October 30, 2025 • 38 mins
Martha welcomes journalist, author, and CNBC Squawk Box host Andrew Ross Sorkin to dive into his much-anticipated new book 1929. It details the real-life drama behind the most infamous economic crash in American history. Andrew brought some of his favorite juicy historical gossip to this conversation—from the scandalous letters he unearthed to the tycoon he dubbed “the Elon Musk” of the era. Andrew and Martha also revisit his first book, the smash success Too Big To Fail, to explore which lessons from the 2008 recession could help us navigate the uncertain economic landscape of today. Are we in a bubble right now? Will AI save us or destroy us? What will happen to all those soybeans? Tune in for Andrew and Martha’s takes on all that and more on this very special episode.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
My guest today is a I was going to say
young Turk, but he's corrected me, and he's more like
a middle aged turk.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
I'm forty eight. I'm forty eight.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
Okay. I looked at this, well, forty eight and forty
eight is ninety six. So if ninety six is the
average age of most human beings, okay, I can still
you can still be a young Turk. I tune into
this Young Turk almost every single day to watch his
astute reporting on CNBC's Squawkbox. In fact, I tune into
(00:37):
all of his projects. His fantastic Showtime series Billions. Really,
I love that show so much, and I knew you,
and I knew mister Kopplemant, and I loved the actors.
I just thought it was one of the best, best,
best shows ever. I've tuned into his book and a
film Too Big to Fail about the two thousand and
(00:59):
eight five financial Crisis, and now his latest book, nineteen
twenty nine. I admire the prolific body of work he
has created for a forty eight year old. You're very prolific,
and I always enjoy talking to him. Welcome to my podcast,
Andrew Ross Sorkin.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Thank you so much Martha.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
Now, where does the Ross come from?
Speaker 2 (01:19):
So the Ross is my mother's maiden name. I never
used it actually in most of my life or career.
I guess I didn't have a career. I used to
go by Andrew Sorkin. Occasionally, I do Andrew Rsorkin if
I was trying to be a little pretentious. When I
was eighteen years old, I was an intern at the
New York Times, and I had an article that was
going to come out, and I had lunch with my grandfather,
(01:39):
my mother's father, alonger with us Chester Ross, and he said, Andrew,
this is going to be our one shot. You're never
going to get a byeline on New York Times ever. Again,
this is it. You got to use your full name.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
Oh how nice.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
So I did the full name, and here we are.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
Well, it's a very elegant name, and you are a
very elegant young man. But he thinks so Andrew or
Serkin has kind of bright blue eyes, dark hair. You
have a big black spot in your left eye.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
The moment, it's not actually a spot. My pupil never
made the full turn. So it's actually the pupil sort
of a little bit a skew, a skew and sometimes
elongated elongated, and it's interesting. Some people notice it. You
noticed it. I have friends from second grade who took
them till I was thirty them to notice it. And
then sometimes I'll walk into cvs and they'll notice it. Secds.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
So my granddaughter has an unusual right eye. She has
blue eyes and she has a big brown streak through
her right eye.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
Isn't that great?
Speaker 1 (02:42):
Yeah, it's so great. Some man is going to be
so entranced with that and esk her to marry totally
him when he sees that eye. Oh my god, I
love strange eyes. We're going to talk about your book,
but first I really want to ask you what did
it take to secure the covided spot on the daily
desk of the Squawkboks.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
For many many years, I was a guest on the
show and I come on, there's the show. So the
show is now thirty years old. Oh that's right. I
went to your anniversary party, which was the best party.
It was a great party.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
You know why it was the best for me. Did
you see who I was talking to?
Speaker 2 (03:17):
Warren Buffett? Yeah, oh, darn Buffett and Martha Stewart together
and if I recall, you've met him a bunch of
times before. And I think there's a picture of you
and Warren together.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
Yeah, it appeared in the wal Street Journal of me
sitting on the back of his old Chevrolet and the
license plate between us reads thrifty love it. It's so great.
He invited me out to Omaha right after I went
public to find out who this lady was, you know,
and we had such a great day, and then I
(03:47):
left Omaha and didn't really think about him again. How
stupid was I?
Speaker 2 (03:51):
Two very special people? Yeah, he's doing him.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
No, he's very special. Yeah, and still jovial and still astute,
and still working very hard and thinking. Just I asked him,
does he think about age old age? And he says
every now and then, and he's ninety five years old. Yep,
every now and then he thinks about old age. Anyway,
we're digressing.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
So, oh goodness. Time just to tell you how I
got the CIA. So I've been going on the show
as a guest for many, many years, and I've been
going on different CNBC shows, and I used to go
back in the day on the CDA Show and Charlie
Rose and all of those shows, and so then they
called me up when if you remember, Mark Haynes passed away,
he was the host of the show at nine am.
At nine am, and they were going to redo that show,
(04:36):
and so they were thinking of moving Carl Kintonia, who
you might remember was on the desk at Squawk to
the nine, and they said, would you want to do this?
And I thought, my goodness, who's going crazy enough to
let me be the host of any kind of show.
I didn't know how to read a teleprompter. I mean,
I'd been on as a guest, but I didn't know
how to do this. I mean I still don't.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
Well, you do very well, by the way, and it's
an interesting show because there are three very diver first
people running that show totally, and you and Joe seem
to spar a little bit, yes, or a lot, sometimes
a lot. So you're on the squalkbox haft for how
many years?
Speaker 2 (05:11):
I've been on for fifteen.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
Fifteen years half its life, and the show has only
gotten better, by the way, And I don't know why
that is exactly. Maybe I'm just more interested in what's
going on even now than I had been.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
You know, I have a theory on this, which is
that I think that the world came a little bit
our way. I think originally we covered business as just business,
and business has now become almost part of everything. It's policy. Now,
it's Washington, it's the White House, it's Paris, Paris, it's everything.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
Too much of the White House. If I can just opine, you.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
Can pine, we're all taking your feedback. Ye at all
times is a little too much of White House. And
let me say, the critical kind of feedback I always
tell people is the best kind of feedback, because I
need to know what's wrong. When people tell me something
is great, I'm like, Okay, that's right, good, I know
what's wrong with it.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
But it is a very very good show. And I
learn a lot. And I love your guests. I love
hearing the diverse diversity of opinions that you bring onto
the show. That's extremely important, and you learn a lot.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
As reports my business.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
It's like I on a cooking show, got to have
interview every great chef, anybody I wanted would come on
this show.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
So you get to.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
Have any business person, any economist, anybody in the financial
word on your show and learn so much from those people.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
No, I mean selfishly. I get to basically have breakfast
with the most interesting people in the world in my mind,
often at the most interesting times in their life, because
they're coming on in these interesting news moments that are
changing their lives, both for the good and some rest
of the bad and who knows what.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
After reading the New York Times review today, yes, which
was not the most I really didn't like the review
very much, but it says why I write this book
about the greatest crash in the history of the United
States stock exchange. Now, now that review points out that
it really wasn't It was a minuscule blip on the
financial world, not at the time, but in retrospect, it's
(07:08):
really a small crash compared to other worldly events that
have occurred.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
What do you think you know? For me, I wrote
this book about the crisis in two thousand and eight,
Too Big to Fail, and after that people constantly would
say to me, tell me how that compares to nineteen
twenty nine. We all know that something horrible happened in
nine twenty nine, and most people think that that created
great depression. And the truth that I didn't know much
about it, and I wanted to understand it and not
(07:34):
just understand. I wanted to know it as a drama.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
Well, there wasn't much written about it.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
There were some great books that some economists had written,
and other kinds of things like that, but there wasn't
this sort of human drama, soap opera version of what
really happened. What were their motives, what were their incentives?
What were they saying to each other? What were the
husbands saying to the wives? What was all of the
sort of backster who's having an affair with who? I
wanted to know all of this, and.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
You covered it in this big How many pages is
this book?
Speaker 2 (07:57):
Oh goodness, I think it's five, but I don't want
people to get scared to beach read folks. It's five
hundred some my pages. But there's end notes involved because
I spent an enormous amount of time in the archives.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
No, it's a very it's a fun read, and it
is also a read to learn. I mean, you learn
an awful, awful lot in this book about people you
never heard of, about events that occurred that you had
no idea about.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
You did a lot of research eight years, eight years literally,
I'd go to libraries all over the country trying to
find information, diaries, memos, letters, notes, and the people.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
No definitive archives.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
There was not one. I think the problem with this
bookhere the challenge was there wasn't one or two or
three places you could just go and go excavate all
the material. You really had to go find it in
all sorts of places, like a needle in a haystack.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
Personal letters. Did you find libraries with so.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
Many personal letters? I mean where you would see the
leaders of these banks, oftentimes in correspondence directly with Hoover,
transcripts of meetings that they'd have in the White House
with each other, from depositions and other kinds of lawsuits.
There was lots of stuff with the husbands and the wives.
There's one fabulous letter where one of the wives is
sending the husband a letter talking about the affairs he's having,
(09:07):
And so I thought, this is so And who was he?
Thomas Lamont, the fellow who's running JP Morgan at the time,
And he actually comes across like a family man, and
he may be actually, but as I was looking through
these letters and the archives, I found this very unusual
letter that his wife had sent where she effectively accuses
him of having you know girls in every port because
(09:28):
he's traveling around the world all the time. And there
was a very bizarre note attached to it by I
think it was his daughter or granddaughter who said that
this is actually not true. It's a joke. It was
a family joke, and I could never tell whether the
letter on top of the letter was trying to protect
their father or with some other thing. So I actually
didn't use the entire thing. I put the whole thing
(09:49):
in the end note so you could actually read it
in all its glory.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
In a review today, he mentions that a lot of
these bankers would give special prices on certain stocks to
their biggest clients. Is that true?
Speaker 2 (10:02):
Oh my goodness. There were no rules back then, I
mean completely, no SEC no SEC, no, no Banking Act,
no anything. Insider trading was legal back then, just to
be I mean ever, you could do whatever.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
You wanting about. Insider trading must have been absolutely acceptable.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
Totally totally. We'll leave that there. But yeah, all of
that was. There was no problem with any of those things.
And so you had people putting together what was called
investment pools where they literally would manipulate the stock price
on purpose. I mean true, pump and dump things.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
But you cover all that in the book in all
very clear fashion, which is very interesting. And I just
think that we have to know about all of this
stuff because what we have now is a highly regulated
industry which people still manage to do bad things in.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
So the good news is people will say, oh, are
we going to have another nineteen twenty nine? And this
really was the greatest crash and greatest depression we've ever
had in terms of length, and you know, twenty five
percent unemployment. Ultimately nine thousand banks went out of business
by nineteen thirty two.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
I mean, this was really a Katia National Park would
not have been built without the Great Crash, though. You
know why because all those people who were out of
work came to work in the parks, Wow, And they
built the walls and built the roads and made a
most beautiful national park up there. So many of those
were Depression era workers. So a lot of that stuff happens.
(11:27):
And yet that's another book. I mean, that's another book.
What did those people actually do when they were unemployed?
Speaker 2 (11:33):
So I hope we will not have another great Depression
style panic. Do I think we'll have another crisis of
some sort I'm sure we will. The good news is
because I think of some of the regulations, we'll be
able to withstand them. The truth, though, is there are
some things happening now in our economy that are a
little similar.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
Yeah, an AI lurking over us, and what is that
going to do in terms of the economy Ultimately.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
So I have very mixed fews. I'm so curious what
you think. I mean, I'm so excited about it in
so many ways. I think it's going to change our
whole life in fabulous ways. And then I think to myself,
if it succeeds, if it does what it's supposed to do,
if the valuations all these companies get to, whether it
requires a shocking amount of productivity, and productivity is sort
of a euphemism for taking out costs, and where's the
(12:19):
cost usually come from? Us, the people. So when you
start to think about twenty five percent on employment back
in nineteen thirty two, I start to think, oh, my goodness,
could we actually get to a We have.
Speaker 1 (12:28):
Three children, I do that's what you have to think about,
I do. You have to think about their future, not yours,
because we're living in I think probably the most exciting
time in technology.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
Ever.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
I love the idea that AI has taken the places
number one, the fastest ever ever industry, to capture the
minds and the money of everybody. But what do the
kids think? My fourteen year old granddaughter writes to me
about AI pretty much every day, and she hates it
(13:00):
because she thinks it is going to destroy us.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
So interesting is I have two sons who are fifteen
other twin boys, and then I have an eight year
old daughter.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
What do they think?
Speaker 2 (13:10):
The fifteen year olds, I think are actually still quite
excited about it. I mean we've had some pretty deep
conversations about jobs and things. They're optimists. They think that
they're going to somehow figure it out. They're going to
find some angle. They're both very entrepreneurial. They're always trying
to find some new fangled way to do something. So
I don't know, I'm going to try to stay on
the optimistic side.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
If they have a good angle, I'm going to bring
Jude over to talk to them, because she really is
negative about it.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
That would actually be a fact.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
Wouldn't that be interesting? You know? What do the kids think? Yeah, yeah,
let's do that. You should have it on your show.
Speaker 2 (13:39):
Actually, what do the kids think? We should do a
segment called what do the kids think?
Speaker 1 (13:42):
Ye, it would be good.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
There you go, Bingo.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
Well, back to the book.
Speaker 2 (13:56):
It took eight years. Took eight years while he's doing
any other things. That's one of the ways I should say. Look,
it took eight years. But also there were periods of
time where I couldn't work on it because I was
running around with my day jobs. The pandemic came in
the middle of it, which did not help at all.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
I just didn't I would have thought that would have helped.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
So you will appreciate this. I couldn't get into libraries
because they weren't allowing you to. So the only people
could get into libraries were sometimes students who had like
a dissertation of thesis do so there was like a
market for these kids, and I would pay them by
the hour and I would say, you go into the library.
I want you to take a picture of every single
page you know in box one fifty two, and they
(14:34):
would then send it back to me. The truth was
it was very helpful, but I ended up once the
pandemic was over and I was allowed back, I went
back and almost redid it all good. You had you,
you felt like you wanted, you needed to your.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
Book details, so many colorful characters like John Jacob Rescov.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
Oh my goodness, I think that you would be friends
with Rascal. Rascot was like the Elon Musk of today,
or then I should say say, and I love Elon.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
When he first appeared on the scene, I loved him
and I bought his stock. I loved everything about that
kind of intelligence and entrepreneurial craziness really appeals to me totally.
But then the downfall was when he went to the
White House politics.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
Yeah, so John Rascal has actually somewhat of a similar arc,
so we'll see what you think. He effectively ran General Motors,
really created modern credit in America, so people did not
take out loans prior to nineteen nineteen in America, it
was considered a sin. It was like a moral sin
to borrow to borrow money. And he decides, well, we
need to sell more cars. How we're going to sell
(15:35):
more cars. We're going to lend people money and then
they'll buy the cars. And this was sort of a
brilliant move, and Sears Roebuck then does the same thing
for appliances, and then by the way, the bankers start
to do it so you could buy stock.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
Did you read today about car loans. The latest is
that many car loans they're not being paid by the borrowers.
And it is a sure sign.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
Of another signal.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
Event, signal of a big economic problem in America.
Speaker 2 (16:02):
Hmm, oh, well, you're more up out it than I
am right now. But Rascob becomes sort of a fabulously
successful investor. He was a philosopher king, and he had
all of these ideas, including he had this idea that
we should have a five day work week, so back
then people worked six days a week. In fact, the
stock exchange was open on Saturdays.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
I would have hated that.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
What he said was he thought that there he would
actually create growth in the economy because people would have
the weekend, and because of this weekend, they'd buy more cars,
because they could go places, hotels, leisure activities, they would garden,
all of these things. And so he had all of
these ideas, and then like Elon, he gets involved in politics.
He decides he wants to be involved in politics, and
(16:42):
he was a Republican. Effectively, he decides to switch sides
to become effectively a Democrat, becomes the head of the
Democratic Party, working with a guy nam Al Smith against Hoover, loses,
then spends a lot of money trying to undermine Hoover's reputation.
Then decides he's going to build what I would describe
as the SpaceX of its time, which was the Empire
State building. And so he was one of these people
(17:03):
who was everywhere all at once. He had thirteen children.
You know, press would hang on every word the way
they do with Elan And if John Rascott had Twitter,
he would be so happy.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
Boy, he would have been amazing. Which character did you
most enjoy getting to know in your research?
Speaker 2 (17:18):
You know, I have a great affection for Guy Jesse
Livermore and great empathy for Jesse. Jesse was a short seller.
He effectively bet against stocks, so he wanted stocks to
go down. He was sort of a reck loose, bit
of a weirdo, to be honest with you, very emotionally
fraud human. But he thought that he frankly was smarter
than everybody else and had these ideas, and he was
(17:40):
very successful doing what he did. And in nineteen twenty
nine he bets against the market when everybody else was
on the other side, and he makes one hundred million dollars.
But he was such an emotional wreckon so lived for
the trading and the gambling of it all that he
lost it a couple of years later, and then he
made some back and he lost it again.
Speaker 1 (17:59):
The first hdge fund.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
Yes, he was really the first, one of the first
headshlongd managers. However, in nineteen forty he walks into the
cloakroom at the Sherry Netherland on Fifth Avenue. I'm sure
you've been, and he shoots himself on the head. And
he lost everything, or he had lost everything, and he
had a drinking problem, and he had many wives and affairs,
and he was just a mess of a person. But
I really thought he was an interesting character, and I
(18:24):
felt for him for some reason. I can imagine, are
we in a bubble? Now? I think we're in some
kind of bubble. The thing I can't figure out is
anytime you have companies spending money that they don't have
and they're taking on debt to do it, And this
is what's happening with AI for example. Now, I don't
really doesn't end well. Whether the Internet had its hiccup
(18:44):
in the late nineties, and look at where the internet
is now. So I think this is going to be,
you know, fabulous, should shift in our whole society. But
I do think that there's a lot of indiscriminated spending
that will probably turn out to be a mistake.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
How many people do you think really understand what AI is?
Speaker 2 (19:00):
Yes, I don't know. Are you using chat gpt yourself?
Speaker 1 (19:03):
Oh, but I'm so disappointed in it?
Speaker 2 (19:05):
You are?
Speaker 1 (19:06):
Yet I have not been able to train it to
answer my questions. I ask kind of complicated questions, and
I don't get good answers. They ask for more information
about what am I really trying to find, and I
get pissed off at it because I think by now
it's really like asking Siri answered my questions a little
bit better than chet GPG is, But I think I
(19:27):
have to learn a little bit more about how to
converse with it.
Speaker 2 (19:30):
Okay, I've started to use it more than I used to,
and I am finding it to be shockingly good. Good.
I'll tell you how I used it recently. So I
got a contract. Someone sends me a contract to sign
twelve pages I read it. I'm thinking of sending to
my lawyer. You actually know my lawyer. I'm thinking I
could send him something. It p I charged me. I
(19:50):
don't know what he was going to charge me for that.
But then I think I'm on airplane when I see this.
I put the contract into chat gipt. I've seen three
things that I in love. I say, tell me everything
that's good and bad in the contract. Oh, identifies the
three things I didn love, plus two other things. It
then tells me three things that I didn't realize were
actually pretty good for me. Oh. Then it says, would
you like me to make a red line version of
the contract, meaning to rewrite the contract? I say sure.
(20:12):
It does this. Then it says to me, would you
like me to write a cover letter to go along
with the new version of the contract. So I say please.
It writes the loveliest letter you've ever read. I want
to thank you so much for how much thought you've
put into this agreement. I know that we both value
being on the same page together. And there's a couple
(20:33):
of items in here that you know a little asymmetric
or something like that, and I'm sure you'll agree that
you know, giving our plans for long term partnership that
these should be fixed. You send it. I made a
couple of quick changes, pressed end. Forty five minutes later,
the guy sent it back and said, totally agree. And
that was that.
Speaker 1 (20:50):
Okay, you got me into a new use for a tragy.
I would never even think of me. My contract said,
I have a very complicated contract right now which I'm
going to try try.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
But this was a very non complicated situation. This is
a very low risk scenario that I was involved in.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
Okay, but I am going to try that because really
and truly I love hearing that. And my thirteen year
old grandson he uses chet Gpeach all the time, not
to write papers or to do his research, but he's
into sports in a big way, and he finds out
a lot about the finances of sports.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
I'll give you one more. My son Max turns some
of the reading that he's supposed to do into podcasts.
So I don't know if you know, Google now has
a product you insert all the information. You could actually
give it a paper and they will create a podcast
out of it, as if two people are talking about
the issues and the facts and you just listen to it.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
We did this with this nineteen twenty nine book that
we're talking about. This is old chet gypch question.
Speaker 2 (21:51):
Oh really, so this is not Martha. This is all hologround.
Speaker 1 (21:53):
I'm trying to kidding.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
Wow, wouldn't that be fun? Though?
Speaker 1 (21:57):
Oh boy, this is so fun. Well, this thing about
the bubble. Yeah, if you do have a crash like
nineteen twenty nine, how long would it take to develop
and how would we recover?
Speaker 2 (22:10):
The good news is I don't think we will have
a crash of the kind of magnitude of nineteen twenty
nine ninet twenty nine. Oddly, the crash was like the
first Domino. And then a series of very bad choices
were made in Washington, like Hoover decided that he was
going to raise taxes. Just in a moment when the
economy was sputtering. Hoover decides that he is going to
(22:31):
implement tariffs. Here we are talking about tariffs. He decides
to implement tariffs in nineteen thirty. In nineteen twenty eight,
when he was trying to get elected, he wanted farmers
to vote for him, so he had told them we're
going to do tariffs. So he felt that he needed
to continue on with that, even though every economist told him.
It was a terrible on food imports, on everything, and
by the way, global trade dropped by sixty percent after
(22:52):
he did that. This is everyone's telling him not to
do it. The Federal Reserve basically sat on their hands,
didn't throw money at the problem, which is what Ben
Bernanki ultimately did in two thousand and eight, which is
really the thing you're supposed to do. Problem is, it's
a politically unpopular thing to do because a lot of
people think you're rescuing people, you're rewarding the arsonists, and
so that was a real thing. There were a lot
(23:13):
of bad choices that were made that hopefully we've learned
from so that if we did have another, call it
AI bubble, sure we could have a market that would
come down materially and it could have real effects, but
hopefully it wouldn't take down the system in a way
where the next ten years would be what they were
after twentye Well, right.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
Now, tariffs have really hurt the soybean farmers. Yes, and
I have just gotten back from Nebraska and Wisconsin and
where all the soybeans are grown, and is a huge
surplus of soybeans because China has said I don't we
don't want any of your soybeans, which is their big,
big crop. Now our president has gone and said he
(23:51):
will subsidize all the farmers, but he hasn't said what
they're going to do with the soybeans. What do they
do with the soybeans?
Speaker 2 (23:59):
That's actually very good, cool question. I don't know what
they're going to do with the soybeans. And there's another
question where we can get the money to subsidize all
these farmers except to take some of the tariff money
and give it to them, right, And then the question
is why are we doing this? If that's the that's right?
Speaker 1 (24:11):
Isn't it crazy? And they would have made more money
if they were able to sell their soybeans to China.
So this keeps me up at night. I'm not kidding.
It really does keep me up at night, worrying about
the farmers and worrying about where are those soybeans? That
it takes a long time to grow a beautiful crop
of soybeans, So what do we do about stuff like that?
(24:31):
And how do you keep borrowing from one place and
putting it into another place?
Speaker 2 (24:35):
And how long can that last? Well, the borrowing is
the problem, and look, leverage in the system is what
always is the match that lights the fire of every
financial crisis. And back in nineteen twenty nine, it was
margin loans for individuals. In two thousand and eight it
was subprime loans. That's like in the corporate banking debt world.
Then I worry about our debt, the nation's debt. By
the way, in nineteen twenty nine, there was a budget surplus.
(24:57):
We didn't have the kind of debt we have today
at all.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
Remember Clinton when he left office, there was a budget
surplus exactly. I loved those years.
Speaker 2 (25:05):
Those were some great years. And so if we do
have a problem, it becomes harder and harder because we're
borrowing from the future and our children, and our children
and their education and their education and everything.
Speaker 1 (25:15):
Else, their colleges and their real estate, et cetera, et cetera.
So think about the kids and what we're doing to them.
You said that you know we will have a crash,
but you can't say when or how deep what should
we be doing.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
So this is the complicated part, and timing is the problem.
So I was with Paul titter Jones a week or
two ago. He's one of the great sort of famous
traders and made billions of dollars. And he said, Andrew,
I think we're in October of nineteen ninety nine. He said, ooh,
that seems scary because October nineteen ninety nine, six or
twelve months later, we've had a bust. He said, yeah,
(25:48):
but the stock market went up forty percent during that period.
And so if you weren't in the market during the
forty percent up, you were stupid, or you would a
file you were stupid. By the way, in nineteen twenty
Charles Merrill of Merrill Lynch, the original Marril of Merrill Lynch,
told people to get out of the market nineteen twenty eight.
From the beginning nineteen twenty eight to September of nineteen
(26:08):
twenty nine, the market went up ninety percent. So he
was wrong, and so he looks like he was right
in retrospect, but sort of wrong. And so this is
why when people say are we in a bubble? Yes,
we're in something.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
And you can't trade emotionally because that never pans out.
It's more luck than anything else. It looks like to me.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
I think luck plays a factor in it. I don't
want to say it doesn't.
Speaker 1 (26:30):
No I think it does. The whole financial world that's
going on everywhere, not just in America but all over
the world is very fascinating. You have a very fascinating job.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
I feel so lucky and blessed, honestly, because every day
is a different day. The headlines are crazy, the news
is crazy. And I'm one of those people who always thought,
if you follow the money, it explains everything. That explains business,
explains politics. Unfortunately, it explains sports, it explains art, it
explains so many things.
Speaker 1 (27:08):
What do you think about this huge amount of money
that's going into sports.
Speaker 2 (27:13):
So, you know, it feels like there might be a
sports bubble. To be honest with you, the amount of
money and this idea that this is the holy Land,
this is the only thing that people are going to
watch in the future, I'm not sure as true. Some
of the prices that these teams are worth, and some
of the licenses that these networks are paying. It's hard
to make all of the economics work. The NFL seems
(27:35):
to be a very special case. Everyone in the NFL
is making money, by the way, not every team in
Major League Baseball or basketball. The values of the teams
keep rising, the cash flows don't though.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
Mm hm and soccer. Do you know anything about that?
Speaker 2 (27:49):
I do know about SA. Where are you on toad?
I don't watch enough soccer though, and I'm not wholly convinced,
but I think obviously it's no.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
We have a soccer maniac in the family, and I
feel that he because he loves it so much. He
goes to Liverpool camp. Wow, he went there when he
was nine years old and hung out with Liverpool, his
favorite team. But I start to learn about it, but
I find it's so unusual that it captures people's minds
(28:16):
in such a deep way, and they think about it
so much, thinking about it almost as much as tech
guys think about AI. The sports guys think about which
teams are the best teams and betting on these teams.
Speaker 2 (28:29):
It's a huge part of the culture, and maybe I
don't fully appreciate because this is one part of the
universe I have not totally adopted. I'm a I'm a
long suffering I.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
Got to invest in at least one little team someplace.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
You want a women's team, men's.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
To No, No, I want a soccer team for Truman. Ye.
I just want to invest in something that would capture
his interests.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
I love it.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
Yeah, it'd be fun.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
Okay, folks, you heard it here first Martha's going to
own a soccer team, professional soccer owner. Oh, here it comes.
Speaker 1 (28:58):
So we wrote Too Big to Fail?
Speaker 2 (29:00):
Yep, in which year? Well, the crisis happened in O eight.
I wrote most of it in eight and nine and
the book came out in nine, so it was a
quick turn.
Speaker 1 (29:07):
And then we would have an expected lesson did you
learn from your research and your writing of that book?
Speaker 2 (29:12):
You know, what I think I learned about the human
condition is what I actually learned, and that actually helped
me with this book because part of the thing with
this book is that people weren't alive. But by actually
being able to interview and speak to almost every single
person during the financial crisis of eight and what was
going through their minds and the emotions of it all,
I think you were able to sort of transport yourself
(29:32):
into twenty nine and say, Okay, where would Charles Mitchell be,
what would he be doing emotionally? And then I would
try to go find the research that would be suggestive
of that. You know, the way crisis was so fascinating
because it really were on sort of the edge of
the abyss. But at the same time, the bailouts were
like the most unpopular thing in the universe, and so
(29:54):
there was such a sort of backlash to all of it.
And I think about that a lot, and the politics
of bailouts and all.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
I was on stage in Palm Beach at the Breakers
Hotel at a bear Sterns conference when it was announced
that the chairman was going back to New York.
Speaker 2 (30:10):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (30:11):
That next day bear Sterns collapsed. It was so odd.
I thought, Oh, something bad has happened. I mean, why
would he be leaving in the midst of it with
all those bankers sitting in the room. It was so
terrifying to me that he would just run back to
New York. But he had a good reason.
Speaker 2 (30:31):
He had a good reason. March March of two thousand
and eight.
Speaker 1 (30:33):
That's so so strange that I even know about that.
It's so weird to me. I'm writing my autobiography now
and I'm finding all this stuff.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
Are you enjoying writing your autobigraphy?
Speaker 1 (30:45):
Oh? It is like going down the deepest rabbit hole.
It is so much fun. I have this fabulous guy,
Kevin O'Leary, who's doing my research for me. I have
a huge archive, so he's going through the archive and
putting it in. I call him a chronologist, but it's
like you had to do for this in nineteen twenty nine.
It is so interesting. And I got an email from
(31:05):
him yesterday. You will be interested in this, he said, today,
you became a billionaire in two thousand and whatever it was,
or no, nineteen ninetye. I don't even remember the year.
He reminds me of stuff like that from his research,
so it's horrifying.
Speaker 2 (31:21):
There was an article in nineteen twenty nine with the
headline our second Billionaire.
Speaker 1 (31:27):
Oh who is that?
Speaker 2 (31:28):
Henry Ford? Oh, it's so interesting. They called it our
second billionaire, as if he was the first Rockefeller.
Speaker 1 (31:34):
Oh of course John D. Rockefeller Junior. Yeah, oh gosh.
They're all kind of familiar to me because I have
a house in Seal Harbor Main where all those guys
came ye building Akadia National Park ultimately, but it's so
fun to see all that you and Joe Curnan have
live the arguments. Yes, Box, we do kind of touched
(31:56):
on what's your relationship off camera?
Speaker 2 (32:00):
Kind of like our relationship on camera. I mean, it's
always been that way. It's a little bit like going
to Thanksgiving dinner with your family every day for breakfast.
Oh boy, I think that's pretty much the way we roll.
But we text each other during the day about all
sorts of crazy things. You know, the President will do something,
I'll text about it or whatever. It is, food for
(32:20):
thought and for thought, food food for thought. That's very good.
Speaker 1 (32:24):
So let's talk about my favorite show, which now has
a sequel to it. My favorite show recently was Mobland.
Speaker 2 (32:32):
Oh.
Speaker 1 (32:32):
I like mob Bland, Yeah, which reminded me of Billions,
just and it's like dirtiness, you know, I loved that part.
But you co created How long was that concept and
your gut, all of your minds? Was that your idea
of Billions?
Speaker 2 (32:48):
I was floating around with sort of the conceit of
it for about a year or two before I met
Brian and David, and I was actually.
Speaker 1 (32:57):
Looking for Brian Kopple.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
Brian Kaufman, Dave Levine, and I was looking for partners,
you know, folks who actually knew how to do this.
I was a novice, and originally I had this idea
of just I thought there should be a show about
hedge funds in that whole hedge fund space, and everyone said, oh,
that's a terrible idea, sor Ca. And nobody likes hedge
fund people. They hate Wall Street. They're not going to
want to watch a show, but and they're boring. They
(33:20):
look at TV screens all day. And I remember coming
home my wife was watching Law and Order, and I said,
you know what kind of shows people like? Procedurals, legal
shows they love. Why do they love a procedural? And
then I thought, if you could sort of pitch the
two against each other and even against type, so that
maybe you actually love the hedgephund manager, maybe you think
that the prosecutor isn't always knew doing everything in the
(33:42):
name of right. And I'd covered a lot of white
collar crime, and I knew the prosecutors were not always
doing everything in the name of right, and so I
thought there might be an interesting program. And then I
happily met Brian and David in twenty thirteen thirteen, I think,
and then we sold the pilot. I think Can fourteen
made the pilot and maybe in fifteen in the show
(34:03):
was on the air in sixteen.
Speaker 1 (34:04):
It was so great. You can still watch it, is
it on Netflix.
Speaker 2 (34:08):
Or I think now it's on Paramount Plum.
Speaker 1 (34:10):
That's what it is, Okay, Paramount plus. I get so
up with all those things.
Speaker 2 (34:14):
Brian David did an extraordinary job and you know that
ran for seven seasons.
Speaker 1 (34:17):
Amazing, amazing. Any other shows coming up? I am working
nineteen twenty ninety one.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
It could. We're actually talking to a couple of people
about so stand by for news there and now working
a couple other things. So nothing to announce yet, as
they say, but hopefully sooner than later.
Speaker 1 (34:32):
Well nineteen twenty nine. It sort of reminds me of
The Guilded Age, only you know, like sixty years later
or something. And I love that show.
Speaker 2 (34:39):
I love that show.
Speaker 1 (34:40):
A few of the characters I love especially, But this
could be a really great show. Well, thank you, yeah,
really fun. So do you like the stock market?
Speaker 2 (34:51):
Do I like the stock market? I'm fascinated by the
stock market. I'm actually fascinating more by the stock market
as a signal of sort of the psyche of the
country and the world and how people actually feel about
things that I am necessarily of trading as an act.
But I'm fascinated by companies, you know, I love the
(35:13):
sort of human drama of a company and a leader,
and why are they doing what they're doing, and why
are they going to make the investment or not make
the investment, or make the deal or do the merger.
For me, that's what really animates my interest in all this.
Speaker 1 (35:24):
And mixing that with your deep seated interest in journalism,
you have a very nice occupation. I mean, I think
it's just fascinating that you were able to turn the
journalistic interest into an interest in our financial markets, and
then into television production and all that stuff. You have
a good gig going.
Speaker 2 (35:43):
I gotta knock on the wood, right, I got to
knock on the wood over here.
Speaker 1 (35:47):
So all of this is just it's just mind boggling
to me that there's so much interest in the financial markets.
How big is your viewership on CNBC?
Speaker 2 (35:56):
Oh goodness. I mean on any given day, you know,
we touch millions of people, and you know, the truth
is not the largest audience in the world. What's fascinating
about it is it really is the most influential audience
in the world. I mean, the amazing part about it
is I mean, look, you're watching it every morning, but
also the White House is watching it every morning. And
you know, the leaders all the big tech companies and
(36:17):
the leaders of the band. I can't tell you what
happens during the show. The emails you get and the
text messages you get are sort of shocking to see
all of these people. And by the way, it's bipartisan,
you know. Sometimes that's what I like. A political stay political.
You know, Ted Cruz is interested in the show, and
Elizabeth Warren's interested in the show.
Speaker 1 (36:36):
So because they're getting educated as we are each and
every day. So congratulations. That is a huge, huge accomplishment
than you in this day and age where take a
side and forget it. It's very difficult to do that.
I keep trying to persuade people who have businesses or
that are selling products. You can't take a side.
Speaker 2 (36:57):
And you got to hear all the science.
Speaker 1 (36:58):
Yeah, yeah, hell you do well. I can't wait for
our listeners to pick up a copy of nineteen twenty
nine by Andrew Ross Sorkin. They are wherever books are sold.
And do you think your biggest market is Amazon?
Speaker 2 (37:13):
Probably? And I think Amazon these days is selling probably
about fifty or sixty percent of all books. I think,
for the most part.
Speaker 1 (37:19):
Is this a good audiobook? Did you read it?
Speaker 2 (37:20):
A great audio book? Did you write I read it myself.
Speaker 1 (37:23):
Good.
Speaker 2 (37:23):
It's about thirteen hours. You can even put it on
double time speed if you like. I know people, it
does only too.
Speaker 1 (37:29):
This is only a round trip to Maine.
Speaker 2 (37:31):
There you go.
Speaker 1 (37:32):
See, And I'm going to drive to Maine. I'm not
going to drive. Somebody else is going to drive me.
And I'm going to listen to the entire book in
your voice. I hope I learned a tremendous come out
about one of the most fascinating events that ever occurred
in the United States, and hope it will not occur
again in such depth. Thank you Andrew Ross Sorkin for
your time today and good luck on your book tour.
Speaker 2 (37:52):
Thank you, Martha Stewart, You're fun to talk to you
so much fun.
Speaker 1 (37:55):
Thank you.
My guest today is a I was going to say
young Turk, but he's corrected me, and he's more like
a middle aged turk.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
I'm forty eight. I'm forty eight.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
Okay. I looked at this, well, forty eight and forty
eight is ninety six. So if ninety six is the
average age of most human beings, okay, I can still
you can still be a young Turk. I tune into
this Young Turk almost every single day to watch his
astute reporting on CNBC's Squawkbox. In fact, I tune into
(00:37):
all of his projects. His fantastic Showtime series Billions. Really,
I love that show so much, and I knew you,
and I knew mister Kopplemant, and I loved the actors.
I just thought it was one of the best, best,
best shows ever. I've tuned into his book and a
film Too Big to Fail about the two thousand and
(00:59):
eight five financial Crisis, and now his latest book, nineteen
twenty nine. I admire the prolific body of work he
has created for a forty eight year old. You're very prolific,
and I always enjoy talking to him. Welcome to my podcast,
Andrew Ross Sorkin.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Thank you so much Martha.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
Now, where does the Ross come from?
Speaker 2 (01:19):
So the Ross is my mother's maiden name. I never
used it actually in most of my life or career.
I guess I didn't have a career. I used to
go by Andrew Sorkin. Occasionally, I do Andrew Rsorkin if
I was trying to be a little pretentious. When I
was eighteen years old, I was an intern at the
New York Times, and I had an article that was
going to come out, and I had lunch with my grandfather,
(01:39):
my mother's father, alonger with us Chester Ross, and he said, Andrew,
this is going to be our one shot. You're never
going to get a byeline on New York Times ever. Again,
this is it. You got to use your full name.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
Oh how nice.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
So I did the full name, and here we are.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
Well, it's a very elegant name, and you are a
very elegant young man. But he thinks so Andrew or
Serkin has kind of bright blue eyes, dark hair. You
have a big black spot in your left eye.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
The moment, it's not actually a spot. My pupil never
made the full turn. So it's actually the pupil sort
of a little bit a skew, a skew and sometimes
elongated elongated, and it's interesting. Some people notice it. You
noticed it. I have friends from second grade who took
them till I was thirty them to notice it. And
then sometimes I'll walk into cvs and they'll notice it. Secds.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
So my granddaughter has an unusual right eye. She has
blue eyes and she has a big brown streak through
her right eye.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
Isn't that great?
Speaker 1 (02:42):
Yeah, it's so great. Some man is going to be
so entranced with that and esk her to marry totally
him when he sees that eye. Oh my god, I
love strange eyes. We're going to talk about your book,
but first I really want to ask you what did
it take to secure the covided spot on the daily
desk of the Squawkboks.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
For many many years, I was a guest on the
show and I come on, there's the show. So the
show is now thirty years old. Oh that's right. I
went to your anniversary party, which was the best party.
It was a great party.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
You know why it was the best for me. Did
you see who I was talking to?
Speaker 2 (03:17):
Warren Buffett? Yeah, oh, darn Buffett and Martha Stewart together
and if I recall, you've met him a bunch of
times before. And I think there's a picture of you
and Warren together.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
Yeah, it appeared in the wal Street Journal of me
sitting on the back of his old Chevrolet and the
license plate between us reads thrifty love it. It's so great.
He invited me out to Omaha right after I went
public to find out who this lady was, you know,
and we had such a great day, and then I
(03:47):
left Omaha and didn't really think about him again. How
stupid was I?
Speaker 2 (03:51):
Two very special people? Yeah, he's doing him.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
No, he's very special. Yeah, and still jovial and still astute,
and still working very hard and thinking. Just I asked him,
does he think about age old age? And he says
every now and then, and he's ninety five years old. Yep,
every now and then he thinks about old age. Anyway,
we're digressing.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
So, oh goodness. Time just to tell you how I
got the CIA. So I've been going on the show
as a guest for many, many years, and I've been
going on different CNBC shows, and I used to go
back in the day on the CDA Show and Charlie
Rose and all of those shows, and so then they
called me up when if you remember, Mark Haynes passed away,
he was the host of the show at nine am.
At nine am, and they were going to redo that show,
(04:36):
and so they were thinking of moving Carl Kintonia, who
you might remember was on the desk at Squawk to
the nine, and they said, would you want to do this?
And I thought, my goodness, who's going crazy enough to
let me be the host of any kind of show.
I didn't know how to read a teleprompter. I mean,
I'd been on as a guest, but I didn't know
how to do this. I mean I still don't.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
Well, you do very well, by the way, and it's
an interesting show because there are three very diver first
people running that show totally, and you and Joe seem
to spar a little bit, yes, or a lot, sometimes
a lot. So you're on the squalkbox haft for how
many years?
Speaker 2 (05:11):
I've been on for fifteen.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
Fifteen years half its life, and the show has only
gotten better, by the way, And I don't know why
that is exactly. Maybe I'm just more interested in what's
going on even now than I had been.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
You know, I have a theory on this, which is
that I think that the world came a little bit
our way. I think originally we covered business as just business,
and business has now become almost part of everything. It's policy. Now,
it's Washington, it's the White House, it's Paris, Paris, it's everything.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
Too much of the White House. If I can just opine, you.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
Can pine, we're all taking your feedback. Ye at all
times is a little too much of White House. And
let me say, the critical kind of feedback I always
tell people is the best kind of feedback, because I
need to know what's wrong. When people tell me something
is great, I'm like, Okay, that's right, good, I know
what's wrong with it.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
But it is a very very good show. And I
learn a lot. And I love your guests. I love
hearing the diverse diversity of opinions that you bring onto
the show. That's extremely important, and you learn a lot.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
As reports my business.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
It's like I on a cooking show, got to have
interview every great chef, anybody I wanted would come on
this show.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
So you get to.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
Have any business person, any economist, anybody in the financial
word on your show and learn so much from those people.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
No, I mean selfishly. I get to basically have breakfast
with the most interesting people in the world in my mind,
often at the most interesting times in their life, because
they're coming on in these interesting news moments that are
changing their lives, both for the good and some rest
of the bad and who knows what.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
After reading the New York Times review today, yes, which
was not the most I really didn't like the review
very much, but it says why I write this book
about the greatest crash in the history of the United
States stock exchange. Now, now that review points out that
it really wasn't It was a minuscule blip on the
financial world, not at the time, but in retrospect, it's
(07:08):
really a small crash compared to other worldly events that
have occurred.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
What do you think you know? For me, I wrote
this book about the crisis in two thousand and eight,
Too Big to Fail, and after that people constantly would
say to me, tell me how that compares to nineteen
twenty nine. We all know that something horrible happened in
nine twenty nine, and most people think that that created
great depression. And the truth that I didn't know much
about it, and I wanted to understand it and not
(07:34):
just understand. I wanted to know it as a drama.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
Well, there wasn't much written about it.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
There were some great books that some economists had written,
and other kinds of things like that, but there wasn't
this sort of human drama, soap opera version of what
really happened. What were their motives, what were their incentives?
What were they saying to each other? What were the
husbands saying to the wives? What was all of the
sort of backster who's having an affair with who? I
wanted to know all of this, and.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
You covered it in this big How many pages is
this book?
Speaker 2 (07:57):
Oh goodness, I think it's five, but I don't want
people to get scared to beach read folks. It's five
hundred some my pages. But there's end notes involved because
I spent an enormous amount of time in the archives.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
No, it's a very it's a fun read, and it
is also a read to learn. I mean, you learn
an awful, awful lot in this book about people you
never heard of, about events that occurred that you had
no idea about.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
You did a lot of research eight years, eight years literally,
I'd go to libraries all over the country trying to
find information, diaries, memos, letters, notes, and the people.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
No definitive archives.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
There was not one. I think the problem with this
bookhere the challenge was there wasn't one or two or
three places you could just go and go excavate all
the material. You really had to go find it in
all sorts of places, like a needle in a haystack.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
Personal letters. Did you find libraries with so.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
Many personal letters? I mean where you would see the
leaders of these banks, oftentimes in correspondence directly with Hoover,
transcripts of meetings that they'd have in the White House
with each other, from depositions and other kinds of lawsuits.
There was lots of stuff with the husbands and the wives.
There's one fabulous letter where one of the wives is
sending the husband a letter talking about the affairs he's having,
(09:07):
And so I thought, this is so And who was he?
Thomas Lamont, the fellow who's running JP Morgan at the time,
And he actually comes across like a family man, and
he may be actually, but as I was looking through
these letters and the archives, I found this very unusual
letter that his wife had sent where she effectively accuses
him of having you know girls in every port because
(09:28):
he's traveling around the world all the time. And there
was a very bizarre note attached to it by I
think it was his daughter or granddaughter who said that
this is actually not true. It's a joke. It was
a family joke, and I could never tell whether the
letter on top of the letter was trying to protect
their father or with some other thing. So I actually
didn't use the entire thing. I put the whole thing
(09:49):
in the end note so you could actually read it
in all its glory.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
In a review today, he mentions that a lot of
these bankers would give special prices on certain stocks to
their biggest clients. Is that true?
Speaker 2 (10:02):
Oh my goodness. There were no rules back then, I
mean completely, no SEC no SEC, no, no Banking Act,
no anything. Insider trading was legal back then, just to
be I mean ever, you could do whatever.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
You wanting about. Insider trading must have been absolutely acceptable.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
Totally totally. We'll leave that there. But yeah, all of
that was. There was no problem with any of those things.
And so you had people putting together what was called
investment pools where they literally would manipulate the stock price
on purpose. I mean true, pump and dump things.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
But you cover all that in the book in all
very clear fashion, which is very interesting. And I just
think that we have to know about all of this
stuff because what we have now is a highly regulated
industry which people still manage to do bad things in.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
So the good news is people will say, oh, are
we going to have another nineteen twenty nine? And this
really was the greatest crash and greatest depression we've ever
had in terms of length, and you know, twenty five
percent unemployment. Ultimately nine thousand banks went out of business
by nineteen thirty two.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
I mean, this was really a Katia National Park would
not have been built without the Great Crash, though. You
know why because all those people who were out of
work came to work in the parks, Wow, And they
built the walls and built the roads and made a
most beautiful national park up there. So many of those
were Depression era workers. So a lot of that stuff happens.
(11:27):
And yet that's another book. I mean, that's another book.
What did those people actually do when they were unemployed?
Speaker 2 (11:33):
So I hope we will not have another great Depression
style panic. Do I think we'll have another crisis of
some sort I'm sure we will. The good news is
because I think of some of the regulations, we'll be
able to withstand them. The truth, though, is there are
some things happening now in our economy that are a
little similar.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
Yeah, an AI lurking over us, and what is that
going to do in terms of the economy Ultimately.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
So I have very mixed fews. I'm so curious what
you think. I mean, I'm so excited about it in
so many ways. I think it's going to change our
whole life in fabulous ways. And then I think to myself,
if it succeeds, if it does what it's supposed to do,
if the valuations all these companies get to, whether it
requires a shocking amount of productivity, and productivity is sort
of a euphemism for taking out costs, and where's the
(12:19):
cost usually come from? Us, the people. So when you
start to think about twenty five percent on employment back
in nineteen thirty two, I start to think, oh, my goodness,
could we actually get to a We have.
Speaker 1 (12:28):
Three children, I do that's what you have to think about,
I do. You have to think about their future, not yours,
because we're living in I think probably the most exciting
time in technology.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
Ever.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
I love the idea that AI has taken the places
number one, the fastest ever ever industry, to capture the
minds and the money of everybody. But what do the
kids think? My fourteen year old granddaughter writes to me
about AI pretty much every day, and she hates it
(13:00):
because she thinks it is going to destroy us.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
So interesting is I have two sons who are fifteen
other twin boys, and then I have an eight year
old daughter.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
What do they think?
Speaker 2 (13:10):
The fifteen year olds, I think are actually still quite
excited about it. I mean we've had some pretty deep
conversations about jobs and things. They're optimists. They think that
they're going to somehow figure it out. They're going to
find some angle. They're both very entrepreneurial. They're always trying
to find some new fangled way to do something. So
I don't know, I'm going to try to stay on
the optimistic side.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
If they have a good angle, I'm going to bring
Jude over to talk to them, because she really is
negative about it.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
That would actually be a fact.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
Wouldn't that be interesting? You know? What do the kids think? Yeah, yeah,
let's do that. You should have it on your show.
Speaker 2 (13:39):
Actually, what do the kids think? We should do a
segment called what do the kids think?
Speaker 1 (13:42):
Ye, it would be good.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
There you go, Bingo.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
Well, back to the book.
Speaker 2 (13:56):
It took eight years. Took eight years while he's doing
any other things. That's one of the ways I should say. Look,
it took eight years. But also there were periods of
time where I couldn't work on it because I was
running around with my day jobs. The pandemic came in
the middle of it, which did not help at all.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
I just didn't I would have thought that would have helped.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
So you will appreciate this. I couldn't get into libraries
because they weren't allowing you to. So the only people
could get into libraries were sometimes students who had like
a dissertation of thesis do so there was like a
market for these kids, and I would pay them by
the hour and I would say, you go into the library.
I want you to take a picture of every single
page you know in box one fifty two, and they
(14:34):
would then send it back to me. The truth was
it was very helpful, but I ended up once the
pandemic was over and I was allowed back, I went
back and almost redid it all good. You had you,
you felt like you wanted, you needed to your.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
Book details, so many colorful characters like John Jacob Rescov.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
Oh my goodness, I think that you would be friends
with Rascal. Rascot was like the Elon Musk of today,
or then I should say say, and I love Elon.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
When he first appeared on the scene, I loved him
and I bought his stock. I loved everything about that
kind of intelligence and entrepreneurial craziness really appeals to me totally.
But then the downfall was when he went to the
White House politics.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
Yeah, so John Rascal has actually somewhat of a similar arc,
so we'll see what you think. He effectively ran General Motors,
really created modern credit in America, so people did not
take out loans prior to nineteen nineteen in America, it
was considered a sin. It was like a moral sin
to borrow to borrow money. And he decides, well, we
need to sell more cars. How we're going to sell
(15:35):
more cars. We're going to lend people money and then
they'll buy the cars. And this was sort of a
brilliant move, and Sears Roebuck then does the same thing
for appliances, and then by the way, the bankers start
to do it so you could buy stock.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
Did you read today about car loans. The latest is
that many car loans they're not being paid by the borrowers.
And it is a sure sign.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
Of another signal.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
Event, signal of a big economic problem in America.
Speaker 2 (16:02):
Hmm, oh, well, you're more up out it than I
am right now. But Rascob becomes sort of a fabulously
successful investor. He was a philosopher king, and he had
all of these ideas, including he had this idea that
we should have a five day work week, so back
then people worked six days a week. In fact, the
stock exchange was open on Saturdays.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
I would have hated that.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
What he said was he thought that there he would
actually create growth in the economy because people would have
the weekend, and because of this weekend, they'd buy more cars,
because they could go places, hotels, leisure activities, they would garden,
all of these things. And so he had all of
these ideas, and then like Elon, he gets involved in politics.
He decides he wants to be involved in politics, and
(16:42):
he was a Republican. Effectively, he decides to switch sides
to become effectively a Democrat, becomes the head of the
Democratic Party, working with a guy nam Al Smith against Hoover, loses,
then spends a lot of money trying to undermine Hoover's reputation.
Then decides he's going to build what I would describe
as the SpaceX of its time, which was the Empire
State building. And so he was one of these people
(17:03):
who was everywhere all at once. He had thirteen children.
You know, press would hang on every word the way
they do with Elan And if John Rascott had Twitter,
he would be so happy.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
Boy, he would have been amazing. Which character did you
most enjoy getting to know in your research?
Speaker 2 (17:18):
You know, I have a great affection for Guy Jesse
Livermore and great empathy for Jesse. Jesse was a short seller.
He effectively bet against stocks, so he wanted stocks to
go down. He was sort of a reck loose, bit
of a weirdo, to be honest with you, very emotionally
fraud human. But he thought that he frankly was smarter
than everybody else and had these ideas, and he was
(17:40):
very successful doing what he did. And in nineteen twenty
nine he bets against the market when everybody else was
on the other side, and he makes one hundred million dollars.
But he was such an emotional wreckon so lived for
the trading and the gambling of it all that he
lost it a couple of years later, and then he
made some back and he lost it again.
Speaker 1 (17:59):
The first hdge fund.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
Yes, he was really the first, one of the first
headshlongd managers. However, in nineteen forty he walks into the
cloakroom at the Sherry Netherland on Fifth Avenue. I'm sure
you've been, and he shoots himself on the head. And
he lost everything, or he had lost everything, and he
had a drinking problem, and he had many wives and affairs,
and he was just a mess of a person. But
I really thought he was an interesting character, and I
(18:24):
felt for him for some reason. I can imagine, are
we in a bubble? Now? I think we're in some
kind of bubble. The thing I can't figure out is
anytime you have companies spending money that they don't have
and they're taking on debt to do it, And this
is what's happening with AI for example. Now, I don't
really doesn't end well. Whether the Internet had its hiccup
(18:44):
in the late nineties, and look at where the internet
is now. So I think this is going to be,
you know, fabulous, should shift in our whole society. But
I do think that there's a lot of indiscriminated spending
that will probably turn out to be a mistake.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
How many people do you think really understand what AI is?
Speaker 2 (19:00):
Yes, I don't know. Are you using chat gpt yourself?
Speaker 1 (19:03):
Oh, but I'm so disappointed in it?
Speaker 2 (19:05):
You are?
Speaker 1 (19:06):
Yet I have not been able to train it to
answer my questions. I ask kind of complicated questions, and
I don't get good answers. They ask for more information
about what am I really trying to find, and I
get pissed off at it because I think by now
it's really like asking Siri answered my questions a little
bit better than chet GPG is, But I think I
(19:27):
have to learn a little bit more about how to
converse with it.
Speaker 2 (19:30):
Okay, I've started to use it more than I used to,
and I am finding it to be shockingly good. Good.
I'll tell you how I used it recently. So I
got a contract. Someone sends me a contract to sign
twelve pages I read it. I'm thinking of sending to
my lawyer. You actually know my lawyer. I'm thinking I
could send him something. It p I charged me. I
(19:50):
don't know what he was going to charge me for that.
But then I think I'm on airplane when I see this.
I put the contract into chat gipt. I've seen three
things that I in love. I say, tell me everything
that's good and bad in the contract. Oh, identifies the
three things I didn love, plus two other things. It
then tells me three things that I didn't realize were
actually pretty good for me. Oh. Then it says, would
you like me to make a red line version of
the contract, meaning to rewrite the contract? I say sure.
(20:12):
It does this. Then it says to me, would you
like me to write a cover letter to go along
with the new version of the contract. So I say please.
It writes the loveliest letter you've ever read. I want
to thank you so much for how much thought you've
put into this agreement. I know that we both value
being on the same page together. And there's a couple
(20:33):
of items in here that you know a little asymmetric
or something like that, and I'm sure you'll agree that
you know, giving our plans for long term partnership that
these should be fixed. You send it. I made a
couple of quick changes, pressed end. Forty five minutes later,
the guy sent it back and said, totally agree. And
that was that.
Speaker 1 (20:50):
Okay, you got me into a new use for a tragy.
I would never even think of me. My contract said,
I have a very complicated contract right now which I'm
going to try try.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
But this was a very non complicated situation. This is
a very low risk scenario that I was involved in.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
Okay, but I am going to try that because really
and truly I love hearing that. And my thirteen year
old grandson he uses chet Gpeach all the time, not
to write papers or to do his research, but he's
into sports in a big way, and he finds out
a lot about the finances of sports.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
I'll give you one more. My son Max turns some
of the reading that he's supposed to do into podcasts.
So I don't know if you know, Google now has
a product you insert all the information. You could actually
give it a paper and they will create a podcast
out of it, as if two people are talking about
the issues and the facts and you just listen to it.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
We did this with this nineteen twenty nine book that
we're talking about. This is old chet gypch question.
Speaker 2 (21:51):
Oh really, so this is not Martha. This is all hologround.
Speaker 1 (21:53):
I'm trying to kidding.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
Wow, wouldn't that be fun? Though?
Speaker 1 (21:57):
Oh boy, this is so fun. Well, this thing about
the bubble. Yeah, if you do have a crash like
nineteen twenty nine, how long would it take to develop
and how would we recover?
Speaker 2 (22:10):
The good news is I don't think we will have
a crash of the kind of magnitude of nineteen twenty
nine ninet twenty nine. Oddly, the crash was like the
first Domino. And then a series of very bad choices
were made in Washington, like Hoover decided that he was
going to raise taxes. Just in a moment when the
economy was sputtering. Hoover decides that he is going to
(22:31):
implement tariffs. Here we are talking about tariffs. He decides
to implement tariffs in nineteen thirty. In nineteen twenty eight,
when he was trying to get elected, he wanted farmers
to vote for him, so he had told them we're
going to do tariffs. So he felt that he needed
to continue on with that, even though every economist told him.
It was a terrible on food imports, on everything, and
by the way, global trade dropped by sixty percent after
(22:52):
he did that. This is everyone's telling him not to
do it. The Federal Reserve basically sat on their hands,
didn't throw money at the problem, which is what Ben
Bernanki ultimately did in two thousand and eight, which is
really the thing you're supposed to do. Problem is, it's
a politically unpopular thing to do because a lot of
people think you're rescuing people, you're rewarding the arsonists, and
so that was a real thing. There were a lot
(23:13):
of bad choices that were made that hopefully we've learned
from so that if we did have another, call it
AI bubble, sure we could have a market that would
come down materially and it could have real effects, but
hopefully it wouldn't take down the system in a way
where the next ten years would be what they were
after twentye Well, right.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
Now, tariffs have really hurt the soybean farmers. Yes, and
I have just gotten back from Nebraska and Wisconsin and
where all the soybeans are grown, and is a huge
surplus of soybeans because China has said I don't we
don't want any of your soybeans, which is their big,
big crop. Now our president has gone and said he
(23:51):
will subsidize all the farmers, but he hasn't said what
they're going to do with the soybeans. What do they
do with the soybeans?
Speaker 2 (23:59):
That's actually very good, cool question. I don't know what
they're going to do with the soybeans. And there's another
question where we can get the money to subsidize all
these farmers except to take some of the tariff money
and give it to them, right, And then the question
is why are we doing this? If that's the that's right?
Speaker 1 (24:11):
Isn't it crazy? And they would have made more money
if they were able to sell their soybeans to China.
So this keeps me up at night. I'm not kidding.
It really does keep me up at night, worrying about
the farmers and worrying about where are those soybeans? That
it takes a long time to grow a beautiful crop
of soybeans, So what do we do about stuff like that?
(24:31):
And how do you keep borrowing from one place and
putting it into another place?
Speaker 2 (24:35):
And how long can that last? Well, the borrowing is
the problem, and look, leverage in the system is what
always is the match that lights the fire of every
financial crisis. And back in nineteen twenty nine, it was
margin loans for individuals. In two thousand and eight it
was subprime loans. That's like in the corporate banking debt world.
Then I worry about our debt, the nation's debt. By
the way, in nineteen twenty nine, there was a budget surplus.
(24:57):
We didn't have the kind of debt we have today
at all.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
Remember Clinton when he left office, there was a budget
surplus exactly. I loved those years.
Speaker 2 (25:05):
Those were some great years. And so if we do
have a problem, it becomes harder and harder because we're
borrowing from the future and our children, and our children
and their education and their education and everything.
Speaker 1 (25:15):
Else, their colleges and their real estate, et cetera, et cetera.
So think about the kids and what we're doing to them.
You said that you know we will have a crash,
but you can't say when or how deep what should
we be doing.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
So this is the complicated part, and timing is the problem.
So I was with Paul titter Jones a week or
two ago. He's one of the great sort of famous
traders and made billions of dollars. And he said, Andrew,
I think we're in October of nineteen ninety nine. He said, ooh,
that seems scary because October nineteen ninety nine, six or
twelve months later, we've had a bust. He said, yeah,
(25:48):
but the stock market went up forty percent during that period.
And so if you weren't in the market during the
forty percent up, you were stupid, or you would a
file you were stupid. By the way, in nineteen twenty
Charles Merrill of Merrill Lynch, the original Marril of Merrill Lynch,
told people to get out of the market nineteen twenty eight.
From the beginning nineteen twenty eight to September of nineteen
(26:08):
twenty nine, the market went up ninety percent. So he
was wrong, and so he looks like he was right
in retrospect, but sort of wrong. And so this is
why when people say are we in a bubble? Yes,
we're in something.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
And you can't trade emotionally because that never pans out.
It's more luck than anything else. It looks like to me.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
I think luck plays a factor in it. I don't
want to say it doesn't.
Speaker 1 (26:30):
No I think it does. The whole financial world that's
going on everywhere, not just in America but all over
the world is very fascinating. You have a very fascinating job.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
I feel so lucky and blessed, honestly, because every day
is a different day. The headlines are crazy, the news
is crazy. And I'm one of those people who always thought,
if you follow the money, it explains everything. That explains business,
explains politics. Unfortunately, it explains sports, it explains art, it
explains so many things.
Speaker 1 (27:08):
What do you think about this huge amount of money
that's going into sports.
Speaker 2 (27:13):
So, you know, it feels like there might be a
sports bubble. To be honest with you, the amount of
money and this idea that this is the holy Land,
this is the only thing that people are going to
watch in the future, I'm not sure as true. Some
of the prices that these teams are worth, and some
of the licenses that these networks are paying. It's hard
to make all of the economics work. The NFL seems
(27:35):
to be a very special case. Everyone in the NFL
is making money, by the way, not every team in
Major League Baseball or basketball. The values of the teams
keep rising, the cash flows don't though.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
Mm hm and soccer. Do you know anything about that?
Speaker 2 (27:49):
I do know about SA. Where are you on toad?
I don't watch enough soccer though, and I'm not wholly convinced,
but I think obviously it's no.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
We have a soccer maniac in the family, and I
feel that he because he loves it so much. He
goes to Liverpool camp. Wow, he went there when he
was nine years old and hung out with Liverpool, his
favorite team. But I start to learn about it, but
I find it's so unusual that it captures people's minds
(28:16):
in such a deep way, and they think about it
so much, thinking about it almost as much as tech
guys think about AI. The sports guys think about which
teams are the best teams and betting on these teams.
Speaker 2 (28:29):
It's a huge part of the culture, and maybe I
don't fully appreciate because this is one part of the
universe I have not totally adopted. I'm a I'm a
long suffering I.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
Got to invest in at least one little team someplace.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
You want a women's team, men's.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
To No, No, I want a soccer team for Truman. Ye.
I just want to invest in something that would capture
his interests.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
I love it.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
Yeah, it'd be fun.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
Okay, folks, you heard it here first Martha's going to
own a soccer team, professional soccer owner. Oh, here it comes.
Speaker 1 (28:58):
So we wrote Too Big to Fail?
Speaker 2 (29:00):
Yep, in which year? Well, the crisis happened in O eight.
I wrote most of it in eight and nine and
the book came out in nine, so it was a
quick turn.
Speaker 1 (29:07):
And then we would have an expected lesson did you
learn from your research and your writing of that book?
Speaker 2 (29:12):
You know, what I think I learned about the human
condition is what I actually learned, and that actually helped
me with this book because part of the thing with
this book is that people weren't alive. But by actually
being able to interview and speak to almost every single
person during the financial crisis of eight and what was
going through their minds and the emotions of it all,
I think you were able to sort of transport yourself
(29:32):
into twenty nine and say, Okay, where would Charles Mitchell be,
what would he be doing emotionally? And then I would
try to go find the research that would be suggestive
of that. You know, the way crisis was so fascinating
because it really were on sort of the edge of
the abyss. But at the same time, the bailouts were
like the most unpopular thing in the universe, and so
(29:54):
there was such a sort of backlash to all of it.
And I think about that a lot, and the politics
of bailouts and all.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
I was on stage in Palm Beach at the Breakers
Hotel at a bear Sterns conference when it was announced
that the chairman was going back to New York.
Speaker 2 (30:10):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (30:11):
That next day bear Sterns collapsed. It was so odd.
I thought, Oh, something bad has happened. I mean, why
would he be leaving in the midst of it with
all those bankers sitting in the room. It was so
terrifying to me that he would just run back to
New York. But he had a good reason.
Speaker 2 (30:31):
He had a good reason. March March of two thousand
and eight.
Speaker 1 (30:33):
That's so so strange that I even know about that.
It's so weird to me. I'm writing my autobiography now
and I'm finding all this stuff.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
Are you enjoying writing your autobigraphy?
Speaker 1 (30:45):
Oh? It is like going down the deepest rabbit hole.
It is so much fun. I have this fabulous guy,
Kevin O'Leary, who's doing my research for me. I have
a huge archive, so he's going through the archive and
putting it in. I call him a chronologist, but it's
like you had to do for this in nineteen twenty nine.
It is so interesting. And I got an email from
(31:05):
him yesterday. You will be interested in this, he said, today,
you became a billionaire in two thousand and whatever it was,
or no, nineteen ninetye. I don't even remember the year.
He reminds me of stuff like that from his research,
so it's horrifying.
Speaker 2 (31:21):
There was an article in nineteen twenty nine with the
headline our second Billionaire.
Speaker 1 (31:27):
Oh who is that?
Speaker 2 (31:28):
Henry Ford? Oh, it's so interesting. They called it our
second billionaire, as if he was the first Rockefeller.
Speaker 1 (31:34):
Oh of course John D. Rockefeller Junior. Yeah, oh gosh.
They're all kind of familiar to me because I have
a house in Seal Harbor Main where all those guys
came ye building Akadia National Park ultimately, but it's so
fun to see all that you and Joe Curnan have
live the arguments. Yes, Box, we do kind of touched
(31:56):
on what's your relationship off camera?
Speaker 2 (32:00):
Kind of like our relationship on camera. I mean, it's
always been that way. It's a little bit like going
to Thanksgiving dinner with your family every day for breakfast.
Oh boy, I think that's pretty much the way we roll.
But we text each other during the day about all
sorts of crazy things. You know, the President will do something,
I'll text about it or whatever. It is, food for
(32:20):
thought and for thought, food food for thought. That's very good.
Speaker 1 (32:24):
So let's talk about my favorite show, which now has
a sequel to it. My favorite show recently was Mobland.
Speaker 2 (32:32):
Oh.
Speaker 1 (32:32):
I like mob Bland, Yeah, which reminded me of Billions,
just and it's like dirtiness, you know, I loved that part.
But you co created How long was that concept and
your gut, all of your minds? Was that your idea
of Billions?
Speaker 2 (32:48):
I was floating around with sort of the conceit of
it for about a year or two before I met
Brian and David, and I was actually.
Speaker 1 (32:57):
Looking for Brian Kopple.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
Brian Kaufman, Dave Levine, and I was looking for partners,
you know, folks who actually knew how to do this.
I was a novice, and originally I had this idea
of just I thought there should be a show about
hedge funds in that whole hedge fund space, and everyone said, oh,
that's a terrible idea, sor Ca. And nobody likes hedge
fund people. They hate Wall Street. They're not going to
want to watch a show, but and they're boring. They
(33:20):
look at TV screens all day. And I remember coming
home my wife was watching Law and Order, and I said,
you know what kind of shows people like? Procedurals, legal
shows they love. Why do they love a procedural? And
then I thought, if you could sort of pitch the
two against each other and even against type, so that
maybe you actually love the hedgephund manager, maybe you think
that the prosecutor isn't always knew doing everything in the
(33:42):
name of right. And I'd covered a lot of white
collar crime, and I knew the prosecutors were not always
doing everything in the name of right, and so I
thought there might be an interesting program. And then I
happily met Brian and David in twenty thirteen thirteen, I think,
and then we sold the pilot. I think Can fourteen
made the pilot and maybe in fifteen in the show
(34:03):
was on the air in sixteen.
Speaker 1 (34:04):
It was so great. You can still watch it, is
it on Netflix.
Speaker 2 (34:08):
Or I think now it's on Paramount Plum.
Speaker 1 (34:10):
That's what it is, Okay, Paramount plus. I get so
up with all those things.
Speaker 2 (34:14):
Brian David did an extraordinary job and you know that
ran for seven seasons.
Speaker 1 (34:17):
Amazing, amazing. Any other shows coming up? I am working
nineteen twenty ninety one.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
It could. We're actually talking to a couple of people
about so stand by for news there and now working
a couple other things. So nothing to announce yet, as
they say, but hopefully sooner than later.
Speaker 1 (34:32):
Well nineteen twenty nine. It sort of reminds me of
The Guilded Age, only you know, like sixty years later
or something. And I love that show.
Speaker 2 (34:39):
I love that show.
Speaker 1 (34:40):
A few of the characters I love especially, But this
could be a really great show. Well, thank you, yeah,
really fun. So do you like the stock market?
Speaker 2 (34:51):
Do I like the stock market? I'm fascinated by the
stock market. I'm actually fascinating more by the stock market
as a signal of sort of the psyche of the
country and the world and how people actually feel about
things that I am necessarily of trading as an act.
But I'm fascinated by companies, you know, I love the
(35:13):
sort of human drama of a company and a leader,
and why are they doing what they're doing, and why
are they going to make the investment or not make
the investment, or make the deal or do the merger.
For me, that's what really animates my interest in all this.
Speaker 1 (35:24):
And mixing that with your deep seated interest in journalism,
you have a very nice occupation. I mean, I think
it's just fascinating that you were able to turn the
journalistic interest into an interest in our financial markets, and
then into television production and all that stuff. You have
a good gig going.
Speaker 2 (35:43):
I gotta knock on the wood, right, I got to
knock on the wood over here.
Speaker 1 (35:47):
So all of this is just it's just mind boggling
to me that there's so much interest in the financial markets.
How big is your viewership on CNBC?
Speaker 2 (35:56):
Oh goodness. I mean on any given day, you know,
we touch millions of people, and you know, the truth
is not the largest audience in the world. What's fascinating
about it is it really is the most influential audience
in the world. I mean, the amazing part about it
is I mean, look, you're watching it every morning, but
also the White House is watching it every morning. And
you know, the leaders all the big tech companies and
(36:17):
the leaders of the band. I can't tell you what
happens during the show. The emails you get and the
text messages you get are sort of shocking to see
all of these people. And by the way, it's bipartisan,
you know. Sometimes that's what I like. A political stay political.
You know, Ted Cruz is interested in the show, and
Elizabeth Warren's interested in the show.
Speaker 1 (36:36):
So because they're getting educated as we are each and
every day. So congratulations. That is a huge, huge accomplishment
than you in this day and age where take a
side and forget it. It's very difficult to do that.
I keep trying to persuade people who have businesses or
that are selling products. You can't take a side.
Speaker 2 (36:57):
And you got to hear all the science.
Speaker 1 (36:58):
Yeah, yeah, hell you do well. I can't wait for
our listeners to pick up a copy of nineteen twenty
nine by Andrew Ross Sorkin. They are wherever books are sold.
And do you think your biggest market is Amazon?
Speaker 2 (37:13):
Probably? And I think Amazon these days is selling probably
about fifty or sixty percent of all books. I think,
for the most part.
Speaker 1 (37:19):
Is this a good audiobook? Did you read it?
Speaker 2 (37:20):
A great audio book? Did you write I read it myself.
Speaker 1 (37:23):
Good.
Speaker 2 (37:23):
It's about thirteen hours. You can even put it on
double time speed if you like. I know people, it
does only too.
Speaker 1 (37:29):
This is only a round trip to Maine.
Speaker 2 (37:31):
There you go.
Speaker 1 (37:32):
See, And I'm going to drive to Maine. I'm not
going to drive. Somebody else is going to drive me.
And I'm going to listen to the entire book in
your voice. I hope I learned a tremendous come out
about one of the most fascinating events that ever occurred
in the United States, and hope it will not occur
again in such depth. Thank you Andrew Ross Sorkin for
your time today and good luck on your book tour.
Speaker 2 (37:52):
Thank you, Martha Stewart, You're fun to talk to you
so much fun.
Speaker 1 (37:55):
Thank you.
Host
Martha Stewart
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