Intel, MAHA, and Trump’s Similarities with Richard Nixon
Summary
Government Intervention in Intel: The Trump administration's move to take an equity stake in Intel, justified by Biden's CHIPS Act, raises concerns about government involvement in private companies, likened to a sovereign wealth fund.
Trump's Influence on Economic Policy: Trump's reactive style, often influenced by media, is seen in his demand for a 10% equity in Intel, reflecting a broader trend of government interventionism.
Historical Context: The podcast draws parallels between current economic policies and historical precedents, such as Nixon's interventionist policies, highlighting a long-standing trajectory of government involvement in the economy.
Fed Independence and Political Influence: Recent developments, including Trump's influence on the Federal Reserve and potential rate cuts, underscore the politicization of the Fed, challenging the notion of its independence.
Impact of Monetary Policy on Inflation: Discussions highlight how monetary policy and inflation affect consumer choices, particularly in food and nutrition, emphasizing the need for a cultural shift towards healthier living.
RFK's Interventionist Approach: RFK's policies, while addressing public health and nutrition, are critiqued for maintaining an interventionist mindset, suggesting a need for a paradigm shift away from government solutions.
Future Economic Uncertainty: The podcast anticipates significant political and economic shifts in the coming years, driven by potential inflationary pressures and the evolving role of government in economic policy.
Transcript
[Music] Welcome back to power and market our weekly roundtable discussion of important news of the day. I'm going to be your host today though Bishop joined not by Ryan McMakon but by two other great members of the editorial team. We have in his usual spot, Connor O'Keefe with his regular Wednesday column and making his first time appearance here on Power Power Power and Market, Joshua Mahorder, who's got our Friday morning column. Uh big week right now, uh college football week. I know. Uh Connor, I'm sure you're you're feeling the the energy building in the nice little village of the Plains in Auburn. It's an away game though tomorrow. So, >> well, inner Austrian. Yeah, we we we've got uh we've got Auburn versus Baylor on Friday. So, some some Klene versus Jonathan Newman action going on there, but we will not be talking and breaking down the college football lineup. We will be >> talking about some of the most noteworthy events and uh it has been full stop on that side of things every day with a new headline. And so we'll start today's show with a major topic of conversation. This has been I think building for a few weeks now, not a few months, but the Trump administration taking uh a an equity claim into Intel, uh which is, you know, they're justifying it based off of Biden administration policies regarding the chips act. There is discussion about further moves in this. There has been larger discussions about a sovereign wealth fund. A lot of it's been a good time to be giving away Hayek books since a lot of uh Hayek commentary out there from those warning about the dangers of that. And if you have not gotten your copy of Hayek for the 21st century, should do it right now at mises.org/hyek21. That's mises.org/hayek21 as in 21st century there. Great book uh free uh thanks to our donor drive. But that being said, uh Connor, you have an article this week on this very topic. So I will open it up to you and let you take this uh in the direction that you would like. >> Yeah. So I wrote about this mainly because of the reaction the the reaction to the deal and just to run over it really quick um because I think that the story of it uh sort of um insightful in some ways. Um, from all indications, it looks like this was another example of Trump watching Fox News, in this case, Fox Business, um, and it then, you know, generating uh, federal policy as a result. So, he was watching a morning show there. There was a segment where the host was going over some concerns that um China hawks in Congress, specifically um Josh Holly I think had raised about the CEO of Intel um and how like with his background he may have had some connections in the Chinese military. And so people went and like uh connected it. And 5 minutes after this segment airs, Trump puts some post out on Truth Social about how this guy needs to be, you know, he needs to step down immediately. He said something there's no other solution for this. It has to happen immediately. Um and then Intel freaked out. They reached out to the White House. They uh got a a meeting organized. So the CEO flew out there um and they sat down. Turns out there were other solutions um to this. Trump basically agreed to back down on this public threat um well threat maybe isn't the right word, but this demand um for him to to step down, but in exchange he wanted 10% um equity share in Intel and yeah, like of course so and uh Intel agreed to this. It was announced last Friday, I believe. But Trump of course is celebrating this. You know, he he loves anything that's like dealmaking. that that's kind of his thing. And um he is really trying to to bolster support for this by bragging that he paid no money for it. And as you sort of mentioned before, the reason um he's able to kind of say that is because the money used in this specific det. So he's of course, you know, acting like this is some amazing deal. Um, and there's some other details I kind of glossed over in the article about how like they want to do this with other companies and it looks like a sovereign wealth fund is the the goal here. And you know, there are plenty of things to say about that. But specifically, I wrote this article because people were freaking out that this was like fascism or like socialism. And it's like that there is something to that for sure. Um, we're not a fan of either of those, but I thought it was important to maybe not remind people that people that are, you know, regular readers of misuses.org or are serious listeners of the show know this, but for people that maybe they're talking to or people uh sort of outside of our circles, it's an important thing to drill down that like heavy government involvement in the economy is not a new thing. This is not some unprecedented like leap into, you know, a fascistic corporatist economy. um the history of that is extensive and it goes back um over a century and I just wanted to sort of drill down and make that point. But yeah, I don't know there there's a lot of uh different angles to the story and that was the specific one I wanted to focus on. >> Um yeah, you know, I had benefit of uh looking over and editing Connor's article before it went out. So, uh which I was enjoy doing, but we actually got a couple of articles on this after the fact uh kind of coming at it from um some different angles. It is telling um and I think this is probably true for lots of our uh political elites. Uh but you know that Trump came to this by by watching TV. So kind of just his shoot from the hip reactive kind of uh thing as style which sometimes can land in our benefit and a lot of times is just it doesn't have a lot of um depth of thought behind it. But uh I thought the way that it was phrased even just in the teaser of the article was that this is really just a rebrand. As long as Trump can say it's it's his. It doesn't really matter what the policy is or does. It doesn't matter if it was borrowed from Biden. It doesn't matter. And this is honestly just like a reflection of um just the like the big beautiful bill. It's he's runs on we're going to cut spending. we're going to cut all these things. No, we're going to do more than ever, but it's going to be big and beautiful and and all this. So, um the the way I kind of saw it as I was reading, Connor focused in on the um the element that this isn't, you know, it it is kind of like fascism, but it's just another form of um of interventionism, but it's uh others have brought up that it's it's moving toward that kind of like sovereign wealth fund. And uh I think the the most annoying thing about it is Trump has this mindset that a lot of people actually have the paradigm that the government is us and that the government is we. So he says we, you know, I didn't give up anything. We spent this money. We got this awesome deal and we have a 10% stake and we're going to make this money. Same with tariffs. Oh, we're going to get all this beautiful money from tariffs. Well, no. If tariffs bring in revenue or this company brings in revenue, the money the government gets uh gets more money, you know, like Trump was being excited about. Uh back in the 1800s, they had a government surplus. That just means they taxed and had more money than the government knew what to do with. It didn't mean the American people um were were any better off. It was actually the opposite because the money was in the hands uh hands of the government. So I mean there really need to you know Rothbard was key on that but breaking that paradigm that the government is not us we are not better off because the government has a 10% share stake in uh in in Intel or any other business. No, absolutely. You know, I I think Connor, your your angle there, I think, is a great one because I I do have to roll my eyes a bit when I see people again, I agree agree with the core, you know, idea, right? Like, you know, this is a a troubling policy, right? This is, you know, this in increasing low, you know, line to the sort of state capitalist model. But, you know, when I see people kind of leaning on, oh, well, you know, he's he's he's ignoring mainstream economists, and I I see even libertarians, I see even like, you know, Austrian folks explicitly talking about like, oh, well, Trump and his economic adviserss, you know, are just hostile to to to mainstream economics, this, that, and the other. Like, this is exactly the road that we have been on for decades, right? you know, we can have I think there's an interesting conversation to be had on whether an equity stake is worse than a direct subsidization of an industry, which is what the chips act was. um to make it clear because I saw some people on social media you know we we were against the chips act we were against this but if you are part of a profession or when when you there was the broad consensus that oh well something had to be done on the chump front the same way that something had to be done bailing out you know various you know name your Wall Street bank here during 2008 something had to be done to do this that and the other well then don't be surprised when inevitably you get a more explicit action here and I I think the broadening scope of this is is interesting and and troubling. Um again I I see a lot of the companies being suggested as who might be next in this order all kind of similarly I think fall in the range of you know these companies that are receiving CHIPS act funding um you know kind of keeping within that sector as part of this program but again don't be surprised when we have you know already glossed over the lines between private and public where that component gets more explicit here and so that there's been a long building momentum for this by again the mainstream of the economic profession and all of the the the fallacies that have been built in here. One of the things I think is kind of interesting though is that like these are precisely the warnings that the institute has been making for decades, right? you you go back to the 90s and you'll find you know Lou Rockwell and Murray Rothbart and and it was the Austrian scholars that were warning about you know our increasing step into economic fascism if you will and that position at that time you know was was being you know was attacked oh it's you're you're being radical you're being extremist you're being fringe whatever everything is great but like this is precisely the course of events that have been building up to decades of policy that had become accepted and unless you're going to have a fundamental radical re-evaluation of what the role of state and private industry should be. Unless you really orientate things towards recognizing the clear distinction that needs to be made off of property rights and kind of the divide between state and banking, you know, state and private business and banking and everything that goes into it. Don't be surprised when this is what it looks like. And I I think there's another interesting component to it where you know this has been the drum beat for the left for quite some time of like oh well you know the fantasizing the of I just imagine if America could have a more Chinese modeled economy now we're kind of seeing it more on the right and I think there's there's some valid you know concerns about it coming from both sides now but again this has largely been accepted this has been baked into where we have been going as on a trajectory for quite some time >> right and it's that that's how I sort of see it is the status quo is a trajectory. It's this trajectory of growth of the government and growth of, you know, the amount of interventions out there. And that is sort of like this is a theme that we've touched on in the show over and over again because it's kind of the same theme for a lot of different stories. Um the they're trying like the media is freaking out about what Trump's doing and acting like he's coming in and just shattering president when all he's doing is just taking what was happening before, taking that same trajectory and rebranding it as his own. And so like we're attacking from the other side there because it's like it he ran as like this big disruptor and all we're getting is the same thing. And then that's the other like component and this is a good example of it. It's like all these maggot types are just acting like they will be in power forever. And that's just like that is very very very unlikely to put it kindly. And so what what you're going to have is like, yeah, if they build up all these stakes in all these different companies, they're just going to be handing those over to the government or to the to the Democrats to, you know, back to the establishment to the extent that the establishment doesn't already run it right now under Trump. And so it's just like it's just very disappointing um you know, after not that I really let myself get too excited um about like this big, you know, disruption that was coming uh during the campaign and like a lot of the rhetoric. I was skeptical and happy. I was skeptical, but it's just it's very frustrating to be in the thick of it right now. And this is just yet another example. >> Do you have anything else to add, Josh? >> Well, I think also just the uh you know the point about the tying back to the chips act and the this ties to um stuff with like Taiwan, right? And that that they can make the microchips. Is that right? I mean that >> that Yeah. So it's somebody was making the point the other day that you know everybody asks oh my gosh Vive Ramas Swami was making this a big point as well that oh well we've got to you know this also ties into foreign policy we've got to uh go to war potentially with China another giant nuclear power uh over Taiwan if if necessary but the Taiwanese are are treated like this magical people or magical place that are the only people in the world who know how to create microchips. where really microchips could be made lots of places. There's comparative advantage and all that, which is fine, but if we rolled back the government interventions, laws, taxes, inflation, microchips could be made in America or anywhere else. And if they're so important, you know, then how about we scale it back? But it's always um it's always more interventions forward and more involvement of the state and then when that causes other problems amazingly the free market that that doesn't exist in its pure form is blamed and more interventions are are the result. And so and both the left and the right um agree on that for for different different reasons. One thing I think is interesting just for a historical overlap is um it's it's kind of interesting. We've seen this a lot online of late. Um I think even Chris Rufo was on was it Bill Maher or something like that where he talked about how like Nixon's going to be vindicated and so like there's there's definitely like you know there's there's definitely a vibe there's definitely a social media sort of trend about you know base Nixon and this sort of stuff and like Nixon himself very interesting character like you know we can have a separate conversation about Watergate as a deep state coup. Um you know Murray Rothbart actually has some very interesting articles on that where he kind of accepts like yeah like this was kind of an interesting deep state operation to remove Nixon. But there is another aspect they here though that I think is very interesting. Um and actually I think it was earlier this year maybe in February um we released an old lecture um or or a talk that Rothbart gave um and the the title was a narco nixonism um and the the NEP which is like the new economic policy and like the the point that Nick that that Trump that that Rothbart was making that I think has a lot of interesting overlap with just the current political zeitgeist is that he was responding to at the time a lot of libertarians in his orbit But even a lot of you know young 1970s you know early you know anc Rothbartians whatever who were very much attracted to Nixon um for a variety of reasons and that you know he was watching how like Nixonian policy plays out like they're always re reassuring like behind the scenes like oh well don't worry like you know he says this he says that but like behind the scenes actually really smart he's really interesting these ideas um there's a lot of kind of actually interesting scholarship about like you know Nixon as classical liberal that sort of stuff that you know is worth considering but like Rothbart's point was that you know Nixon in power has this very much this grabag of economic policies that there is no cohesive economic theory guiding what Nixonianism is. Nixonianism is this use of power. It is kind of a protoversion of you can just do things. And so you had price controls obviously had going off the gold standard as as one of the big ones that we talk about. But, you know, there was all these various aspects and you had all of these people that were, you know, center-right economists defending these sort of policies with the belief that, oh, this is what was needed to be in the moment. And the NEP aspect of it was was derived from uh, you know, Lenin's new economic policy that was just kind of this we're throwing out orthodox Marxism. We're just going to kind of throw everything out there. Everything's going to be underneath the state. We're going to pull whatever we can. And like I think there's a lot of interesting parallels and again it's reflected even in memes in the social media space of this sort of just this view of political power, political will, these short-term measures. We got to do whatever we can to prop up this, prop up that, whatever. Um, again, what we're going to it's going to be very interesting to see how it plays out. Of course, you know, the the record for Nixon's, you know, new economic policy did not turn out very well, right? Stagflation and everything that we got in the 70s. We'll we'll see if there's any reoccurrence there. Um, you know, maybe that's better than, you know, re-evaluating uh, you know, late 1920s, 1930s and things like that. That's conversation to be had. But I I I was just I've been thinking about over these last couple weeks like Nixon Rothbart's uh, lecture on Nixon because I think there's a lot of interesting parallels as we sit here in the year 2025. >> Yeah, that that's interesting. I also think another component is that whole like only Nixon can go to China effect. Like Trump is very sensitive to that. You saw that especially um, in his first term. I mean, he was incredibly hawkish against uh ch against Russia specifically um with Ukraine. I think in large part because of all the Russia gate stuff and the fact they were trying to frame him as this agent of Russia. Yeah. But but like you actually look at how he governed and no, he was quite hawkish. He's the one that changed the aid to Ukraine from basically just money to like weapons and sending rockets and uh yeah, se different weapon systems there. And um that's like an example of and the only Nixon can go to China effect is basically the the thought that only really like Republican politicians can do left-wing things without really facing any criticism because their supporters are not going to criticize them and the left uh won't criticize them either and vice versa. And uh Trump Trump is very sensitive to that for sure. And in this case um that was sort of the opposite from our perspective because like the fact that China or that Nixon was engaging with China um and willing to you know use his words as a positive but uh Trump has absolutely been pressured in the wrong direction. Um it's easiest to see on foreign policy but yeah he's very sensitive to that effect. Well, moving on to another article uh from our round table. Um there's a lot of stuff going on in uh MAHA space, CDC space. Um, and Josh, you have an article on uh kind of that touches on public policy and a bit of the the nutrition component and that is definitely tied into the broader RFK, Maha, Zeitgeist that has been a major force of the conversation here the last several years. There's also some interesting personnel things that are going on with some of the bureaucracies now under Secretary Kennedy and the like. Um, but I'll let you uh open up with what you know the content of your article is and then we might be able to take it in a few different directions that go directly with the headlines. >> Yeah, thanks. Yeah, you know, my article is uh was originally going to be titled inflation and and maja um which I can't say that maha without kind of giggling because I always think of like the Amanda Show me we grew up with. But anyway, u so but uh >> throwback >> uh I changed it to inflation and food debasement because I didn't really get into the public policy RFK side of that. Um uh that being said, it does it does overlap. It does uh touch. So that was um was in my mind. Um and then kind of tying back to what you talked about about you know kind of the Nixon uh connection. Uh, one of the reasons, you know, that that we should still criticize uh, Richard Nixon among many is that closing of the gold window, which there was inflation since 1913, the creation of the Fed, of course, you know, funded uh, World War I and all sorts of things uh, related to that, the Great Depression. But, uh, it really went off the rails after 1971. And I was noticing I was reading another article and uh there's a whole website uh basically saying well what happened in 1971 and it's it's sympathetic to you know to Austrian ideas and and some of it is more you know you could argue is correlation versus causation but they have a lot of interesting uh charts showing increases in all sorts of things that you wouldn't even expect uh things even like not just debt and stuff but uh decreas increases in like food and certain foods and that are more nutritious arguably like meat consumption and more increases in things like soy you know or other things of that nature. So my article is really dealing with more of the uh the economics uh and side of it and it's actually inspired from uh well two sources but uh Jeff Dgner's book on inflation and the family he has a couple I read that and then did a review last week for for mises uh.org or and then um uh found some interesting like points where he raises this point but or talks about it in a footnote but doesn't explore it uh in the book which is talking about how inflation uh price inflation just affects what people buy but also affects the different choices and subsidization of food and things like this that affects nutrition which affects uh fertility uh affects uh just health in general and all sorts of things. So he was tying that to family formation. And so my second source of inspiration was from you know in Isaiah where it talks about well your silver has become dross meaning impurity and your wine has become diluted with water. And so uh the connection between debasement of the uh the commodity metal which silver you know was maybe not used at that time quite yet as a monetary um metal but similarly was as a barter good that was uh measurable and uh it was that directly tied with the dilution of food. And so I was kind of like well is this true? Is this really a valid uh connection? And so I I tie in my article to basically talking about well there's price inflation which if there's price inflation of food which basically was one of the big things that affected uh the 2024 election that was a big one and they even Camalo even talked about uh price controls on grocery stores and all these certain things but by definition price you know increases of the price of food means that you have to change your consumer choices in some way. Even if you buy the same food at higher prices, you're sacrificing elsewhere. Uh but then I tie in, you know, some of the history of uh during the 1970s, ironically, uh because of the price increases in food, uh Nixon uh appointed uh this guy uh to the the um as secretary of I think it was agriculture department uh uh and his his last name is Buts. is for he's not Seymour butts but anyway but anyway uh Earl and he basically um was going to take all that easy money and subsidies and funnel that to big farms and said basically get big or get out. And so all these farms um started major industrial farming and and getting into cheaper um crops and uh using the soil more and all these things and smaller farmers got squeezed out of that competition which meant the bigger farmers bought up their land. So they consolidated the market on behalf of larger farmers and then they subsidized certain foods. And um I also learned this week that uh that the measurement of you know we know there are problems with the CPI index of measuring inflation. But I didn't realize that the core CPI measures inflation but it doesn't measure uh it leaves out food and energy. And so the inflation rate and KR Paul Krugman has done this before. Inflation's not so bad as long as you don't look at food and energy. and they say, "Well, that's because it's so volatile." It's like, "Yes, it's so volatile because of, you know, those are the areas that are uh largely hit with with price inflation." So, then I um borrowed from an article from uh Jonathan Newman about uh shrinkflation where the product literally they offer less for the same amount of price. So, um there's a lot there. Uh but just tying into MA the whole thing and and RFK, my problem is what I call at the end this um interventionist paradigm or interventionist mindset that like I am glad RFK is where he is versus someone else, but he and others are still in that interventionist mindset where the the government interventions have to be the answers to these problems we see in health. And so he's really joining already the people he disagrees with on their terms and their presuppositions and saying, "Okay, well I agree with you. Hey, by the way, did you know Froot Loops in Canada don't look like the Froot Loops here? Let's ban those this or that thing." Okay, so his mindset is still in that interventionist framework. And I kind of conclude at the end if you don't have sound economic theory and you don't tie that in with monetary theory, you you keep running into uh misdiagnosis and then counterproductive uh solutions. And I just want to read one a couple quotes from some of these articles that talked about inflation hurting the the uh you know poorest families which it is true. It's it's inflation uh price inflation and monetary inflation hurt the most vulnerable. But this is this is the type of mindset we're dealing with. And I'm actually reading this with sympathy, not saying, you know, not trying to own, you know, people who I disagree with. I'm actually saying I they're not getting the problem. And so I read this this quote from this one article that said how inflation is hurting the diets of lowincome Americans. says, "Despite government programs encouraging and subsidizing healthy foods, the problem is only growing." You know, so they admit like the government is intervening, intervening, intervening and the problem is getting worse, but their only answer is that it has to do more or do differently more differently. And so, um, while I'm happy RFK hopefully is cleaning some house at the CDC, uh, I I think there needs to be a total paradigm shift of, you know, that the government needs to intervene uh, for Americans to be healthy or have healthier food. It's I think it's actually the opposite. Because of decades of government intervention, uh, our food is is less healthy. our our wine has become water and uh and we're bearing the effects in our health. >> Connor, what do you uh what do you have to add? >> Yeah, I mean it's such a huge topic. This is a topic I'm very passionate about. Um and it's all because it's exactly what you said. I think a lot of it comes from the fact that a lot of these Maha people are former leftists. They still have this interventionist idea that if you know there's just a handful of interventions that if they can just craft it correctly then these problems go away. When in fact the problem is the same that it is in a lot of other industries where decades and sometimes centuries um in this case over a century of policy has all been crafted and built on top of each other and it's all designed or it all makes the most sense. Um, if you think it was designed to move as much of our money into the pockets of, you know, agricultural companies, of drug companies, of health care uh, providers, basically all different um, parts of this uh, industry and, you know, these cross industries, um, it's all a giant racket and it's a racket built on past policies. And so the only way to actually effective effectively address this problem is to roll back those past policies that this whole thing is built on top of. And it like some at some points it seems like MAGA uh not MA the uh RFK especially seems to understand that. I actually wrote a whole article about this I think last year that um uh laid out how this whole racket or outlined how the racket works and he tweeted it out and uh he he had one problem. I think at one point I he thought I demonized the health care system a little too much. So I guess I'm I'm more majk. Um but so it's like he you know amplified this. seems to at least grasp some of some of this, but the movement as a whole and certainly the um specific policies uh so far seem to be a lot more what you're talking about, Josh. It's like uh let's leave all this in place and just ban this food dye. And it's like like once again, I'm quite passionate about this. I'm not like a huge defender of food dye. Um, I don't like the government coming in and banning things and making those decisions for everybody, but I'm not nearly as upset about that intervention as I am with like a lot of other interventions and a lot of other things that the government is doing. But it's just it's the same thing. And I guess I'm kind of a broken record on the show because it's the same thing over and over again. It's just disappointing. You kind of have the what feels like this paradigm shift. You have RFK coming in, Jay Bodacharia, and you know, the the COVID stuff and some of the vaccine stuff is a little bit different. We're talking much bigger here, but it's like it just doesn't really seem like we're going to have the the paradigm shifting results that um they were like celebrating back when the election happened. >> Well, that's that's what will be interesting to see how much of this direction, how much of this change in tone results in lasting change, which almost necessarily will require non-political action. And so, I think so much of this stuff, right, is that you've had decades after decades after decades. And some of this fuels into again the critiques that we you were just talking about in terms of just the you know the the set of policies that has been kind of baked into the American government ideology for quite some time. you know, the the the perversion of economics is disciplined, the perversion of of just you, everything becoming political. And here, you know, I think this is what motivates so much of Trumpism, similar to again what motivated a lot of Nixonism, right? You know, Nixon was a backlash in many ways to the cultural changes, the late60s and things like that and people saying that, okay, we kind of needed to have, you know, strong figure to punch back at some of these folks. That is I think certainly a part of the animating um you know dynamic that you have with with the current form of Trumpism is that you know people are are sick and tired of you know seeing their you know real economic standing you know go away of you know seeing the the quality of their food go out there. There's certainly heightened awareness about, you know, re-evaluating some of these decisions. And again, you I'm not surprised when they see politics as the one major tipping point that has changed things in a certain direction that you everything becomes something that needs to be solved with with a political tool. Um, you know, even even having the president of the United States talking about the Crackco Barrels disastrous rebranding and things like that. Um, and and so it is going to be interesting to see like again, I I think there's, you know, what the temporary political movement looks like now. Now, and again, I I do think there's certainly something that resembles a vibe check, a vibe shift that goes beyond simply the politics, right? You are seeing some of that a little bit with like the steak and shake move, right? And we can have a broader conversation about like, oh well, you know, a fast food burger joint changing from beef tallow from seed oils. Like, is that really some sort of great victory for, you know, healthcare panaceic um outcomes there? I maybe not. Um, there there's also kind of the fun tie-in of the Steak and Shake owner being like the the the the critic investor on the Cracker Barrel situation in particular, like the way there was some some interesting uh investor drama going on on that particular thing with those two kind of stars aligning there. Um but you know I think you definitely see a little bit you know a lot more from a corporate angle of a desire to recognize oh maybe 50% 51% 53% of the country that is sick and tired of a way that a lot of these concerns are not being heard not being considered or are being pushed through. You know maybe that will reconcile in ways that will go just simply beyond politics. But there is the other interesting side of this which is this disruptive force component to it. you know, which plays into you, Trump's impact on the Fed. We're going to talk about that in a little bit. It comes into some of just the the the rotation of elites. Um, elites might be overstating it. I mean, we're talking ultimately, you know, a lot of technocratic folks, and I don't want to give them the, you know, the prestige of being considered an elite by our standards here. Um, but some of the the headlines that have come up with RFK, you know, just this week is, you know, more people at the CDC, a lot of these you kind of, you know, longtime institutional folks that were able to survive the rotation on the change of the administration there of, you know, we we had u um, you know, the the act someone who was serving as the active director of the CDC, who then became the Trump appointee, who was kind of seen as a as a more moderating force there. um you know there's kind of interesting you claims that she's resigned and she hasn't resigned and we'll see how that goes and whatever kind of sounds like a federal governor situation um and in some ways there um there there has been this sort of interesting moderating influence on RFK I mean I've seen people on social media like Nicole Sharon and some of those folks who are very interested on more of the holistic approaches particularly on food right with the the different ways of like agricultural techniques itself um some of the things that Thomas Massie has talked about as well like there does I think genuine interest with a lot of those folks in some of those more kind of deeper systemic things that obviously can't be you know you not necessarily talking about you know monetary policy reforms necessarily but some of these things that go beyond simply the restriction and the banning of certain products you know x y and z um but it seems like a lot of that early energy was being stymied by I think uh Senator Cassidy from Louisiana who was kind of one of the the questionable votes on RFK's confirmation in the first place might have had like a moderating influence and some of the early decisions there based on some of the stuff like maybe Cassid's influence is waning and you're going to kind of get like peak RFK whatever that looks like in the coming months. We'll stay tuned to that. Um but I think it is it goes to I think this more larger dynamic and I think it's easy and understandable for you know for people like us that recognize the state itself you know is you know the the ultimate source of a lot of these problems right recognizing the consequences of monetary in uh the cost of monetary policy you know not only in the inflationary component but the shrinkflation component of it and the the work you know we see these very systemic problems that the state plays a role in and we recognize the very short-term haphazard ways that some of these current interventions going in. But I can understand why, you know, there's a lot of people that are sick and tired of this and recognize, okay, well, here we are stacking things that seem like wins and some of them might prove to be short-term wins. Some of them might end up creating new problems that are create other things down the road, right? But I can have sympathy too, you know, why there's so much interest in, you know, so so much buy in into using these we these tools right now given the extent again our longrunning thing theme of it's been decades of crap policy that have created the conditions for where we find ourselves right now. >> Yeah, I I think that's such an important point too that it has to almost has to be a counterculture thing like the political uh part of this is one part of it and it's an important part. it's what we tend to focus on, but it's like at the end of the day like your or you know your household is determining like what you buy at the grocery store, what you eat. Um and these have been struggles that you know go back a long time. Like it's not easy to avoid, you know, the super addictive processed foods. Like that stuff feels good and it tastes good and like that that's a personal battle that everybody has to go through to some extent. And you know, and that's why I think it's interesting. I hadn't really considered the the monetary policy angle of this um before, but it's like very tied in with time preference. Like it there is kind of a monetary um angle within your life where uh if you eat the cheap super addictive stuff right now that's probably going to generate much larger medical bills down the road, but that's way in the future. So there there's like an interesting kind of high time preference um angle to all that. And it's not like all of this stuff is like just coming from the state. This is a struggle that everybody has to go through and has had to go through for a long time. But it really does matter when the government comes in and you know starts nudging people in an unproductive direction and then that nudge is continuing and building for decades and decades and decades and like clearly things have happened. I mean, like people are always talking about what happened in 1971, but what I remember from that article I wrote was that at in the 70s, the chronic disease rate in the US was at like 1%. And today it's over 222 million Americans. So, it has exploded. And it's not like that is only because of monetary policy. I'm not saying that. But monetary policy absolutely has a it plays a role in terms of you know nudging people towards a higher time preference kind of uh kicking the can down the road not dealing with their problems not making the the right decision right now. It it nudges people in that direction when all of this stuff is already such a struggle that can really compound over time and then you add on to that all of the other non-monetary regulations um on top of that. So yeah, that that's important, but like these they're they're still nudges at the end of the day. And so like if there's this broader counterculture movement to like just eat healthier, be healthier, um we can still like we don't need to wait for, you know, all these policies to be rolled back, which is something I'm not very convinced is going to happen in in the near term. You're right. Like if there's a cultural movement, that's sort of what Maha is at its best is that kind of culture like, hey, we're going to be rejecting this stuff that's been pushed on us because in a lot of ways we can um I I think that's uh that that's a really important amount of uh point of nuance to have with this discussion, >> right? I I think uh there was this meme that was kind of funny, but I think it actually does make an important point right after Trump got elected and RFK was appointed. Uh or even it may have even been before. It doesn't really matter when it was, but it was um you know, the girl goes to the uh refrigerator and pulls out a Coke and then closes it and has a picture of RFK on the fridge and then goes never mind, you know, puts it and takes out a water. So, there is the personal choice component. Um but it's uh you know I would say it's actually more than nudges of monetary policy. I think it is that but it's more that moni money in a in a moni modern economy where we use money I was going to say a modern monetary but I don't want to confuse it is it pervades everything that we we do and so it's unsurprising that money would have an impact on uh these areas and when you tamper with the money the it will have effects um elsewhere where the choices uh have to be changed. However, there is nobody in a sense. RFK is not coming to save you. Uh so you and I have to make those choices. So it's actually an area where it's like sometimes it's a little bit weird because you feel like you have to argue against different sides of the the argument to be a libertarian. But I think it's coherent where it's like I don't care if people want to eat McDonald's and and Froot Loops. I'm, you know, I I'm I don't really know, you know, exactly if somebody wants to be a vegetarian or somebody wants to eat only meat. I I have to kind of figure that out in my own life just like everybody else does. But what I do know is that the artificial um uh choices that that monetary inflation causes and then restricts uh it it debases not only the money but debases the products and then the price inflation uh has to you know affect people's choices because people don't have an unlimited uh amount of money. So I mean if something is higher price you either have to sacrifice to get it or make sacrifices elsewhere um in your life. So even if we didn't take you know all the other more detailed uh aspects just the fact of of uh price inflation um in in food or anything else um affects people elsewhere um elsewhere in their lives. So I think it's yeah it's it there is a personal responsibility element of it um for sure but uh but yeah it has to be you know culturally not it's not going to come from the top down which is still you know still the problem that's what RFK's in in the federal government is going to make you know that 330 million Americans healthy well no that's not going to take place not not from one person making policy decisions well RF FK might not save us, but maybe Jerome Pal will kind some of the the effectively the defectto headlines from uh from Jackson Hole. Of course, we're very very much kidding, of course, make that very very clear. Um, but I know last week with Ryan, uh, if he was here, I'd try to figure out some way of making a Bill PY reference, but uh, he's not here, so we'll we'll avoid that bit for this week. Uh, but you did have Jerome Pal at Jackson Hole. You did have Trump following through on what we discussed last week about him possibly firing Lisa Cook, the great scandal. I mean, how can we dare go on without the great intellectual prowess of Lisa Cook and all of her great work on monetary policy. Um, so there is some Fed drama out there. Um, and what's interesting is is kind of the headlines to me like this is kind of peak Fed, right? You know, Fed speak itself is a key tool of monetary policy. You want to be as boring as possible. You want to make it seem, you know, you want to make people to extrapolate from your words whatever outcome they want to desire. And I think Pal put on a a master class of, you know, cloaking, you know, whatever he's trying to say in the most boring technocratic language as possible to get the outcomes that he wanted. And so when he was at Jackson Hole this past weekend was of course the big hubbub with all the all the fancy central bankers of the world uniting for you know the common cause and human decency and you rainbows and kittens and all that sort of stuff. Um you know pal's statements comments seem to indicate or at least a lot of people took away the indication that concerns over the labor market um and whatnot um might be opening the door to a upcoming rate cut perhaps even next month. Um it seemed that even after the weekend there there was kind of people make recognizing that maybe he wasn't quite saying that maybe um there was new discussions about changing the way the Fed kind of looked at its framework to consider uh monetary policy decisions moving away from from certain elements there certain variables that they had changed back in 2020. I think it was like right before COVID, something like that. But, you know, kind of, oh, don't worry, we're we're super serious. We're constantly re-evaluating and tweaking our the way that we interpret the data to make our highly proclaimed um big solutions here. Um, but uh again, this this of course the the constant political winds that have surrounded the Fed's decision um are at the forefront here. There did seem to be pow, oh, you know, I I I as chair do not dictate this sort of stuff. the the the the governors, the our broader board will make these decisions, right? Trying to separate himself as a singular force when it comes to making monetary policy decisions. Um and so you it's going to be very interesting to see this play out. Again, glad to see so much attention on the Fed. Glad to see the Fed being attacked from so many interesting ways right now. Um again, it's I don't think it's ever been as much a mainstream topic of conversation as it is right now. Uh but Connor, any any takeaways from u from what we've seen this week in Fed Watch? >> Um it's just sort of this broader story is just interesting to me and I I really am focused on the polit politization that you're talking about there and it's just interesting watching the reaction and I guess this makes sense, but it seems like there is no way for them to escape the narrative at all that Trump is driving monetary policy. even if they don't do what he wants, then like that might be seen by some people as them deliberately not doing what he wants. So even if they go the other way, um they're not really going to escape that. And like already like I think Trump made some comments the other day about how um there's like a path to him getting a majority on the Fed board. Basically a majority Trump uh Fed board, which is what I was talking about the other week with like the discourse about the Fed may be going in the same direction that the discourse with the Supreme Court does now where all these board members are essentially just these agents of whatever uh president put them on there. And we're sort of at the point now where Yeah. Yeah. Okay. maybe the the Fed cuts um next in September in in the coming weeks. Um but like that it doesn't seem like there's sort of an offramp for like the depolit depolitization of the Fed. That's tough to say. Um and that as we've been talking about that's that's a positive. And also I I did um there is another angle here too where this does feel kind of inevitable at some point just as you know the debt grows and as the effects of monetary policy just grow with it and become uh more and more ingrained in daily life like I think people are going to be paying more attention to the Fed. So there is a question of like like is Trump really the big driver here? I think he he may be accelerating it a bit and certainly like his specific call for the Fed to cut rates and their refusal to do that and making it a thing and now the fact that they may do that of course will be read as like them relenting and giving into the pressure like he has already changed the conversation around the Fed in a way that um we're generally in favor of because it's more clarifying it's closer to the truth that like this is actually a politicized um organization. So we're we're happy about that. Of course, we're not very happy with what Trump is trying to get the Fed to do, but that that's something we've we've covered a lot before, but it it's been interesting to watch specifically the the reaction to to Jackson Hole has really shown that like we're we're deeper into this polit politization. Gosh, I I really got to practice that word. Um than than I had really expected. And I'm I'm happy to see that. >> What's that say? You Josh. >> Yeah. Well, I I know I'll always remember where I was when I heard that Lisa Cook was uh off the No, I'm just kidding. But uh it kind of reminded me out. >> Well, you know, in this watching of Jackson Hole, there are two two articles uh there actually quite a few actually right now on uh mises.org on uh the Fed independence. Uh Dr. Thornon wrote one about Jackson Hole. You know, what's going on over there and and so his is uh good and he did a follow-up podcast. And Jonathan Newman also wrote one on the the myth of Fed independence which was written before that but plays into this. But I hadn't considered the fact that it is it is good in a sense that now that Trump is so publicly trying to throw his weight around with the Fed. Um that now people are saying wait a second that's kind of seeming like the Fed is political. It's like well yeah it's like you know if that's what it takes to wake um people up to it. It's it's annoying to hear Trump asking for you know the only thing he could ask for is is more um lower interest rates and that's you know that's the only direction they can uh that they can go in. Um, so it's and it's interesting also with uh with Jerome Powell is, you know, let's say, okay, we're going to do this, we're looking at this thing. Well, maybe we'll do a cut this it. But they always facilitate more easy money and credit. The only way that they finally get themselves into too much hot water is when they print so much money. Somebody will get on this and say, "Oh, we don't print money." But anyway, they digitally print so much money that you run the risk of hyperinflation or whatever else. Um the the truth is that I think it's you know we at the Mises Institute would like people to come around to is number one the Fed is and has always been political. It's always been a political instrument to have a hidden method of taxation through through inflation and that this pseudo it's kind of the same thing with um with the CDC and this public health uh dynamic as well. It's it's this pseudo science, this pseudo intellectual thing of well no this is something that really takes experts because this is something called uh called monetary policy that's they're really looking at all this and deciding what is the right um interest rate and uh monetary policy is uh is a fraud. It's this idea of the that um the government or C government through the central banking system uh knows the right amount of artificial money and credit to push into the system which we know causes price inflation boom bust cycles and distorts the structure of production. But they also know how to do that to the right amount of full employment. But then they know how to do that to stop price inflation. Um and that's their their sacred dual mandate and you know that they uh come around you know and and kind of wisely uh figure that out. It's in my head Dr. Serno says that they they ambidextrously you know with both hands are able to manage uh these things and no it's always um it's always political. It's always about more easy money and credit. And um usually the only thing that you can get people to say bad about the Fed is, "Hey, did you know the Fed is a private institution when it's nowhere near a private institution, you know, as as we know, it's it's chartered by Congress, appointed by the president. So, I'm glad that it's um in the news and negatively, but I think just kind of like with the we mentioned there has to be kind of a cultural change and understanding of of money and uh and economics uh with with the uh health uh uh dynamic there. There has to be a cultural change, really a change back because Americans, a lot more of them understood this in the early 1900s of understanding what is actually going on when the Fed uh does this this you know secret uh monetary policy thing, which monetary policy just means figuring out how much money they can print without getting in trouble. That's without getting themselves in trouble. They don't care if we get in trouble. So that that's the it's I the desanctification of the the Fed is really what needs to happen. So I'm glad Trump is doing that, but he doesn't have a sense of why what's really wrong with the Fed. >> Well, you mentioned some articles on the wire about this. I wanted to highlight one other one by John Wolfenberger. Um pal cares more about Fed independence than inflation the economy. Um which is a great breakdown of uh Jackson Hull. Um yeah, at the end he's got some very nice little bullet points that I think sums up um really the takeaways uh from the significance of it going forward. Um you have what does it all mean with his speech um that pal will blame inflation on anything and and anyone else but the Fed. Um he was talking about there's some references to COVID and tariffs and things like that. Um pat himself on the back for being a genius central planner that don't worry they've got it all taken care of. Throw Trump and Wall Street a bone that he's open to cutting rates. It's always my f fun dynamics is you know Wall Street you know stocks go up uh during an announcement like that even though the underlying incentive you the underlying message is oh the the employment rate or the the employment situation is bad so we might have to lower rates but that's hey okay for Wall Street. Um acknowledge that the Fed's rate hike may cause a recession and after all and that the latest job report may be signaling that ding ding ding. um justify the the Fed's precious independence to raise or lower rates whenever they want based on how they interpret the latest data. Um and that the takeaway is going forward that the Fed has no idea what it is doing or what to expect going forward just like all economic central planners all over the world. Pal lacks the courage to stand up to Trump, not create more money out of thin air. Um even though they have failed for for 52 months to hit their 2% target rate. Um and that Pal knows that more massive negative jobs revisions are coming on the September 6th jobs report. Stay tuned for that. um enabling him to cut rates on September 17th unless inflation is surprisingly bad. And again, I I think that's exactly what we are heading with a lot of this sort of stuff. I again none of this should be surprising. Again, like the underlying metrics of the economy have not been particularly strong for quite some time. The whole purpose of kind of the Biden era rate cut was a signal of this. And again, everything the Fed's trying to do right now is to just project competency, enough independence to show a kind of broader institutional um strength that it's we're not overly politicized, but also enough to not seem as a adversarial institution to the broader Trump portfolio. U one thing I do think will be interesting going forward is that uh Steven Moren who is one of Trump's nominees on the table right now um to fill one of the Fed spots that is actually open. Um he's got a lot of very interesting stuff and I I don't know how much you guys have touched on. I' I've read his stuff. Um, so I'm not going to you put you all guys on the spot, but just for our listeners to know, um, he has someone who has written a lot about what's called the the Mara Lago accords. And the idea there was trying to tie broader aggressive tariff policy with a general uh devaluation of the dollar with the viewpoint that the dollar is too overly weighted that that that it is is overly propped up globally and that that is the cause for a lot of the industrial uh uh moves out of the country yada yada yada. The basically the explicit aim is that we need to uh weaken the dollar explicitly and use tariffs to force other countries to kind of accept that and you know in terms of ramifications on uh uh debt and things like that and it's just this very broad ambitious and frankly you fairly dangerous plan. Um obviously Fed policies for quite some time have had the you know the natural uh uh impact of you know being inflationary. we, you know, you can pull up your favorite, you know, you whether it's, you know, what the hell happened in 1971 or 1913, whatever, whatever your favorite like the decline of purching power of the dollar mean that you have out there. Um, you know, that has been the de facto impact of all Fed policies for quite some time. But having it explicitly identified as an aim, um, is a little bit different than what we are used to here. Um, again, not to give any of the former the current or former members of the Fed any any credit there, but it will be interesting to see how much that explicit policy aim is reflected with other potential uh people that Trump is going to look to install here. Um, yeah, we should have some indication on Lisa Cook front. I know there's going to be there will be lawyers. I don't know how much uh I would love to see the legal bills um coming out of Fed battles on this topic, but you'll be very interested to see how that plays out in the courts, whether Trump has the authority to do it, whether Bill Py will get what he wants um and using uh you the mortgage fraud uh case against uh against that particular Fed governor. But again, this that's a lot of stuff going on here. There's be a lot of you a lot of stuff to cover on uh powered market for now in the near future. uh a lot of activity, a lot of changes. Um again, it's it's uh again to me and I think the common thread of all this is going to be, you know, what does the economic environment look like two years from now? Because like what what I find so fascinating is that it was clear that so much of the mandate that came from 2024 was the direct result of inflation as one of the top drivers in politics. We hadn't seen obvious consumer price inflation along those lines in, you know, since the 70s. It all comes back to Nixon in this episode. Um, but you know, that was a key driving force within that 2024 election. If things if we are are on an inflationary track, if if if that pain returns, we're already seeing it play out. Um, you know, with with core inflation and things like that, you there's a lot of good reasons. I mean, Ryan McMin has written a lot like there's no good reason to cut rates right now based on the underlying metrics right now. um you know if if we are dealing with an elevated inflation situation again um in two years from now what that is going to have in terms of the broader political sphere where people are going to be looking for okay well that didn't work what comes next I think that that is a a massive wild card in the general trends um that you know when we have so much reevaluation of what does politics mean what do these underlying cultural components whether it's maha whether it's whatever what do people find as an answer is Is it going to be something better or is it going to be something worse? It could very well be something worse. But I think you the economic environment in the next couple years is going to be I think have the opportunity to create a massive political shift in ways that I think are completely un um unknowable right now. the incredible amount of political uncertainty in ways that I don't think is really being touched upon with so much fixation on interesting topics, but congressional redistricting or you know some of these if if if the economy sucks two years from now um you know all the all the current calculations from political consultants about what congressional races or presidential races are going to look like are going to be completely upended. Um, and so that that is something I think is be very very fascinating as we see the way the Fed tries to manage a situation. >> That that's interesting about the Mara Lago accords. It's sort of it reminds me of um that old that Bill Buckley line that Rothbart attacked like early in his career about how basically the only way to beat the Soviet Union is to be more like the Soviet Union. Kind of feels like the same thing here with like the only way to beat China is to start acting more like the CCP. So I sort in my head I've christened these people economic neoonservatives uh because it's like the same kind of philosophy. But another quick point um just to end on uh if people are interested in this that specific topic we were uh referencing earlier about how the Fed has always been political. Jonathan Newman we just published on uh the on mises.org I guess it was from the a what's it called right now? The the magazine >> messian messian. Yes that's right. um and his uh article going over how the Fed has never been an an independent entity. Fed independence is a complete myth. And he went back and looked at the records. There's a specific meeting um he touches on from 1951 where which is like in the narrative is like when Fed independence was really um you know baked into the equation and he just shows that all they did was change their rhetoric. Um it's based on the speech he gave at our revisionist um history conference and that's a really I think devastating takedown of the the mainstream characterization of the Fed. So I I recommend checking that out. >> Josh, anything to add before we get out of here? >> Uh Ben the Fed. >> There you go. >> No, I don't have anything uh anything more to add than that. >> Excellent. Well, if you want your own copy of the messian so that you can have the the concrete version. concrete would not be make for a very good magazine uh material. But if you want your own version of the messian in paper for your desk, for your uh your your kitchen table or whatever your your magazines to dump on, um you can do so just by becoming a Misesus member. Um you can find more information on to on that at the misus.org. And if you are a Mises member or interested in becoming a Mises member and want to hang out with Connor, Josh, and myself, do not forget that we have got a great event coming up in October on 16th through the 18th in beautiful Delray Beach, Florida. Our theme is economic freedom, the key to liberty. We've got an allstar lineup including Dr. Solerno, Tom Woods, Bob Murphy, Peter Klein, Alex Paula, Guido Hollesman coming all the way from Europe. Parabolin, the Newman's and all sorts of other great great speakers. Um, again, you can find more information about that event at misuses.org/events. It will be a great time. It always is. Well, with that being said, enjoy your college football week for those who celebrate. for Connor O'Keefe for Josh. This is the Bishop. I will we will see you next week. Proceed ever more boldly. [Music]
Intel, MAHA, and Trump’s Similarities with Richard Nixon
Summary
Transcript
[Music] Welcome back to power and market our weekly roundtable discussion of important news of the day. I'm going to be your host today though Bishop joined not by Ryan McMakon but by two other great members of the editorial team. We have in his usual spot, Connor O'Keefe with his regular Wednesday column and making his first time appearance here on Power Power Power and Market, Joshua Mahorder, who's got our Friday morning column. Uh big week right now, uh college football week. I know. Uh Connor, I'm sure you're you're feeling the the energy building in the nice little village of the Plains in Auburn. It's an away game though tomorrow. So, >> well, inner Austrian. Yeah, we we we've got uh we've got Auburn versus Baylor on Friday. So, some some Klene versus Jonathan Newman action going on there, but we will not be talking and breaking down the college football lineup. We will be >> talking about some of the most noteworthy events and uh it has been full stop on that side of things every day with a new headline. And so we'll start today's show with a major topic of conversation. This has been I think building for a few weeks now, not a few months, but the Trump administration taking uh a an equity claim into Intel, uh which is, you know, they're justifying it based off of Biden administration policies regarding the chips act. There is discussion about further moves in this. There has been larger discussions about a sovereign wealth fund. A lot of it's been a good time to be giving away Hayek books since a lot of uh Hayek commentary out there from those warning about the dangers of that. And if you have not gotten your copy of Hayek for the 21st century, should do it right now at mises.org/hyek21. That's mises.org/hayek21 as in 21st century there. Great book uh free uh thanks to our donor drive. But that being said, uh Connor, you have an article this week on this very topic. So I will open it up to you and let you take this uh in the direction that you would like. >> Yeah. So I wrote about this mainly because of the reaction the the reaction to the deal and just to run over it really quick um because I think that the story of it uh sort of um insightful in some ways. Um, from all indications, it looks like this was another example of Trump watching Fox News, in this case, Fox Business, um, and it then, you know, generating uh, federal policy as a result. So, he was watching a morning show there. There was a segment where the host was going over some concerns that um China hawks in Congress, specifically um Josh Holly I think had raised about the CEO of Intel um and how like with his background he may have had some connections in the Chinese military. And so people went and like uh connected it. And 5 minutes after this segment airs, Trump puts some post out on Truth Social about how this guy needs to be, you know, he needs to step down immediately. He said something there's no other solution for this. It has to happen immediately. Um and then Intel freaked out. They reached out to the White House. They uh got a a meeting organized. So the CEO flew out there um and they sat down. Turns out there were other solutions um to this. Trump basically agreed to back down on this public threat um well threat maybe isn't the right word, but this demand um for him to to step down, but in exchange he wanted 10% um equity share in Intel and yeah, like of course so and uh Intel agreed to this. It was announced last Friday, I believe. But Trump of course is celebrating this. You know, he he loves anything that's like dealmaking. that that's kind of his thing. And um he is really trying to to bolster support for this by bragging that he paid no money for it. And as you sort of mentioned before, the reason um he's able to kind of say that is because the money used in this specific det. So he's of course, you know, acting like this is some amazing deal. Um, and there's some other details I kind of glossed over in the article about how like they want to do this with other companies and it looks like a sovereign wealth fund is the the goal here. And you know, there are plenty of things to say about that. But specifically, I wrote this article because people were freaking out that this was like fascism or like socialism. And it's like that there is something to that for sure. Um, we're not a fan of either of those, but I thought it was important to maybe not remind people that people that are, you know, regular readers of misuses.org or are serious listeners of the show know this, but for people that maybe they're talking to or people uh sort of outside of our circles, it's an important thing to drill down that like heavy government involvement in the economy is not a new thing. This is not some unprecedented like leap into, you know, a fascistic corporatist economy. um the history of that is extensive and it goes back um over a century and I just wanted to sort of drill down and make that point. But yeah, I don't know there there's a lot of uh different angles to the story and that was the specific one I wanted to focus on. >> Um yeah, you know, I had benefit of uh looking over and editing Connor's article before it went out. So, uh which I was enjoy doing, but we actually got a couple of articles on this after the fact uh kind of coming at it from um some different angles. It is telling um and I think this is probably true for lots of our uh political elites. Uh but you know that Trump came to this by by watching TV. So kind of just his shoot from the hip reactive kind of uh thing as style which sometimes can land in our benefit and a lot of times is just it doesn't have a lot of um depth of thought behind it. But uh I thought the way that it was phrased even just in the teaser of the article was that this is really just a rebrand. As long as Trump can say it's it's his. It doesn't really matter what the policy is or does. It doesn't matter if it was borrowed from Biden. It doesn't matter. And this is honestly just like a reflection of um just the like the big beautiful bill. It's he's runs on we're going to cut spending. we're going to cut all these things. No, we're going to do more than ever, but it's going to be big and beautiful and and all this. So, um the the way I kind of saw it as I was reading, Connor focused in on the um the element that this isn't, you know, it it is kind of like fascism, but it's just another form of um of interventionism, but it's uh others have brought up that it's it's moving toward that kind of like sovereign wealth fund. And uh I think the the most annoying thing about it is Trump has this mindset that a lot of people actually have the paradigm that the government is us and that the government is we. So he says we, you know, I didn't give up anything. We spent this money. We got this awesome deal and we have a 10% stake and we're going to make this money. Same with tariffs. Oh, we're going to get all this beautiful money from tariffs. Well, no. If tariffs bring in revenue or this company brings in revenue, the money the government gets uh gets more money, you know, like Trump was being excited about. Uh back in the 1800s, they had a government surplus. That just means they taxed and had more money than the government knew what to do with. It didn't mean the American people um were were any better off. It was actually the opposite because the money was in the hands uh hands of the government. So I mean there really need to you know Rothbard was key on that but breaking that paradigm that the government is not us we are not better off because the government has a 10% share stake in uh in in Intel or any other business. No, absolutely. You know, I I think Connor, your your angle there, I think, is a great one because I I do have to roll my eyes a bit when I see people again, I agree agree with the core, you know, idea, right? Like, you know, this is a a troubling policy, right? This is, you know, this in increasing low, you know, line to the sort of state capitalist model. But, you know, when I see people kind of leaning on, oh, well, you know, he's he's he's ignoring mainstream economists, and I I see even libertarians, I see even like, you know, Austrian folks explicitly talking about like, oh, well, Trump and his economic adviserss, you know, are just hostile to to to mainstream economics, this, that, and the other. Like, this is exactly the road that we have been on for decades, right? you know, we can have I think there's an interesting conversation to be had on whether an equity stake is worse than a direct subsidization of an industry, which is what the chips act was. um to make it clear because I saw some people on social media you know we we were against the chips act we were against this but if you are part of a profession or when when you there was the broad consensus that oh well something had to be done on the chump front the same way that something had to be done bailing out you know various you know name your Wall Street bank here during 2008 something had to be done to do this that and the other well then don't be surprised when inevitably you get a more explicit action here and I I think the broadening scope of this is is interesting and and troubling. Um again I I see a lot of the companies being suggested as who might be next in this order all kind of similarly I think fall in the range of you know these companies that are receiving CHIPS act funding um you know kind of keeping within that sector as part of this program but again don't be surprised when we have you know already glossed over the lines between private and public where that component gets more explicit here and so that there's been a long building momentum for this by again the mainstream of the economic profession and all of the the the fallacies that have been built in here. One of the things I think is kind of interesting though is that like these are precisely the warnings that the institute has been making for decades, right? you you go back to the 90s and you'll find you know Lou Rockwell and Murray Rothbart and and it was the Austrian scholars that were warning about you know our increasing step into economic fascism if you will and that position at that time you know was was being you know was attacked oh it's you're you're being radical you're being extremist you're being fringe whatever everything is great but like this is precisely the course of events that have been building up to decades of policy that had become accepted and unless you're going to have a fundamental radical re-evaluation of what the role of state and private industry should be. Unless you really orientate things towards recognizing the clear distinction that needs to be made off of property rights and kind of the divide between state and banking, you know, state and private business and banking and everything that goes into it. Don't be surprised when this is what it looks like. And I I think there's another interesting component to it where you know this has been the drum beat for the left for quite some time of like oh well you know the fantasizing the of I just imagine if America could have a more Chinese modeled economy now we're kind of seeing it more on the right and I think there's there's some valid you know concerns about it coming from both sides now but again this has largely been accepted this has been baked into where we have been going as on a trajectory for quite some time >> right and it's that that's how I sort of see it is the status quo is a trajectory. It's this trajectory of growth of the government and growth of, you know, the amount of interventions out there. And that is sort of like this is a theme that we've touched on in the show over and over again because it's kind of the same theme for a lot of different stories. Um the they're trying like the media is freaking out about what Trump's doing and acting like he's coming in and just shattering president when all he's doing is just taking what was happening before, taking that same trajectory and rebranding it as his own. And so like we're attacking from the other side there because it's like it he ran as like this big disruptor and all we're getting is the same thing. And then that's the other like component and this is a good example of it. It's like all these maggot types are just acting like they will be in power forever. And that's just like that is very very very unlikely to put it kindly. And so what what you're going to have is like, yeah, if they build up all these stakes in all these different companies, they're just going to be handing those over to the government or to the to the Democrats to, you know, back to the establishment to the extent that the establishment doesn't already run it right now under Trump. And so it's just like it's just very disappointing um you know, after not that I really let myself get too excited um about like this big, you know, disruption that was coming uh during the campaign and like a lot of the rhetoric. I was skeptical and happy. I was skeptical, but it's just it's very frustrating to be in the thick of it right now. And this is just yet another example. >> Do you have anything else to add, Josh? >> Well, I think also just the uh you know the point about the tying back to the chips act and the this ties to um stuff with like Taiwan, right? And that that they can make the microchips. Is that right? I mean that >> that Yeah. So it's somebody was making the point the other day that you know everybody asks oh my gosh Vive Ramas Swami was making this a big point as well that oh well we've got to you know this also ties into foreign policy we've got to uh go to war potentially with China another giant nuclear power uh over Taiwan if if necessary but the Taiwanese are are treated like this magical people or magical place that are the only people in the world who know how to create microchips. where really microchips could be made lots of places. There's comparative advantage and all that, which is fine, but if we rolled back the government interventions, laws, taxes, inflation, microchips could be made in America or anywhere else. And if they're so important, you know, then how about we scale it back? But it's always um it's always more interventions forward and more involvement of the state and then when that causes other problems amazingly the free market that that doesn't exist in its pure form is blamed and more interventions are are the result. And so and both the left and the right um agree on that for for different different reasons. One thing I think is interesting just for a historical overlap is um it's it's kind of interesting. We've seen this a lot online of late. Um I think even Chris Rufo was on was it Bill Maher or something like that where he talked about how like Nixon's going to be vindicated and so like there's there's definitely like you know there's there's definitely a vibe there's definitely a social media sort of trend about you know base Nixon and this sort of stuff and like Nixon himself very interesting character like you know we can have a separate conversation about Watergate as a deep state coup. Um you know Murray Rothbart actually has some very interesting articles on that where he kind of accepts like yeah like this was kind of an interesting deep state operation to remove Nixon. But there is another aspect they here though that I think is very interesting. Um and actually I think it was earlier this year maybe in February um we released an old lecture um or or a talk that Rothbart gave um and the the title was a narco nixonism um and the the NEP which is like the new economic policy and like the the point that Nick that that Trump that that Rothbart was making that I think has a lot of interesting overlap with just the current political zeitgeist is that he was responding to at the time a lot of libertarians in his orbit But even a lot of you know young 1970s you know early you know anc Rothbartians whatever who were very much attracted to Nixon um for a variety of reasons and that you know he was watching how like Nixonian policy plays out like they're always re reassuring like behind the scenes like oh well don't worry like you know he says this he says that but like behind the scenes actually really smart he's really interesting these ideas um there's a lot of kind of actually interesting scholarship about like you know Nixon as classical liberal that sort of stuff that you know is worth considering but like Rothbart's point was that you know Nixon in power has this very much this grabag of economic policies that there is no cohesive economic theory guiding what Nixonianism is. Nixonianism is this use of power. It is kind of a protoversion of you can just do things. And so you had price controls obviously had going off the gold standard as as one of the big ones that we talk about. But, you know, there was all these various aspects and you had all of these people that were, you know, center-right economists defending these sort of policies with the belief that, oh, this is what was needed to be in the moment. And the NEP aspect of it was was derived from uh, you know, Lenin's new economic policy that was just kind of this we're throwing out orthodox Marxism. We're just going to kind of throw everything out there. Everything's going to be underneath the state. We're going to pull whatever we can. And like I think there's a lot of interesting parallels and again it's reflected even in memes in the social media space of this sort of just this view of political power, political will, these short-term measures. We got to do whatever we can to prop up this, prop up that, whatever. Um, again, what we're going to it's going to be very interesting to see how it plays out. Of course, you know, the the record for Nixon's, you know, new economic policy did not turn out very well, right? Stagflation and everything that we got in the 70s. We'll we'll see if there's any reoccurrence there. Um, you know, maybe that's better than, you know, re-evaluating uh, you know, late 1920s, 1930s and things like that. That's conversation to be had. But I I I was just I've been thinking about over these last couple weeks like Nixon Rothbart's uh, lecture on Nixon because I think there's a lot of interesting parallels as we sit here in the year 2025. >> Yeah, that that's interesting. I also think another component is that whole like only Nixon can go to China effect. Like Trump is very sensitive to that. You saw that especially um, in his first term. I mean, he was incredibly hawkish against uh ch against Russia specifically um with Ukraine. I think in large part because of all the Russia gate stuff and the fact they were trying to frame him as this agent of Russia. Yeah. But but like you actually look at how he governed and no, he was quite hawkish. He's the one that changed the aid to Ukraine from basically just money to like weapons and sending rockets and uh yeah, se different weapon systems there. And um that's like an example of and the only Nixon can go to China effect is basically the the thought that only really like Republican politicians can do left-wing things without really facing any criticism because their supporters are not going to criticize them and the left uh won't criticize them either and vice versa. And uh Trump Trump is very sensitive to that for sure. And in this case um that was sort of the opposite from our perspective because like the fact that China or that Nixon was engaging with China um and willing to you know use his words as a positive but uh Trump has absolutely been pressured in the wrong direction. Um it's easiest to see on foreign policy but yeah he's very sensitive to that effect. Well, moving on to another article uh from our round table. Um there's a lot of stuff going on in uh MAHA space, CDC space. Um, and Josh, you have an article on uh kind of that touches on public policy and a bit of the the nutrition component and that is definitely tied into the broader RFK, Maha, Zeitgeist that has been a major force of the conversation here the last several years. There's also some interesting personnel things that are going on with some of the bureaucracies now under Secretary Kennedy and the like. Um, but I'll let you uh open up with what you know the content of your article is and then we might be able to take it in a few different directions that go directly with the headlines. >> Yeah, thanks. Yeah, you know, my article is uh was originally going to be titled inflation and and maja um which I can't say that maha without kind of giggling because I always think of like the Amanda Show me we grew up with. But anyway, u so but uh >> throwback >> uh I changed it to inflation and food debasement because I didn't really get into the public policy RFK side of that. Um uh that being said, it does it does overlap. It does uh touch. So that was um was in my mind. Um and then kind of tying back to what you talked about about you know kind of the Nixon uh connection. Uh, one of the reasons, you know, that that we should still criticize uh, Richard Nixon among many is that closing of the gold window, which there was inflation since 1913, the creation of the Fed, of course, you know, funded uh, World War I and all sorts of things uh, related to that, the Great Depression. But, uh, it really went off the rails after 1971. And I was noticing I was reading another article and uh there's a whole website uh basically saying well what happened in 1971 and it's it's sympathetic to you know to Austrian ideas and and some of it is more you know you could argue is correlation versus causation but they have a lot of interesting uh charts showing increases in all sorts of things that you wouldn't even expect uh things even like not just debt and stuff but uh decreas increases in like food and certain foods and that are more nutritious arguably like meat consumption and more increases in things like soy you know or other things of that nature. So my article is really dealing with more of the uh the economics uh and side of it and it's actually inspired from uh well two sources but uh Jeff Dgner's book on inflation and the family he has a couple I read that and then did a review last week for for mises uh.org or and then um uh found some interesting like points where he raises this point but or talks about it in a footnote but doesn't explore it uh in the book which is talking about how inflation uh price inflation just affects what people buy but also affects the different choices and subsidization of food and things like this that affects nutrition which affects uh fertility uh affects uh just health in general and all sorts of things. So he was tying that to family formation. And so my second source of inspiration was from you know in Isaiah where it talks about well your silver has become dross meaning impurity and your wine has become diluted with water. And so uh the connection between debasement of the uh the commodity metal which silver you know was maybe not used at that time quite yet as a monetary um metal but similarly was as a barter good that was uh measurable and uh it was that directly tied with the dilution of food. And so I was kind of like well is this true? Is this really a valid uh connection? And so I I tie in my article to basically talking about well there's price inflation which if there's price inflation of food which basically was one of the big things that affected uh the 2024 election that was a big one and they even Camalo even talked about uh price controls on grocery stores and all these certain things but by definition price you know increases of the price of food means that you have to change your consumer choices in some way. Even if you buy the same food at higher prices, you're sacrificing elsewhere. Uh but then I tie in, you know, some of the history of uh during the 1970s, ironically, uh because of the price increases in food, uh Nixon uh appointed uh this guy uh to the the um as secretary of I think it was agriculture department uh uh and his his last name is Buts. is for he's not Seymour butts but anyway but anyway uh Earl and he basically um was going to take all that easy money and subsidies and funnel that to big farms and said basically get big or get out. And so all these farms um started major industrial farming and and getting into cheaper um crops and uh using the soil more and all these things and smaller farmers got squeezed out of that competition which meant the bigger farmers bought up their land. So they consolidated the market on behalf of larger farmers and then they subsidized certain foods. And um I also learned this week that uh that the measurement of you know we know there are problems with the CPI index of measuring inflation. But I didn't realize that the core CPI measures inflation but it doesn't measure uh it leaves out food and energy. And so the inflation rate and KR Paul Krugman has done this before. Inflation's not so bad as long as you don't look at food and energy. and they say, "Well, that's because it's so volatile." It's like, "Yes, it's so volatile because of, you know, those are the areas that are uh largely hit with with price inflation." So, then I um borrowed from an article from uh Jonathan Newman about uh shrinkflation where the product literally they offer less for the same amount of price. So, um there's a lot there. Uh but just tying into MA the whole thing and and RFK, my problem is what I call at the end this um interventionist paradigm or interventionist mindset that like I am glad RFK is where he is versus someone else, but he and others are still in that interventionist mindset where the the government interventions have to be the answers to these problems we see in health. And so he's really joining already the people he disagrees with on their terms and their presuppositions and saying, "Okay, well I agree with you. Hey, by the way, did you know Froot Loops in Canada don't look like the Froot Loops here? Let's ban those this or that thing." Okay, so his mindset is still in that interventionist framework. And I kind of conclude at the end if you don't have sound economic theory and you don't tie that in with monetary theory, you you keep running into uh misdiagnosis and then counterproductive uh solutions. And I just want to read one a couple quotes from some of these articles that talked about inflation hurting the the uh you know poorest families which it is true. It's it's inflation uh price inflation and monetary inflation hurt the most vulnerable. But this is this is the type of mindset we're dealing with. And I'm actually reading this with sympathy, not saying, you know, not trying to own, you know, people who I disagree with. I'm actually saying I they're not getting the problem. And so I read this this quote from this one article that said how inflation is hurting the diets of lowincome Americans. says, "Despite government programs encouraging and subsidizing healthy foods, the problem is only growing." You know, so they admit like the government is intervening, intervening, intervening and the problem is getting worse, but their only answer is that it has to do more or do differently more differently. And so, um, while I'm happy RFK hopefully is cleaning some house at the CDC, uh, I I think there needs to be a total paradigm shift of, you know, that the government needs to intervene uh, for Americans to be healthy or have healthier food. It's I think it's actually the opposite. Because of decades of government intervention, uh, our food is is less healthy. our our wine has become water and uh and we're bearing the effects in our health. >> Connor, what do you uh what do you have to add? >> Yeah, I mean it's such a huge topic. This is a topic I'm very passionate about. Um and it's all because it's exactly what you said. I think a lot of it comes from the fact that a lot of these Maha people are former leftists. They still have this interventionist idea that if you know there's just a handful of interventions that if they can just craft it correctly then these problems go away. When in fact the problem is the same that it is in a lot of other industries where decades and sometimes centuries um in this case over a century of policy has all been crafted and built on top of each other and it's all designed or it all makes the most sense. Um, if you think it was designed to move as much of our money into the pockets of, you know, agricultural companies, of drug companies, of health care uh, providers, basically all different um, parts of this uh, industry and, you know, these cross industries, um, it's all a giant racket and it's a racket built on past policies. And so the only way to actually effective effectively address this problem is to roll back those past policies that this whole thing is built on top of. And it like some at some points it seems like MAGA uh not MA the uh RFK especially seems to understand that. I actually wrote a whole article about this I think last year that um uh laid out how this whole racket or outlined how the racket works and he tweeted it out and uh he he had one problem. I think at one point I he thought I demonized the health care system a little too much. So I guess I'm I'm more majk. Um but so it's like he you know amplified this. seems to at least grasp some of some of this, but the movement as a whole and certainly the um specific policies uh so far seem to be a lot more what you're talking about, Josh. It's like uh let's leave all this in place and just ban this food dye. And it's like like once again, I'm quite passionate about this. I'm not like a huge defender of food dye. Um, I don't like the government coming in and banning things and making those decisions for everybody, but I'm not nearly as upset about that intervention as I am with like a lot of other interventions and a lot of other things that the government is doing. But it's just it's the same thing. And I guess I'm kind of a broken record on the show because it's the same thing over and over again. It's just disappointing. You kind of have the what feels like this paradigm shift. You have RFK coming in, Jay Bodacharia, and you know, the the COVID stuff and some of the vaccine stuff is a little bit different. We're talking much bigger here, but it's like it just doesn't really seem like we're going to have the the paradigm shifting results that um they were like celebrating back when the election happened. >> Well, that's that's what will be interesting to see how much of this direction, how much of this change in tone results in lasting change, which almost necessarily will require non-political action. And so, I think so much of this stuff, right, is that you've had decades after decades after decades. And some of this fuels into again the critiques that we you were just talking about in terms of just the you know the the set of policies that has been kind of baked into the American government ideology for quite some time. you know, the the the perversion of economics is disciplined, the perversion of of just you, everything becoming political. And here, you know, I think this is what motivates so much of Trumpism, similar to again what motivated a lot of Nixonism, right? You know, Nixon was a backlash in many ways to the cultural changes, the late60s and things like that and people saying that, okay, we kind of needed to have, you know, strong figure to punch back at some of these folks. That is I think certainly a part of the animating um you know dynamic that you have with with the current form of Trumpism is that you know people are are sick and tired of you know seeing their you know real economic standing you know go away of you know seeing the the quality of their food go out there. There's certainly heightened awareness about, you know, re-evaluating some of these decisions. And again, you I'm not surprised when they see politics as the one major tipping point that has changed things in a certain direction that you everything becomes something that needs to be solved with with a political tool. Um, you know, even even having the president of the United States talking about the Crackco Barrels disastrous rebranding and things like that. Um, and and so it is going to be interesting to see like again, I I think there's, you know, what the temporary political movement looks like now. Now, and again, I I do think there's certainly something that resembles a vibe check, a vibe shift that goes beyond simply the politics, right? You are seeing some of that a little bit with like the steak and shake move, right? And we can have a broader conversation about like, oh well, you know, a fast food burger joint changing from beef tallow from seed oils. Like, is that really some sort of great victory for, you know, healthcare panaceic um outcomes there? I maybe not. Um, there there's also kind of the fun tie-in of the Steak and Shake owner being like the the the the critic investor on the Cracker Barrel situation in particular, like the way there was some some interesting uh investor drama going on on that particular thing with those two kind of stars aligning there. Um but you know I think you definitely see a little bit you know a lot more from a corporate angle of a desire to recognize oh maybe 50% 51% 53% of the country that is sick and tired of a way that a lot of these concerns are not being heard not being considered or are being pushed through. You know maybe that will reconcile in ways that will go just simply beyond politics. But there is the other interesting side of this which is this disruptive force component to it. you know, which plays into you, Trump's impact on the Fed. We're going to talk about that in a little bit. It comes into some of just the the the rotation of elites. Um, elites might be overstating it. I mean, we're talking ultimately, you know, a lot of technocratic folks, and I don't want to give them the, you know, the prestige of being considered an elite by our standards here. Um, but some of the the headlines that have come up with RFK, you know, just this week is, you know, more people at the CDC, a lot of these you kind of, you know, longtime institutional folks that were able to survive the rotation on the change of the administration there of, you know, we we had u um, you know, the the act someone who was serving as the active director of the CDC, who then became the Trump appointee, who was kind of seen as a as a more moderating force there. um you know there's kind of interesting you claims that she's resigned and she hasn't resigned and we'll see how that goes and whatever kind of sounds like a federal governor situation um and in some ways there um there there has been this sort of interesting moderating influence on RFK I mean I've seen people on social media like Nicole Sharon and some of those folks who are very interested on more of the holistic approaches particularly on food right with the the different ways of like agricultural techniques itself um some of the things that Thomas Massie has talked about as well like there does I think genuine interest with a lot of those folks in some of those more kind of deeper systemic things that obviously can't be you know you not necessarily talking about you know monetary policy reforms necessarily but some of these things that go beyond simply the restriction and the banning of certain products you know x y and z um but it seems like a lot of that early energy was being stymied by I think uh Senator Cassidy from Louisiana who was kind of one of the the questionable votes on RFK's confirmation in the first place might have had like a moderating influence and some of the early decisions there based on some of the stuff like maybe Cassid's influence is waning and you're going to kind of get like peak RFK whatever that looks like in the coming months. We'll stay tuned to that. Um but I think it is it goes to I think this more larger dynamic and I think it's easy and understandable for you know for people like us that recognize the state itself you know is you know the the ultimate source of a lot of these problems right recognizing the consequences of monetary in uh the cost of monetary policy you know not only in the inflationary component but the shrinkflation component of it and the the work you know we see these very systemic problems that the state plays a role in and we recognize the very short-term haphazard ways that some of these current interventions going in. But I can understand why, you know, there's a lot of people that are sick and tired of this and recognize, okay, well, here we are stacking things that seem like wins and some of them might prove to be short-term wins. Some of them might end up creating new problems that are create other things down the road, right? But I can have sympathy too, you know, why there's so much interest in, you know, so so much buy in into using these we these tools right now given the extent again our longrunning thing theme of it's been decades of crap policy that have created the conditions for where we find ourselves right now. >> Yeah, I I think that's such an important point too that it has to almost has to be a counterculture thing like the political uh part of this is one part of it and it's an important part. it's what we tend to focus on, but it's like at the end of the day like your or you know your household is determining like what you buy at the grocery store, what you eat. Um and these have been struggles that you know go back a long time. Like it's not easy to avoid, you know, the super addictive processed foods. Like that stuff feels good and it tastes good and like that that's a personal battle that everybody has to go through to some extent. And you know, and that's why I think it's interesting. I hadn't really considered the the monetary policy angle of this um before, but it's like very tied in with time preference. Like it there is kind of a monetary um angle within your life where uh if you eat the cheap super addictive stuff right now that's probably going to generate much larger medical bills down the road, but that's way in the future. So there there's like an interesting kind of high time preference um angle to all that. And it's not like all of this stuff is like just coming from the state. This is a struggle that everybody has to go through and has had to go through for a long time. But it really does matter when the government comes in and you know starts nudging people in an unproductive direction and then that nudge is continuing and building for decades and decades and decades and like clearly things have happened. I mean, like people are always talking about what happened in 1971, but what I remember from that article I wrote was that at in the 70s, the chronic disease rate in the US was at like 1%. And today it's over 222 million Americans. So, it has exploded. And it's not like that is only because of monetary policy. I'm not saying that. But monetary policy absolutely has a it plays a role in terms of you know nudging people towards a higher time preference kind of uh kicking the can down the road not dealing with their problems not making the the right decision right now. It it nudges people in that direction when all of this stuff is already such a struggle that can really compound over time and then you add on to that all of the other non-monetary regulations um on top of that. So yeah, that that's important, but like these they're they're still nudges at the end of the day. And so like if there's this broader counterculture movement to like just eat healthier, be healthier, um we can still like we don't need to wait for, you know, all these policies to be rolled back, which is something I'm not very convinced is going to happen in in the near term. You're right. Like if there's a cultural movement, that's sort of what Maha is at its best is that kind of culture like, hey, we're going to be rejecting this stuff that's been pushed on us because in a lot of ways we can um I I think that's uh that that's a really important amount of uh point of nuance to have with this discussion, >> right? I I think uh there was this meme that was kind of funny, but I think it actually does make an important point right after Trump got elected and RFK was appointed. Uh or even it may have even been before. It doesn't really matter when it was, but it was um you know, the girl goes to the uh refrigerator and pulls out a Coke and then closes it and has a picture of RFK on the fridge and then goes never mind, you know, puts it and takes out a water. So, there is the personal choice component. Um but it's uh you know I would say it's actually more than nudges of monetary policy. I think it is that but it's more that moni money in a in a moni modern economy where we use money I was going to say a modern monetary but I don't want to confuse it is it pervades everything that we we do and so it's unsurprising that money would have an impact on uh these areas and when you tamper with the money the it will have effects um elsewhere where the choices uh have to be changed. However, there is nobody in a sense. RFK is not coming to save you. Uh so you and I have to make those choices. So it's actually an area where it's like sometimes it's a little bit weird because you feel like you have to argue against different sides of the the argument to be a libertarian. But I think it's coherent where it's like I don't care if people want to eat McDonald's and and Froot Loops. I'm, you know, I I'm I don't really know, you know, exactly if somebody wants to be a vegetarian or somebody wants to eat only meat. I I have to kind of figure that out in my own life just like everybody else does. But what I do know is that the artificial um uh choices that that monetary inflation causes and then restricts uh it it debases not only the money but debases the products and then the price inflation uh has to you know affect people's choices because people don't have an unlimited uh amount of money. So I mean if something is higher price you either have to sacrifice to get it or make sacrifices elsewhere um in your life. So even if we didn't take you know all the other more detailed uh aspects just the fact of of uh price inflation um in in food or anything else um affects people elsewhere um elsewhere in their lives. So I think it's yeah it's it there is a personal responsibility element of it um for sure but uh but yeah it has to be you know culturally not it's not going to come from the top down which is still you know still the problem that's what RFK's in in the federal government is going to make you know that 330 million Americans healthy well no that's not going to take place not not from one person making policy decisions well RF FK might not save us, but maybe Jerome Pal will kind some of the the effectively the defectto headlines from uh from Jackson Hole. Of course, we're very very much kidding, of course, make that very very clear. Um, but I know last week with Ryan, uh, if he was here, I'd try to figure out some way of making a Bill PY reference, but uh, he's not here, so we'll we'll avoid that bit for this week. Uh, but you did have Jerome Pal at Jackson Hole. You did have Trump following through on what we discussed last week about him possibly firing Lisa Cook, the great scandal. I mean, how can we dare go on without the great intellectual prowess of Lisa Cook and all of her great work on monetary policy. Um, so there is some Fed drama out there. Um, and what's interesting is is kind of the headlines to me like this is kind of peak Fed, right? You know, Fed speak itself is a key tool of monetary policy. You want to be as boring as possible. You want to make it seem, you know, you want to make people to extrapolate from your words whatever outcome they want to desire. And I think Pal put on a a master class of, you know, cloaking, you know, whatever he's trying to say in the most boring technocratic language as possible to get the outcomes that he wanted. And so when he was at Jackson Hole this past weekend was of course the big hubbub with all the all the fancy central bankers of the world uniting for you know the common cause and human decency and you rainbows and kittens and all that sort of stuff. Um you know pal's statements comments seem to indicate or at least a lot of people took away the indication that concerns over the labor market um and whatnot um might be opening the door to a upcoming rate cut perhaps even next month. Um it seemed that even after the weekend there there was kind of people make recognizing that maybe he wasn't quite saying that maybe um there was new discussions about changing the way the Fed kind of looked at its framework to consider uh monetary policy decisions moving away from from certain elements there certain variables that they had changed back in 2020. I think it was like right before COVID, something like that. But, you know, kind of, oh, don't worry, we're we're super serious. We're constantly re-evaluating and tweaking our the way that we interpret the data to make our highly proclaimed um big solutions here. Um, but uh again, this this of course the the constant political winds that have surrounded the Fed's decision um are at the forefront here. There did seem to be pow, oh, you know, I I I as chair do not dictate this sort of stuff. the the the the governors, the our broader board will make these decisions, right? Trying to separate himself as a singular force when it comes to making monetary policy decisions. Um and so you it's going to be very interesting to see this play out. Again, glad to see so much attention on the Fed. Glad to see the Fed being attacked from so many interesting ways right now. Um again, it's I don't think it's ever been as much a mainstream topic of conversation as it is right now. Uh but Connor, any any takeaways from u from what we've seen this week in Fed Watch? >> Um it's just sort of this broader story is just interesting to me and I I really am focused on the polit politization that you're talking about there and it's just interesting watching the reaction and I guess this makes sense, but it seems like there is no way for them to escape the narrative at all that Trump is driving monetary policy. even if they don't do what he wants, then like that might be seen by some people as them deliberately not doing what he wants. So even if they go the other way, um they're not really going to escape that. And like already like I think Trump made some comments the other day about how um there's like a path to him getting a majority on the Fed board. Basically a majority Trump uh Fed board, which is what I was talking about the other week with like the discourse about the Fed may be going in the same direction that the discourse with the Supreme Court does now where all these board members are essentially just these agents of whatever uh president put them on there. And we're sort of at the point now where Yeah. Yeah. Okay. maybe the the Fed cuts um next in September in in the coming weeks. Um but like that it doesn't seem like there's sort of an offramp for like the depolit depolitization of the Fed. That's tough to say. Um and that as we've been talking about that's that's a positive. And also I I did um there is another angle here too where this does feel kind of inevitable at some point just as you know the debt grows and as the effects of monetary policy just grow with it and become uh more and more ingrained in daily life like I think people are going to be paying more attention to the Fed. So there is a question of like like is Trump really the big driver here? I think he he may be accelerating it a bit and certainly like his specific call for the Fed to cut rates and their refusal to do that and making it a thing and now the fact that they may do that of course will be read as like them relenting and giving into the pressure like he has already changed the conversation around the Fed in a way that um we're generally in favor of because it's more clarifying it's closer to the truth that like this is actually a politicized um organization. So we're we're happy about that. Of course, we're not very happy with what Trump is trying to get the Fed to do, but that that's something we've we've covered a lot before, but it it's been interesting to watch specifically the the reaction to to Jackson Hole has really shown that like we're we're deeper into this polit politization. Gosh, I I really got to practice that word. Um than than I had really expected. And I'm I'm happy to see that. >> What's that say? You Josh. >> Yeah. Well, I I know I'll always remember where I was when I heard that Lisa Cook was uh off the No, I'm just kidding. But uh it kind of reminded me out. >> Well, you know, in this watching of Jackson Hole, there are two two articles uh there actually quite a few actually right now on uh mises.org on uh the Fed independence. Uh Dr. Thornon wrote one about Jackson Hole. You know, what's going on over there and and so his is uh good and he did a follow-up podcast. And Jonathan Newman also wrote one on the the myth of Fed independence which was written before that but plays into this. But I hadn't considered the fact that it is it is good in a sense that now that Trump is so publicly trying to throw his weight around with the Fed. Um that now people are saying wait a second that's kind of seeming like the Fed is political. It's like well yeah it's like you know if that's what it takes to wake um people up to it. It's it's annoying to hear Trump asking for you know the only thing he could ask for is is more um lower interest rates and that's you know that's the only direction they can uh that they can go in. Um, so it's and it's interesting also with uh with Jerome Powell is, you know, let's say, okay, we're going to do this, we're looking at this thing. Well, maybe we'll do a cut this it. But they always facilitate more easy money and credit. The only way that they finally get themselves into too much hot water is when they print so much money. Somebody will get on this and say, "Oh, we don't print money." But anyway, they digitally print so much money that you run the risk of hyperinflation or whatever else. Um the the truth is that I think it's you know we at the Mises Institute would like people to come around to is number one the Fed is and has always been political. It's always been a political instrument to have a hidden method of taxation through through inflation and that this pseudo it's kind of the same thing with um with the CDC and this public health uh dynamic as well. It's it's this pseudo science, this pseudo intellectual thing of well no this is something that really takes experts because this is something called uh called monetary policy that's they're really looking at all this and deciding what is the right um interest rate and uh monetary policy is uh is a fraud. It's this idea of the that um the government or C government through the central banking system uh knows the right amount of artificial money and credit to push into the system which we know causes price inflation boom bust cycles and distorts the structure of production. But they also know how to do that to the right amount of full employment. But then they know how to do that to stop price inflation. Um and that's their their sacred dual mandate and you know that they uh come around you know and and kind of wisely uh figure that out. It's in my head Dr. Serno says that they they ambidextrously you know with both hands are able to manage uh these things and no it's always um it's always political. It's always about more easy money and credit. And um usually the only thing that you can get people to say bad about the Fed is, "Hey, did you know the Fed is a private institution when it's nowhere near a private institution, you know, as as we know, it's it's chartered by Congress, appointed by the president. So, I'm glad that it's um in the news and negatively, but I think just kind of like with the we mentioned there has to be kind of a cultural change and understanding of of money and uh and economics uh with with the uh health uh uh dynamic there. There has to be a cultural change, really a change back because Americans, a lot more of them understood this in the early 1900s of understanding what is actually going on when the Fed uh does this this you know secret uh monetary policy thing, which monetary policy just means figuring out how much money they can print without getting in trouble. That's without getting themselves in trouble. They don't care if we get in trouble. So that that's the it's I the desanctification of the the Fed is really what needs to happen. So I'm glad Trump is doing that, but he doesn't have a sense of why what's really wrong with the Fed. >> Well, you mentioned some articles on the wire about this. I wanted to highlight one other one by John Wolfenberger. Um pal cares more about Fed independence than inflation the economy. Um which is a great breakdown of uh Jackson Hull. Um yeah, at the end he's got some very nice little bullet points that I think sums up um really the takeaways uh from the significance of it going forward. Um you have what does it all mean with his speech um that pal will blame inflation on anything and and anyone else but the Fed. Um he was talking about there's some references to COVID and tariffs and things like that. Um pat himself on the back for being a genius central planner that don't worry they've got it all taken care of. Throw Trump and Wall Street a bone that he's open to cutting rates. It's always my f fun dynamics is you know Wall Street you know stocks go up uh during an announcement like that even though the underlying incentive you the underlying message is oh the the employment rate or the the employment situation is bad so we might have to lower rates but that's hey okay for Wall Street. Um acknowledge that the Fed's rate hike may cause a recession and after all and that the latest job report may be signaling that ding ding ding. um justify the the Fed's precious independence to raise or lower rates whenever they want based on how they interpret the latest data. Um and that the takeaway is going forward that the Fed has no idea what it is doing or what to expect going forward just like all economic central planners all over the world. Pal lacks the courage to stand up to Trump, not create more money out of thin air. Um even though they have failed for for 52 months to hit their 2% target rate. Um and that Pal knows that more massive negative jobs revisions are coming on the September 6th jobs report. Stay tuned for that. um enabling him to cut rates on September 17th unless inflation is surprisingly bad. And again, I I think that's exactly what we are heading with a lot of this sort of stuff. I again none of this should be surprising. Again, like the underlying metrics of the economy have not been particularly strong for quite some time. The whole purpose of kind of the Biden era rate cut was a signal of this. And again, everything the Fed's trying to do right now is to just project competency, enough independence to show a kind of broader institutional um strength that it's we're not overly politicized, but also enough to not seem as a adversarial institution to the broader Trump portfolio. U one thing I do think will be interesting going forward is that uh Steven Moren who is one of Trump's nominees on the table right now um to fill one of the Fed spots that is actually open. Um he's got a lot of very interesting stuff and I I don't know how much you guys have touched on. I' I've read his stuff. Um, so I'm not going to you put you all guys on the spot, but just for our listeners to know, um, he has someone who has written a lot about what's called the the Mara Lago accords. And the idea there was trying to tie broader aggressive tariff policy with a general uh devaluation of the dollar with the viewpoint that the dollar is too overly weighted that that that it is is overly propped up globally and that that is the cause for a lot of the industrial uh uh moves out of the country yada yada yada. The basically the explicit aim is that we need to uh weaken the dollar explicitly and use tariffs to force other countries to kind of accept that and you know in terms of ramifications on uh uh debt and things like that and it's just this very broad ambitious and frankly you fairly dangerous plan. Um obviously Fed policies for quite some time have had the you know the natural uh uh impact of you know being inflationary. we, you know, you can pull up your favorite, you know, you whether it's, you know, what the hell happened in 1971 or 1913, whatever, whatever your favorite like the decline of purching power of the dollar mean that you have out there. Um, you know, that has been the de facto impact of all Fed policies for quite some time. But having it explicitly identified as an aim, um, is a little bit different than what we are used to here. Um, again, not to give any of the former the current or former members of the Fed any any credit there, but it will be interesting to see how much that explicit policy aim is reflected with other potential uh people that Trump is going to look to install here. Um, yeah, we should have some indication on Lisa Cook front. I know there's going to be there will be lawyers. I don't know how much uh I would love to see the legal bills um coming out of Fed battles on this topic, but you'll be very interested to see how that plays out in the courts, whether Trump has the authority to do it, whether Bill Py will get what he wants um and using uh you the mortgage fraud uh case against uh against that particular Fed governor. But again, this that's a lot of stuff going on here. There's be a lot of you a lot of stuff to cover on uh powered market for now in the near future. uh a lot of activity, a lot of changes. Um again, it's it's uh again to me and I think the common thread of all this is going to be, you know, what does the economic environment look like two years from now? Because like what what I find so fascinating is that it was clear that so much of the mandate that came from 2024 was the direct result of inflation as one of the top drivers in politics. We hadn't seen obvious consumer price inflation along those lines in, you know, since the 70s. It all comes back to Nixon in this episode. Um, but you know, that was a key driving force within that 2024 election. If things if we are are on an inflationary track, if if if that pain returns, we're already seeing it play out. Um, you know, with with core inflation and things like that, you there's a lot of good reasons. I mean, Ryan McMin has written a lot like there's no good reason to cut rates right now based on the underlying metrics right now. um you know if if we are dealing with an elevated inflation situation again um in two years from now what that is going to have in terms of the broader political sphere where people are going to be looking for okay well that didn't work what comes next I think that that is a a massive wild card in the general trends um that you know when we have so much reevaluation of what does politics mean what do these underlying cultural components whether it's maha whether it's whatever what do people find as an answer is Is it going to be something better or is it going to be something worse? It could very well be something worse. But I think you the economic environment in the next couple years is going to be I think have the opportunity to create a massive political shift in ways that I think are completely un um unknowable right now. the incredible amount of political uncertainty in ways that I don't think is really being touched upon with so much fixation on interesting topics, but congressional redistricting or you know some of these if if if the economy sucks two years from now um you know all the all the current calculations from political consultants about what congressional races or presidential races are going to look like are going to be completely upended. Um, and so that that is something I think is be very very fascinating as we see the way the Fed tries to manage a situation. >> That that's interesting about the Mara Lago accords. It's sort of it reminds me of um that old that Bill Buckley line that Rothbart attacked like early in his career about how basically the only way to beat the Soviet Union is to be more like the Soviet Union. Kind of feels like the same thing here with like the only way to beat China is to start acting more like the CCP. So I sort in my head I've christened these people economic neoonservatives uh because it's like the same kind of philosophy. But another quick point um just to end on uh if people are interested in this that specific topic we were uh referencing earlier about how the Fed has always been political. Jonathan Newman we just published on uh the on mises.org I guess it was from the a what's it called right now? The the magazine >> messian messian. Yes that's right. um and his uh article going over how the Fed has never been an an independent entity. Fed independence is a complete myth. And he went back and looked at the records. There's a specific meeting um he touches on from 1951 where which is like in the narrative is like when Fed independence was really um you know baked into the equation and he just shows that all they did was change their rhetoric. Um it's based on the speech he gave at our revisionist um history conference and that's a really I think devastating takedown of the the mainstream characterization of the Fed. So I I recommend checking that out. >> Josh, anything to add before we get out of here? >> Uh Ben the Fed. >> There you go. >> No, I don't have anything uh anything more to add than that. >> Excellent. Well, if you want your own copy of the messian so that you can have the the concrete version. concrete would not be make for a very good magazine uh material. But if you want your own version of the messian in paper for your desk, for your uh your your kitchen table or whatever your your magazines to dump on, um you can do so just by becoming a Misesus member. Um you can find more information on to on that at the misus.org. And if you are a Mises member or interested in becoming a Mises member and want to hang out with Connor, Josh, and myself, do not forget that we have got a great event coming up in October on 16th through the 18th in beautiful Delray Beach, Florida. Our theme is economic freedom, the key to liberty. We've got an allstar lineup including Dr. Solerno, Tom Woods, Bob Murphy, Peter Klein, Alex Paula, Guido Hollesman coming all the way from Europe. Parabolin, the Newman's and all sorts of other great great speakers. Um, again, you can find more information about that event at misuses.org/events. It will be a great time. It always is. Well, with that being said, enjoy your college football week for those who celebrate. for Connor O'Keefe for Josh. This is the Bishop. I will we will see you next week. Proceed ever more boldly. [Music]