Because you remember mid two thousand SPACs were a thing

572
00:26:36,480 --> 00:26:37,120
Speaker 2: as well.

573
00:26:37,520 --> 00:26:39,359
Speaker 1: Right, there was a long period where SPACs were like

574
00:26:39,640 --> 00:26:43,479
Speaker 1: a known technology but like notoriously shady, and then in

575
00:26:43,520 --> 00:26:46,480
Speaker 1: like the recent boom, they became kind of like mainstream

576
00:26:46,560 --> 00:26:48,639
Speaker 1: and popular. I don't know if they'll go back to

577
00:26:48,680 --> 00:26:51,159
Speaker 1: being like a notoriously shady thing. I think it's a

578
00:26:51,160 --> 00:26:54,800
Speaker 1: plausible tool, right, I think that, like you know, before

579
00:26:54,840 --> 00:26:56,639
Speaker 1: SPACs there is a bit of a boom and direct

580
00:26:56,720 --> 00:26:59,120
Speaker 1: listings US and that's still.

581
00:26:58,960 --> 00:27:01,600
Speaker 2: Kicking around, been talking about that forever.

582
00:27:01,680 --> 00:27:03,879
Speaker 1: You'll still see an occasional direct listing. Like that's just

583
00:27:03,880 --> 00:27:06,560
Speaker 1: like a technology that like someone built and that was

584
00:27:07,320 --> 00:27:09,520
Speaker 1: it's kind of domesticated and is now part of the toolbox.

585
00:27:09,680 --> 00:27:11,520
Speaker 1: I think SPACs are different because like you can't just

586
00:27:11,560 --> 00:27:12,960
Speaker 1: like go to a company and be like, well you

587
00:27:12,960 --> 00:27:14,600
Speaker 1: can do an IPO, you can do a spec because

588
00:27:14,640 --> 00:27:16,760
Speaker 1: you need to have a pre existing spack lying around. Right.

589
00:27:17,160 --> 00:27:20,359
Speaker 1: The spack experience, you know, was very lucrative for spack

590
00:27:20,400 --> 00:27:23,000
Speaker 1: sponsors for you know, the first half of that boom,

591
00:27:23,200 --> 00:27:25,040
Speaker 1: and then more and more sponsors got into it and

592
00:27:25,119 --> 00:27:28,159
Speaker 1: a lot of them ended up stuck and like with spacks,

593
00:27:28,200 --> 00:27:30,600
Speaker 1: that will expire and they will eat a million dollars

594
00:27:30,640 --> 00:27:33,200
Speaker 1: or whatever of setup costs and feel burned. So I

595
00:27:33,240 --> 00:27:35,840
Speaker 1: think that you'll be less likely to see people starting

596
00:27:35,840 --> 00:27:37,879
Speaker 1: spacks like on spack as it were, and trying to

597
00:27:38,000 --> 00:27:40,119
Speaker 1: you know, find a deal. So I don't know, I

598
00:27:40,119 --> 00:27:43,200
Speaker 1: think it will kind of dissipate. But there's still stuff.

599
00:27:43,240 --> 00:27:46,000
Speaker 1: I mean, like I really like Bill Ackman's spark, you

600
00:27:46,040 --> 00:27:48,480
Speaker 1: know his like ah, his spack where you don't raise

601
00:27:48,520 --> 00:27:51,040
Speaker 1: the fund first. Like that solves like a number of issues.

602
00:27:51,040 --> 00:27:53,000
Speaker 1: But one issue that it solves is like it's not

603
00:27:53,080 --> 00:27:56,040
Speaker 1: as risky for the sponsor upfront, right, like because you

604
00:27:56,040 --> 00:27:57,240
Speaker 1: said up the thing and it's like, well, you have

605
00:27:57,240 --> 00:27:59,360
Speaker 1: as long as you need and like you're not raising

606
00:27:59,359 --> 00:28:01,040
Speaker 1: a specific amount money you have, like you know, you

607
00:28:01,080 --> 00:28:03,480
Speaker 1: can raise as much moneys you want and so it's

608
00:28:03,520 --> 00:28:06,320
Speaker 1: like a tool where like seven years from now, a

609
00:28:06,359 --> 00:28:07,919
Speaker 1: bank can go to a company and be like, well

610
00:28:07,960 --> 00:28:09,199
Speaker 1: you can go pupic with an IPO. You can do

611
00:28:09,200 --> 00:28:10,920
Speaker 1: a direct listing, or you can call it Bill Blackman

612
00:28:10,960 --> 00:28:13,080
Speaker 1: and see if he's got a sparkling around, right, And

613
00:28:13,160 --> 00:28:16,520
Speaker 1: so there's something as a technology. It's interesting, but like

614
00:28:16,680 --> 00:28:18,520
Speaker 1: because it needs to be set up in advance, like

615
00:28:18,600 --> 00:28:21,159
Speaker 1: it's possible that like there mostly go away.

616
00:28:21,240 --> 00:28:24,320
Speaker 2: Any other topics that you've been looking at lately that

617
00:28:24,640 --> 00:28:27,840
Speaker 2: are going to become regulars, and I'm holding crypto to

618
00:28:27,920 --> 00:28:28,679
Speaker 2: be its own, you.

619
00:28:28,680 --> 00:28:30,760
Speaker 1: Know, crypto, You're right, like crypto was a regular topic

620
00:28:30,800 --> 00:28:33,479
Speaker 1: and it still is, but you know, a large subset

621
00:28:33,520 --> 00:28:35,040
Speaker 1: of my readers or second it I mean crypto was

622
00:28:35,080 --> 00:28:38,120
Speaker 1: fascinating because lake Elon Musk, it was a laboratory for

623
00:28:38,240 --> 00:28:40,520
Speaker 1: understanding financial concepts, right, Like people who were like kind

624
00:28:40,520 --> 00:28:43,000
Speaker 1: of rebuilding the financial system from scratch, and so you

625
00:28:43,040 --> 00:28:46,600
Speaker 1: could have like great discussions about like what is margin lending?

626
00:28:46,680 --> 00:28:48,840
Speaker 1: Right because like crypto exchanges were like thinking of new

627
00:28:48,840 --> 00:28:49,360
Speaker 1: ways to do it.

628
00:28:49,440 --> 00:28:49,600
Speaker 2: Right.

629
00:28:49,760 --> 00:28:51,920
Speaker 1: The retrenchment of crypto has been has meant that there's

630
00:28:51,960 --> 00:28:53,520
Speaker 1: just like much less of that there's much less like

631
00:28:53,520 --> 00:28:56,440
Speaker 1: interesting financial experiments in crypto, because like crypto is just

632
00:28:56,480 --> 00:28:59,560
Speaker 1: like there's just less new stuff happening in crypto. The

633
00:28:59,600 --> 00:29:01,239
Speaker 1: thing that, like, that's been on my mind a lot

634
00:29:01,280 --> 00:29:04,840
Speaker 1: recently because of the open AI saga. It's just AI, right, Like,

635
00:29:04,880 --> 00:29:07,160
Speaker 1: I just like the influence of large language models and

636
00:29:07,200 --> 00:29:10,160
Speaker 1: other sort of AI tools in finance. It's still kind

637
00:29:10,200 --> 00:29:12,360
Speaker 1: of early days, but you're just like, oh, is an

638
00:29:12,400 --> 00:29:16,520
Speaker 1: article about how AI tools are being used, you know,

639
00:29:16,640 --> 00:29:19,920
Speaker 1: to do new stuff, to like take over jobs from humans,

640
00:29:19,920 --> 00:29:22,200
Speaker 1: to like find new ways to do things in finance.

641
00:29:22,240 --> 00:29:23,840
Speaker 1: And I think that's like, you know, obviously going to

642
00:29:23,880 --> 00:29:25,000
Speaker 1: be a central theme.

643
00:29:25,160 --> 00:29:26,760
Speaker 2: All right, so let's let's talk about a few of

644
00:29:26,800 --> 00:29:30,760
Speaker 2: your other favorite topics. I just love the way you

645
00:29:30,800 --> 00:29:34,120
Speaker 2: put this quote. I have to say, nobody makes being

646
00:29:34,160 --> 00:29:37,680
Speaker 2: a billionaire look like less fun than Elon Musk. He's

647
00:29:37,720 --> 00:29:41,560
Speaker 2: the richest person in the world. Exclamation point. He decided

648
00:29:41,600 --> 00:29:43,600
Speaker 2: to buy his favorite toy and to make it more

649
00:29:43,640 --> 00:29:46,200
Speaker 2: closely aligned with his tastes. So he did that, and

650
00:29:46,240 --> 00:29:49,440
Speaker 2: it worked, and yet it seems to make him more

651
00:29:49,520 --> 00:29:54,760
Speaker 2: miserable every day. So when when the Twitter acquisition was

652
00:29:54,880 --> 00:29:58,800
Speaker 2: early days, it was front page with you all the time.

653
00:29:58,880 --> 00:30:01,360
Speaker 2: It was top of mind. Tell us a little bit

654
00:30:01,440 --> 00:30:05,120
Speaker 2: about why you find it so fascinating to write about

655
00:30:05,160 --> 00:30:05,920
Speaker 2: Elon Musk.

656
00:30:06,240 --> 00:30:08,800
Speaker 1: So, in terms of like my professional interests, I'm really

657
00:30:08,800 --> 00:30:12,120
Speaker 1: interested in like kind of financial stuff, and Elon Musk

658
00:30:12,200 --> 00:30:18,720
Speaker 1: is a fascinating like financial guy because he really rethinks everything.

659
00:30:18,760 --> 00:30:23,040
Speaker 1: And I think, like his biggest supporters would say this,

660
00:30:23,400 --> 00:30:27,320
Speaker 1: he really rethinks everything from first principles, and that's kind

661
00:30:27,360 --> 00:30:30,400
Speaker 1: of a terrible way to do almost everything in like

662
00:30:30,480 --> 00:30:33,560
Speaker 1: regulated financial markets. And so like, I write a lot

663
00:30:33,600 --> 00:30:36,000
Speaker 1: of like imagined dialogue for Elon Musk, and a lot

664
00:30:36,080 --> 00:30:39,240
Speaker 1: of it is like Elon calling his lawyers and saying,

665
00:30:39,320 --> 00:30:42,280
Speaker 1: why can't I pretend I'm going to take Tesla private

666
00:30:42,400 --> 00:30:45,240
Speaker 1: or whatever, and his lawyers being like, you can't do that.

667
00:30:45,760 --> 00:30:48,120
Speaker 1: And I think, you know, you read stories where you're

668
00:30:48,120 --> 00:30:49,720
Speaker 1: like at space X, they're like, well, the laws of

669
00:30:49,720 --> 00:30:52,320
Speaker 1: physics don't allow you to do whatever you're doing. Right

670
00:30:52,800 --> 00:30:56,000
Speaker 1: in like the laws of like financial markets and the

671
00:30:56,080 --> 00:30:58,840
Speaker 1: laws of the sec everything's like a little grayer, you know,

672
00:30:58,840 --> 00:31:00,720
Speaker 1: it's a little bit less clear what's allowed and what's

673
00:31:00,760 --> 00:31:03,680
Speaker 1: not allowed. And so he's constantly pushing up against what's allowed.

674
00:31:04,160 --> 00:31:08,760
Speaker 1: So he's always doing weird stuff that one is funny,

675
00:31:08,760 --> 00:31:12,520
Speaker 1: and then two that kind of illuminates how these mechanisms work, right.

676
00:31:12,560 --> 00:31:14,960
Speaker 1: I mean I wrote so much about his acquisition of

677
00:31:15,000 --> 00:31:16,960
Speaker 1: Twitter because I you know, I was an M and

678
00:31:17,000 --> 00:31:19,440
Speaker 1: A lawyer, and I have written over the you know,

679
00:31:19,720 --> 00:31:23,040
Speaker 1: twelve years of my career in financial journalism there have

680
00:31:23,120 --> 00:31:26,000
Speaker 1: been M and A deals where like there's been some

681
00:31:26,080 --> 00:31:28,280
Speaker 1: dispute about whether some deal had to close, and like

682
00:31:28,680 --> 00:31:30,280
Speaker 1: where you could be like, oh, this is how merger

683
00:31:30,280 --> 00:31:31,840
Speaker 1: are going to work, this is how remedies work in

684
00:31:31,920 --> 00:31:33,880
Speaker 1: merger disputes, right, But I didn't do a lot of

685
00:31:33,880 --> 00:31:36,680
Speaker 1: that because people find it kind of boring, right, and you're, yeah, yeah,

686
00:31:36,680 --> 00:31:40,800
Speaker 1: like merger dispute remedies in in merger contracts, and then

687
00:31:40,800 --> 00:31:43,320
Speaker 1: Elon Musk makes it like hilarious front page News. I'm like,

688
00:31:43,360 --> 00:31:45,880
Speaker 1: I can write about merger disputes and you often don't

689
00:31:45,880 --> 00:31:48,760
Speaker 1: see those mechanics because usually people just kind of do

690
00:31:48,800 --> 00:31:51,239
Speaker 1: the expected thing. And Elon Musk is like, no, I'm

691
00:31:51,280 --> 00:31:54,960
Speaker 1: going to test every like pressure point of how mergers work.

692
00:31:55,360 --> 00:31:58,560
Speaker 1: It turns out they do work, right, Like we might

693
00:31:58,560 --> 00:32:00,520
Speaker 1: have been wrong, right, we might have like all done

694
00:32:00,560 --> 00:32:04,320
Speaker 1: merger argreements in ways that were vulnerable to Elon Musk

695
00:32:04,680 --> 00:32:06,840
Speaker 1: finding flaws in them, but in fact it held up,

696
00:32:06,880 --> 00:32:09,080
Speaker 1: you know, And there's just like a lot of stuff

697
00:32:09,120 --> 00:32:11,360
Speaker 1: like that. There's a lot of you know, he like

698
00:32:11,480 --> 00:32:13,480
Speaker 1: pushes the boundaries of what he can get away with.

699
00:32:13,920 --> 00:32:16,280
Speaker 1: He does weird things and sort of pushes people to

700
00:32:16,880 --> 00:32:19,080
Speaker 1: acquiesce to them, and sometimes they do and sometimes they don't.

701
00:32:19,120 --> 00:32:21,880
Speaker 1: It's always just like illuminating about how finance and how

702
00:32:21,880 --> 00:32:22,480
Speaker 1: the law works.

703
00:32:22,760 --> 00:32:26,479
Speaker 2: I love this description. Nobody has been penalized more in

704
00:32:26,600 --> 00:32:30,600
Speaker 2: history for their inability to manage their impulse control.

705
00:32:31,280 --> 00:32:35,000
Speaker 1: Well, you know, like in like dollar terms, but like

706
00:32:35,440 --> 00:32:38,120
Speaker 1: you know, other people have been penalized worse, like in

707
00:32:38,200 --> 00:32:40,200
Speaker 1: terms of their own utility. Like he's had to pay

708
00:32:40,200 --> 00:32:42,920
Speaker 1: a lot of money for his inability to resist Twitter,

709
00:32:43,000 --> 00:32:44,520
Speaker 1: but like I mean still quite rich.

710
00:32:44,960 --> 00:32:48,160
Speaker 2: Right, that's that's forty four billion dollars. I always wondered

711
00:32:48,200 --> 00:32:51,800
Speaker 2: why he didn't just write the billion dollar breakup of FEEB.

712
00:32:51,920 --> 00:32:53,400
Speaker 1: Well, this is this is what we're telling about. Like

713
00:32:53,640 --> 00:32:56,000
Speaker 1: he couldn't do that. That wasn't how it worked. The

714
00:32:56,040 --> 00:32:59,600
Speaker 1: merger agreement isn't that simple. It had a specific performance

715
00:32:59,640 --> 00:33:02,200
Speaker 1: Clauset said, you can't walk away for by writing a

716
00:33:02,240 --> 00:33:04,400
Speaker 1: billion dollar breakup fee. The breakup fee is payable and

717
00:33:04,520 --> 00:33:07,920
Speaker 1: specific circumstances where you're sort of allowed to walk away.

718
00:33:07,960 --> 00:33:09,440
Speaker 1: But he was not allowed to walk away by writing

719
00:33:09,480 --> 00:33:10,720
Speaker 1: by paying a billion dollar fee.

720
00:33:11,000 --> 00:33:15,080
Speaker 2: Who is advising him to waive due diligence? I recall

721
00:33:15,120 --> 00:33:15,920
Speaker 2: you wrote about that.

722
00:33:16,080 --> 00:33:19,400
Speaker 1: Well, he so I actually think that in hostile public

723
00:33:19,400 --> 00:33:21,720
Speaker 1: company m and A, it is not that uncommon to

724
00:33:21,720 --> 00:33:23,600
Speaker 1: not do due diligence, right, And that's how hostile m and

725
00:33:23,640 --> 00:33:26,400
Speaker 1: A works, Like you don't talk to the management, We'll

726
00:33:26,440 --> 00:33:27,520
Speaker 1: talk to you, and you're like, I'm gonna put in

727
00:33:27,560 --> 00:33:33,080
Speaker 1: a bid anyway. These days, normally the hostile deals sort

728
00:33:33,080 --> 00:33:35,080
Speaker 1: of end up going quasi friendly and like you get

729
00:33:35,080 --> 00:33:37,040
Speaker 1: to do some due diligence. But like, I mean, the

730
00:33:37,080 --> 00:33:42,680
Speaker 1: reasoning is Twitter's financials and you know, it's business were

731
00:33:42,720 --> 00:33:47,080
Speaker 1: all fairly well known publicly, and there was no information

732
00:33:47,400 --> 00:33:49,600
Speaker 1: that he didn't have that was relevant to his bid,

733
00:33:49,920 --> 00:33:51,600
Speaker 1: so like he had all the information he needed. Like

734
00:33:51,680 --> 00:33:53,160
Speaker 1: what happened is like, first of all, he was kind

735
00:33:53,200 --> 00:33:57,480
Speaker 1: of overpaying, you know generally, but more importantly, like kind

736
00:33:57,480 --> 00:34:00,320
Speaker 1: of the market tanked, right, between when he and the

737
00:34:00,320 --> 00:34:03,320
Speaker 1: deal and when it closed, the waiving due diligence was

738
00:34:03,360 --> 00:34:06,200
Speaker 1: not the problem there, right, Like, like he he was

739
00:34:06,240 --> 00:34:11,080
Speaker 1: buying a very well known public company and he knew

740
00:34:11,080 --> 00:34:12,400
Speaker 1: what he needed to know about it.

741
00:34:12,960 --> 00:34:16,920
Speaker 2: So your your headline for that story was Musk lost

742
00:34:17,040 --> 00:34:20,320
Speaker 2: interest in pretending to buy Twitter, which is kind of vibral.

743
00:34:20,320 --> 00:34:22,640
Speaker 2: Well that's what I thought at the time, right, ironic

744
00:34:22,680 --> 00:34:25,320
Speaker 2: because he ends up being forced to buy Twitter because

745
00:34:25,400 --> 00:34:29,160
Speaker 2: he made a firm offer. Yeah, which raises a big question.

746
00:34:29,239 --> 00:34:31,920
Speaker 2: How could you be the wealthiest person in the world

747
00:34:32,400 --> 00:34:36,200
Speaker 2: and not have one or two lawyers and accounts on

748
00:34:36,360 --> 00:34:39,920
Speaker 2: staff that say, hey, genius, you're going to be forty

749
00:34:39,920 --> 00:34:41,759
Speaker 2: five billion in the hole if you don't stop this,

750
00:34:42,280 --> 00:34:43,920
Speaker 2: Like nobody says note him.

751
00:34:44,320 --> 00:34:47,520
Speaker 1: Well, there's two points right before he signed the deal, Like,

752
00:34:47,560 --> 00:34:49,040
Speaker 1: I think that, Like there are a lot of people

753
00:34:49,360 --> 00:34:51,840
Speaker 1: signing a public company merger agreement is sort of different

754
00:34:51,880 --> 00:34:54,280
Speaker 1: from like signing a letter of intent to buy at computer.

755
00:34:54,560 --> 00:34:57,160
Speaker 1: Like I think that, like he might have some experience

756
00:34:57,239 --> 00:34:59,560
Speaker 1: in doing deals where like you sign a piece of

757
00:34:59,600 --> 00:35:02,920
Speaker 1: paper that is not a final binding commitment, right, whereas

758
00:35:02,920 --> 00:35:04,480
Speaker 1: in a public company merger, like it doesn't really work

759
00:35:04,520 --> 00:35:05,839
Speaker 1: that way. You sign a piece of paper, your pretty

760
00:35:05,840 --> 00:35:08,279
Speaker 1: committed it done. I think it's possible that he had

761
00:35:08,320 --> 00:35:10,040
Speaker 1: lawyers who told him that and he didn't listen. I

762
00:35:10,040 --> 00:35:12,000
Speaker 1: think it's also possible that it did not occur to

763
00:35:12,040 --> 00:35:14,840
Speaker 1: a lawyer to say, when you signed the definitive merger agreement,

764
00:35:14,880 --> 00:35:16,000
Speaker 1: that's a definitive merger group.

765
00:35:16,080 --> 00:35:16,160
Speaker 2: Right.

766
00:35:16,160 --> 00:35:18,000
Speaker 1: Think it might have been like the lawyer might have

767
00:35:18,000 --> 00:35:21,040
Speaker 1: assumed that was obvious right after he signed the deal.

768
00:35:21,280 --> 00:35:24,000
Speaker 1: The reporting on this suggests that he did that. His

769
00:35:24,080 --> 00:35:26,919
Speaker 1: lawyers did tell him, you know, you signed a binding deal,

770
00:35:27,239 --> 00:35:29,480
Speaker 1: but I think that they probably accurately told him he

771
00:35:29,520 --> 00:35:31,319
Speaker 1: had some chance of winning.

772
00:35:31,920 --> 00:35:33,360
Speaker 2: Not exactly the same.

773
00:35:34,040 --> 00:35:36,000
Speaker 1: He was like, let's roll the dice. Man like, I

774
00:35:36,000 --> 00:35:39,040
Speaker 1: don't think he minds going up against long odds.

775
00:35:39,520 --> 00:35:42,560
Speaker 2: Really really interesting stuff. Let's talk a little bit about

776
00:35:42,640 --> 00:35:46,320
Speaker 2: how money stuff got started before it was the most

777
00:35:46,440 --> 00:35:49,960
Speaker 2: red item on Wall Street? How did it begin? Tell

778
00:35:50,040 --> 00:35:52,040
Speaker 2: us a little bit about the background.

779
00:35:51,600 --> 00:35:53,319
Speaker 1: You know, I don't. I don't really know. It's sort

780
00:35:53,320 --> 00:35:55,440
Speaker 1: of like accrewed in stages. So I was blogging at

781
00:35:55,480 --> 00:35:58,799
Speaker 1: del Bicker for a while, you know, writing like you know,

782
00:35:59,000 --> 00:36:02,600
Speaker 1: one to three blog posts today about the financial industry

783
00:36:02,600 --> 00:36:06,080
Speaker 1: back when people wrote blog posts. And then I came

784
00:36:06,120 --> 00:36:08,320
Speaker 1: to Bloomberg and they sort of it was at a

785
00:36:08,360 --> 00:36:09,640
Speaker 1: time when they were sort of thing, you do the

786
00:36:09,680 --> 00:36:12,080
Speaker 1: same thing. You know, you'll blog a couple of times

787
00:36:12,080 --> 00:36:15,120
Speaker 1: a day, and like many blogs like deal Breaker, like

788
00:36:15,160 --> 00:36:17,920
Speaker 1: some other financial blogs, you know, there's this notion that

789
00:36:18,000 --> 00:36:20,200
Speaker 1: in the morning you just sent out a roundup of links,

790
00:36:20,480 --> 00:36:23,120
Speaker 1: and so it became like my morning link round up

791
00:36:23,600 --> 00:36:26,799
Speaker 1: was like a couple of paragraphs about four stories, right,

792
00:36:27,520 --> 00:36:30,080
Speaker 1: And at some point I was like, I want this

793
00:36:30,160 --> 00:36:34,320
Speaker 1: link wrap to be an email that goes to your inbox.

794
00:36:34,680 --> 00:36:36,520
Speaker 1: I didn't like do a lot of thinking and market

795
00:36:36,520 --> 00:36:38,920
Speaker 1: research about this. I think I was mostly inspired by

796
00:36:39,200 --> 00:36:42,040
Speaker 1: this great media newsletter called Today in Tabs by Rusty

797
00:36:42,080 --> 00:36:44,680
Speaker 1: Foster that was like hilarious and uh.

798
00:36:44,920 --> 00:36:47,080
Speaker 2: Just very like stylish still still around.

799
00:36:46,840 --> 00:36:49,000
Speaker 1: Still around. Yeah, it's like gone through different direction day

800
00:36:49,719 --> 00:36:51,560
Speaker 1: Today and Tabs that's great and.

801
00:36:51,840 --> 00:36:53,560
Speaker 2: Back in the pre substat days.

802
00:36:53,440 --> 00:36:58,600
Speaker 1: Yeah, this was fourteen something like that. And so I

803
00:36:58,680 --> 00:37:00,319
Speaker 1: was like, I'm gonna make this an email newsletter and

804
00:37:00,360 --> 00:37:02,800
Speaker 1: everyone was, you know, Bloomberger was like sure, whatever, h

805
00:37:03,080 --> 00:37:04,439
Speaker 1: And I don't know.

806
00:37:04,400 --> 00:37:06,279
Speaker 2: Exactly that's precisely what they said sure.

807
00:37:06,640 --> 00:37:09,239
Speaker 1: There was a kind of like real thinking about it,

808
00:37:09,440 --> 00:37:12,200
Speaker 1: and we were like, we should give it a name.

809
00:37:12,640 --> 00:37:15,799
Speaker 1: And I do think that Tim O'Brien, now the head

810
00:37:15,800 --> 00:37:18,880
Speaker 1: of Bloomberg Opinion, came up with the name money Stuff,

811
00:37:19,120 --> 00:37:20,759
Speaker 1: but he thinks it was me. But any any case,

812
00:37:20,800 --> 00:37:22,319
Speaker 1: someone came up with the name money stuff wi I,

813
00:37:22,360 --> 00:37:23,359
Speaker 1: which I adore and.

814
00:37:23,440 --> 00:37:29,479
Speaker 2: Is like, cause it's so it's so perfectly ambiguous and generic. Yeah,

815
00:37:29,760 --> 00:37:33,320
Speaker 2: and yet it's so winking at the same time.

816
00:37:34,239 --> 00:37:37,120
Speaker 1: One of my editors once called my tone and headlines

817
00:37:37,520 --> 00:37:41,360
Speaker 1: blandly sarcastic, and I think I think of money Stuff

818
00:37:41,360 --> 00:37:43,600
Speaker 1: as being blandly sarcastic. But so we came with the name,

819
00:37:43,600 --> 00:37:45,759
Speaker 1: which is which was great. But then like you know,

820
00:37:45,760 --> 00:37:47,400
Speaker 1: I started sending out it's an email, and then like

821
00:37:48,000 --> 00:37:50,440
Speaker 1: over time, more of my work went into the email,

822
00:37:50,480 --> 00:37:52,560
Speaker 1: and it got longer and frankly got later in the day,

823
00:37:52,719 --> 00:37:54,600
Speaker 1: and less of my work went into the standalone blog

824
00:37:54,600 --> 00:37:57,520
Speaker 1: post until I realized, like I had this audience on email,

825
00:37:57,760 --> 00:38:01,359
Speaker 1: it would be obscene for me to write a long,

826
00:38:01,440 --> 00:38:03,080
Speaker 1: good post and put it up on Bloomberg and not

827
00:38:03,080 --> 00:38:05,360
Speaker 1: send it to my email subscribers. So instead the email

828
00:38:05,400 --> 00:38:07,200
Speaker 1: is gonna be the whole thing, and like, if I

829
00:38:07,200 --> 00:38:08,680
Speaker 1: have something good, I'm gonna put it in the email,

830
00:38:08,680 --> 00:38:11,160
Speaker 1: you know. And so I no longer write like standalone

831
00:38:11,239 --> 00:38:15,480
Speaker 1: blog posts, and the word blog has sort of vanished

832
00:38:15,480 --> 00:38:17,400
Speaker 1: from the Internet, but I still kind of think of

833
00:38:17,440 --> 00:38:19,960
Speaker 1: myself as a blogger. It was such a good strategic

834
00:38:20,000 --> 00:38:23,120
Speaker 1: decision to like capture this audience and people who expect

835
00:38:23,160 --> 00:38:25,040
Speaker 1: to hear from you each day, who know your name

836
00:38:25,400 --> 00:38:27,799
Speaker 1: or get an email from your name, rather than like,

837
00:38:27,840 --> 00:38:29,960
Speaker 1: you know, a column that they don't necessarily look at

838
00:38:29,960 --> 00:38:33,399
Speaker 1: the pieline, who expect it every day, who feel some

839
00:38:33,440 --> 00:38:35,759
Speaker 1: sort of like parasocial relationship with you, where they're like,

840
00:38:35,840 --> 00:38:38,040
Speaker 1: were there in some sense in correspondence with you, rather

841
00:38:38,080 --> 00:38:40,280
Speaker 1: than just like reading some stuff on the internet.

842
00:38:40,600 --> 00:38:43,279
Speaker 2: So let's talk a little bit about your audience. And

843
00:38:43,560 --> 00:38:47,000
Speaker 2: I have a few quotes I've pulled from the Internet.

844
00:38:47,280 --> 00:38:51,399
Speaker 2: Matt's one of the best writers today chronicling the ironies, paradoxes,

845
00:38:51,440 --> 00:38:55,680
Speaker 2: and absurdities of modern business and finance. That that's Jim

846
00:38:55,760 --> 00:38:58,920
Speaker 2: Chanos of Kinnicos Associates. His work is some of the

847
00:38:58,960 --> 00:39:03,520
Speaker 2: most sophistic analysis of what's really happening on Wall Street

848
00:39:03,600 --> 00:39:07,520
Speaker 2: says Bill Ackman. These are some pretty big hitters blowing

849
00:39:07,600 --> 00:39:11,280
Speaker 2: kisses your way. What's it like to know that your

850
00:39:11,880 --> 00:39:15,879
Speaker 2: daily email is being read by some pretty big Wall

851
00:39:15,880 --> 00:39:16,600
Speaker 2: Street titans.

852
00:39:16,719 --> 00:39:19,120
Speaker 1: I try not to think about it too much because,

853
00:39:19,160 --> 00:39:20,400
Speaker 1: like sometimes you write about.

854
00:39:20,160 --> 00:39:22,919
Speaker 2: Them when you when you write something, do you know

855
00:39:23,200 --> 00:39:24,759
Speaker 2: this is going to be read by them? Is that

856
00:39:24,840 --> 00:39:25,640
Speaker 2: in the back of your head?

857
00:39:25,880 --> 00:39:27,520
Speaker 1: The thing is that, like the tone of the email

858
00:39:27,600 --> 00:39:29,640
Speaker 1: is so like it is written for like me and

859
00:39:29,680 --> 00:39:31,759
Speaker 1: my friends. You know. It's like I used to think

860
00:39:31,800 --> 00:39:34,400
Speaker 1: of my audience as being like the analysts on my desk,

861
00:39:34,440 --> 00:39:36,200
Speaker 1: who are like sort of like young people who know

862
00:39:36,239 --> 00:39:38,200
Speaker 1: a little that finance play. You can still explain a

863
00:39:38,239 --> 00:39:40,600
Speaker 1: lot of things to them. I no longer really think

864
00:39:40,600 --> 00:39:42,160
Speaker 1: about that way, but I still think of it as like,

865
00:39:42,160 --> 00:39:44,000
Speaker 1: like the audience is to like to make myself laugh.

866
00:39:44,239 --> 00:39:46,400
Speaker 1: I don't think of it as being like Bill Ackman's

867
00:39:46,400 --> 00:39:47,200
Speaker 1: going to see this, you know.

868
00:39:47,520 --> 00:39:51,480
Speaker 2: The New York Times described your analyzes as humor with

869
00:39:51,600 --> 00:39:55,080
Speaker 2: a nerdy, confident tone. Sounds like you're writing for your

870
00:39:55,120 --> 00:39:57,719
Speaker 2: buds on the in the analysts room.

871
00:39:57,920 --> 00:39:59,200
Speaker 1: Yeah a little bit. Yeah.

872
00:39:59,360 --> 00:40:02,640
Speaker 2: So so so let's talk a little bit about some

873
00:40:02,719 --> 00:40:08,120
Speaker 2: of that nerdiness. What's with the endless humorous footnotes?

874
00:40:08,400 --> 00:40:11,560
Speaker 1: I don't know, Like it's just like it's a tick

875
00:40:11,640 --> 00:40:13,400
Speaker 1: that started a deal breaker and then I sort of

876
00:40:13,520 --> 00:40:15,600
Speaker 1: brought it over because like people complain if I don't

877
00:40:15,600 --> 00:40:17,920
Speaker 1: have footnotes that you know, It's like an email newsletter

878
00:40:17,960 --> 00:40:20,239
Speaker 1: is a very linear thing, but like sometimes there are

879
00:40:20,280 --> 00:40:22,200
Speaker 1: like digressions that you want to have and the best

880
00:40:22,239 --> 00:40:23,719
Speaker 1: way to do that is in a footnote and you

881
00:40:23,800 --> 00:40:27,520
Speaker 1: have some rudimentary HTML that allows you to jump back

882
00:40:27,520 --> 00:40:30,320
Speaker 1: and forth. Although in an email newsletter it's like pretty rudimentary.

883
00:40:30,520 --> 00:40:32,720
Speaker 1: As it's gone on longer, like you know, the audience

884
00:40:32,719 --> 00:40:35,120
Speaker 1: has broadened, right, and so it's not like I'm literally

885
00:40:35,120 --> 00:40:39,279
Speaker 1: writing for, like, you know, an audience of analysts at

886
00:40:39,320 --> 00:40:42,880
Speaker 1: a bank. I'm writing for a kind of range of audiences.

887
00:40:42,920 --> 00:40:46,280
Speaker 1: And there are times when I will say something general

888
00:40:46,680 --> 00:40:49,520
Speaker 1: and straightforward in the text, and then I'll be like,

889
00:40:49,600 --> 00:40:51,320
Speaker 1: I know you're going to complain about this, So in

890
00:40:51,360 --> 00:40:53,480
Speaker 1: the footnote I'll be like, this is like not quite right,

891
00:40:53,520 --> 00:40:55,120
Speaker 1: and here's why, you know, And I try to like

892
00:40:55,200 --> 00:40:57,480
Speaker 1: be like not in the direction of like a sort

893
00:40:57,480 --> 00:40:59,960
Speaker 1: of deeper understanding with that necessarily cluttering up the description

894
00:41:00,120 --> 00:41:01,600
Speaker 1: of the text. But there's other things too. Some of

895
00:41:01,600 --> 00:41:03,319
Speaker 1: things there are just like funny jokes that are that

896
00:41:03,360 --> 00:41:05,719
Speaker 1: are distracting in the text, and so I'll put a

897
00:41:05,760 --> 00:41:06,480
Speaker 1: joke on the phoot.

898
00:41:06,520 --> 00:41:08,480
Speaker 2: So, so you mentioned the audience, how often do you

899
00:41:08,480 --> 00:41:11,200
Speaker 2: hear from them? How often are readers hitting you up

900
00:41:11,239 --> 00:41:12,040
Speaker 2: with emails?

901
00:41:12,280 --> 00:41:14,279
Speaker 1: I often get emails from people who are very much

902
00:41:14,320 --> 00:41:17,880
Speaker 1: on my wavelength, right, So I wrote recently about this

903
00:41:18,040 --> 00:41:21,920
Speaker 1: like trading mistake by a power company that led to

904
00:41:22,080 --> 00:41:25,520
Speaker 1: finish electric prices being negative, and so there are like

905
00:41:25,560 --> 00:41:28,400
Speaker 1: these news stories about like finish people running their saunas

906
00:41:28,680 --> 00:41:30,960
Speaker 1: all night to like to make money because they're getting

907
00:41:30,960 --> 00:41:33,520
Speaker 1: paid to run their saunas, and so many people emailed

908
00:41:33,560 --> 00:41:35,839
Speaker 1: at me about that, being like, oh, here's the time

909
00:41:35,840 --> 00:41:37,600
Speaker 1: that my electric presses were negative, and I, you know,

910
00:41:37,640 --> 00:41:40,520
Speaker 1: like that. It's like when I write about like weird trades,

911
00:41:40,760 --> 00:41:43,280
Speaker 1: I have enough of an audience who does weird trades

912
00:41:43,680 --> 00:41:45,520
Speaker 1: and who like think about this in the same way

913
00:41:45,520 --> 00:41:47,040
Speaker 1: that they'll be like, oh, here's a weird trade. I

914
00:41:47,080 --> 00:41:49,080
Speaker 1: did that. It's hilarious and like I always love those,

915
00:41:49,200 --> 00:41:51,360
Speaker 1: and so I often am able to like, if I

916
00:41:51,360 --> 00:41:53,040
Speaker 1: write about something weird, I will have like then a

917
00:41:53,040 --> 00:41:57,319
Speaker 1: week of follow ups of readers corresponding and saying being like,

918
00:41:57,320 --> 00:41:58,520
Speaker 1: here's an even weirder story.

919
00:41:58,560 --> 00:42:00,920
Speaker 2: You know, I have a vivid ruck election when oil

920
00:42:00,960 --> 00:42:04,080
Speaker 2: prices went negative and your headline was something along the

921
00:42:04,120 --> 00:42:08,040
Speaker 2: lines of there's no place to store oil. It's smelly,

922
00:42:08,160 --> 00:42:11,719
Speaker 2: it's it's dangerous, it's this, it's that, and so we'll

923
00:42:11,719 --> 00:42:14,040
Speaker 2: pay you to take this oil off our hands. You

924
00:42:14,040 --> 00:42:19,200
Speaker 2: you probably affected, certainly my understanding what was going on

925
00:42:19,320 --> 00:42:22,120
Speaker 2: with negative oil prices, but I bet a whole lot

926
00:42:22,120 --> 00:42:23,080
Speaker 2: of other people as well.

927
00:42:23,440 --> 00:42:26,640
Speaker 1: Thanks. That's the goal, Like I like to, you know,

928
00:42:26,880 --> 00:42:29,040
Speaker 1: the best things are like things were like there's some

929
00:42:29,080 --> 00:42:31,319
Speaker 1: weird story, and like the headliness like, oh, here's a

930
00:42:31,360 --> 00:42:33,680
Speaker 1: weird thing, and I can be like, here's like a

931
00:42:33,840 --> 00:42:36,719
Speaker 1: sort of intuitive conceptual framework for understanding that weird thing.

932
00:42:36,760 --> 00:42:39,080
Speaker 1: You know, here's like how to think about that weird thing.

933
00:42:39,080 --> 00:42:40,920
Speaker 1: But that's always like super satisfying to do.

934
00:42:41,160 --> 00:42:42,960
Speaker 2: But it's a little more than that. I'm going to

935
00:42:43,040 --> 00:42:46,120
Speaker 2: quote the New York Times on that he makes readers

936
00:42:46,160 --> 00:42:51,120
Speaker 2: feel in on the savage joke that is late capitalism,

937
00:42:51,520 --> 00:42:54,799
Speaker 2: and the Times was referring to what I thought was

938
00:42:54,800 --> 00:42:59,200
Speaker 2: a pretty hilarious acronym that's about thirty letters wrong long

939
00:43:00,400 --> 00:43:05,319
Speaker 2: about a city group shared downside protection derivative that you

940
00:43:05,440 --> 00:43:10,440
Speaker 2: decided to abbreviate, and it was a really really funny

941
00:43:10,920 --> 00:43:12,240
Speaker 2: tongue in chic line.

942
00:43:12,440 --> 00:43:14,040
Speaker 1: I think there's like a sort of standard mode in

943
00:43:14,040 --> 00:43:16,359
Speaker 1: financial journalism of like you look at like stuff that

944
00:43:16,360 --> 00:43:18,960
Speaker 1: banks do and you're like, this is really bad, and

945
00:43:19,000 --> 00:43:21,320
Speaker 1: then like my mode is I often find it really funny.

946
00:43:21,560 --> 00:43:23,760
Speaker 1: And I think that resonates with a lot of readers

947
00:43:23,960 --> 00:43:26,520
Speaker 1: in different ways, sometimes because they work in capital in

948
00:43:26,560 --> 00:43:30,080
Speaker 1: finance and also find it funny, sometimes because they don't

949
00:43:30,080 --> 00:43:32,160
Speaker 1: work in finance and find it funny. You know. I

950
00:43:32,160 --> 00:43:34,480
Speaker 1: have a lot of readers these days who work, like

951
00:43:34,520 --> 00:43:37,520
Speaker 1: broadly speaking, in tech, and like what they are interested

952
00:43:37,560 --> 00:43:40,920
Speaker 1: in is not like specifically descriptions of finance, but like

953
00:43:41,480 --> 00:43:45,960
Speaker 1: this like sort of like system z, like nerdy algorithmic

954
00:43:45,960 --> 00:43:47,719
Speaker 1: way of thinking about the world, and so like, I

955
00:43:47,719 --> 00:43:49,160
Speaker 1: have a lot of tech readers who are sort of like,

956
00:43:49,200 --> 00:43:50,920
Speaker 1: I like your style. I don't really care about finance,

957
00:43:50,920 --> 00:43:52,960
Speaker 1: but I think this is like a explanation of finance

958
00:43:52,960 --> 00:43:54,840
Speaker 1: that resonates with tech people. I have a lot of

959
00:43:54,880 --> 00:43:57,759
Speaker 1: readers who are like very strong critics of banks and

960
00:43:57,800 --> 00:44:01,960
Speaker 1: of finance, and who like what I do because sort

961
00:44:01,960 --> 00:44:05,600
Speaker 1: of neutrally explanatory and tries to get at what's actually

962
00:44:05,640 --> 00:44:07,640
Speaker 1: going on and how people are in the industry are

963
00:44:07,640 --> 00:44:10,640
Speaker 1: actually thinking about things. And the people who are like

964
00:44:10,680 --> 00:44:14,480
Speaker 1: strong critics of banking often find that useful. Right, will

965
00:44:14,480 --> 00:44:16,600
Speaker 1: as supposed to just be like, oh oh, banks are evil.

966
00:44:16,560 --> 00:44:21,080
Speaker 2: Right, You're critical without seeking to be critical in a

967
00:44:21,120 --> 00:44:25,520
Speaker 2: way that once you understand the absurdity of certain situations,

968
00:44:26,040 --> 00:44:26,879
Speaker 2: it can help.

969
00:44:26,920 --> 00:44:30,000
Speaker 1: But be critical, I work from them opinion. I joke

970
00:44:30,040 --> 00:44:32,880
Speaker 1: that I'm an opinion columnist without any opinions. That's not

971
00:44:32,920 --> 00:44:35,560
Speaker 1: really true, but like I'm not, like, it is not

972
00:44:35,680 --> 00:44:37,680
Speaker 1: high on my list to be like this is bad

973
00:44:37,760 --> 00:44:39,719
Speaker 1: or this is good, right, Like, it's always like this

974
00:44:39,800 --> 00:44:41,960
Speaker 1: is interesting, right, Like, look at this interesting thing. Let's

975
00:44:41,960 --> 00:44:44,440
Speaker 1: try to understand it. Yeah, I definitely think that a

976
00:44:44,440 --> 00:44:46,640
Speaker 1: lot of readers come away being like, you have explained

977
00:44:46,640 --> 00:44:48,880
Speaker 1: this thing, and now I think it's much worse. But

978
00:44:49,080 --> 00:44:50,680
Speaker 1: like that's not always my goal, you know.

979
00:44:51,320 --> 00:44:54,600
Speaker 2: That's that's hilarious. So let's talk a little bit about

980
00:44:54,840 --> 00:44:59,080
Speaker 2: a somewhat infamous podcast you did with Sam Banking Freed

981
00:44:59,239 --> 00:45:02,840
Speaker 2: and FTX on odd lots a good year before or

982
00:45:02,880 --> 00:45:06,640
Speaker 2: so before it crashed. What was your sense of FTX

983
00:45:07,120 --> 00:45:07,760
Speaker 2: at the time.

984
00:45:08,280 --> 00:45:09,799
Speaker 1: I've no story that makes me look good. I thought

985
00:45:09,880 --> 00:45:12,560
Speaker 1: FTX was really interesting. I thought FTX seemed like a

986
00:45:12,600 --> 00:45:14,840
Speaker 1: well run crypto exchange that seemed to be printing a

987
00:45:14,840 --> 00:45:18,400
Speaker 1: lot of money, and that had interesting, you know, aggressive

988
00:45:18,440 --> 00:45:21,880
Speaker 1: ideas for how to change the structure of derivatives, margining,

989
00:45:22,320 --> 00:45:25,600
Speaker 1: and what's your endgame as a crypto exchange. I thought

990
00:45:25,600 --> 00:45:28,760
Speaker 1: that Sam Bankmin Freed had a like reasonably clever endgame,

991
00:45:28,760 --> 00:45:32,120
Speaker 1: which is like he was going to consume the regular

992
00:45:32,160 --> 00:45:35,160
Speaker 1: financial system. He was going to be a place where

993
00:45:35,160 --> 00:45:38,720
Speaker 1: you could like tokenize stocks and run a crypto exchange

994
00:45:38,719 --> 00:45:41,640
Speaker 1: that gradually became like the main financial exchange for the world. Right.

995
00:45:41,840 --> 00:45:42,880
Speaker 1: I don't want to say it like I thought that

996
00:45:42,920 --> 00:45:45,319
Speaker 1: plan was inevitable, but I thought that was like, that's

997
00:45:45,360 --> 00:45:48,040
Speaker 1: a better plan for your crypto exchange than like, well,

998
00:45:48,120 --> 00:45:51,120
Speaker 1: crypto will take you know, all of like financial life

999
00:45:51,120 --> 00:45:52,920
Speaker 1: will be in bitcoin. Right. I thought he had like

1000
00:45:52,960 --> 00:45:54,799
Speaker 1: a pretty good idea for like how we're going to

1001
00:45:54,840 --> 00:45:56,360
Speaker 1: be a you know, enormous company.

1002
00:45:56,560 --> 00:45:59,640
Speaker 2: Well, well, he clearly came up with a better mechanism

1003
00:46:00,080 --> 00:46:04,360
Speaker 2: for extending credit and liquidating portfolios that were in the

1004
00:46:04,400 --> 00:46:09,759
Speaker 2: red then other exchanges had. He just kept building FTX

1005
00:46:10,239 --> 00:46:15,640
Speaker 2: and kept focusing on being the biggest, baddest crypto trading

1006
00:46:15,680 --> 00:46:19,480
Speaker 2: platform and crypto exchange that could have been wildly successful.

1007
00:46:19,520 --> 00:46:22,040
Speaker 2: It certainly looked like he was printing money for a while.

1008
00:46:22,680 --> 00:46:25,560
Speaker 2: It turned out there were some com mingling funds and

1009
00:46:25,600 --> 00:46:26,439
Speaker 2: other issues there.

1010
00:46:26,560 --> 00:46:30,120
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's interesting to ask if he was

1011
00:46:30,200 --> 00:46:31,840
Speaker 1: doing what he said he was doing, was that a

1012
00:46:31,840 --> 00:46:33,960
Speaker 1: good idea, because I was like, yeah, that sounds like interesting.

1013
00:46:34,000 --> 00:46:36,160
Speaker 1: I don't know. He was very much about like we're

1014
00:46:36,160 --> 00:46:39,200
Speaker 1: going to have an automated margining system where we're never

1015
00:46:39,200 --> 00:46:40,680
Speaker 1: going to call you for margin calls. We're just going

1016
00:46:40,719 --> 00:46:42,640
Speaker 1: to blow you out if you fall below a certain level.

1017
00:46:42,760 --> 00:46:44,719
Speaker 1: It's going to be all twenty four to seven mark

1018
00:46:44,760 --> 00:46:47,160
Speaker 1: to market. It's going to be much less subjective. And

1019
00:46:47,200 --> 00:46:48,880
Speaker 1: he was talking about this at a time when like

1020
00:46:49,280 --> 00:46:51,359
Speaker 1: the London Metals Exchange had had this like sort of

1021
00:46:51,719 --> 00:46:55,319
Speaker 1: semi scandalous problem where like this big trader accumulated this

1022
00:46:55,400 --> 00:46:57,239
Speaker 1: huge deaf as a position and like he couldn't meet

1023
00:46:57,239 --> 00:46:59,600
Speaker 1: margin calls and they couldn't do anything about it because like,

1024
00:47:00,239 --> 00:47:02,600
Speaker 1: if you know, they would have like blown up the exchange.

1025
00:47:03,360 --> 00:47:05,600
Speaker 1: So they just sort of like pause trading for a week.

1026
00:47:05,719 --> 00:47:07,399
Speaker 1: And it just looked bad, right, And it's like, oh yeah,

1027
00:47:07,400 --> 00:47:10,920
Speaker 1: this like system of like subjectively doing margin calls and

1028
00:47:10,960 --> 00:47:12,680
Speaker 1: like doing margin calls once a day, and if like

1029
00:47:12,760 --> 00:47:15,160
Speaker 1: if it's moved too far, then like you're like, oh no,

1030
00:47:15,200 --> 00:47:18,600
Speaker 1: it's too big to fail. That the SBF endorsed system

1031
00:47:18,719 --> 00:47:21,239
Speaker 1: of like we're going to do everything automated. You know,

1032
00:47:21,320 --> 00:47:23,160
Speaker 1: you're like, oh yeah, I see the appeal of that.

1033
00:47:23,320 --> 00:47:24,840
Speaker 1: I don't know that it was a good idea. I

1034
00:47:24,880 --> 00:47:27,839
Speaker 1: think that like there are obvious downsides to it too,

1035
00:47:28,080 --> 00:47:30,080
Speaker 1: But like what brought FTX down was not any of

1036
00:47:30,120 --> 00:47:32,800
Speaker 1: those downsides, because like what was in fact happening was

1037
00:47:32,840 --> 00:47:35,560
Speaker 1: that he had simply exempted his own big hedge fund

1038
00:47:35,560 --> 00:47:39,760
Speaker 1: from the automated margining rules and it accumulated a vastly

1039
00:47:39,800 --> 00:47:43,200
Speaker 1: bigger deficit position than like the London Metals Exchange guy did,

1040
00:47:43,560 --> 00:47:45,360
Speaker 1: and then it did in fact blow up the exchange

1041
00:47:45,400 --> 00:47:47,480
Speaker 1: and take customer money down with it. The thing he

1042
00:47:47,520 --> 00:47:50,200
Speaker 1: said he wasn't doing was what caused them to blow up.

1043
00:47:50,520 --> 00:47:52,600
Speaker 1: But as far as I know, FTX was printing money,

1044
00:47:52,680 --> 00:47:55,560
Speaker 1: Like the exchange was very valuable in terms of it

1045
00:47:55,600 --> 00:47:57,960
Speaker 1: made a lot of revenue, and some of what they

1046
00:47:57,960 --> 00:48:00,319
Speaker 1: did was just they overspent that revenue. And then what

1047
00:48:00,360 --> 00:48:02,799
Speaker 1: they did was like they had this affiliated hedge fund

1048
00:48:02,840 --> 00:48:06,160
Speaker 1: that you know, lost bajillions of dollars, right and because

1049
00:48:06,560 --> 00:48:08,600
Speaker 1: it was just taking enormous margin loans from the exchange,

1050
00:48:08,600 --> 00:48:10,600
Speaker 1: when it lost the bajillions of dollars, it took the

1051
00:48:10,600 --> 00:48:13,480
Speaker 1: exchange down with it. But the exchange itself is very profitable.

1052
00:48:13,680 --> 00:48:15,000
Speaker 1: And one thing you could say, like there was a

1053
00:48:15,040 --> 00:48:17,960
Speaker 1: time I think like over the summer when like they

1054
00:48:17,960 --> 00:48:21,600
Speaker 1: considered shutting down Alameda the hedge fund, and you do

1055
00:48:21,800 --> 00:48:23,840
Speaker 1: look back and say, like could they have managed to

1056
00:48:23,880 --> 00:48:25,640
Speaker 1: do that in a way that you know, it was

1057
00:48:25,640 --> 00:48:28,480
Speaker 1: like embarrassing it whatever, you know, like lost money, but

1058
00:48:28,600 --> 00:48:31,680
Speaker 1: that left FTX intact and then FTX could continue printing

1059
00:48:31,680 --> 00:48:33,480
Speaker 1: money and maybe I don't know, like maybe they had

1060
00:48:33,520 --> 00:48:35,799
Speaker 1: already gone too far by that point. The other thing

1061
00:48:35,880 --> 00:48:38,480
Speaker 1: is like there is a theory that one reason that

1062
00:48:38,600 --> 00:48:41,600
Speaker 1: FTX was printing so much money was that it was

1063
00:48:41,600 --> 00:48:44,920
Speaker 1: a very good trading experience for customers because Alameda was

1064
00:48:44,960 --> 00:48:46,040
Speaker 1: on the other side of a lot of trades, and

1065
00:48:46,080 --> 00:48:48,000
Speaker 1: Alameda was losing money on all these customers. So you'd

1066
00:48:48,000 --> 00:48:49,880
Speaker 1: go to FTX, you'd trade, you'd make money. You're like, oh,

1067
00:48:49,960 --> 00:48:51,320
Speaker 1: this is great, I'll come back right. But it was

1068
00:48:51,360 --> 00:48:53,200
Speaker 1: all sort of like an indirect Ponzi scheme, where like

1069
00:48:53,200 --> 00:48:55,840
Speaker 1: you were making money from Alameda and Alameda was stealing

1070
00:48:55,880 --> 00:48:58,560
Speaker 1: it from you. I don't think that's really true, I think,

1071
00:48:58,600 --> 00:49:00,520
Speaker 1: but I think there's like a element of truth of that.

1072
00:49:00,520 --> 00:49:03,239
Speaker 1: I don't think that's like what mainly explains FTX. Like

1073
00:49:03,280 --> 00:49:05,520
Speaker 1: I think FTX was a good business and now Alimita

1074
00:49:05,680 --> 00:49:09,000
Speaker 1: was like a hilariously bad business, and like they were interminkled.

1075
00:49:09,280 --> 00:49:13,440
Speaker 2: So last summer, you write this giant piece in Business

1076
00:49:13,440 --> 00:49:18,920
Speaker 2: Week about Crypto. Essentially you were that entire issue of

1077
00:49:19,200 --> 00:49:23,080
Speaker 2: Business Week. Tell us about what led to that massive

1078
00:49:23,360 --> 00:49:26,480
Speaker 2: piece and what the thinking was that had you say,

1079
00:49:26,600 --> 00:49:29,400
Speaker 2: I know, I'm going to take over Business Week for

1080
00:49:29,560 --> 00:49:31,800
Speaker 2: a week and write about nothing but crypto.

1081
00:49:32,160 --> 00:49:33,799
Speaker 1: Joel Weber, the editor of Business Week, came to me

1082
00:49:33,880 --> 00:49:35,480
Speaker 1: and it was like, hey, do you remember what is code?

1083
00:49:35,480 --> 00:49:37,840
Speaker 1: So what is code? Is Paul Forth, this great computer programmer,

1084
00:49:38,200 --> 00:49:40,799
Speaker 1: wrote a Business Week issue took over the entire issue

1085
00:49:40,800 --> 00:49:43,360
Speaker 1: of Business Week to write a thing called what is Code?

1086
00:49:43,560 --> 00:49:46,600
Speaker 1: I was trying to explain computer programming to a like

1087
00:49:46,640 --> 00:49:49,360
Speaker 1: I get sophisticated business audience, but not coders, right, And

1088
00:49:49,440 --> 00:49:51,439
Speaker 1: it was just like this really fabulous, like just piece

1089
00:49:51,480 --> 00:49:54,040
Speaker 1: of writing and explaining and thinking. And I loved it

1090
00:49:54,080 --> 00:49:56,239
Speaker 1: when it came out, and Joel came to me, is like,

1091
00:49:56,239 --> 00:49:58,360
Speaker 1: remember what is code? We'd like to do that for Crypto,

1092
00:49:58,680 --> 00:50:02,480
Speaker 1: and I was like, I found it appealing because I

1093
00:50:02,560 --> 00:50:04,080
Speaker 1: like to write long and I was like, I have

1094
00:50:04,200 --> 00:50:07,000
Speaker 1: a whole magazine. Two. Crypto felt to me like a

1095
00:50:07,040 --> 00:50:09,640
Speaker 1: big enough subject to warrant a whole magazine, but a

1096
00:50:09,680 --> 00:50:12,359
Speaker 1: small enough subject that you could like almost do all

1097
00:50:12,400 --> 00:50:14,080
Speaker 1: of it, Like I didn't do all of it, but

1098
00:50:14,200 --> 00:50:16,280
Speaker 1: you can almost like sort of start at the most

1099
00:50:16,719 --> 00:50:19,919
Speaker 1: basic building block intuitions and build up to a full

1100
00:50:20,000 --> 00:50:22,880
Speaker 1: understanding of the entire Crypto universe in the space of

1101
00:50:22,920 --> 00:50:24,759
Speaker 1: like forty thousand words. And that just seemed like a

1102
00:50:24,800 --> 00:50:27,480
Speaker 1: really interesting, like just technical challenge to be like take

1103
00:50:27,480 --> 00:50:30,880
Speaker 1: a reader from nothing to like not like some vague intuitions,

1104
00:50:30,880 --> 00:50:33,560
Speaker 1: but like a detailed understanding of like all the stuff

1105
00:50:33,600 --> 00:50:36,680
Speaker 1: that matters in crypto that felt really interesting. But also

1106
00:50:36,760 --> 00:50:39,560
Speaker 1: like in my day job, I was often writing about crypto,

1107
00:50:39,719 --> 00:50:41,560
Speaker 1: and you have this question of where to start, right,

1108
00:50:41,760 --> 00:50:43,759
Speaker 1: do I explain what a blockchain is in order to

1109
00:50:43,880 --> 00:50:46,560
Speaker 1: like make a joke about this, like you know, crypto

1110
00:50:46,640 --> 00:50:49,400
Speaker 1: exchange that got hacked, right, And so the idea of

1111
00:50:49,400 --> 00:50:52,520
Speaker 1: writing this this magazine piece is partly like selfishly for me,

1112
00:50:52,800 --> 00:50:54,640
Speaker 1: I could be like, I've explained what a blockchain is

1113
00:50:54,640 --> 00:50:56,360
Speaker 1: over there, so I can just tell you about this

1114
00:50:56,400 --> 00:50:58,880
Speaker 1: thing that got hacked, right. So it felt like a useful,

1115
00:50:58,920 --> 00:51:02,440
Speaker 1: like like reference piece for me to do from then on. Oh.

1116
00:51:02,480 --> 00:51:03,919
Speaker 1: The other thing that I was thinking at the time,

1117
00:51:03,920 --> 00:51:06,160
Speaker 1: to be honest, is that Joel came to me and

1118
00:51:06,200 --> 00:51:09,080
Speaker 1: like in June or whatever, and I was like, summer's

1119
00:51:09,080 --> 00:51:12,239
Speaker 1: always slow. Let me be so bored writing my newsletter every day.

1120
00:51:12,560 --> 00:51:14,359
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna have enough to write about, so why

1121
00:51:14,400 --> 00:51:15,800
Speaker 1: don't I take some time off from the newsletter to

1122
00:51:15,840 --> 00:51:17,400
Speaker 1: write this long thing. And then of course that was

1123
00:51:17,440 --> 00:51:19,759
Speaker 1: the summer of Elon and Twitter and so like I

1124
00:51:19,800 --> 00:51:22,200
Speaker 1: was like, oh damn, And so then yeah, like that's

1125
00:51:22,320 --> 00:51:24,480
Speaker 1: that was that was kind of the motivation for it.

1126
00:51:24,480 --> 00:51:27,040
Speaker 1: My my biggest regret is that, you know, this is

1127
00:51:27,080 --> 00:51:29,680
Speaker 1: really directly inspired by Paul Ford's What Is Code? And

1128
00:51:30,040 --> 00:51:32,319
Speaker 1: the Joel sort of like working title was like what

1129
00:51:32,480 --> 00:51:34,160
Speaker 1: is Crypto? And I was like we should call it

1130
00:51:34,200 --> 00:51:37,120
Speaker 1: what was Crypto? And we were like that's too mean,

1131
00:51:37,200 --> 00:51:39,000
Speaker 1: We're not gonna do it. And then it came out

1132
00:51:39,000 --> 00:51:40,800
Speaker 1: and like, I don't know they'd come out in October

1133
00:51:40,840 --> 00:51:43,400
Speaker 1: of twenty twenty two. It came out like, you know,

1134
00:51:43,480 --> 00:51:46,359
Speaker 1: like two weeks before I have to Exitxploded. And had

1135
00:51:46,440 --> 00:51:48,759
Speaker 1: we called it what was Crypto? You were like, what

1136
00:51:48,800 --> 00:51:51,319
Speaker 1: about all the awards? Man, that what a great title

1137
00:51:51,320 --> 00:51:52,960
Speaker 1: that would have been, and we just like we didn't

1138
00:51:53,000 --> 00:51:54,799
Speaker 1: have the courage or conviction, so we didn't call it

1139
00:51:54,800 --> 00:51:55,480
Speaker 1: what was Crypto?

1140
00:51:55,680 --> 00:51:58,080
Speaker 2: Well, this leads me to a sort of curve ball

1141
00:51:58,239 --> 00:52:01,839
Speaker 2: question that was almost the book. When is the Matt

1142
00:52:01,920 --> 00:52:02,560
Speaker 2: Levine book?

1143
00:52:02,920 --> 00:52:04,400
Speaker 1: Yeah? When I write it, I don't know. I mean, like,

1144
00:52:04,480 --> 00:52:07,400
Speaker 1: I like, there's they're sure there'll be a book. I

1145
00:52:07,480 --> 00:52:09,319
Speaker 1: want to do a book, but like I I really

1146
00:52:09,400 --> 00:52:10,200
Speaker 1: like my day job.

1147
00:52:10,080 --> 00:52:12,080
Speaker 2: A lot, and it goes to get in the way.

1148
00:52:12,360 --> 00:52:15,239
Speaker 1: Yeah, like involves writing a lot of words, so like

1149
00:52:15,400 --> 00:52:16,880
Speaker 1: I don't have any more words to go when I

1150
00:52:16,880 --> 00:52:18,759
Speaker 1: go home at night. But I really like that my my,

1151
00:52:18,960 --> 00:52:21,040
Speaker 1: you know, I like the day job, but like, I

1152
00:52:21,080 --> 00:52:24,239
Speaker 1: don't know, I found that what was crypto exercise really

1153
00:52:24,239 --> 00:52:26,000
Speaker 1: fun and I would like to do something like that

1154
00:52:26,080 --> 00:52:27,280
Speaker 1: for you know, not crypto.

1155
00:52:27,400 --> 00:52:29,759
Speaker 2: All right, well, we only have you for another ten

1156
00:52:29,880 --> 00:52:32,480
Speaker 2: or so minutes, so let's jump to our favorite questions

1157
00:52:32,520 --> 00:52:35,640
Speaker 2: that we ask all our guests, starting with what are

1158
00:52:35,640 --> 00:52:38,680
Speaker 2: you streaming these days? Tell us what you're either watching

1159
00:52:38,760 --> 00:52:41,600
Speaker 2: on Netflix or listening to In terms of podcasts, what's

1160
00:52:41,680 --> 00:52:42,680
Speaker 2: keeping you entertained.

1161
00:52:42,960 --> 00:52:45,239
Speaker 1: I don't really watch television. I have like a lot

1162
00:52:45,239 --> 00:52:47,879
Speaker 1: of children's television in my life, so streaming a lot

1163
00:52:47,880 --> 00:52:51,960
Speaker 1: of Eleanor Wonders Why, a lot of Frozen two things

1164
00:52:52,000 --> 00:52:56,000
Speaker 1: like that. I used to listen to weirder podcasts. Now

1165
00:52:56,040 --> 00:52:58,840
Speaker 1: I listened to like the long form podcast I love.

1166
00:52:58,960 --> 00:53:02,839
Speaker 1: I love song Exploder, the like yeah music podcast that's great.

1167
00:53:02,960 --> 00:53:05,640
Speaker 1: Yeah in PoCA, like I find myself like long form

1168
00:53:05,760 --> 00:53:07,680
Speaker 1: is the same thing, right, Like it's like people who

1169
00:53:07,719 --> 00:53:10,440
Speaker 1: are really good at something explaining like at a like

1170
00:53:10,520 --> 00:53:13,160
Speaker 1: a like a truly like mechanical specific level, like how

1171
00:53:13,160 --> 00:53:15,400
Speaker 1: they do what they do. It's like always satisfying and

1172
00:53:15,480 --> 00:53:16,759
Speaker 1: like how they do what they do, and also like

1173
00:53:16,880 --> 00:53:19,600
Speaker 1: they're sort of psychological traumas as they do it. I

1174
00:53:19,640 --> 00:53:20,600
Speaker 1: find it very useful.

1175
00:53:20,719 --> 00:53:23,560
Speaker 2: Tell us about your mentors who helped shape your career.

1176
00:53:23,960 --> 00:53:27,520
Speaker 1: The person who I most think of that way, it

1177
00:53:27,600 --> 00:53:29,239
Speaker 1: was just like, yeah, my first job out of law

1178
00:53:29,239 --> 00:53:31,239
Speaker 1: school was clerking for a judge, right, And like that's

1179
00:53:31,280 --> 00:53:34,360
Speaker 1: a very weird job, right, like because it's it's like

1180
00:53:34,400 --> 00:53:37,400
Speaker 1: you and like two other people with like cloking for

1181
00:53:37,800 --> 00:53:41,200
Speaker 1: one sort of powerful figure. And I clerked for this judge,

1182
00:53:41,280 --> 00:53:43,520
Speaker 1: Ed Becker in Philadelphia, who was like one of the

1183
00:53:43,560 --> 00:53:46,640
Speaker 1: great judges. Like he was you know, brilliant, highly respected,

1184
00:53:47,200 --> 00:53:50,839
Speaker 1: but also like a mensh a nice guy, a guy

1185
00:53:50,840 --> 00:53:52,719
Speaker 1: who like in your interview would be like I have

1186
00:53:52,719 --> 00:53:54,960
Speaker 1: a zero deference policy and like really meant it and

1187
00:53:55,000 --> 00:53:57,680
Speaker 1: like wanted to hear from his clerks and like wanted

1188
00:53:57,719 --> 00:54:00,880
Speaker 1: to hear your opinions, and who just like had like

1189
00:54:00,920 --> 00:54:03,319
Speaker 1: a work ethic and a just an ethic that was

1190
00:54:03,400 --> 00:54:05,719
Speaker 1: really inspiring. Like he went, in doubt, do it the

1191
00:54:05,760 --> 00:54:07,120
Speaker 1: right way, and like he just like that's how he

1192
00:54:07,120 --> 00:54:09,200
Speaker 1: lived his life, you know, like he really like wasn't

1193
00:54:09,239 --> 00:54:11,880
Speaker 1: interested in short cuts or like he was just like

1194
00:54:11,920 --> 00:54:13,920
Speaker 1: he wanted to get things right, and that was just

1195
00:54:14,080 --> 00:54:16,719
Speaker 1: very inspiring to see, like, you know, in my earliest

1196
00:54:16,760 --> 00:54:18,560
Speaker 1: career to be like, oh yeah, this is a guy

1197
00:54:18,560 --> 00:54:20,600
Speaker 1: who like has been doing it forever and has a

1198
00:54:20,640 --> 00:54:23,400
Speaker 1: lot of accolades, but who is just like totally focused

1199
00:54:23,440 --> 00:54:24,239
Speaker 1: on doing the right thing.

1200
00:54:24,440 --> 00:54:26,680
Speaker 2: Let's talk about books. What are some of your favorites

1201
00:54:26,719 --> 00:54:28,000
Speaker 2: and what are you reading right now.

1202
00:54:28,239 --> 00:54:30,239
Speaker 1: I never have a favorite book. I'm like, I read

1203
00:54:30,280 --> 00:54:33,279
Speaker 1: a lot. I feel like having a favorite book is

1204
00:54:33,320 --> 00:54:35,040
Speaker 1: like I have too many books to have a favorite.

1205
00:54:35,040 --> 00:54:38,040
Speaker 1: But like the finance e books that like when people

1206
00:54:38,080 --> 00:54:41,040
Speaker 1: are like what should I read? Knowing nothing, the books

1207
00:54:41,080 --> 00:54:43,640
Speaker 1: I recommend are Liar's Poker Barbarians at the Gate, which

1208
00:54:43,680 --> 00:54:45,960
Speaker 1: I already mentioned right Like, it's just like I read

1209
00:54:46,000 --> 00:54:47,680
Speaker 1: it at a formative age and I was like, oh yeah,

1210
00:54:47,719 --> 00:54:50,560
Speaker 1: this finance stuff is cool. And the other one that

1211
00:54:50,600 --> 00:54:52,839
Speaker 1: I love is a diary of a very bad year.

1212
00:54:53,000 --> 00:54:54,960
Speaker 1: It was put out by like N plus one the magazine.

1213
00:54:55,000 --> 00:54:57,680
Speaker 1: It's it's Keith Gassing. There's a N plus one utter

1214
00:54:58,160 --> 00:55:01,040
Speaker 1: interviewing this anonymous hedge fund manager over the course of

1215
00:55:01,080 --> 00:55:02,839
Speaker 1: like two thousand and seven to two thousand and nine.

1216
00:55:02,880 --> 00:55:04,680
Speaker 1: He's just like a series of long interviews with this

1217
00:55:05,160 --> 00:55:08,200
Speaker 1: hedge fund manager talks about the financial crisis, but also

1218
00:55:08,239 --> 00:55:09,719
Speaker 1: just about like what it's like to run a hedge fund.

1219
00:55:09,719 --> 00:55:11,880
Speaker 1: He's just like very thoughtful and it gives you a

1220
00:55:11,880 --> 00:55:14,279
Speaker 1: sort of real flavor for like what finance is like,

1221
00:55:14,320 --> 00:55:15,799
Speaker 1: but also like what it is like to think about

1222
00:55:15,840 --> 00:55:18,040
Speaker 1: at a high level, and like like what the mindset

1223
00:55:18,120 --> 00:55:19,880
Speaker 1: is of someone who's very good at this. What am

1224
00:55:19,920 --> 00:55:23,840
Speaker 1: I reading now? I'm reading a book called a Nansi's Gold,

1225
00:55:24,200 --> 00:55:27,239
Speaker 1: which is about this con man in Ghana in like

1226
00:55:27,280 --> 00:55:31,240
Speaker 1: the seventies and eighties who was running a Nigerian prince scamp.

1227
00:55:31,480 --> 00:55:33,960
Speaker 2: If I have all this money waiting for me, if

1228
00:55:33,960 --> 00:55:36,719
Speaker 2: you sat me exactly, I'll split it with you.

1229
00:55:36,960 --> 00:55:39,280
Speaker 1: His version of the scam was that the first president

1230
00:55:39,280 --> 00:55:42,279
Speaker 1: of an independent Ghana had spirited hundreds of millions of

1231
00:55:42,280 --> 00:55:45,920
Speaker 1: dollars out of the country as and then was then deposed,

1232
00:55:46,200 --> 00:55:48,480
Speaker 1: and the money was in trust in a bank in Switzerland.

1233
00:55:48,800 --> 00:55:50,640
Speaker 1: He was going to get the money back and use

1234
00:55:50,680 --> 00:55:52,680
Speaker 1: it for the benefit of Ghana, but he just needed

1235
00:55:52,719 --> 00:55:55,960
Speaker 1: investors to whatever fill out the formalities, and so it's

1236
00:55:56,000 --> 00:55:58,640
Speaker 1: like this is just fascinating story of I love cons right,

1237
00:55:58,680 --> 00:56:01,839
Speaker 1: I love like financial frauds. And what to me is

1238
00:56:02,000 --> 00:56:07,360
Speaker 1: so incredible about this story is just that it lasted

1239
00:56:07,760 --> 00:56:10,279
Speaker 1: for decades because like the problem with this is is

1240
00:56:10,320 --> 00:56:12,960
Speaker 1: you're like, I need money, and in two months, I

1241
00:56:13,000 --> 00:56:15,120
Speaker 1: will get all this money and I'll pay you back tenfold.

1242
00:56:15,239 --> 00:56:17,279
Speaker 1: And then you do that for twenty years, and like

1243
00:56:17,480 --> 00:56:19,759
Speaker 1: your investor, you have like investors who stick with you

1244
00:56:19,800 --> 00:56:22,279
Speaker 1: for twenty years, and like the like the just the

1245
00:56:22,680 --> 00:56:25,799
Speaker 1: charisma and like the ability to get those you know,

1246
00:56:25,920 --> 00:56:27,360
Speaker 1: probably some of a return in two months, and then

1247
00:56:27,400 --> 00:56:29,360
Speaker 1: twenty years later they're still waiting for it. It's crazy.

1248
00:56:29,719 --> 00:56:32,680
Speaker 2: So our final two questions, what sort of advice would

1249
00:56:32,719 --> 00:56:35,799
Speaker 2: you give to a recent college grad interested in a

1250
00:56:35,880 --> 00:56:41,320
Speaker 2: career in m and a derivative structuring or financial writing.

1251
00:56:41,640 --> 00:56:45,640
Speaker 1: Well, it depends on which of those three things. So

1252
00:56:45,680 --> 00:56:47,800
Speaker 1: if you're interested in career and financi're writing, I recommend

1253
00:56:47,840 --> 00:56:49,680
Speaker 1: a career in finance first, because I do think it

1254
00:56:49,719 --> 00:56:52,120
Speaker 1: is really helpful to have subject matter knowledge and also

1255
00:56:52,200 --> 00:56:53,799
Speaker 1: just like sort of cultural knowledge of like what it

1256
00:56:53,800 --> 00:56:55,719
Speaker 1: feels like to work at a bank or whatever. You know.

1257
00:56:55,800 --> 00:56:57,680
Speaker 1: I would not be where I am today if I

1258
00:56:57,719 --> 00:57:00,400
Speaker 1: had like pursued this, you know, like I came to

1259
00:57:00,480 --> 00:57:03,080
Speaker 1: this in a haphazard way after having several other careers.

1260
00:57:03,080 --> 00:57:05,040
Speaker 2: First subject matter of expertise matters.

1261
00:57:05,160 --> 00:57:07,799
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's just like it's I find it like I'm

1262
00:57:07,920 --> 00:57:09,560
Speaker 1: very glad that I did not try to be a

1263
00:57:09,560 --> 00:57:12,120
Speaker 1: writer when I was twenty two. If you want to

1264
00:57:12,120 --> 00:57:14,600
Speaker 1: be interrivatives the advice I sometimes I don't want to

1265
00:57:14,600 --> 00:57:16,360
Speaker 1: say I regret that I have. But a dumb thing

1266
00:57:16,440 --> 00:57:18,320
Speaker 1: I did was like when I left law, I was like,

1267
00:57:18,360 --> 00:57:20,480
Speaker 1: I want to be in finance, and so I'm going

1268
00:57:20,520 --> 00:57:22,919
Speaker 1: to take the first like finance job I get right,

1269
00:57:23,800 --> 00:57:27,040
Speaker 1: And finance is like this enormous, you know, varied industry

1270
00:57:27,040 --> 00:57:29,120
Speaker 1: where there are a lot of different roles, and like

1271
00:57:29,240 --> 00:57:33,400
Speaker 1: if you are essentially like a math person and a tinkerer,

1272
00:57:33,640 --> 00:57:36,040
Speaker 1: like you will want different roles than if you're like

1273
00:57:36,080 --> 00:57:38,640
Speaker 1: a people person and a salesman, you know, and so

1274
00:57:38,680 --> 00:57:41,320
Speaker 1: there's a lot of like, uh, it's hard to know

1275
00:57:41,720 --> 00:57:44,320
Speaker 1: in advance what you'll be good at, but like it's

1276
00:57:44,320 --> 00:57:46,840
Speaker 1: important to know yourself and sort of understand what roles

1277
00:57:46,880 --> 00:57:49,000
Speaker 1: exist and try to find a role that matches your

1278
00:57:49,320 --> 00:57:53,000
Speaker 1: characteristics rather than just like be in finance generally. The

1279
00:57:53,000 --> 00:57:54,960
Speaker 1: other piece of advice I love to give young people

1280
00:57:55,080 --> 00:57:58,520
Speaker 1: is like, like I did a very standard career path,

1281
00:57:58,600 --> 00:58:01,400
Speaker 1: Like I went to college, went to a fancy college.

1282
00:58:01,440 --> 00:58:03,160
Speaker 1: I went to a fancy law school. I went to

1283
00:58:03,160 --> 00:58:04,880
Speaker 1: a fancy law firm, and then it was like two

1284
00:58:04,920 --> 00:58:07,080
Speaker 1: thousand and seven, so like, if you're a fancy corporate lawyer,

1285
00:58:07,120 --> 00:58:08,400
Speaker 1: you want to be an investmentker. So I went to

1286
00:58:08,400 --> 00:58:11,440
Speaker 1: a fancy investment back. Right, everything very standard until I

1287
00:58:11,480 --> 00:58:13,560
Speaker 1: was like, you know, in my early thirties, and then

1288
00:58:13,560 --> 00:58:15,000
Speaker 1: I was like I'm going to quit for deal Ricker.

1289
00:58:15,160 --> 00:58:17,160
Speaker 1: And that was a big change. Right. I tell people,

1290
00:58:17,160 --> 00:58:19,160
Speaker 1: I've made one career decision in my life, right, like

1291
00:58:19,200 --> 00:58:21,120
Speaker 1: everything was set for me and then I went to

1292
00:58:21,160 --> 00:58:24,200
Speaker 1: deal Ricker. And I think that if you are, like,

1293
00:58:24,400 --> 00:58:25,960
Speaker 1: you know, if you're a lot of like young people

1294
00:58:26,120 --> 00:58:28,440
Speaker 1: like looking you know, like an analyst job at Goldban,

1295
00:58:28,520 --> 00:58:32,080
Speaker 1: like you've been on this prestige seeking career path that

1296
00:58:32,200 --> 00:58:34,680
Speaker 1: is very set for you. My advice is like, that's good.

1297
00:58:34,960 --> 00:58:37,400
Speaker 1: Do that, and like there's some point at which you

1298
00:58:37,440 --> 00:58:40,040
Speaker 1: have to jump off that like standard career prestige path

1299
00:58:40,160 --> 00:58:41,360
Speaker 1: and you have to just kind of like know when

1300
00:58:41,360 --> 00:58:43,160
Speaker 1: that point is, and like be really calibrated to where

1301
00:58:43,160 --> 00:58:45,320
Speaker 1: that point is, because there are people who are miserable

1302
00:58:45,360 --> 00:58:47,480
Speaker 1: law firm partners because they stayed on that path too

1303
00:58:47,520 --> 00:58:49,200
Speaker 1: long and they were like I'm gonna do the expected

1304
00:58:49,200 --> 00:58:51,520
Speaker 1: thing and do the expected thing, like oh no, I'm

1305
00:58:51,560 --> 00:58:53,600
Speaker 1: trapped in this thing. I can't do anything else. I

1306
00:58:53,640 --> 00:58:55,640
Speaker 1: need the money, and like I don't like it, right,

1307
00:58:55,840 --> 00:58:57,200
Speaker 1: And then there are people who jump off too early

1308
00:58:57,240 --> 00:58:59,919
Speaker 1: and they're like I don't need to like pursue these

1309
00:59:00,080 --> 00:59:02,040
Speaker 1: hard jobs. I can just like go be a poet.

1310
00:59:02,040 --> 00:59:03,840
Speaker 1: And then like they're not happy either, right, And like

1311
00:59:03,880 --> 00:59:06,480
Speaker 1: there's some like optimally calibrated point where you can like

1312
00:59:06,640 --> 00:59:09,160
Speaker 1: the like optionality and prestige of the standard path and

1313
00:59:09,160 --> 00:59:12,120
Speaker 1: then like exercise your optionality and like do the thing

1314
00:59:12,120 --> 00:59:14,280
Speaker 1: you actually want to do. And it's not immediately, but

1315
00:59:14,320 --> 00:59:15,240
Speaker 1: it's not like never.

1316
00:59:15,400 --> 00:59:18,640
Speaker 2: You know, you seem to have exercised that optionality.

1317
00:59:18,720 --> 00:59:21,160
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean my timing was great and like, you know, accidentally,

1318
00:59:21,200 --> 00:59:24,040
Speaker 1: but like I do think that like people in these

1319
00:59:24,120 --> 00:59:27,040
Speaker 1: jobs think of themselves as a carering optionality and like

1320
00:59:27,080 --> 00:59:28,400
Speaker 1: eventually that starts to decay.

1321
00:59:28,560 --> 00:59:31,040
Speaker 2: So our final question, what do you know about the

1322
00:59:31,040 --> 00:59:34,600
Speaker 2: world of finance today you wish you knew twenty five

1323
00:59:34,680 --> 00:59:37,320
Speaker 2: or so years ago when you were first getting started.

1324
00:59:37,480 --> 00:59:39,320
Speaker 1: This is a mixed bag because like, I love what

1325
00:59:39,400 --> 00:59:42,200
Speaker 1: I do now, and it is so fortuitous that I

1326
00:59:42,280 --> 00:59:45,280
Speaker 1: landed here, and like, there are a lot of ways

1327
00:59:45,320 --> 00:59:48,520
Speaker 1: that I could have been luckier early and then been

1328
00:59:48,600 --> 00:59:51,960
Speaker 1: sadder overall, because I would have found a really good

1329
00:59:52,040 --> 00:59:55,000
Speaker 1: job early on that really fit me, and then it

1330
00:59:55,000 --> 00:59:56,560
Speaker 1: wouldn't fit me quite as well as this one, but

1331
00:59:56,600 --> 00:59:58,360
Speaker 1: I would stay at it. But I do think that,

1332
00:59:58,400 --> 01:00:01,040
Speaker 1: like what I said earlier, like I didn't know anything

1333
01:00:01,080 --> 01:00:03,680
Speaker 1: about like what the different types of jobs were, and

1334
01:00:03,760 --> 01:00:07,520
Speaker 1: I thought finance was this undifferentiated like world where like

1335
01:00:07,720 --> 01:00:10,760
Speaker 1: it's all like you know, the same spreadsheets or whatever.

1336
01:00:11,400 --> 01:00:13,560
Speaker 1: And I think had I known better, like what I

1337
01:00:13,680 --> 01:00:16,000
Speaker 1: was good at and like what kind of jobs there were,

1338
01:00:16,080 --> 01:00:18,920
Speaker 1: I might have like more intentionally pursued jobs in finance

1339
01:00:18,960 --> 01:00:21,840
Speaker 1: and I might have gotten rich. But I might have

1340
01:00:22,280 --> 01:00:25,000
Speaker 1: been like you know, miserable and overworked. So I don't know,

1341
01:00:25,080 --> 01:00:26,360
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know anything now.

1342
01:00:26,960 --> 01:00:29,480
Speaker 2: It all worked out in the end. Thanks Matt for

1343
01:00:29,560 --> 01:00:32,240
Speaker 2: being so generous with your time. We have been speaking

1344
01:00:32,320 --> 01:00:36,360
Speaker 2: with Matt Levine. He is the author of Bloomberg's Money

1345
01:00:36,360 --> 01:00:40,880
Speaker 2: Stuff daily newsletter. If you enjoy this conversation, well check

1346
01:00:40,920 --> 01:00:44,320
Speaker 2: out any of the five hundred previous interviews we've conducted

1347
01:00:44,400 --> 01:00:49,960
Speaker 2: over the past nine years. You can find those at iTunes, Spotify, YouTube,

1348
01:00:50,280 --> 01:00:54,040
Speaker 2: wherever you get your favorite podcasts. Sign up for my

1349
01:00:54,200 --> 01:00:56,680
Speaker 2: daily reading list at ridults dot com. Follow me on

1350
01:00:56,720 --> 01:01:00,840
Speaker 2: Twitter at rid Holt's. Follow Matt Levine on Twitter at

1351
01:01:01,000 --> 01:01:04,840
Speaker 2: Matt underscore Levine. Follow all of the Bloomberg family of

1352
01:01:04,880 --> 01:01:09,200
Speaker 2: podcasts at Twitter, and check out my new podcast at

1353
01:01:09,240 --> 01:01:12,520
Speaker 2: the Money, where each week we share a quick investing

1354
01:01:12,680 --> 01:01:17,600
Speaker 2: insight with an industry expert. Those are on Apple Premium

1355
01:01:17,640 --> 01:01:20,880
Speaker 2: Podcast for the end of the fourth quarter of twenty

1356
01:01:20,920 --> 01:01:24,520
Speaker 2: twenty three. It will be everywhere in twenty twenty four.

1357
01:01:25,240 --> 01:01:27,200
Speaker 2: I would be remiss if I did not thank the

1358
01:01:27,280 --> 01:01:31,360
Speaker 2: Crack staff that helps put these conversations together. My audio

1359
01:01:31,440 --> 01:01:35,240
Speaker 2: engineer is Meredith Frank, My producer is Anna Luck. Sean

1360
01:01:35,320 --> 01:01:38,080
Speaker 2: Russo is my head of research. Attika of al Broun

1361
01:01:38,240 --> 01:01:42,560
Speaker 2: is our project manager. I'm Barry Rutolts. You've been listening

1362
01:01:42,600 --> 01:01:46,400
Speaker 2: to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio