November 21, 2025 • 41 mins
Reporter Max Abelson gives Stacey and Max a primer on the business dealings of disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffery Epstein. Abelson has sifted through thousands of emails to and from Epstein and explains to Max and Stacey what Epstein's business dealings, both legal and unlawful, really was. He also describes why - 20 years into a career of reporting on money and power - he is taken aback of the cruelty involved.
Plus, as America gears up for Thanksgiving, there’s a lot of anxiety about rising food prices. But are the worries warranted? A recent report shows that the average Thanksgiving meal might actually be cheaper in 2025 than previous years. What gives? Deena Shanker joins Max and Stacey to set the record straight.
For more information about the first Everybody's Business live event - happening December 4 in New York City - click here!
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Welcome to Everybody's Business from Bloomberg BusinessWeek.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
I'm Max Chafkin and I'm Stacey Max Smith.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Stacy, we are a little less as you're listening to this.
Speaker 4 (00:20):
A week from Thanksgiving. It is a time to shop
for groceries. We've been talking all about how inflation has
been making stuff more expensive.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
A lot of complaints about food prices.
Speaker 4 (00:30):
But Stacy, we're going to talk about a report that
kind of points in the other direction.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Thanksgiving food maybe is getting cheaper.
Speaker 5 (00:36):
We will hash through all of it. It is actually
kind of complicated. Luckily we have some help.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
We brought in Dina Shanker, food reporter for Business Weeks.
She'll talk us through that.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (00:45):
And then my doppelganger, another Max, Max Abelson is here
coming to us to talk about these documents, these many
tens of thousands of pages of documents that are coming
out around Jeffrey Epstein. Max covers Money and Power for Bloomberg.
He's really got an interesting take on this.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
I'm excited for the conversation.
Speaker 5 (01:05):
Yes, indeed, and then we're going to talk about our
underrated stories this week.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
For me, Max, it's all about the k shaped economy.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Can't wait.
Speaker 4 (01:12):
I've got another letter related underrated story. Stacy, you've heard
of the taco trade. I'm going to remind you or
introduce you to the mamout trade.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
It's back.
Speaker 6 (01:25):
Max.
Speaker 5 (01:25):
Before we get started with our show, we do have
some kind of exciting news.
Speaker 4 (01:30):
Yeah, listeners, we are having a live event. This is
a special event at the Bloomberg Mothership at Bloomberg Headquarters
in Midtown, Manhattan on December fourth. You have to be
a Bloomberg subscriber to go to this.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
Thing, but it's not too late to subscribe.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Not too late.
Speaker 4 (01:48):
I will be there, Stacy will be there, Bradstone, our
friend and boss, will be there, and we'll be talking
to Ellen Hewitt, who is an awesome journalist. She has
a book coming out. She also wrote a story about
chatbots and how they are driving people crazy. That's going
to be kind of the subject of the conversation. People
should check it out. I know we've got a lot
of RSVPs. I think there are still some places available now.
Speaker 5 (02:11):
I will say that the event is quite early in
the morning. It is at eight am, but we were
going to have extremely strong coffee and from what I understand.
Everybody's business coasters will be.
Speaker 4 (02:22):
On offer, Stacy. It's called a power breakfast. It's a
power breakfast.
Speaker 5 (02:25):
We're going to be having a power breakfast with powercoasters.
Speaker 4 (02:29):
So yeah, So go to Bloomberg dot com slash subscriptions subscribe.
If you are a subscriber, you can go to the
show notes and you'll see the details for the event. Come, come,
say hi to me and Stacy. Come ask us some questions.
We will be there. We are very excited to meet you.
We will try to be fully alert when this happens.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
This is where the strong coffee comes in.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
All right, Stacy.
Speaker 4 (02:53):
I think before we get into our segments, we got
to talk about the economic news that's been coming out
this week. I think starting with these jobs numbers. We
got numbers for September better than expected.
Speaker 5 (03:05):
Yeah, it is really good news, it seems, especially since
it has kind of felt like the economies maybe at
this turning point or in this strange liminal space. So
a lot of guys were on this job support. Of
course we didn't get it because of the government shutdown.
So these are jobs numbers for September.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
Right, these are kind of out of date.
Speaker 4 (03:22):
We're not going to have the jobs numbers for last
month because the BLS was not people.
Speaker 5 (03:28):
Weren't they didn't have the manpower, the person power to
take the surveys.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
Now, it was a little bit mixed, I should say so.
Speaker 5 (03:34):
In the month of September, the US economy added about
one hundred and nineteen thousand jobs.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
That is really good.
Speaker 5 (03:41):
But also the unemployment rate ticked up to a little bit,
so four point four percent. Unemployment still quite low. Under
five percent is still considered very low, but it's not
headed into great direction.
Speaker 4 (03:53):
Yeah, and more good news on Wednesday night in Nvidia
Reporter earnings. You know, we've been talking a lot about
how you know, this economy it feels good, but it's
just it's all just a bunch of AI stiff on
sugarh And like if the AI bubble burst, We have
good news. The AI bubble is going strong, and Video
totally blew the doors off its expectations. Stock has gone
(04:15):
up this morning as we're recording it. It feels like
there's still a lot of optimism, at least from kind
of the company that has benefited most from the AI bubble.
Speaker 5 (04:24):
Yeah, and I feel like AI and jobs, those are
the two parts of our economy everybody's watching right now,
the two parts that I feel a little potentially fragile.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
And so both of those came in with good news.
That is great news.
Speaker 5 (04:37):
Of course, the markets are a little upset about it
for the comical reason that they're worried that now Jerome
Powell might not decide to cut interest rates right because
the job market looks pretty strong, classic class, classic powers.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
Wall Street reaction.
Speaker 4 (04:53):
You know, there is one other indicator that I think
is arguably more important than in Nvidia earnings, and that
is the Turkey Index. Thanksgiving Stacy, it is here, it
is coming. It's obviously a great opportunity to eat and
see your family and and and share a meal. It's
also a great opportunity to talk about affordability, right because
(05:17):
everybody is going out there and buying the same basic
handful of things. We sent our reporter Charlie Gorivin, who's
gonna be with us for the next few months on
the show, out there into the streets to ask people
about their Thanksgiving plans.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
What are your Thanksgiving plants?
Speaker 5 (05:33):
Go to relatives, I'm actually making Thanksgiving than.
Speaker 3 (05:40):
Its likely if not heard in Masisterdaxity for three days
with my family.
Speaker 7 (05:45):
And with how the economy is right now, are you
making a choice to cut back in any way?
Speaker 8 (05:50):
Normally I would have gone down to Florida, So I'm
not because the airfare is I have gotten so out
of control.
Speaker 5 (05:57):
We contribute the same every year, so we didn't see
reason to cutback because it's.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
Not that much. We are a lot more coaches, so
we're going slowly.
Speaker 5 (06:08):
This is a hard time where the food stamps are cut,
but it's always cool.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
Are you guys using foods stamps mostly for christ for shopping?
Speaker 4 (06:14):
Is there anything that you've been shopping for recently that's
really struck you, like.
Speaker 3 (06:17):
Well, staple bread, Milky's a staple stuff.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
Just what I bought skirt steak. It was twenty three
dollars a pound.
Speaker 8 (06:23):
I never paid that. I had this funny story because
I wanted to get whipped green because as a treat
for myself, and I was with my husband and I
was like, it's eight dollars on principal alone, I will
not spend eight dollars for whipped.
Speaker 4 (06:36):
Eight dollars for whipped green. That's a non negotiable in
my house, though, whipped cream. You gotta have the whipped cream.
Speaker 5 (06:41):
Oh yeah, it's the best part of the pumpkin pie.
And I say this as a person who loves pumpkin pie.
Speaker 9 (06:46):
I love it too, all right, Max, We just heard
a lot of New Yorkers talking about their Thanksgiving plans
and how much food costs, and certainly that is very
top of mind right now, food costs, and.
Speaker 5 (07:05):
Specifically how much this pretty expensive ornate meal that many
of us make in this country is going to cost.
Speaker 4 (07:13):
Such a good meal, though, I've been thinking about it Tuesdacy,
I am buying, I'm going to are you hosting, I'm hosting.
I'm going to pick up a very very very expensive turkey.
It's like one hundred and fifty dollars farm fresh turkey.
Speaker 5 (07:26):
You're being one hundred and fifty dollars, Like, how many
people does it feed?
Speaker 4 (07:30):
I haven't got the final weight of the turkey, all right, Well,
but I will come.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
Back to fancy pants turkey.
Speaker 5 (07:37):
Aside, we all will be shopping for a lot of
similar ingredients on different scales, and the cost of those
ingredients and the cost of food in general, has of
course been a huge topic all year and for the
last few years, so we wanted to bring on an
expert in the field, the great Dina Shanker, writer for BusinessWeek,
covers food in all of its glory.
Speaker 6 (07:57):
Welcome Dina, thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
Dean, Am I overpaying for turkey?
Speaker 10 (08:01):
You know?
Speaker 1 (08:02):
I actually I have a lot of questions about your turkey.
That means, yes, it is it a heritage turkey?
Speaker 7 (08:09):
I don't know, like.
Speaker 3 (08:10):
What is it?
Speaker 5 (08:11):
I'd feel like they should give you a whole family
tree for a turkey if they charge you one hundred
fifty dollars for it, Especially since the American Farm Bureau
just released it has this Thanksgiving Dinner Index it puts
out every year where it tracks the price of.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
All the fix ins for a.
Speaker 5 (08:27):
Thanksgiving dinner for twelve very folksy, yeah, I try to
be folksy. The cost is down this year, apparently fifty
five dollars for a dinner for ten people.
Speaker 3 (08:38):
And this is you know, using cheaper ingredients. But they
look at grocery stores.
Speaker 5 (08:42):
Across the country and have looked at the same grocery
stores for years and years, and the major decrease in
the cost of this menu. It was fifty eight dollars
in twenty twenty four, sixty one in twenty twenty three.
Now it's fifty five. And the big drop in price
came from the Turkey.
Speaker 6 (09:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
I mean, we actually have a few different reports this
year telling us different things.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
Yes, and entry, let's do it.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
I think what we can really take away from this
is that it doesn't really matter what you're paying.
Speaker 6 (09:16):
It matters how you're feeling about it.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
Because if the Farm Bureau is saying costs are down
five percent, and Deloitte is saying the cost for a
dinner for eight people is up zero point six percent,
and we actually don't have CPI for October.
Speaker 5 (09:33):
Cinflation report, Yeah, that comes out every month usually, right,
so we don't know.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
And yet lending Tree says Thanksgiving hosts are expecting to
spend thirteen percent more than last year.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
Can I just say I don't trust any of these numbers.
Speaker 4 (09:48):
The Farm Bureau, it sounds like that sounds like a
very official like group, but it's it's a lobbying group. Yes,
it is a lobbying It is not like a government agency.
So on one hand, it does seem like the data
that they're putting out is fairly rigorous.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
But also I feel like I have to say, like there's.
Speaker 4 (10:09):
Probably some disincentives for farmers to say stuff costs more
because we're in an environment where the president is basically
threatening anyone who raises prices, and farmers have been kind
of beefing with Trump over various parts of agriculture policy
and so on.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
So I don't know.
Speaker 4 (10:28):
On the other hand, it seems like we have this
like Farm Bureau data, we have Deloitte. Those are two
different entities essentially saying it's not costing more, which definitely
that feels like in contradiction to how many people feel
about food prices.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
It's hard to understand.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
Yeah, So I did email both Deloitte and the Farm
Bureau about like, why did you guys come up with
different numbers? Number one is they have very different methodologies,
and the Farm Bureau emphasized, or maybe I should say
I emphasize. Their response included that there's is an informal
survey of prices.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
Okay, okay.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
Deloitte is much more formal, but their collection of information.
Speaker 6 (11:12):
Is through September. But I think that that's exactly right,
and this is.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
Why we are supposed to get government data.
Speaker 3 (11:18):
Well, I should say that.
Speaker 5 (11:20):
I spoke with Mike McDonough, who's an economist here at
Bloomberg who's putting together Thanksgiving Index, and he told me,
according to his numbers, the prices were also slightly down,
especially for turkey. And I asked about this because there
are reports that the wholesale price for turkey is way up,
like forty percent up. But what he said was, they
have like a lot of frozen turkeys. There's like a
(11:41):
strategic turkey reserve or something. And also that the retail
price could be very different from the wholesale price because
a lot of supermarkets might be marking down turkey to
get people into the store where they buy all the
other ingredients.
Speaker 4 (11:56):
Right, And that's a classic move, giving away a frozen
turkey or whatever as way to get foot traffic in
the door. You spend a lot of money on like
pumpkin pies or whatever, more expensive items.
Speaker 5 (12:06):
Yeah, I mean you'll go to a grocery store because
you're like, oh, they have a great turkey deal, and
then you'll just maybe get all the other ingredients for
your feast there. So that could be. It could be
like the hot dogs at Costco.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
It's the Yeah, the lost leader brings people in. So
I reached out to David Ortega, professor of food economics
at Michigan State University, and he told me Number one
is the different findings have a lot to do with
different methodologies.
Speaker 6 (12:29):
He says he looks to CPI.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
CPI in September said two point seven percent grocery inflation.
Speaker 6 (12:35):
That's up, but it's not that different crazy up.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
It's not falling.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
But he also noted that, you know, Thanksgiving prices are
really family specific, and also there are so many retailers
doing these big Thanksgiving sales. So Walmart has their lowest
price ever, all these doing one target. It's everyone. Every
retailer does some kind of Thanksgiving special. So my conclusion
(13:04):
from this is like Thanksgiving is a terrible gauge for
the food prices because they're all over the place.
Speaker 3 (13:10):
Now.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
In terms of the Farm Bureau being a lobbying organization,
I actually think that if we look even further into
the report, that's where the real clues are about what's
going on, which is they are making some points about
higher costs for inputs for farms like fertilizer that's from tariffs.
They're talking about weather patterns driving prices up.
Speaker 3 (13:35):
We call that climate change sometimes.
Speaker 6 (13:38):
And they're talking about a labor shortage.
Speaker 7 (13:40):
Ice.
Speaker 5 (13:42):
Yes, there were some of the big increases on the
Thanksgiving list were three pounds of the sweet potatoes were
up thirty seven percent. The veggie tray, which is like
carrots and celery, those costs are up sixty one percent.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
Who buys a veggie?
Speaker 6 (13:57):
Please don't invite me to that meal.
Speaker 5 (13:58):
I mean I was gonna say, like, basically the theme
of Thanksgiving costs this year is don't buy vegetables. My
personal like inner eight year old's dream of Thanksgiving.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
It's like, yes, you can't afford vegetables.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
And I'll just now, Max, it's so nice that you
host Thanksgiving dinner.
Speaker 6 (14:15):
That's a great service to your family.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
Are you in the eighteen percent of potential hosts that
regret that decision?
Speaker 6 (14:22):
No, that's up from fourteen percent last year.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
Eighteen percent of people who host Thanksgiving.
Speaker 6 (14:29):
That's according to lending Tree.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
And I don't know that that's really specific to cost.
Speaker 6 (14:33):
I mean I would regret hosting dishes.
Speaker 3 (14:36):
It's dishes I.
Speaker 4 (14:37):
Have such I have no regret yet, is what I'll say.
I but there is time. We're recording this a week
from Thanksgiving, and you know it's possible that that in
seven days I will be I will beware of the.
Speaker 6 (14:51):
What percentage was it eighteen percent?
Speaker 2 (14:54):
Now I'm in the majority for now.
Speaker 3 (14:55):
I mean, this has.
Speaker 5 (14:56):
Been a big moment in food prices for multiple reasons,
including one that President Trump just is like suspending tariffs
on some food items like bananas and coffee and things
like that, where they have seen prices spike because of
tariffs overall Thanksgiving feasts aside, what is happening with food prices?
Speaker 2 (15:15):
Do we know?
Speaker 3 (15:16):
Is it mixed?
Speaker 2 (15:17):
Is it?
Speaker 6 (15:18):
They seem to be going up. That's what the CPI
shows us is that they're going up. I mean I
think that. You know, when I go to the supermarket,
I like to ask the.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
Cashier how many people complain about food prices?
Speaker 4 (15:31):
You do.
Speaker 3 (15:33):
Always be reported.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
I love it.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
And the answer at like my stop and shop is, oh,
almost everyone is complaining. The last time I asked, the
guy behind me in line was like, it's terrible, and
I started. We had a whole conversation about is chicken
wings and it's the meat driving the prices up? And
I think, really, prices are going up. I don't know
(15:57):
how closely people are tracking. Well, I paid X for
this package of chicken wings this week, but I remember
last week what I paid in a year ago. The
truth is that prices have gone up so much since
pre pandemic.
Speaker 6 (16:12):
That's what people remember.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
People remember prices that are never coming back now. Yes,
banana tariffs, if we remove them, it might bring bananas
down from thirty cents a banana to twenty seven cents
or whatever, but ultimately that's not that's not going to
change how you feel about your grocery costs, which might
(16:35):
just be people have to change how they think about
groceries in terms of how much of their paycheck they
divert to them.
Speaker 3 (16:41):
Are you cooking a turkey this show?
Speaker 6 (16:43):
Oh my god, I would never in a million years host.
Speaker 7 (16:45):
Of Thanksgiving me all that.
Speaker 3 (16:47):
I mean, you're a food reporter. It seems like you're
a food personal.
Speaker 6 (16:50):
Number one is that's just a huge responsibility.
Speaker 3 (16:52):
It's like a massive You don't want to be among
the eighteen percent?
Speaker 7 (16:55):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (16:55):
No, I mean.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
Also, I don't eat meat, so nobody wants to come
to my house for Thanksgiving. But I do host a
lot of like Friday night Shabbat dinners. We have fish,
which is extraordinarily expensive all the time, and I often
regret it, not because of the cost, but because but
I'm always happy once the guests arrive.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
Stacy, are you are you cooking or what are your
Thanksgiving plans?
Speaker 5 (17:23):
I am bringing a dish, which is my favorite thing.
I have not even selected which dish it. It just
depends on whatever people need. I will bring. Apparently I
need to avoid the vegetables, is what the farm Bureau
is selling me.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
I just want to say, that's really great that you're
bringing something, because according to lending Tree, for what it's worth,
one in ten hosts say that they wouldn't invite an
empty handed guest back next year.
Speaker 3 (17:48):
So I gradualll never be an empty handed guest.
Speaker 4 (17:51):
I would never disinvite an empty handed guest. Dina Shanker,
Thank you.
Speaker 5 (17:56):
Happy Thanksgiving Dina.
Speaker 4 (18:04):
Okay, Stacy, I think we need to talk about the
Epstein stuff. And I hesitate to go there because this
is a business podcast, and in certain ways it's not
a business story.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
But in other ways, of course, it is a huge
business story.
Speaker 4 (18:21):
Yeah, both because the guy who's at the center of it,
Jeffrey Epstein, was operated ostensibly very successful business most measure,
and also because we're seeing a bunch of prominent people
in our world getting caught up in it, most recently
(18:41):
Larry Summers. I think he stepped back from his public
commitments at Harvard and open Ai, the big chatbot company,
and you know, all of a sudden, there's the prospect
of a bunch of Epstein files getting released. Congress over
President Trump's objections, pass this bill. Trump signed it, apparently enthusiastically. Anyway,
(19:04):
I want to unpack this, and to do that, We've
got a great guy, Max Abelson, who little known fact
he's a Bloomberg reporter, but we are often mistaken for
one another because of the name.
Speaker 10 (19:15):
I get a lot of emails meant for this Max
and visa versa.
Speaker 4 (19:19):
When Max launched his Max had a TV show, and
when it launched, I got all these congratulatory messages. But
Max is here. He covers money and power for Bloomberg.
What you've been doing for the past couple of months
is looking at Epstein emails, Right, I've been.
Speaker 7 (19:35):
Reading a lot of jevery Epstein's emails.
Speaker 10 (19:38):
Bloomberg News obtained more than eighteen thousand emails sent sent
to and from Epstein and not just any old emails,
but these are emails basically like a private Yahoo email address.
And this team we are doing our best to be
able to explain something that is enormous and complicated in
(19:59):
some ways and co eight and we've been trying to
lay it out for readers and to try to understand
it ourselves when people.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
Say the Epstein files.
Speaker 4 (20:07):
There was also people may remember at the beginning of
the Trump presidency there was this like amazing media event
where a bunch of right wing influencers got in front
of the White House, held up these awesome binders and
were like, we have the Epstein files. When people say
the Epstein files, like what does that even mean?
Speaker 7 (20:22):
This is so interesting.
Speaker 10 (20:22):
A phrases like that kind of entered the lexicon and
sort of amount to exactly like kind of nothing because
it's essentially like a meaningless phrase, but but but it's
also very meaningful. Let's all right, I'm going to do
my very best at trying to sort of, like bucket
by bucket, try to think think through the project that
I've worked with a bunch of our Bloomberg News colleagues on.
I'm thinking of Jason Leopold and Harry Wilson and Lauren Edter.
(20:44):
Those are emails from a Yahoo inbox that was like
really active around two thousand and seven, two thousand and eight.
Speaker 4 (20:52):
That was before Epstein was convicted of I forget the
exact the original Florida conviction, right, maxis.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
Because I was in two thousand and eight.
Speaker 7 (21:00):
Yes, it's even better than that.
Speaker 10 (21:01):
The emails start before he is charged, and that's the
Florida charges are in two thousand and six, and they
last up to and through him pleading guilty to two
charges in two thousand and eight, which were part of
the non prosecution agreement that really stops cold both state
and federal investigations. And then I'm happy to say the
(21:22):
emails do continue past that. So let's call that bucket one.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
That's the Yahoo email.
Speaker 7 (21:27):
That's that's the Bloomberg News.
Speaker 3 (21:29):
Cash, that's like the exclusive Bloomberg.
Speaker 10 (21:33):
Then over to the right, you've got the congressional committees
Republicans and Democrats released I think basically last week thousands
more and those are unfortunately a different email account, but
what they have is really rich stuff more recent, more
past past two thousand into the twenty tens.
Speaker 4 (21:55):
Well all the way up at least till he died.
I think, yeah, until he was arrested.
Speaker 7 (22:01):
That's exactly right.
Speaker 10 (22:01):
It's called that Epstein batch too. That's got the summer's
emails and many more. But you know, when people talk
about the Epstein files, what they are consistently referring to
are what's to come, and that is I think a
very helpful way of thinking.
Speaker 3 (22:16):
About that also emails.
Speaker 7 (22:18):
My thinking is it's.
Speaker 10 (22:19):
Going to be much more governmental when I think about
what we're supposed to expect now that Trump has signed
the law to release the let's just call these the
Epstein files. I think it's very helpful to think of
this as essentially DJ the Department of Justice, that they
will be releasing lots and lots of files that are
from the Department of Justice is investigation into Epstein, and
(22:41):
I'm assuming that we'll have a lot of emails. But
I think that sort of at least the way I'm
conceptualizing it right now, is it rather than a cache
of emails, it's going to be a much broader governmental collection,
collection of data and files.
Speaker 3 (22:55):
So here's my question.
Speaker 5 (22:56):
If Jeffrey Epstein was running a kind of business which
it feels like he was in a way, I'm wondering, like,
as the stuff starts to emerge, like what was the
nature of this business?
Speaker 3 (23:07):
And like what was the currency here? What was he buying?
What was he selling?
Speaker 5 (23:11):
Like are you starting to get kind of a larger
scope picture of what exactly was the nature of this
thing that he was running.
Speaker 10 (23:20):
I'm going to answer that very very good question two ways.
The most honest and the simplest answer to give you
is that the more we find out about Epstein, the
more enigmatic he becomes. That it isn't like a kind
of normal Let's say, you know, if I'm reporting out
a magazine piece or I'm reporting out of finance story,
it's like, you talk to the people you need to
talk to, You find as many documents as you can,
(23:40):
and then you know, a picture emerges. As we say,
in Epstein's case, you know, even though we've put out
lots of stories that are extremely solid and I hope
push the ball forward in many concrete ways, I sit
back and I reflect on Epstein, you know, whose job
is pretty much in keeping with what I tend to
write about. I mean, I am essentially a Wall Street
(24:01):
reporter and Epstein was essentially a money manager. But what's
so interesting about Epstein and what I think is one
of the things that captures the imagination of I think
the American publican beyond, is that he seems to have
made a career out of connections with the most important
people in the world. And you know, sometimes that work
(24:22):
of financial connections on Wall Street is pretty simple, and
sometimes it's even kind of dull. There is a whole
industry of people who service.
Speaker 7 (24:33):
The wallets and portfolios of the wealthy.
Speaker 10 (24:35):
You can look it up on the Internet and you
can find lots of sort of elite, fancy people who
would love to charge you a little bit of money
and they're going to oversee your finances.
Speaker 4 (24:43):
So is this like, uh, try to attempt an analogy
that maybe a person who's outside of this world would understand.
Like I think some people like have an accountant who
has like season tickets to the Jets or something.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
Part of what that's about is I'm.
Speaker 3 (24:56):
Nervous about where this is going.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
Okay, just wait a second.
Speaker 4 (24:59):
He pays for that season tickets out of his business expenses,
he writes them off, he gets to go to Jets games.
He also brings his clients to the Jets, it's like
part of why you choose this account, and like it's
like that, but like with Epstein, it's like being connected
to people like Larry Summers or whatever, and then as
you accumulate those connections, it becomes like an asset into itself.
(25:23):
I haven't brought up the fact that Epstein was also
engaging in illegal sex trafficking, which feels like part of
that too, but it sounds like part of it is
just this kind of collection of powerful people that you
know basically becomes more and more valuable the further along
he goes.
Speaker 10 (25:39):
I think that's a very helpful way of laying out,
and it makes me imagine in my mind's eye while
you're talking, sort of three different things that he was doing.
Speaker 7 (25:46):
On the one hand, he was running money. He was
managing the money of rich people.
Speaker 10 (25:49):
There's a Ohio bill billionaire named Wexner who's well known
for Victoria's Secret, for example, and that is a sort
of traditional business. I believe it was actually called the
Financial Trust Company. There's a document from JP Morgan that
says that Epstein was not accepting clients with less than
a billion dollars, so let's consider that the business of
(26:09):
money management, managing money for really rich people. Then let's
think about his sort of like fancy globe trotter connections,
even sort of like a ted Talk portion of his business.
The ted Talk portion of his business is Larry Summers.
You know, I don't believe he was actually in business
with Larry Summers, but Larry Summers and people like that
at Harvard were very important to him. They were part
of a kind of academic network that provided kind of
(26:31):
bona fides and that seemed to pander to Epstein's interests.
And Epstein had a lot of money. He was a
donor to Harvard and MIT and other institutions. So let's
consider that, Yes, like intelligen the intelligency had the ted
Talk world. And then, of course, you know, even though
I'm a financial reporter, we can't ignore what is over
you know, I think on all of our minds as
we talk about Epstein, which is that, according to the
(26:53):
Department of Justice, he had more than a thousand victims
because he died while he was in jail. What was
happening with Epstein's sex crimes is may forever be unknown,
but it's it certainly has to be on the boards.
As we think about this, the question of why such
(27:13):
powerful people were willing to be either in business with
him literally or to be in his circle is I
think maybe possibly sort of the foundational question of the
Jeffrey Epstein story.
Speaker 4 (27:26):
Just to pick up on that, like one thing that
I have like not fully understood, And I think this
will continue to be important assuming the Trump administration actually
releases something. I think there are questions about well, like
Pam Bondi, the Attorney General has a lot of leeway.
There are investigations going on there. There are various ways
(27:47):
I think the Trump administration could either drag their feet
or maybe produce a bunch of documents that are less
revealing than we might hope. But assuming a bunch of
documents do get produced, I think we're going to see
more names connected to business who are involved in this guy.
There are a lot of powerful people, as we know.
And the thing that I haven't fully understood is how
(28:09):
Larry Summers lost all his jobs like this week, And
I'm wondering why was it this week? Because I'm not
totally sure how much more information we got about Larry
Summers's connections with Jeffrey Epstein from these emails and by
the same question, like, how is it that Bill Gates,
Reid Hoffman, some of these other guys who also have
connections to Jeffrey Epstein.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
It feels like we haven't fully reckoned with that.
Speaker 10 (28:33):
You know. One of the very powerful things about reporting
on emails is you get to see how people talk.
Speaker 7 (28:39):
To one another.
Speaker 10 (28:40):
You know, normally, as an interviewer, if any of us
are sitting down with our subjects, we ask some questions
and if we get lucky, they answer them. But what's
interesting about this kind of journalism with Jason and Harry
and all of our colleagues is that we have the
ability and now the world does too, with these other emails,
to read the way powerful people are actually talking to
(29:01):
one another, and it is you know, it really is
one thing to sort of know in the abstract that
Bill Gates and Jeffrey Epstein were in the same room together,
or Woody Allen was in was in.
Speaker 2 (29:13):
I guess that can mean a lot of different things.
Speaker 4 (29:14):
Right, You can be in a room with somebody without
necessarily endorsing.
Speaker 5 (29:18):
He was a connected guy, like you were saying, and
it's hard to know. It's like, well, how do you
deep did this connection go? Were they committing crimes with him?
Did they just show up at this cocktail party.
Speaker 7 (29:25):
That's absolutely right.
Speaker 10 (29:26):
Even even someone like Leon Black, who's a private equity billionaire,
has said, look, he was like saving me money on taxes. Essentially,
that's ultimately I mean, it's many things, but it's relatively
boring to be able to read Larry Summers, who's one
of the most important figures in global academia and a.
Speaker 3 (29:44):
Most famous economists in the world.
Speaker 10 (29:46):
It's really important economist, huge political figure, huge political figure.
To read the words of two men, you know, speaking
about women in the way that characters in movies do,
it's very it's very yess, yes, yes, Graham characters. I
think that all of us is, as journalists, go into
the work of journalism, especially when we're writing about money
(30:07):
and power, with a little bit of cynicism, a little
bit of a sense that people you know, behind closed
doors don't talk the way they do necessarily in public.
But I think to answer your question, the thing that
was really powerful was just hearing someone in his own
words talking with Jeffrey Epstein. My mind is going to
the writer Michael Wolfe, who is like was basically offering
(30:31):
public relations advice to Jeffrey Epstein, and you get to
read it as a reader or as a journalist going
through these emails, and it's powerful. I think it does
make a difference. Well.
Speaker 5 (30:42):
Also with Larry Summers, I feel like part of the
issue was that he had had those comments at Harvard
about how women were sort of less equipped to study
the sciences, and he had lost his position. He wasn't
named the head of the Federal Reserve, like, he was
punished for that, and then he apologized, and so I
think there was this feeling of like, Okay, you know,
(31:02):
we all make mistakes, we all have views we're not
proud of in retrospect and things like that. But then
the idea that he apologized but then in like secret
so hard he was just like oh my god, yeah,
and it was like, hey, you like you were forgiven
for this.
Speaker 3 (31:18):
And I think it was maybe.
Speaker 2 (31:19):
Partly that, I want to say, Larry Summers.
Speaker 4 (31:23):
All all the people we've mentioned have as being associated
with Jeffrey Epstein having one way or another said that
they regret their associations with Jeffrey Epstein, including Larry Summers,
who has said it again as vowing, oh, yeah, they
definitely regret it.
Speaker 10 (31:38):
Hearing you talk just puts me in mind of a
kind of maybe it's like a sort of a bifurcation.
There are people who were in Epstein's orbit and have
now gotten in trouble for it, but then they're the
people who were Epstein's clients or the people for whom
Epstein himself was a client. And I'm thinking now with
JP Morgan, big banks exactly some of the biggest banks
(31:58):
in the world. And I I think that because I'm
a financial reporter and not necessarily a legal reporter, and
not even necessarily a political reporter, but I find myself
most interested in, and most excited by, and most keen
to see when all of the documents come out, has
to do with the mechanics of money making. I am
looking forward to seeing who was doing business with Epstein
(32:20):
that we don't know about, the ways they were doing
business that we don't totally understand yet, and what the
ramifications will be. There were clearly billionaires, There was clearly
money moving at the high echelons of finance. We certainly
do have an understanding of some of what that money
looked like and some of the banks that we're handling it.
Speaker 7 (32:39):
But I do think there's more to come.
Speaker 5 (32:41):
Can I ask you a question about kind of the
unvarnished nature of some of the communications you're talking about,
Like we've been talking a lot on the show about
like whatever the K shaped economy and the sort of
division between regular people and elites, the very wealthy, and
so you're reading kind of the unguarded communications between elite
it's a lot, and you report on finance.
Speaker 3 (33:03):
Has this has these emails, reading all.
Speaker 5 (33:05):
These thousands of emails, has this changed your view at
all on the upper echelons of our economy, the sort
of titans of business.
Speaker 10 (33:15):
I think that it would be cool, and I think
I would sound cooler to your audience if I were
to sort of like shrug and be like, you know,
I've been I've been in Bloomberg News for fifteen years,
which I have, and I've been writing about money and
power for twenty years, which I have. You know, I
wasn't born yesterday. Like I know how powerful people work,
and I know they talk, and like, I wasn't surprised
many of this at all. But the truth is I
have been surprised. I find it very grim and very depressing.
(33:40):
And I why that is is that it has a
level of meanness and even cruelty that I'm just not
used to.
Speaker 4 (33:49):
Max, you mentioned our colleague Jason Leopold. He has a
new podcast. It's called Disclosure, and he's an episode all
about following Epstein's money and about how he learned about
the DOJ investigation in Epstein's finances that stayed very.
Speaker 2 (34:05):
For seventeen years.
Speaker 4 (34:06):
It's awesome. People should check it out. Max Abelson, thanks
for being here.
Speaker 10 (34:09):
Pleasures mine, So, Stacey.
Speaker 4 (34:16):
We talked about the idea of the fifty year mortgage
on the last episode. We got to comment from a listener, Rudy.
He's from Omaha, Nebraska. He's actually a longtime fan of yours.
Speaker 3 (34:26):
I believe clearly. Thank you, Rudy.
Speaker 4 (34:30):
Rudy pointed out something that I don't think we quite
mentioned as clearly as we probably should have on the
last episode, which is that as you go from a
thirty year mortgage to a fifty year mortgage, the interest
rate is going to go up, because like that's how
it works when termlines go up. A fifteen year mortgage
has a lower interest rate than a thirty year mortgage,
(34:51):
which would have a lower interest rate of a fifty
year mortgage. Rudy sound a bunch of numbers, but Stacy,
as I said, he's also a long time listener of
The Indicator, which is was the show before this.
Speaker 2 (35:01):
One was Indeed, and he answers.
Speaker 4 (35:04):
The question that you I think it was in the
back of your mind as we talked about a penny
which was his favorite coin. For Rudy, it's the Morgan
silver dollar, originally minted from eighteen seventy eight to nineteen
oh four. Stacy, how do you feel about the Morgan
Are you familiar with this this coin?
Speaker 5 (35:21):
I don't know anything about the Morgan dollar. It was
the first standard silver dollar minted since the passage of
the coin ejacked, which ended the free coining of silver
and the production of the previous design, the seated Liberty dollar.
Was this after free silver?
Speaker 4 (35:37):
I don't know, but it is a really cool looking coin.
It is okay, and Rudy thank you. All right, let's
get to our underrated stories. You said it was something
about the letter K. I believe, yes.
Speaker 5 (35:48):
So the key shaped economy is this idea that's been
sort of going around a lot about how part of
our economy is getting much, much, much wealthier like AI.
There's so much money in investment going on to that
part of the economy, a lot of excitement. Companies are
raking in record profits. At the same time wages are
not going up for lower earners. So one of the
(36:10):
kind of interesting back and forth I think of the
last couple of weeks has been President Donald Trump talking
about these possible stimulus checks he might send out.
Speaker 3 (36:18):
I think he says, because of the surplus real terarifts.
Speaker 2 (36:23):
He's going to send money to everybody.
Speaker 5 (36:24):
So this organization called the Tax Foundation, which is generally
a pretty conservative organization, did the map, and as it
turns out, of course, the tariffs are not enough to
subsidize two thousand dollars checks for people, even if you limit,
even if there's an income cap. And then when they
interview Treasury Secretary Scott Besson about all this, he said,
you know, especially expressing inflationary concerns, because this is the
(36:47):
big worry. You pump a bunch of money out into
the economy if people spend it and then it pushes
prices up. He said, well, hopefully they wouldn't spend it.
He said hopefully people would save it. What I don't know,
it's I feel like that's what I tell myself when
I buy like multiple pints of ice cream. I'm like, oh,
save it, and with mixed success. But I feel like
(37:10):
what's interesting about this is why President Trump would send
stimulus out.
Speaker 3 (37:14):
I mean stimulus by any other name.
Speaker 5 (37:15):
But I feel like presidents from Biden to Trump now
are kind of trying to deal with this inequality because
on the one hand, our country is getting sort of
exponentially wealthier, part of our economy is getting left behind.
I think, partly because of technological advancements, partly because of
the markets. I think this is a way of handling
(37:38):
and maybe acknowledging the K shaped economy. That was what
I felt was kind of an underrated story of the
last Tacts.
Speaker 2 (37:44):
I mean, I think that I like that take.
Speaker 4 (37:46):
I mean, I think my reaction to hearing this and
seeing it is just like wow. Like Trump's coalition is
it's pretty tenuous, like because you have these kind of
like traditional Republicans who spent a lot of time when
Biden was sending out stimulus checks complaining about those stimulus checks,
and then you have the kind of like populist instinct.
Speaker 2 (38:08):
It is.
Speaker 4 (38:09):
And you know, amid the Epstein stuff, amid all this
news around the economy, the government shut down, like it
really does feel like.
Speaker 2 (38:15):
He's scrambled like a little bit.
Speaker 4 (38:17):
Yeah, he's you know, trying to find some some way
to sort of reclaim the narrative.
Speaker 2 (38:22):
I want to bring up.
Speaker 4 (38:23):
Another area where the Trump coalition is starting to feel
a lot stronger, and that is Elon Musk.
Speaker 5 (38:29):
Now, Stacy, I could have predicted your underrated story would
be about Elon Musk.
Speaker 2 (38:35):
Tell me what. Okay?
Speaker 4 (38:37):
So you probably remember that in early June Elon Musk
and Donald Trump had an enormous blow up, a blow
up of epic proportions. I must, I guess rather prophetically
we should acknowledge brought up Jeffrey Epstein, but in a
way that was extremely incendiary. The relationship looked like it
(38:58):
was dead, and at the time I was arguing essentially
that this would not last, that this breakup, that they
were bound to get back together and borrowing you remember
the taco trade. Trump always chickens out, Oh yes, yeah,
this idea that like Donald Trump is gonna like.
Speaker 3 (39:13):
He'll say, but then he'll dial it not.
Speaker 4 (39:17):
Not necessarily chickening out, but but like finding a way
to moderate some of that rhetoric. I and David Poppadopolis,
the former host of elan Ing, we coined a new
term mamoot, which stands for Musk always makes up with Trump.
And I have to tell you, Stacy, it is happening.
Elon Musk went to the White House. He's like posting
on Twitter. He's talking about how great Trump is. It
(39:39):
looks like the relationship is back on New York Times
reporting that Musk is Taylor and Burton Taylor.
Speaker 2 (39:47):
And I don't know what those times.
Speaker 5 (39:48):
Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burt that they were married and
divorced and they later got remarried, that very toxic relationship.
Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf is a very painful movie
to watch, And I feel like maybe this is them.
Speaker 4 (40:03):
You know, Musk is one of the rare people who
has divorced and then remarried his ex wife. And like
you said, that's exactly it. They are back together. The
election is coming, Trump is feeling, i'd say, maybe a
little more politically vulnerable. Musk has his own vulnerabilities, and
so we've got an alliance, and I think this is
going to be a big political story for the next year,
(40:26):
a no joke political story, even though it is kind
of funny that this on again, off again to pestuous
relationship is back on.
Speaker 2 (40:37):
This show is produced by Stacey Wong.
Speaker 4 (40:39):
Magnus Hendrickson is our supervising producer, and Amy Kean our
executive producer. Sam Rogich handles engineering, and Dave Percell fact checks.
Sage Bauman heads Bloomberg Podcasts Special thanks to Jeff Muscus,
Julia Rubin, Charlie Gorivin, and RIEA.
Speaker 2 (40:53):
Ling. If you have a minute, please rate and review
the show. It'll mean a.
Speaker 4 (40:56):
Lot to us, and more than that, if you have
a story that should be our business, email us at
Everybody's at Bloomberg dot net. That's everybody with an ass
at Bloomberg dot net. Thank you for listening and we
will see you next week.
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Welcome to Everybody's Business from Bloomberg BusinessWeek.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
I'm Max Chafkin and I'm Stacey Max Smith.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Stacy, we are a little less as you're listening to this.
Speaker 4 (00:20):
A week from Thanksgiving. It is a time to shop
for groceries. We've been talking all about how inflation has
been making stuff more expensive.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
A lot of complaints about food prices.
Speaker 4 (00:30):
But Stacy, we're going to talk about a report that
kind of points in the other direction.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Thanksgiving food maybe is getting cheaper.
Speaker 5 (00:36):
We will hash through all of it. It is actually
kind of complicated. Luckily we have some help.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
We brought in Dina Shanker, food reporter for Business Weeks.
She'll talk us through that.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (00:45):
And then my doppelganger, another Max, Max Abelson is here
coming to us to talk about these documents, these many
tens of thousands of pages of documents that are coming
out around Jeffrey Epstein. Max covers Money and Power for Bloomberg.
He's really got an interesting take on this.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
I'm excited for the conversation.
Speaker 5 (01:05):
Yes, indeed, and then we're going to talk about our
underrated stories this week.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
For me, Max, it's all about the k shaped economy.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Can't wait.
Speaker 4 (01:12):
I've got another letter related underrated story. Stacy, you've heard
of the taco trade. I'm going to remind you or
introduce you to the mamout trade.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
It's back.
Speaker 6 (01:25):
Max.
Speaker 5 (01:25):
Before we get started with our show, we do have
some kind of exciting news.
Speaker 4 (01:30):
Yeah, listeners, we are having a live event. This is
a special event at the Bloomberg Mothership at Bloomberg Headquarters
in Midtown, Manhattan on December fourth. You have to be
a Bloomberg subscriber to go to this.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
Thing, but it's not too late to subscribe.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Not too late.
Speaker 4 (01:48):
I will be there, Stacy will be there, Bradstone, our
friend and boss, will be there, and we'll be talking
to Ellen Hewitt, who is an awesome journalist. She has
a book coming out. She also wrote a story about
chatbots and how they are driving people crazy. That's going
to be kind of the subject of the conversation. People
should check it out. I know we've got a lot
of RSVPs. I think there are still some places available now.
Speaker 5 (02:11):
I will say that the event is quite early in
the morning. It is at eight am, but we were
going to have extremely strong coffee and from what I understand.
Everybody's business coasters will be.
Speaker 4 (02:22):
On offer, Stacy. It's called a power breakfast. It's a
power breakfast.
Speaker 5 (02:25):
We're going to be having a power breakfast with powercoasters.
Speaker 4 (02:29):
So yeah, So go to Bloomberg dot com slash subscriptions subscribe.
If you are a subscriber, you can go to the
show notes and you'll see the details for the event. Come, come,
say hi to me and Stacy. Come ask us some questions.
We will be there. We are very excited to meet you.
We will try to be fully alert when this happens.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
This is where the strong coffee comes in.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
All right, Stacy.
Speaker 4 (02:53):
I think before we get into our segments, we got
to talk about the economic news that's been coming out
this week. I think starting with these jobs numbers. We
got numbers for September better than expected.
Speaker 5 (03:05):
Yeah, it is really good news, it seems, especially since
it has kind of felt like the economies maybe at
this turning point or in this strange liminal space. So
a lot of guys were on this job support. Of
course we didn't get it because of the government shutdown.
So these are jobs numbers for September.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
Right, these are kind of out of date.
Speaker 4 (03:22):
We're not going to have the jobs numbers for last
month because the BLS was not people.
Speaker 5 (03:28):
Weren't they didn't have the manpower, the person power to
take the surveys.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
Now, it was a little bit mixed, I should say so.
Speaker 5 (03:34):
In the month of September, the US economy added about
one hundred and nineteen thousand jobs.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
That is really good.
Speaker 5 (03:41):
But also the unemployment rate ticked up to a little bit,
so four point four percent. Unemployment still quite low. Under
five percent is still considered very low, but it's not
headed into great direction.
Speaker 4 (03:53):
Yeah, and more good news on Wednesday night in Nvidia
Reporter earnings. You know, we've been talking a lot about
how you know, this economy it feels good, but it's
just it's all just a bunch of AI stiff on
sugarh And like if the AI bubble burst, We have
good news. The AI bubble is going strong, and Video
totally blew the doors off its expectations. Stock has gone
(04:15):
up this morning as we're recording it. It feels like
there's still a lot of optimism, at least from kind
of the company that has benefited most from the AI bubble.
Speaker 5 (04:24):
Yeah, and I feel like AI and jobs, those are
the two parts of our economy everybody's watching right now,
the two parts that I feel a little potentially fragile.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
And so both of those came in with good news.
That is great news.
Speaker 5 (04:37):
Of course, the markets are a little upset about it
for the comical reason that they're worried that now Jerome
Powell might not decide to cut interest rates right because
the job market looks pretty strong, classic class, classic powers.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
Wall Street reaction.
Speaker 4 (04:53):
You know, there is one other indicator that I think
is arguably more important than in Nvidia earnings, and that
is the Turkey Index. Thanksgiving Stacy, it is here, it
is coming. It's obviously a great opportunity to eat and
see your family and and and share a meal. It's
also a great opportunity to talk about affordability, right because
(05:17):
everybody is going out there and buying the same basic
handful of things. We sent our reporter Charlie Gorivin, who's
gonna be with us for the next few months on
the show, out there into the streets to ask people
about their Thanksgiving plans.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
What are your Thanksgiving plants?
Speaker 5 (05:33):
Go to relatives, I'm actually making Thanksgiving than.
Speaker 3 (05:40):
Its likely if not heard in Masisterdaxity for three days
with my family.
Speaker 7 (05:45):
And with how the economy is right now, are you
making a choice to cut back in any way?
Speaker 8 (05:50):
Normally I would have gone down to Florida, So I'm
not because the airfare is I have gotten so out
of control.
Speaker 5 (05:57):
We contribute the same every year, so we didn't see
reason to cutback because it's.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
Not that much. We are a lot more coaches, so
we're going slowly.
Speaker 5 (06:08):
This is a hard time where the food stamps are cut,
but it's always cool.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
Are you guys using foods stamps mostly for christ for shopping?
Speaker 4 (06:14):
Is there anything that you've been shopping for recently that's
really struck you, like.
Speaker 3 (06:17):
Well, staple bread, Milky's a staple stuff.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
Just what I bought skirt steak. It was twenty three
dollars a pound.
Speaker 8 (06:23):
I never paid that. I had this funny story because
I wanted to get whipped green because as a treat
for myself, and I was with my husband and I
was like, it's eight dollars on principal alone, I will
not spend eight dollars for whipped.
Speaker 4 (06:36):
Eight dollars for whipped green. That's a non negotiable in
my house, though, whipped cream. You gotta have the whipped cream.
Speaker 5 (06:41):
Oh yeah, it's the best part of the pumpkin pie.
And I say this as a person who loves pumpkin pie.
Speaker 9 (06:46):
I love it too, all right, Max, We just heard
a lot of New Yorkers talking about their Thanksgiving plans
and how much food costs, and certainly that is very
top of mind right now, food costs, and.
Speaker 5 (07:05):
Specifically how much this pretty expensive ornate meal that many
of us make in this country is going to cost.
Speaker 4 (07:13):
Such a good meal, though, I've been thinking about it Tuesdacy,
I am buying, I'm going to are you hosting, I'm hosting.
I'm going to pick up a very very very expensive turkey.
It's like one hundred and fifty dollars farm fresh turkey.
Speaker 5 (07:26):
You're being one hundred and fifty dollars, Like, how many
people does it feed?
Speaker 4 (07:30):
I haven't got the final weight of the turkey, all right, Well,
but I will come.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
Back to fancy pants turkey.
Speaker 5 (07:37):
Aside, we all will be shopping for a lot of
similar ingredients on different scales, and the cost of those
ingredients and the cost of food in general, has of
course been a huge topic all year and for the
last few years, so we wanted to bring on an
expert in the field, the great Dina Shanker, writer for BusinessWeek,
covers food in all of its glory.
Speaker 6 (07:57):
Welcome Dina, thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
Dean, Am I overpaying for turkey?
Speaker 10 (08:01):
You know?
Speaker 1 (08:02):
I actually I have a lot of questions about your turkey.
That means, yes, it is it a heritage turkey?
Speaker 7 (08:09):
I don't know, like.
Speaker 3 (08:10):
What is it?
Speaker 5 (08:11):
I'd feel like they should give you a whole family
tree for a turkey if they charge you one hundred
fifty dollars for it, Especially since the American Farm Bureau
just released it has this Thanksgiving Dinner Index it puts
out every year where it tracks the price of.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
All the fix ins for a.
Speaker 5 (08:27):
Thanksgiving dinner for twelve very folksy, yeah, I try to
be folksy. The cost is down this year, apparently fifty
five dollars for a dinner for ten people.
Speaker 3 (08:38):
And this is you know, using cheaper ingredients. But they
look at grocery stores.
Speaker 5 (08:42):
Across the country and have looked at the same grocery
stores for years and years, and the major decrease in
the cost of this menu. It was fifty eight dollars
in twenty twenty four, sixty one in twenty twenty three.
Now it's fifty five. And the big drop in price
came from the Turkey.
Speaker 6 (09:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
I mean, we actually have a few different reports this
year telling us different things.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
Yes, and entry, let's do it.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
I think what we can really take away from this
is that it doesn't really matter what you're paying.
Speaker 6 (09:16):
It matters how you're feeling about it.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
Because if the Farm Bureau is saying costs are down
five percent, and Deloitte is saying the cost for a
dinner for eight people is up zero point six percent,
and we actually don't have CPI for October.
Speaker 5 (09:33):
Cinflation report, Yeah, that comes out every month usually, right,
so we don't know.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
And yet lending Tree says Thanksgiving hosts are expecting to
spend thirteen percent more than last year.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
Can I just say I don't trust any of these numbers.
Speaker 4 (09:48):
The Farm Bureau, it sounds like that sounds like a
very official like group, but it's it's a lobbying group. Yes,
it is a lobbying It is not like a government agency.
So on one hand, it does seem like the data
that they're putting out is fairly rigorous.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
But also I feel like I have to say, like there's.
Speaker 4 (10:09):
Probably some disincentives for farmers to say stuff costs more
because we're in an environment where the president is basically
threatening anyone who raises prices, and farmers have been kind
of beefing with Trump over various parts of agriculture policy
and so on.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
So I don't know.
Speaker 4 (10:28):
On the other hand, it seems like we have this
like Farm Bureau data, we have Deloitte. Those are two
different entities essentially saying it's not costing more, which definitely
that feels like in contradiction to how many people feel
about food prices.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
It's hard to understand.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
Yeah, So I did email both Deloitte and the Farm
Bureau about like, why did you guys come up with
different numbers? Number one is they have very different methodologies,
and the Farm Bureau emphasized, or maybe I should say
I emphasize. Their response included that there's is an informal
survey of prices.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
Okay, okay.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
Deloitte is much more formal, but their collection of information.
Speaker 6 (11:12):
Is through September. But I think that that's exactly right,
and this is.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
Why we are supposed to get government data.
Speaker 3 (11:18):
Well, I should say that.
Speaker 5 (11:20):
I spoke with Mike McDonough, who's an economist here at
Bloomberg who's putting together Thanksgiving Index, and he told me,
according to his numbers, the prices were also slightly down,
especially for turkey. And I asked about this because there
are reports that the wholesale price for turkey is way up,
like forty percent up. But what he said was, they
have like a lot of frozen turkeys. There's like a
(11:41):
strategic turkey reserve or something. And also that the retail
price could be very different from the wholesale price because
a lot of supermarkets might be marking down turkey to
get people into the store where they buy all the
other ingredients.
Speaker 4 (11:56):
Right, And that's a classic move, giving away a frozen
turkey or whatever as way to get foot traffic in
the door. You spend a lot of money on like
pumpkin pies or whatever, more expensive items.
Speaker 5 (12:06):
Yeah, I mean you'll go to a grocery store because
you're like, oh, they have a great turkey deal, and
then you'll just maybe get all the other ingredients for
your feast there. So that could be. It could be
like the hot dogs at Costco.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
It's the Yeah, the lost leader brings people in. So
I reached out to David Ortega, professor of food economics
at Michigan State University, and he told me Number one
is the different findings have a lot to do with
different methodologies.
Speaker 6 (12:29):
He says he looks to CPI.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
CPI in September said two point seven percent grocery inflation.
Speaker 6 (12:35):
That's up, but it's not that different crazy up.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
It's not falling.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
But he also noted that, you know, Thanksgiving prices are
really family specific, and also there are so many retailers
doing these big Thanksgiving sales. So Walmart has their lowest
price ever, all these doing one target. It's everyone. Every
retailer does some kind of Thanksgiving special. So my conclusion
(13:04):
from this is like Thanksgiving is a terrible gauge for
the food prices because they're all over the place.
Speaker 3 (13:10):
Now.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
In terms of the Farm Bureau being a lobbying organization,
I actually think that if we look even further into
the report, that's where the real clues are about what's
going on, which is they are making some points about
higher costs for inputs for farms like fertilizer that's from tariffs.
They're talking about weather patterns driving prices up.
Speaker 3 (13:35):
We call that climate change sometimes.
Speaker 6 (13:38):
And they're talking about a labor shortage.
Speaker 7 (13:40):
Ice.
Speaker 5 (13:42):
Yes, there were some of the big increases on the
Thanksgiving list were three pounds of the sweet potatoes were
up thirty seven percent. The veggie tray, which is like
carrots and celery, those costs are up sixty one percent.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
Who buys a veggie?
Speaker 6 (13:57):
Please don't invite me to that meal.
Speaker 5 (13:58):
I mean I was gonna say, like, basically the theme
of Thanksgiving costs this year is don't buy vegetables. My
personal like inner eight year old's dream of Thanksgiving.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
It's like, yes, you can't afford vegetables.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
And I'll just now, Max, it's so nice that you
host Thanksgiving dinner.
Speaker 6 (14:15):
That's a great service to your family.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
Are you in the eighteen percent of potential hosts that
regret that decision?
Speaker 6 (14:22):
No, that's up from fourteen percent last year.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
Eighteen percent of people who host Thanksgiving.
Speaker 6 (14:29):
That's according to lending Tree.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
And I don't know that that's really specific to cost.
Speaker 6 (14:33):
I mean I would regret hosting dishes.
Speaker 3 (14:36):
It's dishes I.
Speaker 4 (14:37):
Have such I have no regret yet, is what I'll say.
I but there is time. We're recording this a week
from Thanksgiving, and you know it's possible that that in
seven days I will be I will beware of the.
Speaker 6 (14:51):
What percentage was it eighteen percent?
Speaker 2 (14:54):
Now I'm in the majority for now.
Speaker 3 (14:55):
I mean, this has.
Speaker 5 (14:56):
Been a big moment in food prices for multiple reasons,
including one that President Trump just is like suspending tariffs
on some food items like bananas and coffee and things
like that, where they have seen prices spike because of
tariffs overall Thanksgiving feasts aside, what is happening with food prices?
Speaker 2 (15:15):
Do we know?
Speaker 3 (15:16):
Is it mixed?
Speaker 2 (15:17):
Is it?
Speaker 6 (15:18):
They seem to be going up. That's what the CPI
shows us is that they're going up. I mean I
think that. You know, when I go to the supermarket,
I like to ask the.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
Cashier how many people complain about food prices?
Speaker 4 (15:31):
You do.
Speaker 3 (15:33):
Always be reported.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
I love it.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
And the answer at like my stop and shop is, oh,
almost everyone is complaining. The last time I asked, the
guy behind me in line was like, it's terrible, and
I started. We had a whole conversation about is chicken
wings and it's the meat driving the prices up? And
I think, really, prices are going up. I don't know
(15:57):
how closely people are tracking. Well, I paid X for
this package of chicken wings this week, but I remember
last week what I paid in a year ago. The
truth is that prices have gone up so much since
pre pandemic.
Speaker 6 (16:12):
That's what people remember.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
People remember prices that are never coming back now. Yes,
banana tariffs, if we remove them, it might bring bananas
down from thirty cents a banana to twenty seven cents
or whatever, but ultimately that's not that's not going to
change how you feel about your grocery costs, which might
(16:35):
just be people have to change how they think about
groceries in terms of how much of their paycheck they
divert to them.
Speaker 3 (16:41):
Are you cooking a turkey this show?
Speaker 6 (16:43):
Oh my god, I would never in a million years host.
Speaker 7 (16:45):
Of Thanksgiving me all that.
Speaker 3 (16:47):
I mean, you're a food reporter. It seems like you're
a food personal.
Speaker 6 (16:50):
Number one is that's just a huge responsibility.
Speaker 3 (16:52):
It's like a massive You don't want to be among
the eighteen percent?
Speaker 7 (16:55):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (16:55):
No, I mean.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
Also, I don't eat meat, so nobody wants to come
to my house for Thanksgiving. But I do host a
lot of like Friday night Shabbat dinners. We have fish,
which is extraordinarily expensive all the time, and I often
regret it, not because of the cost, but because but
I'm always happy once the guests arrive.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
Stacy, are you are you cooking or what are your
Thanksgiving plans?
Speaker 5 (17:23):
I am bringing a dish, which is my favorite thing.
I have not even selected which dish it. It just
depends on whatever people need. I will bring. Apparently I
need to avoid the vegetables, is what the farm Bureau
is selling me.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
I just want to say, that's really great that you're
bringing something, because according to lending Tree, for what it's worth,
one in ten hosts say that they wouldn't invite an
empty handed guest back next year.
Speaker 3 (17:48):
So I gradualll never be an empty handed guest.
Speaker 4 (17:51):
I would never disinvite an empty handed guest. Dina Shanker,
Thank you.
Speaker 5 (17:56):
Happy Thanksgiving Dina.
Speaker 4 (18:04):
Okay, Stacy, I think we need to talk about the
Epstein stuff. And I hesitate to go there because this
is a business podcast, and in certain ways it's not
a business story.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
But in other ways, of course, it is a huge
business story.
Speaker 4 (18:21):
Yeah, both because the guy who's at the center of it,
Jeffrey Epstein, was operated ostensibly very successful business most measure,
and also because we're seeing a bunch of prominent people
in our world getting caught up in it, most recently
(18:41):
Larry Summers. I think he stepped back from his public
commitments at Harvard and open Ai, the big chatbot company,
and you know, all of a sudden, there's the prospect
of a bunch of Epstein files getting released. Congress over
President Trump's objections, pass this bill. Trump signed it, apparently enthusiastically. Anyway,
(19:04):
I want to unpack this, and to do that, We've
got a great guy, Max Abelson, who little known fact
he's a Bloomberg reporter, but we are often mistaken for
one another because of the name.
Speaker 10 (19:15):
I get a lot of emails meant for this Max
and visa versa.
Speaker 4 (19:19):
When Max launched his Max had a TV show, and
when it launched, I got all these congratulatory messages. But
Max is here. He covers money and power for Bloomberg.
What you've been doing for the past couple of months
is looking at Epstein emails, Right, I've been.
Speaker 7 (19:35):
Reading a lot of jevery Epstein's emails.
Speaker 10 (19:38):
Bloomberg News obtained more than eighteen thousand emails sent sent
to and from Epstein and not just any old emails,
but these are emails basically like a private Yahoo email address.
And this team we are doing our best to be
able to explain something that is enormous and complicated in
(19:59):
some ways and co eight and we've been trying to
lay it out for readers and to try to understand
it ourselves when people.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
Say the Epstein files.
Speaker 4 (20:07):
There was also people may remember at the beginning of
the Trump presidency there was this like amazing media event
where a bunch of right wing influencers got in front
of the White House, held up these awesome binders and
were like, we have the Epstein files. When people say
the Epstein files, like what does that even mean?
Speaker 7 (20:22):
This is so interesting.
Speaker 10 (20:22):
A phrases like that kind of entered the lexicon and
sort of amount to exactly like kind of nothing because
it's essentially like a meaningless phrase, but but but it's
also very meaningful. Let's all right, I'm going to do
my very best at trying to sort of, like bucket
by bucket, try to think think through the project that
I've worked with a bunch of our Bloomberg News colleagues on.
I'm thinking of Jason Leopold and Harry Wilson and Lauren Edter.
(20:44):
Those are emails from a Yahoo inbox that was like
really active around two thousand and seven, two thousand and eight.
Speaker 4 (20:52):
That was before Epstein was convicted of I forget the
exact the original Florida conviction, right, maxis.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
Because I was in two thousand and eight.
Speaker 7 (21:00):
Yes, it's even better than that.
Speaker 10 (21:01):
The emails start before he is charged, and that's the
Florida charges are in two thousand and six, and they
last up to and through him pleading guilty to two
charges in two thousand and eight, which were part of
the non prosecution agreement that really stops cold both state
and federal investigations. And then I'm happy to say the
(21:22):
emails do continue past that. So let's call that bucket one.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
That's the Yahoo email.
Speaker 7 (21:27):
That's that's the Bloomberg News.
Speaker 3 (21:29):
Cash, that's like the exclusive Bloomberg.
Speaker 10 (21:33):
Then over to the right, you've got the congressional committees
Republicans and Democrats released I think basically last week thousands
more and those are unfortunately a different email account, but
what they have is really rich stuff more recent, more
past past two thousand into the twenty tens.
Speaker 4 (21:55):
Well all the way up at least till he died.
I think, yeah, until he was arrested.
Speaker 7 (22:01):
That's exactly right.
Speaker 10 (22:01):
It's called that Epstein batch too. That's got the summer's
emails and many more. But you know, when people talk
about the Epstein files, what they are consistently referring to
are what's to come, and that is I think a
very helpful way of thinking.
Speaker 3 (22:16):
About that also emails.
Speaker 7 (22:18):
My thinking is it's.
Speaker 10 (22:19):
Going to be much more governmental when I think about
what we're supposed to expect now that Trump has signed
the law to release the let's just call these the
Epstein files. I think it's very helpful to think of
this as essentially DJ the Department of Justice, that they
will be releasing lots and lots of files that are
from the Department of Justice is investigation into Epstein, and
(22:41):
I'm assuming that we'll have a lot of emails. But
I think that sort of at least the way I'm
conceptualizing it right now, is it rather than a cache
of emails, it's going to be a much broader governmental collection,
collection of data and files.
Speaker 3 (22:55):
So here's my question.
Speaker 5 (22:56):
If Jeffrey Epstein was running a kind of business which
it feels like he was in a way, I'm wondering, like,
as the stuff starts to emerge, like what was the
nature of this business?
Speaker 3 (23:07):
And like what was the currency here? What was he buying?
What was he selling?
Speaker 5 (23:11):
Like are you starting to get kind of a larger
scope picture of what exactly was the nature of this
thing that he was running.
Speaker 10 (23:20):
I'm going to answer that very very good question two ways.
The most honest and the simplest answer to give you
is that the more we find out about Epstein, the
more enigmatic he becomes. That it isn't like a kind
of normal Let's say, you know, if I'm reporting out
a magazine piece or I'm reporting out of finance story,
it's like, you talk to the people you need to
talk to, You find as many documents as you can,
(23:40):
and then you know, a picture emerges. As we say,
in Epstein's case, you know, even though we've put out
lots of stories that are extremely solid and I hope
push the ball forward in many concrete ways, I sit
back and I reflect on Epstein, you know, whose job
is pretty much in keeping with what I tend to
write about. I mean, I am essentially a Wall Street
(24:01):
reporter and Epstein was essentially a money manager. But what's
so interesting about Epstein and what I think is one
of the things that captures the imagination of I think
the American publican beyond, is that he seems to have
made a career out of connections with the most important
people in the world. And you know, sometimes that work
(24:22):
of financial connections on Wall Street is pretty simple, and
sometimes it's even kind of dull. There is a whole
industry of people who service.
Speaker 7 (24:33):
The wallets and portfolios of the wealthy.
Speaker 10 (24:35):
You can look it up on the Internet and you
can find lots of sort of elite, fancy people who
would love to charge you a little bit of money
and they're going to oversee your finances.
Speaker 4 (24:43):
So is this like, uh, try to attempt an analogy
that maybe a person who's outside of this world would understand.
Like I think some people like have an accountant who
has like season tickets to the Jets or something.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
Part of what that's about is I'm.
Speaker 3 (24:56):
Nervous about where this is going.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
Okay, just wait a second.
Speaker 4 (24:59):
He pays for that season tickets out of his business expenses,
he writes them off, he gets to go to Jets games.
He also brings his clients to the Jets, it's like
part of why you choose this account, and like it's
like that, but like with Epstein, it's like being connected
to people like Larry Summers or whatever, and then as
you accumulate those connections, it becomes like an asset into itself.
(25:23):
I haven't brought up the fact that Epstein was also
engaging in illegal sex trafficking, which feels like part of
that too, but it sounds like part of it is
just this kind of collection of powerful people that you
know basically becomes more and more valuable the further along
he goes.
Speaker 10 (25:39):
I think that's a very helpful way of laying out,
and it makes me imagine in my mind's eye while
you're talking, sort of three different things that he was doing.
Speaker 7 (25:46):
On the one hand, he was running money. He was
managing the money of rich people.
Speaker 10 (25:49):
There's a Ohio bill billionaire named Wexner who's well known
for Victoria's Secret, for example, and that is a sort
of traditional business. I believe it was actually called the
Financial Trust Company. There's a document from JP Morgan that
says that Epstein was not accepting clients with less than
a billion dollars, so let's consider that the business of
(26:09):
money management, managing money for really rich people. Then let's
think about his sort of like fancy globe trotter connections,
even sort of like a ted Talk portion of his business.
The ted Talk portion of his business is Larry Summers.
You know, I don't believe he was actually in business
with Larry Summers, but Larry Summers and people like that
at Harvard were very important to him. They were part
of a kind of academic network that provided kind of
(26:31):
bona fides and that seemed to pander to Epstein's interests.
And Epstein had a lot of money. He was a
donor to Harvard and MIT and other institutions. So let's
consider that, Yes, like intelligen the intelligency had the ted
Talk world. And then, of course, you know, even though
I'm a financial reporter, we can't ignore what is over
you know, I think on all of our minds as
we talk about Epstein, which is that, according to the
(26:53):
Department of Justice, he had more than a thousand victims
because he died while he was in jail. What was
happening with Epstein's sex crimes is may forever be unknown,
but it's it certainly has to be on the boards.
As we think about this, the question of why such
(27:13):
powerful people were willing to be either in business with
him literally or to be in his circle is I
think maybe possibly sort of the foundational question of the
Jeffrey Epstein story.
Speaker 4 (27:26):
Just to pick up on that, like one thing that
I have like not fully understood, And I think this
will continue to be important assuming the Trump administration actually
releases something. I think there are questions about well, like
Pam Bondi, the Attorney General has a lot of leeway.
There are investigations going on there. There are various ways
(27:47):
I think the Trump administration could either drag their feet
or maybe produce a bunch of documents that are less
revealing than we might hope. But assuming a bunch of
documents do get produced, I think we're going to see
more names connected to business who are involved in this guy.
There are a lot of powerful people, as we know.
And the thing that I haven't fully understood is how
(28:09):
Larry Summers lost all his jobs like this week, And
I'm wondering why was it this week? Because I'm not
totally sure how much more information we got about Larry
Summers's connections with Jeffrey Epstein from these emails and by
the same question, like, how is it that Bill Gates,
Reid Hoffman, some of these other guys who also have
connections to Jeffrey Epstein.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
It feels like we haven't fully reckoned with that.
Speaker 10 (28:33):
You know. One of the very powerful things about reporting
on emails is you get to see how people talk.
Speaker 7 (28:39):
To one another.
Speaker 10 (28:40):
You know, normally, as an interviewer, if any of us
are sitting down with our subjects, we ask some questions
and if we get lucky, they answer them. But what's
interesting about this kind of journalism with Jason and Harry
and all of our colleagues is that we have the
ability and now the world does too, with these other emails,
to read the way powerful people are actually talking to
(29:01):
one another, and it is you know, it really is
one thing to sort of know in the abstract that
Bill Gates and Jeffrey Epstein were in the same room together,
or Woody Allen was in was in.
Speaker 2 (29:13):
I guess that can mean a lot of different things.
Speaker 4 (29:14):
Right, You can be in a room with somebody without
necessarily endorsing.
Speaker 5 (29:18):
He was a connected guy, like you were saying, and
it's hard to know. It's like, well, how do you
deep did this connection go? Were they committing crimes with him?
Did they just show up at this cocktail party.
Speaker 7 (29:25):
That's absolutely right.
Speaker 10 (29:26):
Even even someone like Leon Black, who's a private equity billionaire,
has said, look, he was like saving me money on taxes. Essentially,
that's ultimately I mean, it's many things, but it's relatively
boring to be able to read Larry Summers, who's one
of the most important figures in global academia and a.
Speaker 3 (29:44):
Most famous economists in the world.
Speaker 10 (29:46):
It's really important economist, huge political figure, huge political figure.
To read the words of two men, you know, speaking
about women in the way that characters in movies do,
it's very it's very yess, yes, yes, Graham characters. I
think that all of us is, as journalists, go into
the work of journalism, especially when we're writing about money
(30:07):
and power, with a little bit of cynicism, a little
bit of a sense that people you know, behind closed
doors don't talk the way they do necessarily in public.
But I think to answer your question, the thing that
was really powerful was just hearing someone in his own
words talking with Jeffrey Epstein. My mind is going to
the writer Michael Wolfe, who is like was basically offering
(30:31):
public relations advice to Jeffrey Epstein, and you get to
read it as a reader or as a journalist going
through these emails, and it's powerful. I think it does
make a difference. Well.
Speaker 5 (30:42):
Also with Larry Summers, I feel like part of the
issue was that he had had those comments at Harvard
about how women were sort of less equipped to study
the sciences, and he had lost his position. He wasn't
named the head of the Federal Reserve, like, he was
punished for that, and then he apologized, and so I
think there was this feeling of like, Okay, you know,
(31:02):
we all make mistakes, we all have views we're not
proud of in retrospect and things like that. But then
the idea that he apologized but then in like secret
so hard he was just like oh my god, yeah,
and it was like, hey, you like you were forgiven
for this.
Speaker 3 (31:18):
And I think it was maybe.
Speaker 2 (31:19):
Partly that, I want to say, Larry Summers.
Speaker 4 (31:23):
All all the people we've mentioned have as being associated
with Jeffrey Epstein having one way or another said that
they regret their associations with Jeffrey Epstein, including Larry Summers,
who has said it again as vowing, oh, yeah, they
definitely regret it.
Speaker 10 (31:38):
Hearing you talk just puts me in mind of a
kind of maybe it's like a sort of a bifurcation.
There are people who were in Epstein's orbit and have
now gotten in trouble for it, but then they're the
people who were Epstein's clients or the people for whom
Epstein himself was a client. And I'm thinking now with
JP Morgan, big banks exactly some of the biggest banks
(31:58):
in the world. And I I think that because I'm
a financial reporter and not necessarily a legal reporter, and
not even necessarily a political reporter, but I find myself
most interested in, and most excited by, and most keen
to see when all of the documents come out, has
to do with the mechanics of money making. I am
looking forward to seeing who was doing business with Epstein
(32:20):
that we don't know about, the ways they were doing
business that we don't totally understand yet, and what the
ramifications will be. There were clearly billionaires, There was clearly
money moving at the high echelons of finance. We certainly
do have an understanding of some of what that money
looked like and some of the banks that we're handling it.
Speaker 7 (32:39):
But I do think there's more to come.
Speaker 5 (32:41):
Can I ask you a question about kind of the
unvarnished nature of some of the communications you're talking about,
Like we've been talking a lot on the show about
like whatever the K shaped economy and the sort of
division between regular people and elites, the very wealthy, and
so you're reading kind of the unguarded communications between elite
it's a lot, and you report on finance.
Speaker 3 (33:03):
Has this has these emails, reading all.
Speaker 5 (33:05):
These thousands of emails, has this changed your view at
all on the upper echelons of our economy, the sort
of titans of business.
Speaker 10 (33:15):
I think that it would be cool, and I think
I would sound cooler to your audience if I were
to sort of like shrug and be like, you know,
I've been I've been in Bloomberg News for fifteen years,
which I have, and I've been writing about money and
power for twenty years, which I have. You know, I
wasn't born yesterday. Like I know how powerful people work,
and I know they talk, and like, I wasn't surprised
many of this at all. But the truth is I
have been surprised. I find it very grim and very depressing.
(33:40):
And I why that is is that it has a
level of meanness and even cruelty that I'm just not
used to.
Speaker 4 (33:49):
Max, you mentioned our colleague Jason Leopold. He has a
new podcast. It's called Disclosure, and he's an episode all
about following Epstein's money and about how he learned about
the DOJ investigation in Epstein's finances that stayed very.
Speaker 2 (34:05):
For seventeen years.
Speaker 4 (34:06):
It's awesome. People should check it out. Max Abelson, thanks
for being here.
Speaker 10 (34:09):
Pleasures mine, So, Stacey.
Speaker 4 (34:16):
We talked about the idea of the fifty year mortgage
on the last episode. We got to comment from a listener, Rudy.
He's from Omaha, Nebraska. He's actually a longtime fan of yours.
Speaker 3 (34:26):
I believe clearly. Thank you, Rudy.
Speaker 4 (34:30):
Rudy pointed out something that I don't think we quite
mentioned as clearly as we probably should have on the
last episode, which is that as you go from a
thirty year mortgage to a fifty year mortgage, the interest
rate is going to go up, because like that's how
it works when termlines go up. A fifteen year mortgage
has a lower interest rate than a thirty year mortgage,
(34:51):
which would have a lower interest rate of a fifty
year mortgage. Rudy sound a bunch of numbers, but Stacy,
as I said, he's also a long time listener of
The Indicator, which is was the show before this.
Speaker 2 (35:01):
One was Indeed, and he answers.
Speaker 4 (35:04):
The question that you I think it was in the
back of your mind as we talked about a penny
which was his favorite coin. For Rudy, it's the Morgan
silver dollar, originally minted from eighteen seventy eight to nineteen
oh four. Stacy, how do you feel about the Morgan
Are you familiar with this this coin?
Speaker 5 (35:21):
I don't know anything about the Morgan dollar. It was
the first standard silver dollar minted since the passage of
the coin ejacked, which ended the free coining of silver
and the production of the previous design, the seated Liberty dollar.
Was this after free silver?
Speaker 4 (35:37):
I don't know, but it is a really cool looking coin.
It is okay, and Rudy thank you. All right, let's
get to our underrated stories. You said it was something
about the letter K. I believe, yes.
Speaker 5 (35:48):
So the key shaped economy is this idea that's been
sort of going around a lot about how part of
our economy is getting much, much, much wealthier like AI.
There's so much money in investment going on to that
part of the economy, a lot of excitement. Companies are
raking in record profits. At the same time wages are
not going up for lower earners. So one of the
(36:10):
kind of interesting back and forth I think of the
last couple of weeks has been President Donald Trump talking
about these possible stimulus checks he might send out.
Speaker 3 (36:18):
I think he says, because of the surplus real terarifts.
Speaker 2 (36:23):
He's going to send money to everybody.
Speaker 5 (36:24):
So this organization called the Tax Foundation, which is generally
a pretty conservative organization, did the map, and as it
turns out, of course, the tariffs are not enough to
subsidize two thousand dollars checks for people, even if you limit,
even if there's an income cap. And then when they
interview Treasury Secretary Scott Besson about all this, he said,
you know, especially expressing inflationary concerns, because this is the
(36:47):
big worry. You pump a bunch of money out into
the economy if people spend it and then it pushes
prices up. He said, well, hopefully they wouldn't spend it.
He said hopefully people would save it. What I don't know,
it's I feel like that's what I tell myself when
I buy like multiple pints of ice cream. I'm like, oh,
save it, and with mixed success. But I feel like
(37:10):
what's interesting about this is why President Trump would send
stimulus out.
Speaker 3 (37:14):
I mean stimulus by any other name.
Speaker 5 (37:15):
But I feel like presidents from Biden to Trump now
are kind of trying to deal with this inequality because
on the one hand, our country is getting sort of
exponentially wealthier, part of our economy is getting left behind.
I think, partly because of technological advancements, partly because of
the markets. I think this is a way of handling
(37:38):
and maybe acknowledging the K shaped economy. That was what
I felt was kind of an underrated story of the
last Tacts.
Speaker 2 (37:44):
I mean, I think that I like that take.
Speaker 4 (37:46):
I mean, I think my reaction to hearing this and
seeing it is just like wow. Like Trump's coalition is
it's pretty tenuous, like because you have these kind of
like traditional Republicans who spent a lot of time when
Biden was sending out stimulus checks complaining about those stimulus checks,
and then you have the kind of like populist instinct.
Speaker 2 (38:08):
It is.
Speaker 4 (38:09):
And you know, amid the Epstein stuff, amid all this
news around the economy, the government shut down, like it
really does feel like.
Speaker 2 (38:15):
He's scrambled like a little bit.
Speaker 4 (38:17):
Yeah, he's you know, trying to find some some way
to sort of reclaim the narrative.
Speaker 2 (38:22):
I want to bring up.
Speaker 4 (38:23):
Another area where the Trump coalition is starting to feel
a lot stronger, and that is Elon Musk.
Speaker 5 (38:29):
Now, Stacy, I could have predicted your underrated story would
be about Elon Musk.
Speaker 2 (38:35):
Tell me what. Okay?
Speaker 4 (38:37):
So you probably remember that in early June Elon Musk
and Donald Trump had an enormous blow up, a blow
up of epic proportions. I must, I guess rather prophetically
we should acknowledge brought up Jeffrey Epstein, but in a
way that was extremely incendiary. The relationship looked like it
(38:58):
was dead, and at the time I was arguing essentially
that this would not last, that this breakup, that they
were bound to get back together and borrowing you remember
the taco trade. Trump always chickens out, Oh yes, yeah,
this idea that like Donald Trump is gonna like.
Speaker 3 (39:13):
He'll say, but then he'll dial it not.
Speaker 4 (39:17):
Not necessarily chickening out, but but like finding a way
to moderate some of that rhetoric. I and David Poppadopolis,
the former host of elan Ing, we coined a new
term mamoot, which stands for Musk always makes up with Trump.
And I have to tell you, Stacy, it is happening.
Elon Musk went to the White House. He's like posting
on Twitter. He's talking about how great Trump is. It
(39:39):
looks like the relationship is back on New York Times
reporting that Musk is Taylor and Burton Taylor.
Speaker 2 (39:47):
And I don't know what those times.
Speaker 5 (39:48):
Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burt that they were married and
divorced and they later got remarried, that very toxic relationship.
Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf is a very painful movie
to watch, And I feel like maybe this is them.
Speaker 4 (40:03):
You know, Musk is one of the rare people who
has divorced and then remarried his ex wife. And like
you said, that's exactly it. They are back together. The
election is coming, Trump is feeling, i'd say, maybe a
little more politically vulnerable. Musk has his own vulnerabilities, and
so we've got an alliance, and I think this is
going to be a big political story for the next year,
(40:26):
a no joke political story, even though it is kind
of funny that this on again, off again to pestuous
relationship is back on.
Speaker 2 (40:37):
This show is produced by Stacey Wong.
Speaker 4 (40:39):
Magnus Hendrickson is our supervising producer, and Amy Kean our
executive producer. Sam Rogich handles engineering, and Dave Percell fact checks.
Sage Bauman heads Bloomberg Podcasts Special thanks to Jeff Muscus,
Julia Rubin, Charlie Gorivin, and RIEA.
Speaker 2 (40:53):
Ling. If you have a minute, please rate and review
the show. It'll mean a.
Speaker 4 (40:56):
Lot to us, and more than that, if you have
a story that should be our business, email us at
Everybody's at Bloomberg dot net. That's everybody with an ass
at Bloomberg dot net. Thank you for listening and we
will see you next week.
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