Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
Speaker 1: today's best minds. And Elon must CEO status at Twitter
Speaker 1: is up for a vote on Twitter. You're gonna learn
Speaker 1: oh so much. On today's show Vanity Fairs Nick Bilton,
Speaker 1: who literally wrote the book on Twitter. We'll talk to
Speaker 1: us about what the hell is happening there. Then we'll
Speaker 1: talk to Molly White, who writes the amazing blog web
Speaker 1: three is going just great about f t X and
Speaker 1: SPF and many of the other woes of the crypto industry.
Speaker 1: But first we have the host of NPRS Full Disclosure
Speaker 1: and here and now, Robin fars Odd. Welcome to Fast Politics. Robin,
Speaker 1: thank you for having me, Molly. What a joy, what flattery?
Speaker 1: Oh well, I'm thrilled. It's like there's so much ship
Speaker 1: going on right now. Excuse my French. The economy and
Speaker 1: inflation and the numbers and are they better are they worse?
Speaker 1: So my first question for you is here we are,
Speaker 1: And again I always feel like my feelings do not
Speaker 1: necessarily drive with what has actually happened. In my heart,
Speaker 1: it feels like the economy is better than we thought
Speaker 1: it was going to be am I wrong. What the
Speaker 1: hell is happening? The economy has got deep power to it.
Speaker 1: I don't know where this money is left over from,
Speaker 1: if it was extraordinary stimulus from the pandemic or the
Speaker 1: fact that many of us are working from home and
Speaker 1: not commuting or not spending on wardrobe. But you can't
Speaker 1: really kill it as much as the fete is hiked.
Speaker 1: And now you've hiked more than four points in a year.
Speaker 1: This is the biggest surge of inflation we've had in
Speaker 1: forty years. Many of us have never experienced capital I
Speaker 1: inflation that they keep taking rates up. But nope, we're
Speaker 1: still doing the fomo travel fomo dining out tickets. I mean,
Speaker 1: pandemic be damned, rs v B damned, fever be damned.
Speaker 1: And I was at Chippolle late the other day and these, uh,
Speaker 1: these hucksters actually shook me down for three dollars for
Speaker 1: an extra dollar of chicken. I remember what extra chicken
Speaker 1: was a dollar twenty five. All you need to know
Speaker 1: about this economy is Chipotle. I mean, you have a
Speaker 1: willingness to pay. I don't even like it that much.
Speaker 1: The kids send me there, but they extort you every
Speaker 1: time they have pricing power. And that's the way things
Speaker 1: are headed. And there's a tip button now too. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you finance people, economists, people do with the economy,
Speaker 1: very involved in Chippotele. Is inflation worse than we thought?
Speaker 1: I mean, the numbers went down. The Biden administration seems
Speaker 1: very joyous. They're not. I mean they're still high, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, explain to us where we are with inflation.
Speaker 1: You have the Federal Reserve look at things in terms
Speaker 1: of bifur k like a duality of economy. You want
Speaker 1: stable prices and full employment. We have arguably more than
Speaker 1: full employment, with unemployment at three and a half percent.
Speaker 1: In fact, we have too many job openings. No by
Speaker 1: are willing to take these jobs. I think the Fed privately,
Speaker 1: if you've got Jerome Powell beer or vermouth at a bar,
Speaker 1: you tell you I'd gladly trade you know, five percent
Speaker 1: unemployment for two three percent inflation. It used to be
Speaker 1: that we just got used to two or three percent inflation.
Speaker 1: It's closer to seven percent now, and it hit as
Speaker 1: much as nine nearly ten percent, and that's really hard
Speaker 1: to snuff out. I mean by hiking rates up. In theory,
Speaker 1: you're making borrowing so difficult for people. You're making short
Speaker 1: term treasury yields or maybe bank saving zeald so attractive
Speaker 1: that people don't want to spend the money and practice.
Speaker 1: Like you said, there's a lot of money out there
Speaker 1: and there's still plenty to spend and FOMO I call
Speaker 1: it f O m O if you're missing out versus
Speaker 1: f O m C, the Federal Open Market Committee. That's
Speaker 1: really what this boils down to sow the raising interest rates.
Speaker 1: The Fed is raising interest rates because of this inflation
Speaker 1: in the hopes of slowing it down. It's making the
Speaker 1: mark it's mad, yeah, and it's making things perverse. Like
Speaker 1: on many days you have a bowl run on bad news,
Speaker 1: because if there's bad news, there's this idea that, oh,
Speaker 1: it's going to make the Fed thing twice about hiking again,
Speaker 1: or we'll have a sooner end to this rate hiking cycle.
Speaker 1: If there's good news, like, whoa, we're gonna we're gonna
Speaker 1: take rates up to six percent. This is worse than
Speaker 1: we thought. And so there's a complete disconnect now between
Speaker 1: news you should be rooting for and news investors and
Speaker 1: speculators are rooting for and this has actually been the
Speaker 1: worst year for diversification in recent history. It used to
Speaker 1: be that if you're in stocks and bonds, you get ballast,
Speaker 1: you get protection. But everything has gotten taken out and
Speaker 1: shot this year, so an enormous amount of confusion and
Speaker 1: capitulation among investors. So this is real. The markets are
Speaker 1: not the economy. That's right. It's really not that way.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, we first came to the United States,
Speaker 1: and this is a little cliche that I tell this story.
Speaker 1: One of my coming of age things is my dad,
Speaker 1: there's an immigrant. It was very proud to take me
Speaker 1: to the Savings Bank of America in North Dade County,
Speaker 1: Florida and give me my first past book savings account
Speaker 1: in two and I was a kindergartener, and I remember
Speaker 1: there were toasters and blenders everywhere, and the CDs were
Speaker 1: paying fifteen sixteen percent. That's when the FED was last
Speaker 1: killing inflation. Banks were begging you to give them your money.
Speaker 1: And if we have the highest inflation of four years,
Speaker 1: we don't have anything like that at a bank. I
Speaker 1: walk into a b of A or a chase, and
Speaker 1: they feel like they're doing me a favor if I
Speaker 1: open up a CD or a money market account. Things
Speaker 1: have changed so much. I haven't felt inflation in my
Speaker 1: adult life. There's been a lot of crying wolf. I know,
Speaker 1: you're gonna let this thing out of the bag, and
Speaker 1: you're not gonna be able to put it back in
Speaker 1: the bag. And it's finally visited it this year. And
Speaker 1: I speak to traders and investors in Wall Street people
Speaker 1: and they're just isn't an institutional memory. A lot of
Speaker 1: the greenhorns out there have never had to deal with
Speaker 1: a foe like this. We we we largely have broken the
Speaker 1: back of inflation for more than a generation, but we
Speaker 1: haven't this time, right, I mean, inflation isn't going up anymore,
Speaker 1: but it's not going down. And they've raised rates almost
Speaker 1: every month, though this month they only raised by half
Speaker 1: a percent. Yeah, but again we raised by a chunky
Speaker 1: four full points, more than four points, and we have
Speaker 1: another hike in the offing I think in February, and
Speaker 1: inflation you could say, is getting sanded down a bit,
Speaker 1: but seven point one percent that's still chunky. And I
Speaker 1: gotta tell you the theoretical stuff you see the government stats,
Speaker 1: they don't jive with what you see in the grocery
Speaker 1: store Avian flu has eggs at nearly four dollars. Or
Speaker 1: people are complaining about Roman and lettuce, you know, basic staples.
Speaker 1: Gas prices for much of this year choked people off,
Speaker 1: and the Chipotle factor, to me, that's still I don't
Speaker 1: want to I want to never talk about that restaurant again. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, I just don't think it's a good. Mexican
Speaker 1: food is good. I don't either. There's better food out there.
Speaker 1: But they single handily caused inflation. They send so much power.
Speaker 1: They single handily caused hassa avocado. Back when I lived
Speaker 1: in Manhattan, I used to get sweet hass avocados fors
Speaker 1: and regale my men girlfriend now wife with him. Now
Speaker 1: I can't buy one for less than four bucks. That's
Speaker 1: neither here nor there, but go ahead. That really is yes, Well,
Speaker 1: I mean I guess it shows inflation. Gases though down right,
Speaker 1: I mean gas is down now right, And that's was
Speaker 1: one of the big drivers, right, gases down. Labor is
Speaker 1: not down enough. I think that people are still feeling
Speaker 1: that stores cannot beg people to show up for job interviews,
Speaker 1: much less show up for the job. You've had to
Speaker 1: up the anti what was effectively now the de facto
Speaker 1: minimum wage in many cities in service sector jobs, not
Speaker 1: statutory necessarily as fifteen dollars and fifteen dollars. And there's
Speaker 1: much more clout now in terms of negotiating for tips
Speaker 1: a tip option. You see what's happening with Starbucks. I
Speaker 1: had recently a person on my show who's turning his
Speaker 1: coffee shop into a bit of a Kibbutz collective type thing,
Speaker 1: a co ownership thing with his baristas because there's no
Speaker 1: management track, there's no equity track. It's and and then
Speaker 1: on top of that, getting people back to the office
Speaker 1: is like pulling teeth. Now have we If we had
Speaker 1: more of an economic shock and unemployment was back up
Speaker 1: to six percent or seven percent, I think that would
Speaker 1: expose a lot of honesty and price discovery in the market.
Speaker 1: But we're still enjoying less than four percent unemployment. Some
Speaker 1: of this has to do with immigration, absolutely, And this
Speaker 1: is where you know somebody's got to do a great
Speaker 1: thing on the Chamber of commerce is cloud versus MAGA.
Speaker 1: You have so many people who are nominally GOP voting
Speaker 1: and everything, like the CEO of grocery store chains and
Speaker 1: restaurant chains and everything. Privately, they tell you that I've
Speaker 1: been killed on the lack of immigration, whether it's was
Speaker 1: the Trump administratration channeling hostility. I used to depend not
Speaker 1: just on illegal or undocumented workers, but people who would
Speaker 1: come here seasonally and work in my diner. I could
Speaker 1: get a short order chef. There's this tradition, a history
Speaker 1: have not just in fruit picking and agriculture and painting
Speaker 1: and towering the roof and landscaping, but on repaytrading money
Speaker 1: back to Mexico and Central America and other places. And
Speaker 1: we so bad, badly need that immigration right now because
Speaker 1: there just aren't there too many openings, and the wages,
Speaker 1: the clearing price wages for these things which aren't even effective,
Speaker 1: are driving up menu costs and everything else. You're seeing
Speaker 1: it in agriculture, You're seeing it in home building. You're
Speaker 1: seeing it just across the board. And it's a conversation
Speaker 1: that I think the diminishing chamber of commerce wing of
Speaker 1: the GOP needs to have with its cultural right wing.
Speaker 1: I mean, maybe you could have found this somewhere in
Speaker 1: that two thousand and twelve post boredom of the election,
Speaker 1: which is in Embers somewhere I don't even know. Let
Speaker 1: me ask you what happens now? Where do we think
Speaker 1: this goes? Right? There's no fix for immigration on the horizon,
Speaker 1: so the labor markets are not going to loosen. I mean,
Speaker 1: the only way labor markets get looser is by adding
Speaker 1: more people. I mean, are we just stuck in this forever?
Speaker 1: I think here's where the FED would privately like to
Speaker 1: see higher unemployment, because you'll see slack in wages, and
Speaker 1: you'll see people who were unwilling to show up at
Speaker 1: work more willing to show up at work. Do you
Speaker 1: remember what happened at the outset of this pandemic? We've
Speaker 1: really we visited unemployment in the high teams. The TV
Speaker 1: news networks had all this aerial footage of long breadlines,
Speaker 1: people waiting to get that that that was very short
Speaker 1: lived and it immediately shot back down. That exposes a
Speaker 1: lot of truth, you know, as as Warren Buffett says,
Speaker 1: and it's a little cliche. You see when the tide
Speaker 1: goes out, you see who's not wearing swim trunks. It's
Speaker 1: entirely possible that way. And the FED, while probably doesn't
Speaker 1: want to tip the economy into a full blown recession,
Speaker 1: wants to see higher pain so that wages subside. So
Speaker 1: much is so much as captured here in wages and
Speaker 1: and the vicious wage price spiral of people demanding higher wages,
Speaker 1: bosses and everything, increasing menu prices, passing it down to consumers,
Speaker 1: consumers going to their bosses getting higher wages. We're still
Speaker 1: feeling that. And now I'm going to sound like a socialist,
Speaker 1: but higher wages are good, especially in the world or
Speaker 1: cost of living, you know. I mean part of this
Speaker 1: is there hasn't the wage growth hasn't kept up with
Speaker 1: the economy. I mean, don't you think that share our
Speaker 1: by backs and things like that, where profits were put
Speaker 1: onto the managerial class and the wealthy and not given
Speaker 1: to the workers was kind of how we got here
Speaker 1: in the first place. And you're saying this from the
Speaker 1: upper east Side, not the upper west side. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm from the z Bars district. I know this, I
Speaker 1: know this field. But yeah, no. But here's the problem
Speaker 1: is if you have inflation at north of wage growth,
Speaker 1: then you're still losing money in real time. But the
Speaker 1: good news is that workers rested back a tremendous amount
Speaker 1: of cloud in the battle between capital and labor. This
Speaker 1: has been a real defining moment of workers who just
Speaker 1: didn't want to show up. You've read about quiet quitting,
Speaker 1: about people who just wanted to lie flat and do
Speaker 1: these other things. And there's still that cloud in whatever
Speaker 1: peculiar area we are in this economic cycle. The worker
Speaker 1: right now, the blue collar worker, the service sector worker,
Speaker 1: has an enormous amount of bargaining power and that just
Speaker 1: hasn't been seen over decades where there this is this
Speaker 1: learned helplessness. The money is going to go first to
Speaker 1: shareholders and dividends and management and profit, and now you can't.
Speaker 1: You're leaving money on the table if you don't have workers,
Speaker 1: so you need to pay them. So that actually is impositive. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's an equilibration. In the past, you did and after
Speaker 1: the financial crisis two thousand and eight, two thousand nine,
Speaker 1: I remember I was covering Lehman and everything, and people
Speaker 1: are saying, if this doesn't get workers in the streets
Speaker 1: with pitchforks, the fact that you're bailing out Wall Street,
Speaker 1: I don't know what will, but it didn't. I mean
Speaker 1: Obama took power. They say, don't waste a good crisis.
Speaker 1: Wall Street got to recapitalize with dividends again, and then
Speaker 1: we went back to business as usual. The pandemic. Fundamentally,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a sea change moment where people who
Speaker 1: are putting up with crap, working at diners, working at Walmart's,
Speaker 1: working at grocery stores with I rate crabby customers coming
Speaker 1: out and getting hero pay at the outset and seeing
Speaker 1: that hero pay go away. And on top of the
Speaker 1: fact that something like Obamacare has been normalized now and
Speaker 1: you comport health insurance, don't underestimate how important that's been,
Speaker 1: and it's gonna be hard to take that bone back
Speaker 1: from the dog's mouth that I think together has really
Speaker 1: given the worker much more cloud. Watch what's happening at
Speaker 1: Starbucks very closely. I think it's fascinating. And then on
Speaker 1: top of that, you know tips tips, You know you
Speaker 1: can't go anywhere now without a tip option. Wait, I
Speaker 1: want to talk to talk to you about unions because
Speaker 1: one of the things that we talk a lot about
Speaker 1: here are unions, and uh, you know, I come from
Speaker 1: this union family. My grandfather was very in welve with unions. So, like,
Speaker 1: I want to know, it seems like we're in a
Speaker 1: period right now where there are huge victories for unions.
Speaker 1: Starbucks at least that's an ongoing victory, small victories. Amazon
Speaker 1: is in fight trying to you know, kill a young union.
Speaker 1: But then there are also some really terrible things that
Speaker 1: have happened, like what's happening with the railroad workers. So
Speaker 1: we are are away with unions. I still think unions
Speaker 1: are in the part of a long inexorable a client generationally.
Speaker 1: You tell me, if gen Y gen Z really feels
Speaker 1: this clamoring to join a union, it's a hard sell.
Speaker 1: I think if there was more unanimity, if you saw
Speaker 1: all of these Amazon unionization pushes be slam dunks. If
Speaker 1: you saw Starbucks slam dunk with unionization across the country.
Speaker 1: Right you're even seeing a move to have a three
Speaker 1: day work stoppage across a hundred stores. There just isn't
Speaker 1: that unanimity journalists where the journalist unions that are banded together,
Speaker 1: I mean various things that have happened. They had a
Speaker 1: lot of power. There's a Life magazine story I read,
Speaker 1: I think from nineteen seventy two on the power of unions,
Speaker 1: and so much of that is curtailed and what's gone
Speaker 1: out the door with that is a lot of the
Speaker 1: Democrats blue collar cloud, which was siphoned away from Reagan
Speaker 1: as you're feeling right now with lesser educated blue collar
Speaker 1: workers kind of sifting away to cultural issues. I think
Speaker 1: that that's largely continuing. And I don't see younger people,
Speaker 1: I at least anecdotally or quality quantitatively, don't see evidence
Speaker 1: that they're lining up to join unions. I mean, do
Speaker 1: you think, though, I just want to it back to
Speaker 1: the second, it does seem like the only way you
Speaker 1: can protect those lower weight turners would be unions. It's possible.
Speaker 1: I would, you know, I would ask these Starbucks workers.
Speaker 1: I know many baristas. Some feel that they get much
Speaker 1: more self determination in terms of banding together with the
Speaker 1: store and using social media and the other stores, and
Speaker 1: you know, shaking down a regional executive like the Starbucks
Speaker 1: National movement. A lot of the problem is some of
Speaker 1: these jobs are transient type jobs, Amazon warehouse workers. A
Speaker 1: lot of people take these jobs as a stepping stone
Speaker 1: to something else and can't see themselves in unization. That's
Speaker 1: why this barista who I recently had on Eric Spivak
Speaker 1: of Alchemy Coffee, said I need to take this into
Speaker 1: my own hands, because I don't want people to think
Speaker 1: of this as a transitional job. I want them to
Speaker 1: have ownership. I want them to potentially have equity. Now
Speaker 1: that on a kind of a Maslow's hierarchy of needs level.
Speaker 1: If insurance is provided for, I need to give you
Speaker 1: a path. And if you have ownership, you're gonna think
Speaker 1: twice it's about waste, or you're gonna think twice about
Speaker 1: absentee is um and all these other things. And I
Speaker 1: think that's a fascinating experiment. And I would hope that
Speaker 1: the likes of Amazon and Starbucks and others look at
Speaker 1: it that way instead of kind of zero some it's
Speaker 1: either my shareholders or my workers, right right, right, right right.
Speaker 1: It's a good point. I have one two part question here.
Speaker 1: What the funk is Elon Musk doing? Is he playing
Speaker 1: three dimensional chess? And I just don't understand the process
Speaker 1: of how distressed debt is, uh. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of theories going on. I mean, is
Speaker 1: he having some kind of meltdown or is he playing
Speaker 1: some kind of three dimensional jazz? Do you remember what
Speaker 1: is it? Producers, Bali, Stock and Bloom right now? Oh yes,
Speaker 1: springtime for Hitler and Germany. Yeah, there's a little bit
Speaker 1: of springtime for Hitler going on here. Do you want
Speaker 1: to sabotage Twitter as a going concern? So you, as
Speaker 1: a person with a hundred and fifty billion dollar Tesla
Speaker 1: equity a t M can buy the distressed debt back
Speaker 1: for the reluctant banks at a fraction of what you
Speaker 1: bought it for. I mean, it seems like a ludd
Speaker 1: Eye type thing to do you think that's going on?
Speaker 1: I can't get in the guy's mind. You're already you
Speaker 1: know what if what do we say, Dianeu, It would
Speaker 1: have been good enough and you just ran Tesla and
Speaker 1: SpaceX and change the world type person. You had goodwill
Speaker 1: and you're the wealthiest person on the planet. But you
Speaker 1: had to be a big shot, did you. You had
Speaker 1: to go and buy Twitter and blow forty four billion
Speaker 1: dollars on it and let everybody go and then have
Speaker 1: these you know, tilted windmills with journalists and other people
Speaker 1: on the platform as advertisers flee. What's amazing to me
Speaker 1: is that people he can entirely not care that he
Speaker 1: has forty billion or probably forty eight billion dollars. I
Speaker 1: think he sold three billion in Tesla stock, probably to
Speaker 1: retire debt. At some point. Money doesn't matter. You just
Speaker 1: have so much of it, what are you gonna do
Speaker 1: eat more? So I can't get into his head. One
Speaker 1: thing that really bothers me, and I mentioned it on
Speaker 1: TV this morning, is Twitter's management that was there, Yes
Speaker 1: it was a publicly traded company. Was the only consideration
Speaker 1: that this was the highest bid that they could get
Speaker 1: in the markets? That they not have an independent director's
Speaker 1: committee that said, well, we can't risk having a man
Speaker 1: child narcissist run the company into the ground. No, they
Speaker 1: just they took the money and ran. And that's a
Speaker 1: problem with me, is that that money in an efficient market, right,
Speaker 1: you should have it should be more than the shareholders,
Speaker 1: their stakeholders. You had half your employees a shit can'
Speaker 1: you have the standards people that are gone. You have
Speaker 1: a person out there willy nilly claiming that he's you know,
Speaker 1: an assassination risk, and I'm gonna take public information down.
Speaker 1: It's turned into such a sad ship show. And everybody
Speaker 1: who's on Twitter has a love hey relationship with it already.
Speaker 1: And I'm just frustrated that, you know, you can't have
Speaker 1: something like a Google bird that just shows up and
Speaker 1: replicates this experience in a non nefarious, kind of more
Speaker 1: organic way that we're all kind of beholden to this guy.
Speaker 1: Give me you're under over on where this goes. I
Speaker 1: think that he keeps owning it. I don't know how
Speaker 1: he I don't think he cares anymore. It's private, and
Speaker 1: I think he keeps selling Tesla stock to get the
Speaker 1: bank out of it. What leverage does anybody have to
Speaker 1: get him out of it? And we hang on because
Speaker 1: our accounts are all there. I mean you are invested significantly,
Speaker 1: Molly in Twitter. I mean you could go to Masodon,
Speaker 1: you could go to substock and people will follow you.
Speaker 1: But what's going to happen? He will then lose control
Speaker 1: of Tesla? Right, A simple economic question here. If you
Speaker 1: have a choice between Olden stock and Tesla or owning
Speaker 1: stock in Twitter, wouldn't you rather have stuck in Tesla.
Speaker 1: I think he's still worth a hundred and fifty billion
Speaker 1: dollars substantially in Teslas, so much of Tesla. I don't
Speaker 1: see him losing control, but it is. It should be
Speaker 1: very worrisome the Tesla shareholders. The stock has gotten murdered
Speaker 1: over the past year, and the fact that he's redeeming
Speaker 1: the stock and selling it on the way down, not
Speaker 1: probably not for financial planning reasons, but more than likely
Speaker 1: than not to retire the bank's debt. If that wasn't
Speaker 1: the case, then the banks could come in and say,
Speaker 1: you're not hitting performance milestones, we could take the company,
Speaker 1: we could rest control from you. And I think he's
Speaker 1: forestalling that. So in the end he just keeps selling
Speaker 1: Tesla stock and keeps buying Twitter stock. It's this lud
Speaker 1: eye type arrangement. The Twitter debt, it's private now he'd
Speaker 1: be buying it from the banks, and it's almost Citizen Kane,
Speaker 1: like it's this combination of narcissism, ego paranoia with the
Speaker 1: soussante of kind of right wing heroism and a man
Speaker 1: with so many followers. And I'm probably gonna get banned
Speaker 1: myself for saying this, but you look at you look
Speaker 1: at the great reporters who suddenly it felt like squid
Speaker 1: Game last night, Like gosh, should I say this? Should
Speaker 1: I change the you and musk to a V to
Speaker 1: kind of conceal my footprints. You don't think there's a
Speaker 1: grand plan here, I just can't see it. Why would
Speaker 1: you do that? If you come in, you should be worried.
Speaker 1: You know how much debt he put on this company.
Speaker 1: You should be worried about advertisers. You should be genuflecting
Speaker 1: before people. If you're a torch bearer for speech, free speech,
Speaker 1: then be it. You know, worst case scenario, he decides
Speaker 1: to spit it out in two years when tech markets
Speaker 1: back up it, let's say nine of what he bought it.
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter to him. Again, he's worth a hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty billion dollars at his peak. He was worth
Speaker 1: well north of that, but his net worth is hemorrhaging
Speaker 1: because Twitter share I mean Testlas shareholders are livid right now,
Speaker 1: and they have a right to be. The man took
Speaker 1: his eyes off the ball. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 1: Oh it's my joy. Nick Bilton is a special correspondent
Speaker 1: Vanny Fair and author of Hatching Twitter. Welcome Too Fast Politics.
Speaker 1: Nick Bilton, thank you so much for having me on.
Speaker 1: I'm so excited to talk about all the lunatics out
Speaker 1: there in the technology world. Well, I felt we had
Speaker 1: to talk about it because there's so much going on.
Speaker 1: I feel like for such a long time, Facebook was
Speaker 1: this problem that needed to be dealt with, right, and
Speaker 1: there's certainly a lot of Facebook news about its involvement
Speaker 1: with in multiple genocides. Can we talk about Mark Zuckerberg? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I kind of feel like we need to
Speaker 1: talk about all of them. It's like you've got Duck
Speaker 1: and Facebook, You've got on on Twitter, You've got SPF
Speaker 1: and f TX, and like it's almost like their robots
Speaker 1: and someone spilled water on them and they just broke
Speaker 1: and we like finally got to see it will happen.
Speaker 1: And I feel like, for the first time ever that
Speaker 1: the government is actually aware of what's going on to
Speaker 1: it feels like the end of days for the tech world.
Speaker 1: Oh see, I like this take you wrote about zapp
Speaker 1: being surrounded by sycophants. You know, she seems to me
Speaker 1: like he's having this sort of quietest downward spiral of
Speaker 1: the three of them. Yeah. I think you're right. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think you know, you look at the market cap
Speaker 1: of Facebook over the last year has fallen several hundred
Speaker 1: billion dollars, and I think that they're the reason for
Speaker 1: that is that he picked the wrong bad look. I
Speaker 1: think the thing about Mark is He's an incredibly smart,
Speaker 1: incredibly driven person, but at the same time he is
Speaker 1: not an ideas guy. Every idea has ever had has
Speaker 1: essentially constole them and something else right, borrowed, or whatever
Speaker 1: you want to call it. I think stolen, I'll do it.
Speaker 1: Stolen is a good term. And he had this original
Speaker 1: idea of like, oh, the metaverse, Like that's cool, I
Speaker 1: don't have to like go talk to other humans in
Speaker 1: real life. I can do it on a on a
Speaker 1: screen that's like duct taped to my face. And he
Speaker 1: made the wrong back, because no one wants to go
Speaker 1: live in the fucking metaverse. Like if anything, COVID taught
Speaker 1: us that technology allows us to be connected to other
Speaker 1: people when we don't have the ability. But the end
Speaker 1: of Covid Shodah's that we don't want that, we want
Speaker 1: human interaction. And I think Zuck is the opposite and
Speaker 1: made the worst petable as a results of that. So
Speaker 1: we have Zuka metaverse. He's killing his company, but he's
Speaker 1: doing it quietly and he's spending a lot of time
Speaker 1: in Hawaii. Then we have this incredible elon whatever this is?
Speaker 1: What is this? Honestly, I've been covering Twitter since the
Speaker 1: day of the company started in one form or another.
Speaker 1: I've known all these guys for years and years and
Speaker 1: years and years, Elon included. And if you would have
Speaker 1: told me ten years ago when I wrote a book
Speaker 1: about the company, if you just said, write me a
Speaker 1: list of a hundred thousands sinnaire, let's just say a
Speaker 1: million scenarios of what Twitter, you know, could end up
Speaker 1: looking like in the future, This would not have made
Speaker 1: it on that list, Like Ellen buying the company, literally
Speaker 1: obliterating everything that has been built up over the past
Speaker 1: seventeen years, and to the point that now I just
Speaker 1: think he's trying to destroy I don't actually know what
Speaker 1: he's doing. And I think that you know, you're seeing
Speaker 1: his lunacy play out in public. I think in the
Speaker 1: past I've heard many, many stories about how crazy he
Speaker 1: was at SpaceX and Tesla, and I think that he
Speaker 1: was surrounded by and insulated by people that you know,
Speaker 1: ensure that that lunacy was used for good and off evil.
Speaker 1: And I think Twitter, he's not surrounded by that, and
Speaker 1: it's all in public, and it's, I mean, honestly, one
Speaker 1: of the craziest stories I've ever seen. Do you think
Speaker 1: and then SBF let's talk about because that's like the
Speaker 1: third billionaire in the Tripic of broken billionaires. There are
Speaker 1: many more broken billionaires right now. Now he's a for
Speaker 1: one of the story of the story of the week
Speaker 1: is the se Tripic. He's going to jail and quickly, well,
Speaker 1: he's actually currently Yeah, he's currently sitting in a jail
Speaker 1: cell in the Bahamas, which I think is such a
Speaker 1: sweet revenge for what he did to you know, everyone.
Speaker 1: You know, Look, I think he is a I don't know,
Speaker 1: the sociopath, that's the right description for him. I just
Speaker 1: think he's just an arrogant brat from what I can tell.
Speaker 1: And he thought he was smarter than everyone else, and
Speaker 1: clearly was was very, very far from that. And he
Speaker 1: squandered billions of dollars that belonged to other people and
Speaker 1: thought he was just gonna get away with it. And
Speaker 1: thank god that you know, the government when arrested him,
Speaker 1: and you know, based on the potential charges that are
Speaker 1: against him, he could spend up a hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: five years in jail, Like this is a Bernie made off,
Speaker 1: you know, size screw up. And I think that he's
Speaker 1: going to be in a lot of trouble, Like I
Speaker 1: truly believe that it actually will. This will be one
Speaker 1: of those whether actually will be justice served. What has
Speaker 1: happened to Ellen? It seems to me a sort of
Speaker 1: he was maybe right wing, he was maybe slight less
Speaker 1: right wing. It's not clear, but he's clearly been radicalized.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, look, I think put aside
Speaker 1: the stupid Q and on tweet this week, and like,
Speaker 1: I have a different point of view on this, Like
Speaker 1: I think most people. I'll speak anecdotally from people I
Speaker 1: know in Hollywood, people I know and tech people I know,
Speaker 1: in the arts, you know, so on and so forth,
Speaker 1: like and pretty much you know every dinner party, every
Speaker 1: play day, every school conversation over the past couple of years.
Speaker 1: And I think what happened, my personal opinion is what
Speaker 1: happened is a lot of people were on the left
Speaker 1: and anti Trump, and then when Trump went away, the
Speaker 1: left started to kind of eat its own, which it
Speaker 1: always does, and I think that it put people in
Speaker 1: it in a situation where they were like, I don't
Speaker 1: I love I agree with that. Like I'll give you
Speaker 1: one example. In Los Angeles, there's this build a past
Speaker 1: called and what it was was you had. For whatever reason,
Speaker 1: I think it's because of the way these the schools
Speaker 1: are designed in America, but in Los Angeles specifically, all
Speaker 1: the schools were surrounded by homeless and canbras like elementary
Speaker 1: schools and middle schools and high schools and more so
Speaker 1: in poor neighborhoods, and so there were kids that were
Speaker 1: literally walking through homeless encampments of people shipping on the
Speaker 1: sidewalk and smoking meth and all these other things to
Speaker 1: get to school. And people were like, this is not cool, Like,
Speaker 1: you know, let's move them across the streets. So there
Speaker 1: was this rule put in place that said, let's move
Speaker 1: the homeless in canblems fivest away from from this school's
Speaker 1: daycares and East centers. And there were people on this
Speaker 1: extreme left that went berserk and they were like, you
Speaker 1: can't do that to the homeless people. And I think
Speaker 1: that there's a million instances like that of issues around
Speaker 1: trans issues, this, all these things where people can't agree,
Speaker 1: and I think that it drove a lot of people
Speaker 1: to the center, Ellen being one of them. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't think Ellen's in the center though, right, I think, yeah,
Speaker 1: why I think elon is is right of center. I
Speaker 1: think where I think where Ellen goes sol that is
Speaker 1: that he like his like Fouci Cans spariracy theories and
Speaker 1: his you know Q and non tweets and and the
Speaker 1: deep state and things like that. Like I would put
Speaker 1: him in like kind of like a Joe Rogan like
Speaker 1: right wing. I wouldn't put him in like a Ben
Speaker 1: Shapiro right wing kind of bucket. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: I think it's like there's a difference between it, and
Speaker 1: I'm not justifying anything that Ellen does. I think he's
Speaker 1: a nut job. The biggest problem is he now has
Speaker 1: one of the large, loudest voices in the world. He's
Speaker 1: got a hundred million followers on Twitter, and he's the
Speaker 1: stuff he's talking about is just insanity, total insanity. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think there certainly is some kind of internal Los
Speaker 1: Angeles debate about the homeless problem, which has radicalized from
Speaker 1: some rich people who live in Los Angeles. But I'm curious,
Speaker 1: you know, he technically lives in Texas, doesn't he. No, No,
Speaker 1: I'm not. I'm just saying I'm not talking about him
Speaker 1: and his viewpoints on homelessness and long I'm using that
Speaker 1: as an example to talk about how there are these
Speaker 1: There are a million stories, right, and they are issues
Speaker 1: that where people who are liberal right. And actually it's
Speaker 1: not just rich people in Los Angeles. It's a lot
Speaker 1: of poor people in Los Angees that were pushing for
Speaker 1: this because there it was primarily this was happening in
Speaker 1: the poor neighborhoods and their kids were being forced to
Speaker 1: walk through the stuff. This stuff is not happening in
Speaker 1: Brentwood and Beverly Hills. Like I think that there are
Speaker 1: a million stories like this that have driven a like
Speaker 1: eighty percent of people that were on the left to
Speaker 1: the center. And I think that most of them have
Speaker 1: stayed left of center, and they still you know, a
Speaker 1: pro choice and anti gun and this that and the other.
Speaker 1: It's just some of these these like extreme issues where
Speaker 1: they don't agree with. But what happened with Elon was
Speaker 1: he just kept driving the truck and he went he
Speaker 1: kept going right and writer and he's just in some
Speaker 1: weird like nebulous like Nomam's land of I don't even
Speaker 1: know what his viewpoints are anymore. I think they changed
Speaker 1: by the hour. It's just it's it's it's unlike anything
Speaker 1: I've ever seen. I think he likes to be liked, right,
Speaker 1: because he said, like democrats will really mean to me, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I totally agree. I think I think most of them
Speaker 1: want to be liked at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: and they're like very insecure people. And uh, I mean,
Speaker 1: did you see what happened with the Dave Chappelle's show
Speaker 1: this week? Yeah, let's talk about that. So that was
Speaker 1: in California. He went on stage and a Dave Chappelle show.
Speaker 1: I mean I listened to it. It sounded like they
Speaker 1: were booing him. It was San Francisco. Was in San Francisco, Yeah,
Speaker 1: so he was. It was San Francisco. Dave Chappelle was
Speaker 1: doing a set. Eighteen thousand people in the arena, and
Speaker 1: Dave said, who wants to see the richest guy in
Speaker 1: the world. And Ellen comes out with its arms in
Speaker 1: the air like some national hero. And at first there
Speaker 1: was some booze and some claps, and then it was
Speaker 1: just old booze and for five minutes straight. I talked
Speaker 1: to people who were there. For five minutes straight, it
Speaker 1: was just booze. And Dave Chappelle was like, it looks
Speaker 1: like this. Some Twitter Twitter employees in the audience, which
Speaker 1: is of course funny, but after the fact, I mean,
Speaker 1: he was like, I've talked to people who said they
Speaker 1: don't like Ellen and even they felt bad for him,
Speaker 1: and it was just this constant like boo boo boo. Afterwards,
Speaker 1: you know, this is just typical Ellen, he tweeted, it
Speaker 1: was only the woke people in the audience that were booing.
Speaker 1: Excuse me, it's a Dave Chappelle show. There was no
Speaker 1: one woke in the audience, like they don't know. Those
Speaker 1: people wouldn't go and see Dave Chappelle because of all
Speaker 1: the stuff he said about fans people. So it's like
Speaker 1: the people who were booing him were the people that
Speaker 1: probably used to adore him. I don't think he gets it.
Speaker 1: So it does seem to me like if you look
Speaker 1: at what's happened with SPF, there is a sense in
Speaker 1: which the government is getting more right involved and quicker,
Speaker 1: and you know, there's been a hesitation I think on
Speaker 1: a part of a lot of legislators to legislate tech,
Speaker 1: despite the sort of fact that tech companies pretend to
Speaker 1: want to be legislated. Of course they don't. We have
Speaker 1: Section to Thirday trending like every day and Twitter. Where
Speaker 1: does this go? I think that you know, have you
Speaker 1: been following chat g t P the new AI? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I was gonna ask you about that, but this is
Speaker 1: this is to answer that question. Okay, So chat g
Speaker 1: t P. It's this new artificial intelligence system that has
Speaker 1: built on a concept that was introduce in two thousand
Speaker 1: seventeen which completely changed AI and natural language processing so
Speaker 1: that you could it could start to understand humans the
Speaker 1: way humans understand humans and start to speak to humans
Speaker 1: in the same way. And it's I've been covering TEX
Speaker 1: for twenty years. It's the most astounding, scariest thing I've
Speaker 1: ever seen because it is so good at what it
Speaker 1: does and we'll get so much better. And a lot
Speaker 1: of people were reaching out to me who are in
Speaker 1: the tech community and saying this is terrifying. It should
Speaker 1: not be out there. It needs to be regulated in
Speaker 1: the same way that nuclear power and nuclear weapons and
Speaker 1: all these other things need to because it has the
Speaker 1: ability to decimate the job market. Fifty to eighty million
Speaker 1: jobs could advantage. And these are not garbage people and
Speaker 1: and sidewalk cleaners. These are like lawyers, accountants, writers, all
Speaker 1: of these crazy creative industries. And what I heard this
Speaker 1: week is that the White House was immediately making calls
Speaker 1: and that there's a task force there that's involved in
Speaker 1: AI and they were like starting to reach out to people.
Speaker 1: I've never seen that happen before. Usually it takes, you know,
Speaker 1: a year or two years, five years before the White
Speaker 1: House and the U. S. Government is aware of the
Speaker 1: things that are happening. You still that play out with
Speaker 1: bitcoin to ten years before they were they realized. And
Speaker 1: so I do think that we're getting to a point
Speaker 1: where the people who are working in government are becoming
Speaker 1: more aware of the things that are happening and quicker.
Speaker 1: But there's also massive limitations on what they can do
Speaker 1: because we live in a time where the U. S.
Speaker 1: Constitution was not written for things like chat, GQP and
Speaker 1: Twitter and other tech that exists today, and so there
Speaker 1: I don't know how these things go from them being
Speaker 1: aware of them to change actually happen. Predict for us,
Speaker 1: and if you're wrong, don't worry, We'll make fun of
Speaker 1: you for it. I'll be wrong, I'll be wrong. Predict
Speaker 1: for us. Where this goes with the elan you could
Speaker 1: say to me, predict to me like how long humanity
Speaker 1: will live before we kill ourselves with some kind of
Speaker 1: rogue whatever. And I would probably get it more aptly
Speaker 1: correct than if I were to try to predict where
Speaker 1: it goes with the one. I'll give you what I've
Speaker 1: heard as a addiction. The prediction is that he defaults
Speaker 1: on the debt, and no bank on planet Earth is
Speaker 1: going to want to own Twitter and deal with it,
Speaker 1: so they come to some sort of agreement where it
Speaker 1: pays fifty cents on the dollar or even less. He
Speaker 1: continues to gut the staff, advertising continues to plummet. No
Speaker 1: one pays for the blue check marks, at least not
Speaker 1: not a large number of people, and more and more
Speaker 1: people on the left or any anybody who has center
Speaker 1: to left, which is a lot of people, continues to
Speaker 1: leave the platform, which has been happening like in mass
Speaker 1: this week. And I think it gets to a point
Speaker 1: where he breaks it. And then at the end of that, uh,
Speaker 1: it's a shell of itself. It's some sort of right
Speaker 1: wing kind of true social like thing. And he goes
Speaker 1: back to play with his rockets in his cars, and
Speaker 1: he loses for you for billion dollars. That's my prediction.
Speaker 1: That was depressing. Thank you, Nick Filton, of course, thank
Speaker 1: you for having me on. I know you, our dear
Speaker 1: listeners are very busy and you don't have time to
Speaker 1: sort through the hundreds of pieces of pundentry each week.
Speaker 1: This is why every week I put together a newsletter
Speaker 1: of my five favorite articles on politics. If you enjoy
Speaker 1: the podcast, you will love having this in your inbox
Speaker 1: every Friday. So sign up at Fast Politics pod dot
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Speaker 1: That's Fast politics pod dot com. Molly White is a
Speaker 1: crypto researcher and critic, and she writes the blog Web
Speaker 1: three is going just great. Welcome to Fast Politics, Molly. Thanks,
Speaker 1: it's been a bad week for crypto. Yeah, that's I
Speaker 1: think an understatement. Let's talk first about f t X
Speaker 1: and what's happening with s b F. Yeah, the acronyms
Speaker 1: are a little bit a lot so f t X,
Speaker 1: you know, and major cryptocurrency exchange that until somewhat recently
Speaker 1: was the second largest in the world, but is now
Speaker 1: bankrupt and the subject of some fraud investigations thanks to
Speaker 1: its founder and former CEO Sam Bankman. Freed, who's often
Speaker 1: shortened to SPF. So you have been covering this pretty hardcore.
Speaker 1: Explained to me sort of how you got to this story. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So I follow the crypto industry pretty closely. I maintain
Speaker 1: a blog called Web three is Going Just Great, which
Speaker 1: is a sarcastic title because tracks many frauds and scams
Speaker 1: and hacks and just general disasters in the cryptocurrency and
Speaker 1: Web three industry, and so f t X and its explosion.
Speaker 1: The past month or so has been under that per view,
Speaker 1: I would say, But you know, it's something that people
Speaker 1: find interesting. I think fraud is clear at this point
Speaker 1: that will have in packs on many, many people, and
Speaker 1: so I've been doing what I can to try to
Speaker 1: help people understand what happened, the context in which it happened,
Speaker 1: and you know, the impact and reflections that should have
Speaker 1: on the crypto industry as a whole. I just kind
Speaker 1: of want you to talk about SPF and and sort
Speaker 1: of a little bit about him, because he's got this
Speaker 1: sort of he has a ship going. It's pretty interesting, right.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think a lot of these figures in
Speaker 1: the crypto industry becomes sort of larger than light, and
Speaker 1: each of them seems to have their own little persona.
Speaker 1: But Sam Bankman Freed is an a M I T graduate.
Speaker 1: You know, he is a pretty nerdy guy. He absolutely
Speaker 1: plays that up by you know, he's always a little
Speaker 1: bit disheveled. He wears shorts all the time and and
Speaker 1: like FTX branded T shirts, and he always looks kind
Speaker 1: of like he just woke up. He claims at least
Speaker 1: to sleep in a bean bag chair in the f
Speaker 1: t X office, despite having a luxury penthouse in the
Speaker 1: Bahamas that he could avail himself of. And you know,
Speaker 1: he has really made this brand for himself as sort
Speaker 1: of a boy genius who created this hedge fund or
Speaker 1: this rather this quantitative trading firm, and then this crypto
Speaker 1: exchange and made himself a billionaire at a fairly young age.
Speaker 1: I would say a lot of that is sort of
Speaker 1: a crafted persona that has been used really to make
Speaker 1: people trust him and believe that he might be the
Speaker 1: next nerdy kid who comes up with a billion dollar company,
Speaker 1: you know, in the wake of other nerdy tech personalities
Speaker 1: like Mark Zuckerberg in folks like that. Can we talk
Speaker 1: about the parents, because I'm telling you the parents as
Speaker 1: a Jewish mother myself, I don't know why this speaks
Speaker 1: to me. Yeah, so his parents are kind of an
Speaker 1: interesting feature of this story, which, you know, it's a
Speaker 1: fraud case for sure, you know it's a question of
Speaker 1: fraud and it's a crypto collapse, but it also has
Speaker 1: this very sort of bizarre drama behind it with some
Speaker 1: of the personalities who were involved. And some of those
Speaker 1: personalities are Sam Bankman Freed's parents, who are both Stanford
Speaker 1: law professors. They are specifically knowledgeable about compliance, which you
Speaker 1: would think might have been useful knowledge to share with
Speaker 1: their son. And he sort of like made his brand
Speaker 1: that like, I'm an expert because of my parents. Right. Well,
Speaker 1: he definitely played on the fact that he is American.
Speaker 1: He is, you know, from a prestigious background, both in
Speaker 1: his own education but also in his family's background as
Speaker 1: Stanford law professors. So yes, I mean I think he
Speaker 1: did really lean on that. I'm going to get to
Speaker 1: a larger question, but just talk about what the mother said.
Speaker 1: The mother has had some great lines in this drama. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, his parents reactually to this have been somewhat strange.
Speaker 1: You know, they they were in attendance in the court
Speaker 1: hearing that happened. I want to say it was a
Speaker 1: state before yesterday. In the in the in the Bahamas,
Speaker 1: he had a court hearing to determine if he should
Speaker 1: be granted bail, and his mother apparently was sort of
Speaker 1: audibly laughing when he was referred to as a fugitive,
Speaker 1: and apparently at various times his father put his fingers
Speaker 1: in his ears when the the hearing was ongoing, which
Speaker 1: is just sort of strange behavior. I mean, I can
Speaker 1: definitely see how it would be traumatic for parents to
Speaker 1: see their son in you know, appearing in court in handcuffs.
Speaker 1: But on the other hand, they are Stanford law professors.
Speaker 1: You would sort of expect they might have some composure
Speaker 1: in this. But you know, who's to say, I suppose
Speaker 1: and he bought them a penhouse, right, Yeah, So some
Speaker 1: of the real estate that was purchased by f t
Speaker 1: X in the Bahamas was in his parents names, and
Speaker 1: you know, his parents definitely were not divorced from what
Speaker 1: was happening at f t X. When when this first
Speaker 1: started happening, I was a little bit skeptical of, you know,
Speaker 1: people bringing up his parents because you know, just because
Speaker 1: you're the son of a law professor doesn't necessarily mean
Speaker 1: you have inherited, you know, knowledge of the law from birth.
Speaker 1: But I did then learn that, you know, his father
Speaker 1: was actually fairly involved in f t X. He was
Speaker 1: directly involved in some of the philanthropy that was happening
Speaker 1: and some of the various other programs that f t
Speaker 1: X was putting on, And so, you know, I think
Speaker 1: it is reasonable to pay some attention to what might
Speaker 1: have been going on there. There's a lot of talk
Speaker 1: fd X, and there's a lot of talk about and
Speaker 1: f t S and what do they get wrong about crypto?
Speaker 1: I think one thing that's happening, especially recently in the
Speaker 1: wake of the ft X collapse, is the idea that
Speaker 1: these are really isolated incidents. You know, that this was
Speaker 1: just an issue at fraud Sam Bank men Freed is
Speaker 1: just one bad apple. This is not a systemic problem.
Speaker 1: It is not reflective of issues in the crypto industry
Speaker 1: as a whole. H The crypto industry is always very
Speaker 1: quick to dissociate itself from bad actors and from disasters
Speaker 1: that happen. But these disasters happen all the time. I mean,
Speaker 1: like my blog specifically follows disasters in the crypto industry,
Speaker 1: and it's usually at least one a day, and that's
Speaker 1: hacks and scams and you know, bankruptcys and things like that.
Speaker 1: This is not an issue of a one off problem.
Speaker 1: This is absolutely representative of crypto as a whole. And
Speaker 1: I think that the media has to be careful when
Speaker 1: it comes to repeating the lines that are coming out
Speaker 1: of the crypto industry, which is very much motivated to
Speaker 1: maintain as much as possible of a mirror of respectability here.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about that hearing yesterday, Senate hearing on crypto.
Speaker 1: I'm going to have you debunked something Stu bed as
Speaker 1: opposed to what you've been doing this whole time. Elon Musk,
Speaker 1: perhaps you've heard of him, had a tweet that said
Speaker 1: that SBF is not going to face an investigation because
Speaker 1: he gave a lot of money to democratic politicians. Yes, okay,
Speaker 1: So now he's in jail, he has denied bail, waiting
Speaker 1: for extradition. He's probably going to get in the new
Speaker 1: year January February brought back to America. He's likely going
Speaker 1: to go to jail for a long time. This investigation
Speaker 1: seems like it's moving very fast, relatively speaking. People online,
Speaker 1: many of whom are hopefully bought um have been saying, well,
Speaker 1: they got to him before he could testify. His testimony
Speaker 1: was published yesterday. Talk to me about his testimony and
Speaker 1: also just how you know everything else. Yeah, So that's
Speaker 1: been a pretty popular conspiracy theory fairly recently has been
Speaker 1: that Sam Bankman freed is going to just get off
Speaker 1: scott free because he made all of these large donations
Speaker 1: to Democratic candidates and committees and things like that. But
Speaker 1: that ignores is that he also made substantial donations to
Speaker 1: Republicans as well, he just was quieter about them. He
Speaker 1: made them through sort of back channels and was not
Speaker 1: making headlines for it. So I think the idea that
Speaker 1: Sam Bington freed himself is, you know, this huge supporter
Speaker 1: of the Democrats, is a little bit overblown. But I
Speaker 1: think also the idea that he is just going to
Speaker 1: get away with all of his fraud in various crimes
Speaker 1: without any prosecution is kind of a silly thing to
Speaker 1: say now that he is in custody and has had
Speaker 1: charges filed against him by the Attorney General of the
Speaker 1: Southern District of New York, the SEC, and the CFTC.
Speaker 1: I saw an amusing article this morning or yesterday in
Speaker 1: the American Prospect that said if the Forest Service could
Speaker 1: have filed charges against him, they would have. You know,
Speaker 1: people are really cracking down on him. As far as
Speaker 1: the testimony thing, that isn't interesting question. He was scheduled
Speaker 1: to testify in front of the House on Tuesday, and
Speaker 1: he was arrested in the Bahamas the night before, and
Speaker 1: so he was unable to appear for that testimony. And
Speaker 1: some of the Congress members did bring that up. They
Speaker 1: questioned why that arrest would happen at that time when
Speaker 1: it would presumably be in the interest of the prosecutors
Speaker 1: to have Sam Bankman free testify in front of Congress
Speaker 1: under oath for hours. You know, they could potentially add
Speaker 1: lying to Congress to his charges if he did lie
Speaker 1: to Congress, which you know, he spent on a bit
Speaker 1: of a lying tour recently, so that seems likely. That
Speaker 1: was something that someone asked the Attorney's office in the
Speaker 1: Southern District of New York during a hearing that or
Speaker 1: during a press conference they had about the charges, and
Speaker 1: and the the U S Attorney said that it was
Speaker 1: a coincidence they had filed the charges the week before
Speaker 1: and then the indictment had come down the friday before,
Speaker 1: and so it was just a matter of waiting for
Speaker 1: law enforcement to act. And it was not an intentional thing.
Speaker 1: Who's really to say, I mean, I don't have any
Speaker 1: more visibility into that than anybody else, but some Congress
Speaker 1: people did seem a little bit concerned about the timing
Speaker 1: the idea that aunt voluntary testimony. And remember he had said,
Speaker 1: I mean, didn't you interview him in a Twitter spaces? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I had the opportunity to ask him a couple of questions,
Speaker 1: like the day that he was arrested, several hours before,
Speaker 1: I mean, somebody asked him about the testimony and he
Speaker 1: was like, yeah, I think I'm gonna do it. Right
Speaker 1: at that point, he had committed to testifying in front
Speaker 1: of Congress, but he had not committed to appearing in
Speaker 1: front of the Senate, who was having a hearing the
Speaker 1: day after. And so I asked him first why was
Speaker 1: he going to be appearing virtually in front of Congress
Speaker 1: instead of in person? And then I asked why he
Speaker 1: did not plan to testify in front of the Senate,
Speaker 1: and he said that he was needed in the Bahamas,
Speaker 1: which is ridiculous. Because he is not involved with ft
Speaker 1: X in any way. The current executives who were handling
Speaker 1: the ft X bankruptcy, you're not involving him. They're not
Speaker 1: asking questions of him at this point, so there is
Speaker 1: probably nothing important for him to be doing in the Bahamas.
Speaker 1: He also said he was overbooked, which was a silly
Speaker 1: thing to say when his bookings seemed to be various
Speaker 1: interviews on Twitter spaces and in various other places, which
Speaker 1: I would not think would be more important than testifying
Speaker 1: in front of the Senate. Yeah, me and wild stuff.
Speaker 1: I want to talk to you about Mr Wonderful versus
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Warren. Yes, I saw that you tweeted it. It
Speaker 1: was a pretty amazing bit of amazing Nous talked to
Speaker 1: us about this Senate hearing and what it meant and
Speaker 1: how badass Elizabeth Warren knows. So. Yeah. The Senate brought
Speaker 1: in for witnesses, one of whom was Kevin O'Leary, who
Speaker 1: was a paid spokesperson for f t X. F t
Speaker 1: X it paid him fifteen million dollars to become basically
Speaker 1: a brand ambassador, a position that he fulfilled quite adequately.
Speaker 1: I would say he was chilling for FTXIT basically every opportunity,
Speaker 1: and now that it's collapsed, he's still been very friendly
Speaker 1: to Sam Bankman freed. I mean he said in an
Speaker 1: interview at one point that he would fund Sam Bankman
Speaker 1: Freed again. And this was after the evidence of fraud
Speaker 1: began to come out. So it was a very strange
Speaker 1: choice I think to have Kevin O'Leary come as a witness.
Speaker 1: I don't know who decided that was a good idea,
Speaker 1: well for him anyway, Yeah, I mean part of me
Speaker 1: was wondering if it was, you know, someone who was
Speaker 1: crypto critical who brought him in front of the Senate
Speaker 1: because they knew it would make Crypto look bad. But
Speaker 1: you know, you're right that it was good for him
Speaker 1: in terms of getting his name into headlines and things
Speaker 1: like that, which I think is maybe his top priority.
Speaker 1: But Senator Warren asked a question of him which was basically,
Speaker 1: do you think crypto is so incredible and so innovative
Speaker 1: that it should be exempted from the same anti money
Speaker 1: laundering laws that are required of traditional financial institutions, And
Speaker 1: he said no. But he then tried to object to
Speaker 1: something she had said earlier, which you know she basically
Speaker 1: said that crypto is particularly useful for criminals, and he
Speaker 1: tried to make the argument that is pretty common among
Speaker 1: crypto advocates, that the US dollars are also used for crime,
Speaker 1: and he said something very weird, which is that drug
Speaker 1: traffickers have been using currencies for drug trafficking since the sixties,
Speaker 1: which is a really weird thing to say. It's like,
Speaker 1: I don't know if he thinks that drug trafficking just
Speaker 1: sprung into existence in the nineties, sixties or what I
Speaker 1: thought he was describing a movie, because remember what he said,
Speaker 1: like they're throwing the cash out of the airplane in
Speaker 1: a suitcase. I don't know if he lost his train
Speaker 1: of thought halfway through what happened, but it came out
Speaker 1: very strange. She did not push back on that, which
Speaker 1: she could have absolutely but she just moved on and
Speaker 1: basically said, well, since as you knowledge, crypto is also
Speaker 1: used for crimes, as is the US dollar, shouldn't crypto
Speaker 1: then be subject to the same types of regulations that
Speaker 1: are applied to financial institutions that use the dollar. And
Speaker 1: he said, no, you know, and tried to object to
Speaker 1: what she said, but he came out looking pretty coolish.
Speaker 1: I think, for example, I know Puerto Rico had you know,
Speaker 1: there was some and Miami and New York there were
Speaker 1: some machinations between our insane mayor's and cryptos. The f
Speaker 1: is just a part of crypto. What is the larger
Speaker 1: exposure for the U. S economy? I mean, are we
Speaker 1: looking at another housing crisis? Absolutely not. And that's something
Speaker 1: that Professor Hillary Allen spoke about at the Senate hearing yesterday.
Speaker 1: You know, she is an expert on financial stability, and
Speaker 1: she really credited banking regulations for their effectiveness in keeping
Speaker 1: crypto from infecting the traditional financial system. So, you know,
Speaker 1: f t X collapsed, but it had no discernible effect
Speaker 1: on the stock market. You know, there was no concern
Speaker 1: that the government might end up having to bail out
Speaker 1: crypto in the same way that they bailed out banks
Speaker 1: in two thousand and eight. And for people who have
Speaker 1: no you know, they hold no crypto, they don't have
Speaker 1: money that they were keeping on f t X, they
Speaker 1: won't notice any difference. And so I think that is
Speaker 1: something to to realize here is that despite the prevalence
Speaker 1: of crypto in the last couple of years, it has
Speaker 1: not become entwined in the traditional financial system in a
Speaker 1: way that contagion would be a risk, and I think,
Speaker 1: to Hillary Allen's point yesterday, that's something that is critical
Speaker 1: to remain the case, because you know, it would be
Speaker 1: extremely concerning if you know, everyday people who did not
Speaker 1: decide to engage in the risky type of behavior that
Speaker 1: is investing in crypto had to pay for the failures
Speaker 1: and the frauds that are absolutely common occurrence in the industry. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: what do you what's coming down the pike that looks
Speaker 1: crazy and interesting. I think the finance situation will be
Speaker 1: very interesting. Explained to my father what finances? Yeah, so
Speaker 1: finance is much like f t X, a cryptocurrency exchange,
Speaker 1: and it is the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world,
Speaker 1: and it is orders of magnitude larger than f t X,
Speaker 1: and it's not, you know, just a little bit bigger.
Speaker 1: And there I think are some questions now about what's
Speaker 1: been going on at Binance, which has for a long
Speaker 1: time been acknowledged as a bit of a shady operation.
Speaker 1: I mean, they won't even disclose where they are based.
Speaker 1: You know where they are headquartered pretty much, you know,
Speaker 1: f t X had to buy out Finances investment in
Speaker 1: f t X because it was such a regulatory hurdle
Speaker 1: that they basically could not cross that Finance had a
Speaker 1: stake in the company, so they had to buy them out.
Speaker 1: And so now we're starting to hear people question what's
Speaker 1: going on at Finance. There was recently billions of dollars
Speaker 1: of withdrawal so that they processed during sort of a
Speaker 1: miniature version of the run on the exchange that we
Speaker 1: saw with f t X, And you know, senators were
Speaker 1: asking questions about Finance and it's now much larger position
Speaker 1: in the crypto exchange world now that f t X,
Speaker 1: it's largest competitor, is no longer there. There was a
Speaker 1: report recently about a long running investigation into Finance that
Speaker 1: has been happening that has been examining questions around money
Speaker 1: laundering and sanctions of Asian uh. Reuters reported that some
Speaker 1: of the prosecutors were split and believed that they should
Speaker 1: pursue criminal charges against Finance executives, including their CEO UM
Speaker 1: and then other prosecutors believed that they should hold off
Speaker 1: for a little bit keep examining the evidence. So you know,
Speaker 1: there is the possibility of criminal charges coming against Finance,
Speaker 1: but all that to day that you know, if Finance
Speaker 1: were to collapse or even falter, it would have enormous
Speaker 1: effects on the cryptocurrency industry. I mean, we've seen what's
Speaker 1: happened in the recent couple of weeks with f t X,
Speaker 1: which was quite extreme and quite widespread in terms of
Speaker 1: its contagion effects throughout the crypto industry. Something happening to
Speaker 1: Finance would be absolutely devastating to the crypto industry, I think,
Speaker 1: And in fact, Finances lawyers made that argument to prosecutors.
Speaker 1: They basically said that if you come after Finance, you
Speaker 1: will threaten the entire cryptocurrency industry. Yeah, well, a good
Speaker 1: reason to let them keep doing what they're doing. Look
Speaker 1: into it. Thank you so much, Molly, this was great.
Speaker 1: I hope he'll come back. Thanks for having me, Molly
Speaker 1: junk Fast Jessie Cannon carry Lake. It seems as doing
Speaker 1: now the portion of her audition to be Trump's vice
Speaker 1: president where she runs to every organization to do a
Speaker 1: speech where she tries to say the most insane thing
Speaker 1: to get attention, and what a ride. I think she's
Speaker 1: either auditioning to be his fourth wife or his either
Speaker 1: of which in my mind seemed like bad jobs. You
Speaker 1: know what I found really interesting though, because I'm obsessed
Speaker 1: with the filter she gets on the cameras. The lighting
Speaker 1: both these speeches is so much different than all the
Speaker 1: other lighting on everybody else, because you know, her advanced
Speaker 1: team sat there making sure she's lit just perfectly for
Speaker 1: Mr Trump to find her attractive. Golden c three po
Speaker 1: carry Lake saying lots of crazy things. Her pronouns are
Speaker 1: I one is what she said at the Turning Point USA.
Speaker 1: This bit never gets old for them. Turning Point USA
Speaker 1: is an entire conference built around the fact that Charlie
Speaker 1: Kirk didn't get into the college you wanted to go to,
Speaker 1: and so we decided that college was a scam. And
Speaker 1: for that, that entire moment of Carrie Lake screaming about
Speaker 1: her pronouns, proudly announcing she's an election denier and auditioning
Speaker 1: for Donald Trump's fourth wife, that is our moment of fun. Right,
Speaker 1: that's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
Speaker 1: every Monday, Wednesday and Friday to her the best minds
Speaker 1: and politics makes sense of all this chaos. If you
Speaker 1: enjoyed what you've heard, please send it to a friend
Speaker 1: and keep the conversation going. And again thanks for listening.