October 4, 2025 • 42 mins
On this week's Everybody's Business, Stacey Vanek Smith and Max Chafkin discuss a possible return of DOGE-like cuts due to the shutdown, the wild ride of crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun and a very surprising economic indicator.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
This is Everybody's business from Bloomberg Business Week.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
I'm Max Chafkin and I'm Stacy Vannoxsmith.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Stacey. Have we got a story for you.
Speaker 4 (00:19):
It is about the wildest, weirdest, most interesting man in crypto.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
His name is Justin Sun will tell you all.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
About it, Okay, I'm looking forward to that. Before we
get to that, We've got, of course, the big news
of the week, Max, government shutdown.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Oh Stacy, we're doing this again.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
I know, I know, government shutdowns they happen periodically, but
this time I think is different. We've got Justin Wolfer's
an economists here to help us break that down.
Speaker 4 (00:44):
And Stacy the underrated story of the week. Yeah, two
words for you, little teas splendid.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
Daddy's splendid. Daddy's all right, hang around for that, Okay, Max.
This week the news has been completely are taken by
the government shutdown. It's all the headlines, it's everywhere, It's
all anybody can talk about.
Speaker 4 (01:06):
Well, is Stacy, there is one very very positive economic
indicator that we need to discuss.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
Yes, tell me I want some positive economic indicators.
Speaker 4 (01:15):
Life of a Showgirl the new Taylor Swift album hitting
on Friday tomorrow. As we record this today, as you listen,
you know, Taylor Swift obviously huge mega phenomenon. She she
criss crosses the country raising hotel rooms.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
Hit pause on the podcast and just go listen to that.
Speaker 4 (01:33):
But I mean, seriously, this is it does feel like
a big cultural moment. You know, Taylor Swift obviously the
biggest pop star on the planet right now.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
She's had this amazing run.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
She's been mentioned in the Beige Book as I don't
know what courses that has moved local economies when her
concerts come through town.
Speaker 4 (01:52):
That's what I was alluding to, like the arostour when
it would hit a town, like hotel room prices would
go way up, you know, restaurants would sell more.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
I think there were literal earthquakes that.
Speaker 4 (02:02):
Happened because people were moving around so much in these stadiums.
Speaker 3 (02:06):
So you're saying, this is this moment, is the shutdown
versus Taylor Swift? Can she do enough to salvage the
US economy? I'm the government shutdown.
Speaker 4 (02:16):
Donald Trump and Chuck Schumer, they all have their calculations
about where Americans are going to fall and how much
pain are people going to be willing to accept? But
they haven't counted on the fact that everyone's going to
be distracted for like the next month listening to this.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
Album and dissecting all the lyrics.
Speaker 4 (02:32):
Indeed, that aside Stacy, I mean, the shutdown is happening,
and like this sense of chaos, political chaos that then
kind of tries to spill into the business world that's
continuing this week, and I feel like that's maybe where
we need to start.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
Yes, indeed, and in fact, I was at the University
of Michigan earlier this week. I got to drop in
on economist Justin Wolfer's ECON one oh one class, which
was delightful. It's a class of five hundred students and
at the end and I tracked some of them down
and asked them how they were feeling about the economy
and like what their worries were about the economy at
this moment. Here's what they said. What scares you about
(03:09):
the economy right now?
Speaker 2 (03:10):
The cost of living? Like I have like a girlfriend,
and when we talk about.
Speaker 4 (03:14):
Like our future, it's like are we gonna be able
to get a house or like what are we gonna do.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
I think it's a lot harder for people to get jobs.
Speaker 5 (03:21):
I think that's just a bigger worry and a lot
of students' minds.
Speaker 6 (03:24):
I mean, I would agree with And I've applied to
a bunch of jobs like Panera, bread and.
Speaker 4 (03:27):
Things like that, and I haven't heard bag at all.
Speaker 6 (03:30):
I was originally given a pelgrant and then it got
taken away wit how saying I don't know, just like
the current administration announced that they would be like repealing
to a certain like student.
Speaker 3 (03:41):
Like your pel grant got taken away?
Speaker 6 (03:43):
Yeah, just literally gone. There wasn't an edification or email
or anything.
Speaker 3 (03:47):
It's just what was gone that scares you about the
economy right now, I would have.
Speaker 7 (03:50):
To say the tariffs, And that's really terrifying because President
Trump does state that the other countries will be paying.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
These taxes, but as we've also learned in econ one on.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
One, American consumers will probably be paying a lot of
the tax for it.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
The cost of food.
Speaker 6 (04:03):
Remember, like back in the day, like you could get
a candy bar from ninety nine cents.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
Right now get king sized candy bars going.
Speaker 6 (04:09):
Up to like three dollars, three dollars fifty cents, Like
at the stadium.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
A bottle of water could be like five six dollars.
Speaker 3 (04:14):
So what, oh is this when you guys go to games?
Do you all go to games?
Speaker 6 (04:19):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (04:19):
Yeah, really University of Michigan, Big ten school, they all
go to the games.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
You know what I love about that?
Speaker 4 (04:27):
Like and I say love, but I mean what I
appreciate about hearing those voices. We live in an era
defined by kind of like reality television and social media,
where like presentation is everything, and our politics is playing
out essentially on screens, and you have these two sides
like trying to spin stuff. But all these policies, all
the stuff that's happening in the economy, it has consequences.
(04:48):
And that, like that woman talking about the pelgrant, Yeah,
is a consequence.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
I mean sounds really bad. It sounds really tough.
Speaker 4 (04:55):
And I do wonder as we think about how the
consequences of this government shutdown that we're entering right now
are going to play out. Those are the kinds of
stories that are going to define like how we experience it,
not like what Trump says on TV, not what Schumer
whoever says on TV. It's going to be stories like
that and and I don't know, I just feel like
(05:17):
we have to keep talking to those people. So good job, Stacey.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
The teacher of these really lovely students is economist Justin Wolfers,
and he is here today to talk government shutdown. Thanks
again for letting me sit it on your class and welcome.
Hey Stacey, Justinould, what did you think of what your
students had to say?
Speaker 7 (05:39):
Well, they're brilliant. They I think, well, try and articulate.
And I think it's so lovely to hear young voices
engaging in our economic debates. We're fighting about the future,
and that's who they are.
Speaker 3 (05:52):
Is all around.
Speaker 5 (05:53):
That's what I say, Oh, you're for grade inflation now.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
But Justin, we brought you on to talk about the
government shutdown, that terrible moment when politics and economics meet
and it is a mess. And right now we are
in the middle of a shutdown. Before we kind of
jump into the more granular issues, what do you see
as going on here?
Speaker 5 (06:17):
Mostly politics.
Speaker 7 (06:18):
I understand that people's first instinct at a moment like
this is to call an economist because it feels like
a big deal economically. I think the reality is, if
we think about the macroeconomy, the ups and downs of
GDP and unemployment and recessions and booms and.
Speaker 5 (06:33):
Stuff like that. It's just not that big of a deal.
Speaker 7 (06:36):
So for folks who are not working in or very
closely with the government, what I think the appropriate status
is sort of disappointed parent.
Speaker 3 (06:46):
But seven hundred and fifty thousand people are not working
today because of this, that feels like a big economic deal.
Speaker 7 (06:53):
Absolutely, Although Stacy, there's one hundred and forty million people
who are and one hundred and forty million is substantially big.
In seven hundred and fifty thousand, we're probably talking about
a matter of weeks rather than the full year, and
so you start to do this sort of math and
it starts to become fractions of a percentage point. Look,
two things are true, and I want to be really
clear about it, and I thank you for drawing it.
(07:16):
It can be that something's not a major macroeconomic issue
yet still is a dumb and horrendous and pointless waste.
And were I president, it wouldn't change the reality that
a billion dollars is both a tiny fraction of GDP
and a ton of money and wasting it for no
reason whatsoever. Feels utterly pointless and utterly disparity.
Speaker 4 (07:42):
So justin you're saying it, it doesn't matter economically, or
at least on a macroeconomic point of view. And I
feel like Stacey and I talked about this. We've both
been business journals for a long time. These shutdowns come
with some frequency, right, the last one was in twenty eighteen.
We're constantly hitting the debt ceiling. And if you've been
through this a few times, a dozen times, however many
(08:04):
it's been, you basically just start to feel like, eh,
like this is like they're going to get it figured out.
This is a sort of a manufactured political crisis. The
only thing that matters really is who gets blamed.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
Right.
Speaker 4 (08:16):
I do wonder if this one is a little bit different,
only because this is coming in a larger context, which
is that the Trump administration has been since the beginning,
since January, just trying in various ways to kind of
kneecap parts of the federal government. Right, and to me,
(08:36):
this really feels like an almost repeat of Doge, which
might seem weird to say, but like we had during
the first couple months of the administration, Elon Musk going
around sort of purporting to close various federal agencies laying
people off. I think it's yesterday as we record this
on Thursday, October two, that the workers who took deferred
(08:58):
resignations are are in fact leaving the government. It's like
another one hundred thousand workers. And when you listen to
what the Trump administration is saying, and we listen to
what russ Vote the head of the OMB is saying,
they see this as an opportunity not just to furlough workers,
but to attack parts of the bureaucracy permanently.
Speaker 7 (09:16):
Yes, so much. There max so full of ideas. Let
me start with the first one. You're like, eugh, another,
the government shutdown? Who cares? The problem with that thinking
is the thing that eventually ends the shutdown is people
are like, holy cow, this is terrible, and it causes
(09:37):
political pain for one side or other of politics. That
causes enough that pushes them back to the table, and
they sort it allowed. If we all sit around and
take people like me seriously and say, hey, it's not
that big of a deal, then actually it will never resolve.
And so I think your point that we're all sort
of a little bit indifferent, right, Well, battered, bruised, and
(09:59):
used to large scale shocks to how the government works.
Right now, this would have been outrageous six years ago,
and you and I I think our blood would have boiled.
And this might be the thirteenth worst thing to have
happened so far in October. That removes the urgency. And
if you remove the urgency, that then creates the possibility
(10:20):
that this one actually runs on a whole lot longer.
So the last one went thirty four days. When I
say government shutdowns are not a huge event, I should
say one, We're already shut down most of the government
two days every week, so if we made it a
third wouldn't be a big deal.
Speaker 3 (10:35):
So the government gets shut down right now, it's not
that huge of a deal macroeconomically, and potentially, you know,
thousands of people will lose their jobs.
Speaker 7 (10:46):
Wait, Stacy, could we just hold up because they want
to get the premise right. So what has historically happened
is non essential employees are told not to do any work.
The government remains shut down for two weeks then and
then they shutdown ends and they come back to work.
And usually in every past case, Congress has passed a
law saying even though you didn't do any work for
(11:08):
those two weeks, we're going to pay you anyway. So
no one historically was losing their jobs through this. And
then there's the essential workers who keep working, but they
keep working without getting paid, and then they'll get repaid later,
So there's no job cuts that are essential to this.
What this gets to, though, is Max's earlier point, which
(11:28):
is this is a political escalation at the current moment.
This one's different because normally presidents are embarrassed by their
inability to keep the government open.
Speaker 3 (11:37):
Right this is like a shameful moment, like, oh, you
couldn't get it together and make a deal again, And.
Speaker 5 (11:42):
What we have is escalation.
Speaker 7 (11:45):
Certainly in claims the president says he's going to go
after democratic priorities. He's going to definitely not collect the
trash from outside Max's house, and so on. This president's saying, well,
you guys are doing me, I'm just going to fight back.
So it sounds like when my kids were five. He
has no new powers to fire people right now that
(12:08):
he didn't have yesterday. So if there was whole departments
he wanted to shut down, if he could do it,
he could do it. Two days ago, and he could
still do it in two days time. So the presidents
claim that this brings on an escalation. There's no structural
change that creates that escalation. So the escalation, though, is
that he would be taking advantage of the political moment
that somehow the press and the people would let it
(12:30):
slide that he's going to do something, and other times
we would find repugnant.
Speaker 4 (12:35):
You know, I spent earlier this year a couple of
months reporting on Russ Vote, who I said, head of
the OMB, super interesting character. He wrote part of the
Project twenty twenty five. I think he was involved in
the last government shutdown in fact, and he was kind
of like hanging behind the scenes with Doge.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
Right.
Speaker 4 (12:52):
I described him as like, you know, I can't remember
the words I actually use, but like the real mastermind
or the ideological mastermind or something like that. And what's
interesting is Vote had been saying for like a decade
basically that if we could, we should just like cut
all these woke agencies, defang the deep state, massively cut
back in the government, and that that was like a
(13:13):
political end in itself, and that's what we saw essentially
with Doge A couple months ago right where where they
did this and then discovered, oh crap, it's unpopular. Elon
Musk suddenly had people protesting outside of his dealerships. People
were suddenly putting bumper stickers on their cars, you know,
trading their teslas in. People hated this because, you know,
(13:34):
for all the times we sort of complain and grouse
about the ways that the government doesn't work, like it
actually does work pretty well.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
That was one of the things I think we learned
with Doge.
Speaker 4 (13:44):
And now they're kind of trying to run it back,
but this time blame the Democrats. And like you said,
justin nothing's really changed from a legal perspective, although I'm
sure there might be arguments to be made about, oh,
maybe it's an emergency or something like that, But really
this is about can we pin this on Chuck Schumer?
And I don't know what the answer to that. I
(14:04):
don't think any of us actually know what the answer
to that. I'm not even sure russ Vote Donald Trump
or Chuck Schumer knows the answer.
Speaker 7 (14:12):
I'm not a very good political scientist, so I'm far
less interested in who we pined on, although that's ultimately
going to be what results. Is right one side or
the other will find the situation's not working well for
them and it's better for them to end it. There's
a deeper economics here, which is why was Dozier failure
and why would the same logic fail at the current moment.
(14:33):
So many of us have an image in our minds
of the federal government is big and bloated and pointless.
And last time I went to the DMV, I thought
the person behind the count it might actually have been
a sloth.
Speaker 5 (14:46):
There's a kid's movie where it's Zutopia. It is Utopia.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
Yeah, I got three little ones about twenty times.
Speaker 7 (14:55):
It's a wonderful movie. But yeah, you walk in and like, literally,
the DMV is run by a sloth. And I've been
in that DMV and the sloth isn't even cute. They're
resentful and middle aged and slow moving. And we take.
Speaker 3 (15:09):
That experience with that, I'm just kidding.
Speaker 7 (15:13):
We take that experience and we projected on the rest
of government. There's a few things to recognize here. First
of all, most of our experiences with government, with these
annoying officers are actually state and local.
Speaker 4 (15:22):
I was just gonna say, you're talking about a state
agency that's a problem from Michigan.
Speaker 7 (15:26):
Absolutely, but we all have that idea, and that's why
there's this strong current, particularly through public and politics. Oh,
let's run the government like a business, or let's choke it,
or let's get rid of all these useless employees, which
is what you're hearing a lot of right now. That's
the wrong model for the federal government. There's an old
saying about the federal government. It's an insurance company with
an army. What do I mean by that? The federal
(15:47):
government most of its spending is on what we call
insurance programs. It's unemployment insurance, it's Medicare, it's Medicaid, and those.
Speaker 3 (15:54):
Are like not an issue here at all. I mean,
those are mandatory things. That is not This is what
always blows my mind about the shutdowns. It's not about
the big stuff, you know. I looked into this. I
got really interested in how big a share of the
federal budget went to federal workers, and so I actually
looked this up, and as it turns out, if you
count the military of salary benefits, everything adds up to
(16:17):
about seven percent of the US budget, and if you
don't count the military, it's about five percent. So this
is a very small part of the budget. And then
this healthcare subsidy, the thing that's become a big point
of contention between the right and the left, these sort
of extra subsidies that got rolled out during the pandemic
to help people afford health insurance. I mean, that is
like zero point two percent of the budget. That's really little,
(16:38):
and it's just it really striking to me that so
much is happening over something that is such a small
part of the seven trillion dollar budget that we spend
every year.
Speaker 7 (16:49):
The federal government's it's a small share of the economy.
Much of its function is printing Social Security chicks does
checks is still going to go out. There are important
things the federal government does. Some of them will be
shut down for a small number of weeks. Maybe I
just want to come back to this is not a
macroeconomic moment. Every dollar we waste is a dollar we
(17:10):
didn't have to waste, and it's all for political posturing.
So it's as if we've just given several billion dollars
to both Democrats and Republicans to spend on political advertising
so they can yell at each other.
Speaker 3 (17:22):
And the billion dollars is that the cost or what is.
Speaker 7 (17:24):
The cost here, It's going to be several billion, which
again is a real amount of money. I hate wasting
a billion dollars. We could spend that billion building schools,
or feeding hungry or giving tax cuts to people whose
yachts are not big enough, guilding the White House, gilding.
We could probably guild another whole room with that. One
(17:45):
part of the story we haven't told is the public servants. Right,
These are real people who I teach the other job
I have you started with my economic students. I also
teaching the Ford School of Public Policy. These are young
things in their early twenties who answered Kennedy's call to
ask not what your country can do for you, but
(18:06):
what you can do for your country, who believe deeply
and profoundly in public service and have gone off to
school to become smarter at it, and can't wait to
go back out there and serve the greater good. And
they're being treated appallingly. They're being treated as if they're
the public enemy. For the generation of students I'm teaching
right now, there may not be jobs for them. For
the folks who are currently in the federal government, which
(18:27):
includes many of my former students. They're being asked to
go without pay for as long as the politicians decide.
And that's the thing I will just tell you. This
is not being an economist, This is being a person.
I find it utterly dismaying the extent to which we
are using people as pawns in greater political games. And
I've seen more of that since January of twenty twenty
(18:49):
five than I've ever seen in my life. And every
time I see it, it churns my stomach a lot.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
Wow, justin, thank you for being here. Thank you, justin,
thank you very much.
Speaker 3 (19:05):
Okay, Max, at the top of the show, you promised
that we were going to hear about the most interesting
man in crypto. It is time to deliver.
Speaker 4 (19:11):
Yeah, but we need to back up, and I just
need to explain a little bit about Trump and crypto
because I think that's what the big issue here is.
Speaker 3 (19:18):
Okay. I do feel like the first six months of
the Trump presidency there's been a lot of crypto news.
Some of it I followed, some of it not so much.
So what is going on right now with Trump and crypto?
Speaker 4 (19:29):
Yeah, this is an industry that Trump seemed to despise,
during his first term. It's also one that I'm sure
most listeners know. Lots of controversy, lots of allegations, some
big ups, some big downs, and many of the leading
lights you know going back a few years ago were
either criminally charged or convicted or the subject of SEC cases.
(19:50):
And basically Stacy, with a couple of exceptions, all those
cases pretty much are gone now they've been.
Speaker 3 (19:57):
The President has his own coin, the Converted.
Speaker 4 (20:01):
Indeed, yeah, he's he's in the crypto business now. And
there's an amazing BusinessWeek story out right now that kind
of explains this.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
It's focused on Justin Sun, who.
Speaker 4 (20:10):
Is, like I said, this wild figure in the industry.
He's the founder of the blockchain network Tron will explain
what that is in a second. He owns that big
famous banana or the banana that was duct taped to
the wall, oh.
Speaker 3 (20:24):
The art piece. Is he the guy who ate the banana?
Speaker 2 (20:27):
He ate the banana.
Speaker 4 (20:28):
And the best thing about this story is that it
was written by our colleague Zeke Fox, who wrote a
book about crypto It's called Number Go Up. It's really
like the best book that I've read on the subject.
Zeke is basically an expert in all kinds of financial chicanery.
He covered all those ups and downs that I mentioned,
and I wanted to talk to him and try to
(20:48):
understand the story and why all these guys who I
thought of as controversial figures, who would never find themselves
in a room with anybody close to the presidency, are
now in position of power.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
What do they want? What does it mean for our country?
Speaker 3 (21:03):
So this story is called a crypto Billionaire's Path from
Pariah to Trump Moneyman, and ze grote it with Muyaushin
Max take.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
It away, Zeke, thanks for joining us.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
Thanks Max.
Speaker 4 (21:14):
So you and I I think have covered aspects of
this world for a long time. I thought of you
always as like an expert on the on financial scams,
of which there are many in the world of crypto,
and I had kind of gotten interested because of tech
and politics and the way that crypto guys we're trying
to be influential, and Justin Son kind of fits into
both of these worlds.
Speaker 2 (21:35):
He was sued by the SEC.
Speaker 4 (21:37):
In twenty twenty three, accused of I'm selling unregistered securities,
of manipulating the market for tokens and tron He denied wrongdoing,
but then also, and this is where things get kind
of interesting, the suit was paused after Sun happened to
pay seventy five million dollars. It's a lot of money
to a company controlled by the Trump family. And at
(22:00):
some point he also invested fifteen million dollars. For those
keeping track at home, that's ninety million total in Trump's
mean coin. We're not sure of the timing there. Maybe
he was before or after the sec thing, but either way,
after this big initial investment, Justin Son and the Trump
family go into business together.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
Did I get all that right, Zeke.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
Yeah, as long as we're just very strict on the
we're talking about time here. Son first invested ninety million
dollars in Trump coins, and then the lawsuit was paused.
We don't know why exactly.
Speaker 4 (22:36):
I'm just kind of curious that somebody who had kind
of followed these figures in crypto for a long time,
Justin Son being kind of an important figure in this world.
Were you surprised when he just like showed up in
Trump world, you know, when he appeared at this event
in Arlington and like gave a speech next to Trump.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
Yes and no. Within crypto, Son is infamous as lawyers
for Coinbase, the biggest US crypto company, once set in court.
He's kind of mysterious, like people aren't quite sure how
rich he is or how he made his money, but
he's really out there. He loves publicity stunts. He commissioned
(23:17):
a theme song for his blockchain tron by the Oscar
winning composer Hans Zimmer. He paid millions of dollars to
have lunch with Warren Buffett try to pitch him on crypto.
It did not work.
Speaker 2 (23:31):
Yeah, Buffett not a fan of crypto in general.
Speaker 1 (23:33):
Hates crypto. And he ran for prime minister of the
libertarian micro state liber Land.
Speaker 2 (23:42):
Right, which, as I understand, that's somewhere in the Balkans.
Is he is he the prime minister.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
He's the prime Minister, right.
Speaker 4 (23:48):
Okay, And he likes to be referred to as your excellency.
He has a title to that effect from Janata.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
Yes, the title does come from Grenada, and this was
because he was appointed their ambassador to the World Trade Organization.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
I'm going to take a wild guess of how you
get that appointment.
Speaker 1 (24:06):
So at the time, it has since come out that
there was kind of a scandal there and diplomatic posts
were for sale for one hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
We asked Son how he got his post, and his
lawyer said there was no impropriety.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
Okay.
Speaker 4 (24:27):
So Sun is this larger than life figure, and like
you said, you know, he's sort of everywhere and nowhere
in crypto. I think over the last like ten years
or so, this company Tron, was at the center of
this sec thing that was dropped.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
It's his main thing, Like what is Tron?
Speaker 1 (24:42):
Yeah, so Sun's been around since the twenty seventeen ICO
boom initial coin offering. Yes, and this was like the
first crypto bubble when it seemed like anybody who just
said the word blockchain could raise tons of money for whatever.
The pitch was like pretty vague. It was going to
be like a new decentralized Internet, it was going to
(25:04):
be for content, it was going to be an app store.
But at that time it didn't really matter. And Son
had kind of a following from his podcast in China
called the Road to Financial Freedom Revolution, and so he
raised I think seventy million dollars or so for Tron
in this ICO despite the kind of vague pitch and
(25:25):
what tron is is very similar to other blockchains. So
if you only think of crypto as like a replacement
for dollars, that's kind of like a outdated vision of
the industry, And a blockchain is kind of like a ledger.
Speaker 2 (25:48):
The thing.
Speaker 4 (25:48):
The thing usually here is that it's a distributed ledger.
It's like a way of keeping track of payments. But
there are lots of people who think it could be
useful for other things like tracking inventory or something like that.
Speaker 2 (26:02):
I think that's the explanation and.
Speaker 4 (26:04):
The one that is used when people are trying to
explain why crypto isn't just a bunch of guys essentially
trying to pump up worthless currencies.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
Yeah, and tron has become There's one particular thing that
it's mainly used for, which is a stable coin called Tether,
just sort of like a digital dollar, And often when
people transact in Tether, they're using tron to do so.
Speaker 4 (26:32):
So and Tether is used by people who are investing
in cryptocurrencies.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
It's also.
Speaker 4 (26:39):
Very very useful for people who are trying to move
money around without it being noticed, so that could be
like money launders, criminals, terrorists, and so on.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
Yeah, in the last few years, word has definitely spread
around the criminal world that there is this cool new
way of moving money from person to person that does
not involve revealing your identity.
Speaker 4 (27:05):
Right, and a bunch of disclaimers here, number one, pretty
much everyone in the crypto industry. When when people point
this out, we'll say something like, you know, US dollars
are used by money launders and drug dealers. No one
is trying to get rid of the US dollar. Does
it make the Federal Reserve complicit in drug dealing? We
are trying to stop illegal activity. This is just like
(27:27):
kind of a bad thing that's happening. And then the
last thing they bring up is that, you know, many
of these currencies are decentralized, like we don't even control
like what is happening on this network.
Speaker 1 (27:38):
Really, they try to say, like a blockchain like Bitcoin
or Tron, it's like the protocols that power email or websites. Right,
we don't see anyone going after them this technology. Yeah,
Tron and Tether formed the T three Financial Crime Unit,
and they've said that even know it's just technology, we
(28:01):
don't want people doing bad things here. We're going to
try our best to root out crime.
Speaker 4 (28:05):
So just to take a few steps back from the
sort of questions around Justin Son, he was part of
this larger, essentially like romance between Trump and the crypto industry.
It started, you know, sort of mid campaign last year.
I BLUs is like July at the Bitcoin conference, and
(28:26):
I think the conventional wisdom for why Donald Trump, a
populist who had in the past said that he, you know,
thinks crypto is terrible, he prefers the dollar, you know,
in all sorts of ways, doesn't seem like the kind
of guy who would want to embrace crypto. The conventional
wisdom I think for why he embraced it is basically money.
(28:46):
That this is a big class of donors and they
were all writing him checks and as a result, you
had this kind of confluence where Trump took a lot
of crypto money, he got into the crypto business, and
he's also been changing policy and making and causing the
SEC to drop cases such as the one that Justin
Sun's involved in. If you had to make a case
(29:07):
for like why Trump would embrace crypto at that moment,
like what is the case for doing it outside of donations,
just like trying to please donors, like is there any
way that what these guys are offering, either for the
American economy or for the global economy somehow like fits
Trump's agenda.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
I mean, the Trump argument is that the traditional players
in a financial system have been discriminating against conservatives. They've
been cutting off bank accounts of people like the Trumps
because of like the perceived risk of dealing with them.
Speaker 2 (29:44):
Right, this is the decentralization thing.
Speaker 4 (29:45):
Maybe you can't stop money laundering as well as you
could if it were centralized, but you also can't discriminate
against ideological viewpoints.
Speaker 2 (29:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:53):
I think that Trump he has a lot of respect
for other rich people, and that in the past he
may have thought that crypto was not real money and
that these people were not really rich, But then once
he saw that they had lots of real money in
addition to cryptocurrency, he was like, all right, they seem
like my kind of guys. Maybe we should hang out,
Like if they're buying memberships at mar A Lago, but
(30:15):
they're donating to his campaign.
Speaker 4 (30:17):
I also feel like there's something about Justin Sun that's
kind of trumpy, Like he's totally this like self created
who's like using like all of these tools to sort
of create an image, like you brought up the Hans
Zimmer theme song for his company, which is funny, like,
like what company needs a Han Zimmer theme song? I
(30:39):
almost want to hear it kind of coming up in
the background as we're discussing it.
Speaker 2 (30:42):
Have you heard the theme song?
Speaker 1 (30:44):
I definitely have, but don't I cannot describe it properly.
Speaker 4 (30:48):
And then you know he bought this, this piece of art,
the banana that had been duct taped to the wall,
you brought the buffet lunch.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
He basically like, if there's any way.
Speaker 4 (30:57):
To signal status or to use money to signal status,
just the Sun is gone for it.
Speaker 2 (31:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:02):
I mean, actually it's kind of funny because like Trump,
he's willing to sell any sort of like status symbol
that you want as long as it's like a Trump
status symbol. Like he's like, pay me money and you
can live in a Trump apartment, or you can wear
a Trump watch or whatever. And Sun is like the
perfect customer because he loves to spend lots of money
(31:23):
on things that might make him look rich or important.
Speaker 2 (31:27):
He got a Trump watch. In fact, he.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
Got a Trump watch. He actually played a really key
role in Trump, the Trump's getting into the crypto business.
So Trump gave the speech he said, you know, I
love crypto. I'm gonna deregulate the industry. It's going to
be great. Everyone liked that. And then a few weeks
later Trump said, and I'm going to get into the
crypto business myself. I've got this company called World Liberty
(31:51):
and the crypto industry. A lot of people were like,
oh man, this is like you're in it for the
wrong reason, right. We thought you just like want to
to decentralize things. We didn't think you were trying to
make money off of us. And so the sales of
Trump's first cryptocurrency were really slow. It was looking like
(32:12):
the project might not get off the ground. They'd set
out to sell like hundreds of millions of dollars with
these tokens and they only sold a couple of million.
And Son stepped in and bought initially thirty million dollars
in one go, and this like got a lot of
momentum for the Trump project. Sun got named and advisor
(32:35):
to World Liberty, and it kind of put them right
in the in the Trump's orbit.
Speaker 4 (32:40):
And Son, in addition to this money that went into
World Liberty. He also bought one of the Trump Meme coins.
That's another payment that effectively goes to companies controlled by
the Trump family. I feel like I have to ask
the question that like everybody is thinking, but maybe everyone
is afraid to ask, which is first of all, Justin
Sun's born in China, he is not allowed to make
(33:03):
political contributions to political candidates. You're also not, I don't think,
allowed to just say, hey, I'm going to write a
seventy five million dollar check to help with an SEC problem.
Speaker 2 (33:16):
How is this not improper?
Speaker 4 (33:18):
I mean he's making a payment to Trump's or many
payments to Trump's family, and also getting a bunch of
policy considerations.
Speaker 5 (33:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:27):
I think Trump has made it very clear that he
sees nothing wrong with accepting payments with his family, accepting
payments from people who have business before his administration. And
for this to be illegal, you'd have to prove that
(33:49):
favors had been done in exchange for these payments. I mean,
absence that proof, they can just say, hey, you know,
Son really wanted to buy these coins. He thought they
were investments. And then Trump has you know, said I
want to deregulate crypto because I see it as the
future of money. And this case against Sun was just
(34:09):
one of many lawsuits the SEC had filed. I'm instructing
them to toss all of them. So it's not hard
to find examples where there's a conflict of interest. But
so far, I haven't seen anyone who's nailed down something
where they've proven that like a particular action was taken
(34:30):
because of a particular payment, which is like the current
standard for what constitutes corruption.
Speaker 4 (34:39):
Well, and like you said, Trump just blends his personal
identity and his political identity. It's all kind of tied
up together. And I feel like this story and this
guy is just like one example maybe the best example
of what of how Trump is changing, you know, the presidency.
Speaker 1 (34:57):
There's something that Trump said, and this was about the
four hundred million dollar jet that his administration was accepting
from the government of Cutter that I think illustrates his attitude.
And he said I could say no, no, no no,
(35:19):
or I could say thank you very much.
Speaker 4 (35:22):
And okay, zeke to finish up here. We said at
the beginning that tron is decentralized. But in August, the
Bloomberg Billionaires Index published an accounting of Justinsun's assets. That accounting,
and I'm pulling this from your story, was based on
material that had been provided to Bloomberg by Justin. Sun
(35:44):
had all a bunch of his assets, including his art
collection which I believe was worth fifty five million, his
plane and airbus two hundred million, and then this crypto wallet,
and using this crypto wallet, Bloomberg calculated that Sun had
sixty billion Tron tokits, which is a majority of the supply.
Speaker 2 (36:03):
And he's suing Bloomberg over this.
Speaker 1 (36:05):
Yes, So after Bloomberg Billionaires published this valuation, Sun sued
in federal court in Delaware, and he claimed that this
report included details that he'd been promised wouldn't be in there,
(36:27):
something Bloomberg has denied. And he said that listing his
crypto holdings put him at risk of hacking or kidnapping.
And he also said that the list of holdings that
he provided to Bloomberg mistakenly included wallets that did not
(36:50):
belong to him, and that he does not in fact
own a majority of Tron's tokens. But when Bloomberg went
to ask him, which of these holdings are not actually yours?
To get a little more detail on what he was saying.
They did not respond. We've published our story. The lawsuit
(37:11):
is still pending.
Speaker 2 (37:15):
Zeke Fox, thanks for being here.
Speaker 1 (37:17):
Thanks Max.
Speaker 4 (37:23):
All Right, Stacy, the underrated part of the show. You're
gonna love this story. I feel right, this is gonna
be an economic indicator that.
Speaker 2 (37:32):
Is meaningful to you.
Speaker 4 (37:33):
Okay, shoot, Okay, I'm joking because I know you hate it.
But this is a story in Bustle. The headline is
even the sugar daddies are feeling the squeeze, and it
is about how the economic forces that we have been
talking about on the show, the Vibe Session, are impacting
this sector of the economy, the sugar daddy sector of
(37:55):
the economy, essentially where wealthy men are essentially women to
be their girlfriends. These men are feeling less wealthy, these
sugar daddies, and they are cutting back and there the
article suggests that people in this world have a new
term to describe them, splendid daddies, because they're so cheap,
Because I splend it as kind of a crappier.
Speaker 2 (38:17):
Version of sugar.
Speaker 4 (38:19):
And so basically this is the Vibe Session but playing
out in the world of sex work.
Speaker 3 (38:25):
Right, Okay, well, I obviously care about these issues a lot.
I wrote a book about women in the workplace, Machiavelli
for Women, And what this makes me think of immediately is,
you know, for most of history, like women's economic opportunities
was this attaching themselves in whatever way they could to
(38:46):
a man because that was the only way to earn
money or one of the only ways to earn money.
I find it a little distressing that that still exists,
but we still have, you know, like a gender pay
gap is still a really serious thing. So I just
see when I hear these stories, I just feel like
the economic limitations of women in the economy have not
(39:07):
gone like I It makes me sad. I just feel
like Bustle should do better because it's supposed to be
a feminist publication and women are having a hard enough
time in this economy right now. Women the participation in
the workforce has gone backwards recently for the first time
in a long time, because childcare expenses have gotten so high,
and women's earning potential is lower than often their male
(39:30):
partners or whatever husbands, And so if there's if it's
a couple, often it's more economically feasible for the man
to work and the women to stay home. These are
all the things going through my head right now when
I hear about sugar daddies. I just feel like it's
a very old profession finding a rich boyfriend. But I
just feel like, of all the messions, it is the hardest.
Speaker 4 (39:52):
You're saying, like, of all the economic stories, the fact
that these guys are like cutting back on their spending,
we shouldn't be talking about it, like we should be
talking about something else other than the tough times and sugaring.
Speaker 2 (40:06):
Well.
Speaker 3 (40:07):
I just think it's alarming that this is still a
career path for women. I'm surprised and saddened that Bustle
would cover this.
Speaker 4 (40:16):
So yeah, Stacy, And when we talked about this offline,
it was even more Stacy is sort of is being
gentle right now that she had some.
Speaker 3 (40:23):
I've had some time to digest it.
Speaker 4 (40:25):
So but one thing I wanted to say about this
story is that the story is sort of premised on
the idea that this is like the vibe session. So
you have these guys who are like I think the
lead anecdote is like a tennis coach. He's not able,
he doesn't have as many clients right, people are cutting
back on their tennis lessons. Therefore he's cutting back on
his expenses and essentially sending his girlfriends less money and
(40:50):
and so like.
Speaker 2 (40:51):
That is one possible explanation.
Speaker 4 (40:52):
The other possible explanation that the story suggests, and that
some of the women who are in this world put forward,
is that these guys are just cheap, and that it's
not that the economy is bad, it's that, like dating websites,
it's that there's like a market problem.
Speaker 3 (41:09):
I would find it funnier if I felt like the
steaks were lower. I just feel like the stakes are high,
you know, like a lot of women are single parents,
a lot of households count on women, women live a
long time. I just want to see women able to
thrive in this economy. But I don't know that I
do better, do better, report on something else. The show
(41:33):
is produced by Stacy Wong. Magnus Henrickson is our supervising producer,
and Amy Kean is our executive producer. Kelly garat Handle's Engineering,
and Dave Purcell factchecks. Sage Bauman heads Bloomberg Podcasts Special
thanks to Jeff Muskus, Julia Rubin, and Maria ling. If
you have a minute, please rate and review the show.
It means a lot to us. And if you have
a story that should be our business, please send us
(41:54):
an email. Everybody's at Bloomberg dot net. That is, everybody's
with an us at Bloomberg dot net. We love to
hear from you. Thank you for listening, and see your
next time.
Speaker 2 (42:03):
Ye send us stories you hate too, We'll we'll walk
about those.
Speaker 3 (42:06):
We're fine.
Speaker 2 (42:06):
We're good with that.
Speaker 3 (42:07):
We want to hear stories you hate. I control max
with them. Next time, we want us to talk about
sugar daddies.
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
This is Everybody's business from Bloomberg Business Week.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
I'm Max Chafkin and I'm Stacy Vannoxsmith.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Stacey. Have we got a story for you.
Speaker 4 (00:19):
It is about the wildest, weirdest, most interesting man in crypto.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
His name is Justin Sun will tell you all.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
About it, Okay, I'm looking forward to that. Before we
get to that, We've got, of course, the big news
of the week, Max, government shutdown.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Oh Stacy, we're doing this again.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
I know, I know, government shutdowns they happen periodically, but
this time I think is different. We've got Justin Wolfer's
an economists here to help us break that down.
Speaker 4 (00:44):
And Stacy the underrated story of the week. Yeah, two
words for you, little teas splendid.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
Daddy's splendid. Daddy's all right, hang around for that, Okay, Max.
This week the news has been completely are taken by
the government shutdown. It's all the headlines, it's everywhere, It's
all anybody can talk about.
Speaker 4 (01:06):
Well, is Stacy, there is one very very positive economic
indicator that we need to discuss.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
Yes, tell me I want some positive economic indicators.
Speaker 4 (01:15):
Life of a Showgirl the new Taylor Swift album hitting
on Friday tomorrow. As we record this today, as you listen,
you know, Taylor Swift obviously huge mega phenomenon. She she
criss crosses the country raising hotel rooms.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
Hit pause on the podcast and just go listen to that.
Speaker 4 (01:33):
But I mean, seriously, this is it does feel like
a big cultural moment. You know, Taylor Swift obviously the
biggest pop star on the planet right now.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
She's had this amazing run.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
She's been mentioned in the Beige Book as I don't
know what courses that has moved local economies when her
concerts come through town.
Speaker 4 (01:52):
That's what I was alluding to, like the arostour when
it would hit a town, like hotel room prices would
go way up, you know, restaurants would sell more.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
I think there were literal earthquakes that.
Speaker 4 (02:02):
Happened because people were moving around so much in these stadiums.
Speaker 3 (02:06):
So you're saying, this is this moment, is the shutdown
versus Taylor Swift? Can she do enough to salvage the
US economy? I'm the government shutdown.
Speaker 4 (02:16):
Donald Trump and Chuck Schumer, they all have their calculations
about where Americans are going to fall and how much
pain are people going to be willing to accept? But
they haven't counted on the fact that everyone's going to
be distracted for like the next month listening to this.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
Album and dissecting all the lyrics.
Speaker 4 (02:32):
Indeed, that aside Stacy, I mean, the shutdown is happening,
and like this sense of chaos, political chaos that then
kind of tries to spill into the business world that's
continuing this week, and I feel like that's maybe where
we need to start.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
Yes, indeed, and in fact, I was at the University
of Michigan earlier this week. I got to drop in
on economist Justin Wolfer's ECON one oh one class, which
was delightful. It's a class of five hundred students and
at the end and I tracked some of them down
and asked them how they were feeling about the economy
and like what their worries were about the economy at
this moment. Here's what they said. What scares you about
(03:09):
the economy right now?
Speaker 2 (03:10):
The cost of living? Like I have like a girlfriend,
and when we talk about.
Speaker 4 (03:14):
Like our future, it's like are we gonna be able
to get a house or like what are we gonna do.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
I think it's a lot harder for people to get jobs.
Speaker 5 (03:21):
I think that's just a bigger worry and a lot
of students' minds.
Speaker 6 (03:24):
I mean, I would agree with And I've applied to
a bunch of jobs like Panera, bread and.
Speaker 4 (03:27):
Things like that, and I haven't heard bag at all.
Speaker 6 (03:30):
I was originally given a pelgrant and then it got
taken away wit how saying I don't know, just like
the current administration announced that they would be like repealing
to a certain like student.
Speaker 3 (03:41):
Like your pel grant got taken away?
Speaker 6 (03:43):
Yeah, just literally gone. There wasn't an edification or email
or anything.
Speaker 3 (03:47):
It's just what was gone that scares you about the
economy right now, I would have.
Speaker 7 (03:50):
To say the tariffs, And that's really terrifying because President
Trump does state that the other countries will be paying.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
These taxes, but as we've also learned in econ one on.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
One, American consumers will probably be paying a lot of
the tax for it.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
The cost of food.
Speaker 6 (04:03):
Remember, like back in the day, like you could get
a candy bar from ninety nine cents.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
Right now get king sized candy bars going.
Speaker 6 (04:09):
Up to like three dollars, three dollars fifty cents, Like
at the stadium.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
A bottle of water could be like five six dollars.
Speaker 3 (04:14):
So what, oh is this when you guys go to games?
Do you all go to games?
Speaker 6 (04:19):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (04:19):
Yeah, really University of Michigan, Big ten school, they all
go to the games.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
You know what I love about that?
Speaker 4 (04:27):
Like and I say love, but I mean what I
appreciate about hearing those voices. We live in an era
defined by kind of like reality television and social media,
where like presentation is everything, and our politics is playing
out essentially on screens, and you have these two sides
like trying to spin stuff. But all these policies, all
the stuff that's happening in the economy, it has consequences.
(04:48):
And that, like that woman talking about the pelgrant, Yeah,
is a consequence.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
I mean sounds really bad. It sounds really tough.
Speaker 4 (04:55):
And I do wonder as we think about how the
consequences of this government shutdown that we're entering right now
are going to play out. Those are the kinds of
stories that are going to define like how we experience it,
not like what Trump says on TV, not what Schumer
whoever says on TV. It's going to be stories like
that and and I don't know, I just feel like
(05:17):
we have to keep talking to those people. So good job, Stacey.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
The teacher of these really lovely students is economist Justin Wolfers,
and he is here today to talk government shutdown. Thanks
again for letting me sit it on your class and welcome.
Hey Stacey, Justinould, what did you think of what your
students had to say?
Speaker 7 (05:39):
Well, they're brilliant. They I think, well, try and articulate.
And I think it's so lovely to hear young voices
engaging in our economic debates. We're fighting about the future,
and that's who they are.
Speaker 3 (05:52):
Is all around.
Speaker 5 (05:53):
That's what I say, Oh, you're for grade inflation now.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
But Justin, we brought you on to talk about the
government shutdown, that terrible moment when politics and economics meet
and it is a mess. And right now we are
in the middle of a shutdown. Before we kind of
jump into the more granular issues, what do you see
as going on here?
Speaker 5 (06:17):
Mostly politics.
Speaker 7 (06:18):
I understand that people's first instinct at a moment like
this is to call an economist because it feels like
a big deal economically. I think the reality is, if
we think about the macroeconomy, the ups and downs of
GDP and unemployment and recessions and booms and.
Speaker 5 (06:33):
Stuff like that. It's just not that big of a deal.
Speaker 7 (06:36):
So for folks who are not working in or very
closely with the government, what I think the appropriate status
is sort of disappointed parent.
Speaker 3 (06:46):
But seven hundred and fifty thousand people are not working
today because of this, that feels like a big economic deal.
Speaker 7 (06:53):
Absolutely, Although Stacy, there's one hundred and forty million people
who are and one hundred and forty million is substantially big.
In seven hundred and fifty thousand, we're probably talking about
a matter of weeks rather than the full year, and
so you start to do this sort of math and
it starts to become fractions of a percentage point. Look,
two things are true, and I want to be really
clear about it, and I thank you for drawing it.
(07:16):
It can be that something's not a major macroeconomic issue
yet still is a dumb and horrendous and pointless waste.
And were I president, it wouldn't change the reality that
a billion dollars is both a tiny fraction of GDP
and a ton of money and wasting it for no
reason whatsoever. Feels utterly pointless and utterly disparity.
Speaker 4 (07:42):
So justin you're saying it, it doesn't matter economically, or
at least on a macroeconomic point of view. And I
feel like Stacey and I talked about this. We've both
been business journals for a long time. These shutdowns come
with some frequency, right, the last one was in twenty eighteen.
We're constantly hitting the debt ceiling. And if you've been
through this a few times, a dozen times, however many
(08:04):
it's been, you basically just start to feel like, eh,
like this is like they're going to get it figured out.
This is a sort of a manufactured political crisis. The
only thing that matters really is who gets blamed.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
Right.
Speaker 4 (08:16):
I do wonder if this one is a little bit different,
only because this is coming in a larger context, which
is that the Trump administration has been since the beginning,
since January, just trying in various ways to kind of
kneecap parts of the federal government. Right, and to me,
(08:36):
this really feels like an almost repeat of Doge, which
might seem weird to say, but like we had during
the first couple months of the administration, Elon Musk going
around sort of purporting to close various federal agencies laying
people off. I think it's yesterday as we record this
on Thursday, October two, that the workers who took deferred
(08:58):
resignations are are in fact leaving the government. It's like
another one hundred thousand workers. And when you listen to
what the Trump administration is saying, and we listen to
what russ Vote the head of the OMB is saying,
they see this as an opportunity not just to furlough workers,
but to attack parts of the bureaucracy permanently.
Speaker 7 (09:16):
Yes, so much. There max so full of ideas. Let
me start with the first one. You're like, eugh, another,
the government shutdown? Who cares? The problem with that thinking
is the thing that eventually ends the shutdown is people
are like, holy cow, this is terrible, and it causes
(09:37):
political pain for one side or other of politics. That
causes enough that pushes them back to the table, and
they sort it allowed. If we all sit around and
take people like me seriously and say, hey, it's not
that big of a deal, then actually it will never resolve.
And so I think your point that we're all sort
of a little bit indifferent, right, Well, battered, bruised, and
(09:59):
used to large scale shocks to how the government works.
Right now, this would have been outrageous six years ago,
and you and I I think our blood would have boiled.
And this might be the thirteenth worst thing to have
happened so far in October. That removes the urgency. And
if you remove the urgency, that then creates the possibility
(10:20):
that this one actually runs on a whole lot longer.
So the last one went thirty four days. When I
say government shutdowns are not a huge event, I should
say one, We're already shut down most of the government
two days every week, so if we made it a
third wouldn't be a big deal.
Speaker 3 (10:35):
So the government gets shut down right now, it's not
that huge of a deal macroeconomically, and potentially, you know,
thousands of people will lose their jobs.
Speaker 7 (10:46):
Wait, Stacy, could we just hold up because they want
to get the premise right. So what has historically happened
is non essential employees are told not to do any work.
The government remains shut down for two weeks then and
then they shutdown ends and they come back to work.
And usually in every past case, Congress has passed a
law saying even though you didn't do any work for
(11:08):
those two weeks, we're going to pay you anyway. So
no one historically was losing their jobs through this. And
then there's the essential workers who keep working, but they
keep working without getting paid, and then they'll get repaid later,
So there's no job cuts that are essential to this.
What this gets to, though, is Max's earlier point, which
(11:28):
is this is a political escalation at the current moment.
This one's different because normally presidents are embarrassed by their
inability to keep the government open.
Speaker 3 (11:37):
Right this is like a shameful moment, like, oh, you
couldn't get it together and make a deal again, And.
Speaker 5 (11:42):
What we have is escalation.
Speaker 7 (11:45):
Certainly in claims the president says he's going to go
after democratic priorities. He's going to definitely not collect the
trash from outside Max's house, and so on. This president's saying, well,
you guys are doing me, I'm just going to fight back.
So it sounds like when my kids were five. He
has no new powers to fire people right now that
(12:08):
he didn't have yesterday. So if there was whole departments
he wanted to shut down, if he could do it,
he could do it. Two days ago, and he could
still do it in two days time. So the presidents
claim that this brings on an escalation. There's no structural
change that creates that escalation. So the escalation, though, is
that he would be taking advantage of the political moment
that somehow the press and the people would let it
(12:30):
slide that he's going to do something, and other times
we would find repugnant.
Speaker 4 (12:35):
You know, I spent earlier this year a couple of
months reporting on Russ Vote, who I said, head of
the OMB, super interesting character. He wrote part of the
Project twenty twenty five. I think he was involved in
the last government shutdown in fact, and he was kind
of like hanging behind the scenes with Doge.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
Right.
Speaker 4 (12:52):
I described him as like, you know, I can't remember
the words I actually use, but like the real mastermind
or the ideological mastermind or something like that. And what's
interesting is Vote had been saying for like a decade
basically that if we could, we should just like cut
all these woke agencies, defang the deep state, massively cut
back in the government, and that that was like a
(13:13):
political end in itself, and that's what we saw essentially
with Doge A couple months ago right where where they
did this and then discovered, oh crap, it's unpopular. Elon
Musk suddenly had people protesting outside of his dealerships. People
were suddenly putting bumper stickers on their cars, you know,
trading their teslas in. People hated this because, you know,
(13:34):
for all the times we sort of complain and grouse
about the ways that the government doesn't work, like it
actually does work pretty well.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
That was one of the things I think we learned
with Doge.
Speaker 4 (13:44):
And now they're kind of trying to run it back,
but this time blame the Democrats. And like you said,
justin nothing's really changed from a legal perspective, although I'm
sure there might be arguments to be made about, oh,
maybe it's an emergency or something like that, But really
this is about can we pin this on Chuck Schumer?
And I don't know what the answer to that. I
(14:04):
don't think any of us actually know what the answer
to that. I'm not even sure russ Vote Donald Trump
or Chuck Schumer knows the answer.
Speaker 7 (14:12):
I'm not a very good political scientist, so I'm far
less interested in who we pined on, although that's ultimately
going to be what results. Is right one side or
the other will find the situation's not working well for
them and it's better for them to end it. There's
a deeper economics here, which is why was Dozier failure
and why would the same logic fail at the current moment.
(14:33):
So many of us have an image in our minds
of the federal government is big and bloated and pointless.
And last time I went to the DMV, I thought
the person behind the count it might actually have been
a sloth.
Speaker 5 (14:46):
There's a kid's movie where it's Zutopia. It is Utopia.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
Yeah, I got three little ones about twenty times.
Speaker 7 (14:55):
It's a wonderful movie. But yeah, you walk in and like, literally,
the DMV is run by a sloth. And I've been
in that DMV and the sloth isn't even cute. They're
resentful and middle aged and slow moving. And we take.
Speaker 3 (15:09):
That experience with that, I'm just kidding.
Speaker 7 (15:13):
We take that experience and we projected on the rest
of government. There's a few things to recognize here. First
of all, most of our experiences with government, with these
annoying officers are actually state and local.
Speaker 4 (15:22):
I was just gonna say, you're talking about a state
agency that's a problem from Michigan.
Speaker 7 (15:26):
Absolutely, but we all have that idea, and that's why
there's this strong current, particularly through public and politics. Oh,
let's run the government like a business, or let's choke it,
or let's get rid of all these useless employees, which
is what you're hearing a lot of right now. That's
the wrong model for the federal government. There's an old
saying about the federal government. It's an insurance company with
an army. What do I mean by that? The federal
(15:47):
government most of its spending is on what we call
insurance programs. It's unemployment insurance, it's Medicare, it's Medicaid, and those.
Speaker 3 (15:54):
Are like not an issue here at all. I mean,
those are mandatory things. That is not This is what
always blows my mind about the shutdowns. It's not about
the big stuff, you know. I looked into this. I
got really interested in how big a share of the
federal budget went to federal workers, and so I actually
looked this up, and as it turns out, if you
count the military of salary benefits, everything adds up to
(16:17):
about seven percent of the US budget, and if you
don't count the military, it's about five percent. So this
is a very small part of the budget. And then
this healthcare subsidy, the thing that's become a big point
of contention between the right and the left, these sort
of extra subsidies that got rolled out during the pandemic
to help people afford health insurance. I mean, that is
like zero point two percent of the budget. That's really little,
(16:38):
and it's just it really striking to me that so
much is happening over something that is such a small
part of the seven trillion dollar budget that we spend
every year.
Speaker 7 (16:49):
The federal government's it's a small share of the economy.
Much of its function is printing Social Security chicks does
checks is still going to go out. There are important
things the federal government does. Some of them will be
shut down for a small number of weeks. Maybe I
just want to come back to this is not a
macroeconomic moment. Every dollar we waste is a dollar we
(17:10):
didn't have to waste, and it's all for political posturing.
So it's as if we've just given several billion dollars
to both Democrats and Republicans to spend on political advertising
so they can yell at each other.
Speaker 3 (17:22):
And the billion dollars is that the cost or what is.
Speaker 7 (17:24):
The cost here, It's going to be several billion, which
again is a real amount of money. I hate wasting
a billion dollars. We could spend that billion building schools,
or feeding hungry or giving tax cuts to people whose
yachts are not big enough, guilding the White House, gilding.
We could probably guild another whole room with that. One
(17:45):
part of the story we haven't told is the public servants. Right,
These are real people who I teach the other job
I have you started with my economic students. I also
teaching the Ford School of Public Policy. These are young
things in their early twenties who answered Kennedy's call to
ask not what your country can do for you, but
(18:06):
what you can do for your country, who believe deeply
and profoundly in public service and have gone off to
school to become smarter at it, and can't wait to
go back out there and serve the greater good. And
they're being treated appallingly. They're being treated as if they're
the public enemy. For the generation of students I'm teaching
right now, there may not be jobs for them. For
the folks who are currently in the federal government, which
(18:27):
includes many of my former students. They're being asked to
go without pay for as long as the politicians decide.
And that's the thing I will just tell you. This
is not being an economist, This is being a person.
I find it utterly dismaying the extent to which we
are using people as pawns in greater political games. And
I've seen more of that since January of twenty twenty
(18:49):
five than I've ever seen in my life. And every
time I see it, it churns my stomach a lot.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
Wow, justin, thank you for being here. Thank you, justin,
thank you very much.
Speaker 3 (19:05):
Okay, Max, at the top of the show, you promised
that we were going to hear about the most interesting
man in crypto. It is time to deliver.
Speaker 4 (19:11):
Yeah, but we need to back up, and I just
need to explain a little bit about Trump and crypto
because I think that's what the big issue here is.
Speaker 3 (19:18):
Okay. I do feel like the first six months of
the Trump presidency there's been a lot of crypto news.
Some of it I followed, some of it not so much.
So what is going on right now with Trump and crypto?
Speaker 4 (19:29):
Yeah, this is an industry that Trump seemed to despise,
during his first term. It's also one that I'm sure
most listeners know. Lots of controversy, lots of allegations, some
big ups, some big downs, and many of the leading
lights you know going back a few years ago were
either criminally charged or convicted or the subject of SEC cases.
(19:50):
And basically Stacy, with a couple of exceptions, all those
cases pretty much are gone now they've been.
Speaker 3 (19:57):
The President has his own coin, the Converted.
Speaker 4 (20:01):
Indeed, yeah, he's he's in the crypto business now. And
there's an amazing BusinessWeek story out right now that kind
of explains this.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
It's focused on Justin Sun, who.
Speaker 4 (20:10):
Is, like I said, this wild figure in the industry.
He's the founder of the blockchain network Tron will explain
what that is in a second. He owns that big
famous banana or the banana that was duct taped to
the wall, oh.
Speaker 3 (20:24):
The art piece. Is he the guy who ate the banana?
Speaker 2 (20:27):
He ate the banana.
Speaker 4 (20:28):
And the best thing about this story is that it
was written by our colleague Zeke Fox, who wrote a
book about crypto It's called Number Go Up. It's really
like the best book that I've read on the subject.
Zeke is basically an expert in all kinds of financial chicanery.
He covered all those ups and downs that I mentioned,
and I wanted to talk to him and try to
(20:48):
understand the story and why all these guys who I
thought of as controversial figures, who would never find themselves
in a room with anybody close to the presidency, are
now in position of power.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
What do they want? What does it mean for our country?
Speaker 3 (21:03):
So this story is called a crypto Billionaire's Path from
Pariah to Trump Moneyman, and ze grote it with Muyaushin
Max take.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
It away, Zeke, thanks for joining us.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
Thanks Max.
Speaker 4 (21:14):
So you and I I think have covered aspects of
this world for a long time. I thought of you
always as like an expert on the on financial scams,
of which there are many in the world of crypto,
and I had kind of gotten interested because of tech
and politics and the way that crypto guys we're trying
to be influential, and Justin Son kind of fits into
both of these worlds.
Speaker 2 (21:35):
He was sued by the SEC.
Speaker 4 (21:37):
In twenty twenty three, accused of I'm selling unregistered securities,
of manipulating the market for tokens and tron He denied wrongdoing,
but then also, and this is where things get kind
of interesting, the suit was paused after Sun happened to
pay seventy five million dollars. It's a lot of money
to a company controlled by the Trump family. And at
(22:00):
some point he also invested fifteen million dollars. For those
keeping track at home, that's ninety million total in Trump's
mean coin. We're not sure of the timing there. Maybe
he was before or after the sec thing, but either way,
after this big initial investment, Justin Son and the Trump
family go into business together.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
Did I get all that right, Zeke.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
Yeah, as long as we're just very strict on the
we're talking about time here. Son first invested ninety million
dollars in Trump coins, and then the lawsuit was paused.
We don't know why exactly.
Speaker 4 (22:36):
I'm just kind of curious that somebody who had kind
of followed these figures in crypto for a long time,
Justin Son being kind of an important figure in this world.
Were you surprised when he just like showed up in
Trump world, you know, when he appeared at this event
in Arlington and like gave a speech next to Trump.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
Yes and no. Within crypto, Son is infamous as lawyers
for Coinbase, the biggest US crypto company, once set in court.
He's kind of mysterious, like people aren't quite sure how
rich he is or how he made his money, but
he's really out there. He loves publicity stunts. He commissioned
(23:17):
a theme song for his blockchain tron by the Oscar
winning composer Hans Zimmer. He paid millions of dollars to
have lunch with Warren Buffett try to pitch him on crypto.
It did not work.
Speaker 2 (23:31):
Yeah, Buffett not a fan of crypto in general.
Speaker 1 (23:33):
Hates crypto. And he ran for prime minister of the
libertarian micro state liber Land.
Speaker 2 (23:42):
Right, which, as I understand, that's somewhere in the Balkans.
Is he is he the prime minister.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
He's the prime Minister, right.
Speaker 4 (23:48):
Okay, And he likes to be referred to as your excellency.
He has a title to that effect from Janata.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
Yes, the title does come from Grenada, and this was
because he was appointed their ambassador to the World Trade Organization.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
I'm going to take a wild guess of how you
get that appointment.
Speaker 1 (24:06):
So at the time, it has since come out that
there was kind of a scandal there and diplomatic posts
were for sale for one hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
We asked Son how he got his post, and his
lawyer said there was no impropriety.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
Okay.
Speaker 4 (24:27):
So Sun is this larger than life figure, and like
you said, you know, he's sort of everywhere and nowhere
in crypto. I think over the last like ten years
or so, this company Tron, was at the center of
this sec thing that was dropped.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
It's his main thing, Like what is Tron?
Speaker 1 (24:42):
Yeah, so Sun's been around since the twenty seventeen ICO
boom initial coin offering. Yes, and this was like the
first crypto bubble when it seemed like anybody who just
said the word blockchain could raise tons of money for whatever.
The pitch was like pretty vague. It was going to
be like a new decentralized Internet, it was going to
(25:04):
be for content, it was going to be an app store.
But at that time it didn't really matter. And Son
had kind of a following from his podcast in China
called the Road to Financial Freedom Revolution, and so he
raised I think seventy million dollars or so for Tron
in this ICO despite the kind of vague pitch and
(25:25):
what tron is is very similar to other blockchains. So
if you only think of crypto as like a replacement
for dollars, that's kind of like a outdated vision of
the industry, And a blockchain is kind of like a ledger.
Speaker 2 (25:48):
The thing.
Speaker 4 (25:48):
The thing usually here is that it's a distributed ledger.
It's like a way of keeping track of payments. But
there are lots of people who think it could be
useful for other things like tracking inventory or something like that.
Speaker 2 (26:02):
I think that's the explanation and.
Speaker 4 (26:04):
The one that is used when people are trying to
explain why crypto isn't just a bunch of guys essentially
trying to pump up worthless currencies.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
Yeah, and tron has become There's one particular thing that
it's mainly used for, which is a stable coin called Tether,
just sort of like a digital dollar, And often when
people transact in Tether, they're using tron to do so.
Speaker 4 (26:32):
So and Tether is used by people who are investing
in cryptocurrencies.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
It's also.
Speaker 4 (26:39):
Very very useful for people who are trying to move
money around without it being noticed, so that could be
like money launders, criminals, terrorists, and so on.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
Yeah, in the last few years, word has definitely spread
around the criminal world that there is this cool new
way of moving money from person to person that does
not involve revealing your identity.
Speaker 4 (27:05):
Right, and a bunch of disclaimers here, number one, pretty
much everyone in the crypto industry. When when people point
this out, we'll say something like, you know, US dollars
are used by money launders and drug dealers. No one
is trying to get rid of the US dollar. Does
it make the Federal Reserve complicit in drug dealing? We
are trying to stop illegal activity. This is just like
(27:27):
kind of a bad thing that's happening. And then the
last thing they bring up is that, you know, many
of these currencies are decentralized, like we don't even control
like what is happening on this network.
Speaker 1 (27:38):
Really, they try to say, like a blockchain like Bitcoin
or Tron, it's like the protocols that power email or websites. Right,
we don't see anyone going after them this technology. Yeah,
Tron and Tether formed the T three Financial Crime Unit,
and they've said that even know it's just technology, we
(28:01):
don't want people doing bad things here. We're going to
try our best to root out crime.
Speaker 4 (28:05):
So just to take a few steps back from the
sort of questions around Justin Son, he was part of
this larger, essentially like romance between Trump and the crypto industry.
It started, you know, sort of mid campaign last year.
I BLUs is like July at the Bitcoin conference, and
(28:26):
I think the conventional wisdom for why Donald Trump, a
populist who had in the past said that he, you know,
thinks crypto is terrible, he prefers the dollar, you know,
in all sorts of ways, doesn't seem like the kind
of guy who would want to embrace crypto. The conventional
wisdom I think for why he embraced it is basically money.
(28:46):
That this is a big class of donors and they
were all writing him checks and as a result, you
had this kind of confluence where Trump took a lot
of crypto money, he got into the crypto business, and
he's also been changing policy and making and causing the
SEC to drop cases such as the one that Justin
Sun's involved in. If you had to make a case
(29:07):
for like why Trump would embrace crypto at that moment,
like what is the case for doing it outside of donations,
just like trying to please donors, like is there any
way that what these guys are offering, either for the
American economy or for the global economy somehow like fits
Trump's agenda.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
I mean, the Trump argument is that the traditional players
in a financial system have been discriminating against conservatives. They've
been cutting off bank accounts of people like the Trumps
because of like the perceived risk of dealing with them.
Speaker 2 (29:44):
Right, this is the decentralization thing.
Speaker 4 (29:45):
Maybe you can't stop money laundering as well as you
could if it were centralized, but you also can't discriminate
against ideological viewpoints.
Speaker 2 (29:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:53):
I think that Trump he has a lot of respect
for other rich people, and that in the past he
may have thought that crypto was not real money and
that these people were not really rich, But then once
he saw that they had lots of real money in
addition to cryptocurrency, he was like, all right, they seem
like my kind of guys. Maybe we should hang out,
Like if they're buying memberships at mar A Lago, but
(30:15):
they're donating to his campaign.
Speaker 4 (30:17):
I also feel like there's something about Justin Sun that's
kind of trumpy, Like he's totally this like self created
who's like using like all of these tools to sort
of create an image, like you brought up the Hans
Zimmer theme song for his company, which is funny, like,
like what company needs a Han Zimmer theme song? I
(30:39):
almost want to hear it kind of coming up in
the background as we're discussing it.
Speaker 2 (30:42):
Have you heard the theme song?
Speaker 1 (30:44):
I definitely have, but don't I cannot describe it properly.
Speaker 4 (30:48):
And then you know he bought this, this piece of art,
the banana that had been duct taped to the wall,
you brought the buffet lunch.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
He basically like, if there's any way.
Speaker 4 (30:57):
To signal status or to use money to signal status,
just the Sun is gone for it.
Speaker 2 (31:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:02):
I mean, actually it's kind of funny because like Trump,
he's willing to sell any sort of like status symbol
that you want as long as it's like a Trump
status symbol. Like he's like, pay me money and you
can live in a Trump apartment, or you can wear
a Trump watch or whatever. And Sun is like the
perfect customer because he loves to spend lots of money
(31:23):
on things that might make him look rich or important.
Speaker 2 (31:27):
He got a Trump watch. In fact, he.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
Got a Trump watch. He actually played a really key
role in Trump, the Trump's getting into the crypto business.
So Trump gave the speech he said, you know, I
love crypto. I'm gonna deregulate the industry. It's going to
be great. Everyone liked that. And then a few weeks
later Trump said, and I'm going to get into the
crypto business myself. I've got this company called World Liberty
(31:51):
and the crypto industry. A lot of people were like,
oh man, this is like you're in it for the
wrong reason, right. We thought you just like want to
to decentralize things. We didn't think you were trying to
make money off of us. And so the sales of
Trump's first cryptocurrency were really slow. It was looking like
(32:12):
the project might not get off the ground. They'd set
out to sell like hundreds of millions of dollars with
these tokens and they only sold a couple of million.
And Son stepped in and bought initially thirty million dollars
in one go, and this like got a lot of
momentum for the Trump project. Sun got named and advisor
(32:35):
to World Liberty, and it kind of put them right
in the in the Trump's orbit.
Speaker 4 (32:40):
And Son, in addition to this money that went into
World Liberty. He also bought one of the Trump Meme coins.
That's another payment that effectively goes to companies controlled by
the Trump family. I feel like I have to ask
the question that like everybody is thinking, but maybe everyone
is afraid to ask, which is first of all, Justin
Sun's born in China, he is not allowed to make
(33:03):
political contributions to political candidates. You're also not, I don't think,
allowed to just say, hey, I'm going to write a
seventy five million dollar check to help with an SEC problem.
Speaker 2 (33:16):
How is this not improper?
Speaker 4 (33:18):
I mean he's making a payment to Trump's or many
payments to Trump's family, and also getting a bunch of
policy considerations.
Speaker 5 (33:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:27):
I think Trump has made it very clear that he
sees nothing wrong with accepting payments with his family, accepting
payments from people who have business before his administration. And
for this to be illegal, you'd have to prove that
(33:49):
favors had been done in exchange for these payments. I mean,
absence that proof, they can just say, hey, you know,
Son really wanted to buy these coins. He thought they
were investments. And then Trump has you know, said I
want to deregulate crypto because I see it as the
future of money. And this case against Sun was just
(34:09):
one of many lawsuits the SEC had filed. I'm instructing
them to toss all of them. So it's not hard
to find examples where there's a conflict of interest. But
so far, I haven't seen anyone who's nailed down something
where they've proven that like a particular action was taken
(34:30):
because of a particular payment, which is like the current
standard for what constitutes corruption.
Speaker 4 (34:39):
Well, and like you said, Trump just blends his personal
identity and his political identity. It's all kind of tied
up together. And I feel like this story and this
guy is just like one example maybe the best example
of what of how Trump is changing, you know, the presidency.
Speaker 1 (34:57):
There's something that Trump said, and this was about the
four hundred million dollar jet that his administration was accepting
from the government of Cutter that I think illustrates his attitude.
And he said I could say no, no, no no,
(35:19):
or I could say thank you very much.
Speaker 4 (35:22):
And okay, zeke to finish up here. We said at
the beginning that tron is decentralized. But in August, the
Bloomberg Billionaires Index published an accounting of Justinsun's assets. That accounting,
and I'm pulling this from your story, was based on
material that had been provided to Bloomberg by Justin. Sun
(35:44):
had all a bunch of his assets, including his art
collection which I believe was worth fifty five million, his
plane and airbus two hundred million, and then this crypto wallet,
and using this crypto wallet, Bloomberg calculated that Sun had
sixty billion Tron tokits, which is a majority of the supply.
Speaker 2 (36:03):
And he's suing Bloomberg over this.
Speaker 1 (36:05):
Yes, So after Bloomberg Billionaires published this valuation, Sun sued
in federal court in Delaware, and he claimed that this
report included details that he'd been promised wouldn't be in there,
(36:27):
something Bloomberg has denied. And he said that listing his
crypto holdings put him at risk of hacking or kidnapping.
And he also said that the list of holdings that
he provided to Bloomberg mistakenly included wallets that did not
(36:50):
belong to him, and that he does not in fact
own a majority of Tron's tokens. But when Bloomberg went
to ask him, which of these holdings are not actually yours?
To get a little more detail on what he was saying.
They did not respond. We've published our story. The lawsuit
(37:11):
is still pending.
Speaker 2 (37:15):
Zeke Fox, thanks for being here.
Speaker 1 (37:17):
Thanks Max.
Speaker 4 (37:23):
All Right, Stacy, the underrated part of the show. You're
gonna love this story. I feel right, this is gonna
be an economic indicator that.
Speaker 2 (37:32):
Is meaningful to you.
Speaker 4 (37:33):
Okay, shoot, Okay, I'm joking because I know you hate it.
But this is a story in Bustle. The headline is
even the sugar daddies are feeling the squeeze, and it
is about how the economic forces that we have been
talking about on the show, the Vibe Session, are impacting
this sector of the economy, the sugar daddy sector of
(37:55):
the economy, essentially where wealthy men are essentially women to
be their girlfriends. These men are feeling less wealthy, these
sugar daddies, and they are cutting back and there the
article suggests that people in this world have a new
term to describe them, splendid daddies, because they're so cheap,
Because I splend it as kind of a crappier.
Speaker 2 (38:17):
Version of sugar.
Speaker 4 (38:19):
And so basically this is the Vibe Session but playing
out in the world of sex work.
Speaker 3 (38:25):
Right, Okay, well, I obviously care about these issues a lot.
I wrote a book about women in the workplace, Machiavelli
for Women, And what this makes me think of immediately is,
you know, for most of history, like women's economic opportunities
was this attaching themselves in whatever way they could to
(38:46):
a man because that was the only way to earn
money or one of the only ways to earn money.
I find it a little distressing that that still exists,
but we still have, you know, like a gender pay
gap is still a really serious thing. So I just
see when I hear these stories, I just feel like
the economic limitations of women in the economy have not
(39:07):
gone like I It makes me sad. I just feel
like Bustle should do better because it's supposed to be
a feminist publication and women are having a hard enough
time in this economy right now. Women the participation in
the workforce has gone backwards recently for the first time
in a long time, because childcare expenses have gotten so high,
and women's earning potential is lower than often their male
(39:30):
partners or whatever husbands, And so if there's if it's
a couple, often it's more economically feasible for the man
to work and the women to stay home. These are
all the things going through my head right now when
I hear about sugar daddies. I just feel like it's
a very old profession finding a rich boyfriend. But I
just feel like, of all the messions, it is the hardest.
Speaker 4 (39:52):
You're saying, like, of all the economic stories, the fact
that these guys are like cutting back on their spending,
we shouldn't be talking about it, like we should be
talking about something else other than the tough times and sugaring.
Speaker 2 (40:06):
Well.
Speaker 3 (40:07):
I just think it's alarming that this is still a
career path for women. I'm surprised and saddened that Bustle
would cover this.
Speaker 4 (40:16):
So yeah, Stacy, And when we talked about this offline,
it was even more Stacy is sort of is being
gentle right now that she had some.
Speaker 3 (40:23):
I've had some time to digest it.
Speaker 4 (40:25):
So but one thing I wanted to say about this
story is that the story is sort of premised on
the idea that this is like the vibe session. So
you have these guys who are like I think the
lead anecdote is like a tennis coach. He's not able,
he doesn't have as many clients right, people are cutting
back on their tennis lessons. Therefore he's cutting back on
his expenses and essentially sending his girlfriends less money and
(40:50):
and so like.
Speaker 2 (40:51):
That is one possible explanation.
Speaker 4 (40:52):
The other possible explanation that the story suggests, and that
some of the women who are in this world put forward,
is that these guys are just cheap, and that it's
not that the economy is bad, it's that, like dating websites,
it's that there's like a market problem.
Speaker 3 (41:09):
I would find it funnier if I felt like the
steaks were lower. I just feel like the stakes are high,
you know, like a lot of women are single parents,
a lot of households count on women, women live a
long time. I just want to see women able to
thrive in this economy. But I don't know that I
do better, do better, report on something else. The show
(41:33):
is produced by Stacy Wong. Magnus Henrickson is our supervising producer,
and Amy Kean is our executive producer. Kelly garat Handle's Engineering,
and Dave Purcell factchecks. Sage Bauman heads Bloomberg Podcasts Special
thanks to Jeff Muskus, Julia Rubin, and Maria ling. If
you have a minute, please rate and review the show.
It means a lot to us. And if you have
a story that should be our business, please send us
(41:54):
an email. Everybody's at Bloomberg dot net. That is, everybody's
with an us at Bloomberg dot net. We love to
hear from you. Thank you for listening, and see your
next time.
Speaker 2 (42:03):
Ye send us stories you hate too, We'll we'll walk
about those.
Speaker 3 (42:06):
We're fine.
Speaker 2 (42:06):
We're good with that.
Speaker 3 (42:07):
We want to hear stories you hate. I control max
with them. Next time, we want us to talk about
sugar daddies.
Host
David Papadopoulos
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