The Fed, Unreserved with Chicago Fed President Austan Goolsbee

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Shastu can say expand with Viso Steuier. Oh, yeah. Hey everybody, welcome to the weekly show. Podcast, my name is John Stewart, I'll be hosting this week's episode. It is Tuesday, July 14th.

We're heading into the semi-finals of the world cup.

“Coming tomorrow is going to be two, I think, incredible matches.”

We are back at war with Iran. So the world is stabilizing, becoming more normal now. The Iran War will just be a low level fire that is just burning for years and years underneath the surface of the Earth's mantle. It is Tuesday, obviously Lindsey Graham passed over the weekend.

This won't air till Wednesday. Who knows how many more of the assisted living facility we call our United States government. How many more will fall? Till then, but we're not going to talk about that. This, you know, the new CPI report, the new inflation report came out and it's creating

ripples about what the Fed might possibly do and it occurred to me that I have no fucking idea how they do that, what they do and how they do it and so I am very excited. We are going to get inside scoop ladies and gentlemen. Not from a Fed observer, not from a Bloomberg analyst, no my friends. From someone inside the belly of the beast, inside the room, where it happens, a president

of a regional Fed, Chicago, no less, the great city of Chicago. They, my friends, have sent us one of their best representatives. Did he get to go see Millani at Rigley Field? He might not have, but a hell of a show that was if you were there. But ladies and gentlemen, let's get to our president of the Chicago Fed right now.

Ladies and gentlemen, what an exciting day on the weekly show podcast. We welcome back an old friend along Los Powell, a king of the world of economics, Austin Coolsby, who is now beyond all expectation, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, Austin Coolsby, how are you sir? You thought they built the walls of the vault to keep people like me out of here, but listen,

it didn't work. I thought for sure they did and to see you elevated to have to see you in the hallowed halls of the Federal Reserve of Chicago. How many presidents, what is their 12 of you guys? How many presidents of regional feds are there?

Oh, I thought you meant ever at Chicago. Yeah, there's 12 reserve banks spread around the 12 reserve banks. Spread around the cut.

“Right now, did you run for president, were you appointed, how did this, how did this work?”

I was chosen. Each of those reserve banks is not a government agency, they're not for profit.

and bankers and the non banker board members choose the president at each of the, each of the banks. This is, we're, let me tell you something. This is, I can't even believe we've jumped in so hot and so fresh. We're, you know what, we're not even dipping our toes in Austin, Goals baiting.

We haven't even gotten to the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, but we're going to. Oh, but when, when we get to Eccles, the whole place is going to explode. We are, we are diving right in. So you've got this 12 regional feds and they're chosen by local leaders, civic leaders. And then that mixes with the board of governors and that is a more probably not political,

but politically pointed. Yeah, politically appointed, confirmed by the Senate and, and, and each of those governors, the thing that's confusing is, oh, it's those Austin, it's all confusing. D.C. political appointees, their title is governor, but they're kind of more like senators and the presidents are more like governors because we, we're, we're out and have a region.

But those, those governors that are political appointees are appointed to 14 year terms and they're staggered because from the beginning, they were trying to be as much as possible in a democracy. They were trying to keep it independent from political interference. And the feds independence is, is a necessary, because why, Austin, why?

Because people hate inflation, that's the main reason that if you just look around economies before I, you, you knew me before I was ever at the fed.

Economists are basically unanimous that the central bank of the country needs to be independent

from political interference because the incentives of the sitting government for the setting of interest rates, you know what it is, they're like, cut the rates, let the inflation come back in the future. That's right. So they don't care if you just look at countries or times in this country, when the central

bank is not independent, inflation comes raging back, the job market is worth growth as worse.

“And that's why I fed independence is important.”

It's not, it says, I say, it's not like we're, the, the fed is not getting a pirate flag or like putting a snake on there and, and don't tread on me, right? We want to have our own stamps or something. It's only because if you don't have central bank independence from, from interference in setting the interest rate, you get a lot of inflation and people hate inflation.

And the case study of that, as always, as is the case study in any political discussion here,

Richard Nixon, Richard Millhouse Nixon, you know, the tapes that keep on giving, Richard Millhouse Nixon, he, he said to the, the Vegec, hey, man, I have an election coming up. One that he was going to win by the way, like 49 states to one. Yeah. I don't think, I don't think, my government got his own statement.

Yeah. So exactly. But the thing is, that's the US test case, I guess I would say there are a lot worse test cases. Oh, sure.

You know, as you look around the world, Argentina, yeah. Look, Argentina, why are more Germany, whether there's not, well, if the, if the central

government basically insists that the, that the central bank monetized the debt to, to pay

“for what the government's doing, that, that ends in tears, and that, that's why Fed”

independent matters. And it does matter. And you bring an interesting point, monetize the debt and we'll get into that in a little bit because that got a little tricky in 2008. We're running through it all Austin, we're, we're hitting all the, I haven't talked

you in so long and it's, it's so exciting. We're going to, we're going to grab all the hits there. So they establish this now. Now, the Fed independence, I don't even know if you're allowed to talk about this because you're, as one of the presidents.

But obviously right now, every president is going to try and influence at some level monetary policy. And also Congress is going to try and influence it through legislation. That's, let's face facts, Congress could change the dual mandate if they wanted to. Could they not, isn't, wasn't a congressional act that made it so that the Fed had those

“two mandates one to control inflation and one for maximum employment?”

Yes. Look, everything you said is true now, now you, now you're out front, you're dragging me as a, is the proofs, the dual mandate, the whole thing. Let's do a mandate this bitch. All right.

The, the, the constitution says in there, I'm not a, the constitutional expert, but it says Congress is the one who coins money.

So I've kind of think that at the root of the Federal Reserve Act, which is started

“in 1913, is the idea that Congress coins the money and is in charge of that, they created”

the system. The law says that what the Fed does when it's setting the interest rate. And that's all, when we go for monetary policy, what the Fed does at the federal open market committee is we go in a big, huge, table room, giant table. They does shades come really, yeah, F, F, O, M, C, F, O, M, C, sits are literally sits around

a big, literally around the biggest table, how often every six weeks. What? Yeah, every six weeks, we go to Washington, D, C, the shades come down. So nobody can spy. It's like the situation room, you got to leave your phone outside.

And there's no devices in there. And then it's the, if you're eConerd, John, it's the coolest room in the world. They're going to just literally go around the table and they're going to be like, okay, Jay Powell, what do you think about the economy? Day one, it goes two days.

Now he's not F, O, M, C, though, isn't he? No, he is for the governor's or his board of governors, part of F, O, M, C. They're on at the F, O, M, C is a collection, the 12 of us, and the seven of them. F, O, M, C is the board of governors. Yeah, seven appointed members, and then the 12 presidents of the regional feds, that

have been selected by regional civic and business leaders, 19 people. Yes. But now I'm going to add one in the weeds, and I already feel like punch at myself for doing it.

“But not all of the 12 are voting at any one time, how many or five of the 12 are voting?”

So that it adds up to an even number. Well, it's, I still don't understand. Awesome. Are you getting voters or 12 voters at any given moment? Five from the banks and seven from the governor.

Now, do they do that to lessen the influence of the non-political actors? I think so. I think so. And who decided that it was that? Was that a congressional act?

Yes. Yeah, that's a banking reform act on 1934, something like that. But what's important is the idea.

So not to go back in the financial history, but Andrew Jackson kills the second bank of

the United States. We have a national bank. He kills it. Along with thousands and thousands of other people, but that's beyond, that's beyond. We're not going to talk about that with the interjections.

Yes. Go ahead. Look, I'm not disputing that, and I thought you were saying by killing the national bank, it killed a lot of people and that might be true because the panic of 1837 follows the shutdown of the national bank.

We then go for 70 years without a national bank, panic of 1907, now that's where we went to Morgan. That's where we went to Morgan. Exactly.

J.P. Morgan himself in the panic of 1907 basically steps in as the lender of last resort

to prevent the what would be a great depression. He backsopped the United States government who has what you consider there a liquidity crisis. They have no money. They have nothing to lend the government, but it's more that I think the story has

an interesting wrinkle because he doesn't do that out of just gratitude for the nation. Sure. They never do. He backs stops a series of financial institutions and he chooses his friends when he does it.

Okay.

“So when the crisis comes, you have to decide, no, no, you guys are doomed.”

It's we're not going to throw good money chasing after bed. So he chooses the people that he likes and he's like, okay, I'm going to give you the loans and the ones he doesn't like, they die. Wow. Congress creates the Federal Reserve Act a because they want to have a lender of last

resort and b, they don't want to be beholden to one private individual choosing winners based on whatever criteria they want to choose the way. J.P. Morgan shouldn't get to choose. They should get to choose. You know, in a way, but they, but they outlined that it vested in a Federal Reserve system

and importantly, they're deeply uneasy in 1913, just as people are today that Washington DC plus the banks on Wall Street are going to control the entire financial system of the

And that is why they create 12 reserve banks spread around the country to represent and and we have boards of directors made up of these regions and we aren't political appointees and we come to these FOMC meetings with a totally different perspective than political appointees. And that actually, even though it's cludgy, even though I was, yes, we've got five votes and they rotate in and out, but that actually was a stroke of genius and it's, and it's

a reason why the central bank, the Fed, has existed for 100 and whatever for 13 years.

And it wasn't shut down like the first and second banks of the United States were.

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of the United States, so two that point, so you've got a San Francisco fed and they're in charge of, I guess, growing weed. I don't know what they do out there, but it's something San Francisco, St. Louis, Boston, New York, there's kind of some crazy, I guess, the speaker of the house and the majority

“leader were both from Missouri and the Federal Reserve Act, I think kind of came down”

to one vote, St. Louis and Kansas City. Two of the 12 are in Missouri, St. Louis, Kansas City, Atlanta, so they've got it, it's all spread around. So Austin Gooseby's purview is now, I would say, all those, uh, probably what Michigan is that to you represent the interests of manufacturing.

We got most of, and the 90% of the economies of Iowa, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, part of the Midwest, now, importantly, if you go look at the economy, most of the economy in any place is kind of macro is the same everywhere. It's the, the, the thing that is distinctive of Chicago's district, it is the most manufacturing intensive of all the districts you're quite right, but manufacturing is still not the majority

of the economy. So we don't just represent, you're taking a macro view. We're taking a macro view, but it doesn't form when we've got into all the tariff discussions and liberation day of the seven most affected states by tariffs. Four of them are in my district in Chicago.

So when I'm out talking to business people, talking to civic leaders, they're hair is not fire, and they want to talk about supply chain, they want to talk about if tariffs apply to their, to their components and supplies, how it's going to end up turning into inflation

And so I'll try to bring that when I go to the meetings, I'll try to bring that.

Right. That perspective.

“The, the different research that that you've done.”

So now everybody, I'm assuming is doing that, maybe not at the level that Austin Google's being doing it because your, your diligence and your tenacity is seconded. I am in the greatest of all the Fed district and Missouri is doubling up on everything. Everybody's around. Everybody's trying to do so, so they all get together and it's every six weeks.

So I imagine the, the nuance of it because economic conditions over every six week period are probably not that not that different, certain storms can come in, certain others. But you're getting together, the thing I want to ask is, so everybody's got all this incredibly nuanced information about the economic conditions that are affecting their general regions.

But the Fed really only has kind of the, the more broad based, sledgehammer tool of interest rates. No. Totally. Yes.

And only one small part of interest rates. So we set an overnight rate, which affects short run interest rates. But okay, okay, a mortgage is like a 30 year mortgage. And the determination of those long rates as they call it, the market has a lot to say about that.

So what we do is important, but as I describe with kind of like, we're this big of the universe, but Bob Boy, in this part of the universe, what the Fed does makes a huge difference. But there are a lot of things that are outside the Fed's purview. So what is downstream of the Fed's, because that's all anybody talks about. Nobody talks about the variety of other interest rates that may be raised at other levels.

And I guess we can get into who raises those or who closes those, or if those are just downstream of the overnight interest rate that the Fed would open up. They are downstream of the overnight interest rate. So when the Fed does things, it does affect those.

But one of the most important things that affects mortgage rates or 30 year treasury rates

are all of this, if we get down in the weeds, are what do people think the inflation rate is going to be over the next 30 years?

“Wait, are people really trying to figure that out over 30 years?”

They're trying to figure out the inflation rate. Yeah, the whoever owns the 30 year mortgage that you got, that person cares a lot about what inflation is going to be over the next 30 years, because if they lend to you at 6% and then inflation is going to be 9% for 30 years, they're going to lose money every year for the entire time.

So the Fed does a thing on these shorter rates that influences longer rates. But other influences include what do people think are going to be inflation, how do people think growth is going to be, what do they think is going to be productivity, all of this stuff? These are all projections, all of those involve a projection.

Let me ask you a question.

How accurate, because this is, this is the thing about economics that I'm never quite sure

about. My sense, my sense when I talk to economists is that they think they're arithmetic, but they're really probability calculators. They know stradomas kind of thing. They think that they are doing a strict science as opposed to an art science.

Yeah. I'm more on the arts science.

“I think you're right that it's arts science and most researcher, academic kind of economists,”

basically don't think forecasting is doable. They think it's extremely, and a fool's errand, you know, a bit of a fool's errand. Yet we have to, we have to make decisions every six weeks, but what is the track record over 30 years? In other words, generally speaking, we're the economists in 2000, or I would say now, but

1995, we're in the arena of where we are now. In other words, the people that were setting monetary policy in the '90s, in the '80s, in 2000. I won't go with Volker because that obviously was a crisis situation. And you know, and we'll take 2008 out of it.

But the projections that they're using to base these on, are they generally accurate what's the margin here? They're the cleanest dirty shirt we have, okay? So I would say there actually is evidence that the feds forecast were better than the private sector forecast.

But that doesn't make them good. You know, that doesn't make them worse. Why are they all such dicks about it?

Why is that awesome?

Anybody who's overconfident, I can say this because I wasn't a forecaster, so I came in,

so I'm a inherently different rule. Skeptical black boxes to begin with. And I have this theory about human beings that dates back to caveman times, that they're kind of like you either believe in magic or you don't believe in magic and there is. And this plays out in many venues in academics, if somebody came and presented a paper

that was so complicated that no one could understand it. There are some academics who are like that person is so impressive. I couldn't even understand it. And others like the Nobel Laureate Jean Phama, who was at the University of Chicago, his thing inherently doesn't believe in magic.

So he'd be like, this whole thing is bullshit.

I can't understand one word that guy said, and I'm more sympathetic to that.

“Yeah, I think that's the correct interpretation.”

But that makes just skeptical of forecasting in general, and yet, and yet it has to be done. It's better than it has to be done. It's been better than random. And for all the criticisms, for all the criticisms of the people who say, look, you missed this one, you screwed that one up, it's not like their forecasts were better and like

I say. So I'm kind of love the idea, though, that economic textbooks, there should be a title of an economic textbook, and the title is better than random. I'm going to make that the subtitle. I'm going to make that the subtitle.

I love some more. Better than random. I think that's the highest bar that we can try and aspire to. So you've done this, everybody sits down, and it's only that. And what it seems like when you're in the meeting, and you've got your 12 members of the

regional boards, only five of which vote, you've got your seven board members, and they're going to decide 25 basis points up, 25 basis points down. We're going to hold, we're going to put, we're going to do a push.

“We're going to do all these different things, right?”

Yes, but we're almost matters more than that, is what everybody thought they were going to do. That's fair. That's fair. The expectation and the expectations and the communication and like how are we talking

about it? All of that stuff, I get impatient with the funhouse mirror nature of this. Well, we think that we think that this is going to have a, I don't like that, as you know, Paul Volcker was the old friend of mine. Do you guys talk about that in the meeting?

Sometimes, in the, sometimes, in the meeting, you'll say that. They think we're going to do this. Yes, there are some, people come from different backgrounds. And some people are markets, people came from a finance background. I was an economist, their business people, it feels like we're only ever supposed to talk

about what we ourselves think, not what the committee thinks or what anybody else's opinion is. But you live in the world. But you live in the world. And my observation is that some people put a higher weight on what does the market expect.

And for myself, I was old, protege of Paul Volcker went through the financial crisis, working very closely with him. For those who don't remember, Volcker was, he came in after the Nixon debacle where the lowered rates artificially inflation got really sticky in the late 70s. There was the oil shock and Volcker came in and raised rates, what, to maybe record levels

for the United States. It literally hit 20%, and it was a brutal period, terrible recession.

“And it was the only way that we got rid of inflation.”

And so in central bank circles and got Reagan elected basically, they look back at Paul Volcker

as the, as the, the superhero of central banking. And he was like six foot eight, he was a giant in every way. And he used to say, our job is to act. The market's job is to react. And let's not get the order mixed up.

And I try to carry that, that's interesting. So I do think it matters the psychology of the market matters. But there's nothing in the Federal Reserve Act. The law says that we are to maximize employment and stabilize prices. And that those are the two jobs.

There's nothing in there that says, make sure the stock market is happy. Make sure nobody's disappointed. And I don't know, we've had this conversation, we, we had it 15 years ago.

The stock market is not the economy.

“And the, the ultimate evidence that that's true is you'll remember that day at peak,”

COVID that they announced the job numbers for April, they announced that on my mom's birthday

in, at the beginning of the day, always do it on your mom's birthday.

No, just happen to this here. It just happened to be my mom's birthday. That's how I remember whether what the day was, it was they announced that the United States had lost 20 million jobs in a single month. That's right.

That was the worst day in the history of any of the job market, the stock market went up that day. Of course, because they thought it would be worse. Who knows why? No, you know why, but like the stock market is not the economy.

Everybody needs to remember that because what they thought, it's, oh, I mean, this happens just recently. There was a, in the midst of this difficult economy, I think it was maybe last month, or two months ago, there was a really good job support. And in the really good jobs report, the market went down, or no, I'm sorry, reverse

that. It was a terrible jobs report, and it shot up, and the market goes up.

“The thinking of it, I think, is, oh, shit, they've got a dual mandate.”

So if they're not worried about hiring, right? They'll be more likely to do what we want on interest rates. And therefore, we won't have the competition of treasuries and other things. People will think the stock market is our best avenue. Maybe, but look, just be careful, getting trying to get into people's heads.

Yeah. Okay. In the market. Why would it go up? What, what would be the reason?

Well, that would be why. Well, I mean, it could be two reasons. It could be, hey, they think it means the Fed is going to do something, or it could be, they had already priced in what they thought it was going to be. And actually, this was better or worse than what they thought it was going to be.

Another expectation game. Yeah.

“So that's why you just got to be careful about that.”

I have a friend who's a pretty famous doctor down at the University of Chicago.

And she started her first job before medical school.

She was working at the Wall Street Journal, who had some kind of a TV program. And her job was to call the people in the market and say, you know, "Coppers up 5% this week, why is that?" And she would get the explanation. And then she had to run over and they would record it on the tape and then they'd send

out the tapes to all of the branch affiliates or something. And she said, she decided to go into medicine when she came in and they said, "Golden is down 5%, why is that?" and the guy said, "Well, it's because the traders think that this and the Fed is going to move." So she runs in and just as they're about to hand it, somebody says, "Wait a minute.

Gold is not down, it's up. Go back and call the guy." So she runs back down and she calls them up. And she says, "We said you told me why gold was down, but actually gold is up. Why is gold up?"

And the guy said, same reason. At that point, she said, "I'm out of here, I'm going to become a doctor." I'm going back into where not as many people will die at my hand, then would if the economy tanks down. Yes.

That's phenomenal. Obviously, we've talked a little bit on the show about the crumple, which is the portable dog bed that you throw on the ground that makes it different, topographical shape each time you do it. Or maybe I'll make an app.

Maybe I'm always thinking of a different app.

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They chop a phahandleset, get some to come back and repeat customers, set up and check out a raw handle. Then you get to live your life, grow your business, which they help you too too. I'm perfectly, I don't say I'm not that happy with them that they stole my idea, even though obviously they had it first and did the work you needed to do to make it come to fruition.

business. So go make it one, start your free trial at Shopify.com/tWS, start your free trial at Shopify.com/tWS. Now let's get into, so the Fed is charged with this idea of, if employment, if we're in a deep recession, they might say we're going to cut rates because that will stimulate the economy and then hopefully as the money pours into the economy, people will start

hiring again. If employment is steady and looking good, but inflation is sticky and above that 2% mark, which it is now, although the new I guess CPI came out, it was lower a little bit than they thought it had cooled a little bit, but if that's the case, they might raise interest

rates because employment looks robust, but they need to bring down the problem is when

they get into where employment doesn't look great, but inflation is still up and then you're in that weird, I guess they call stagflation. Look at you, John, I read the synopsis, you got the whole thing wired, the basic idea is that the most cyclical parts of the economy, whether they're durable goods manufacturing, autos, stuff like that, business investment, construction of data centers or what have

you, these parts of the economy also tend to be the most interest rates sensitive.

“So that's why the Fed kind of becomes the tip of the spear, why use the interest rate”

to counteract the business cycle because these really cyclical, if the economy is overheating,

then you raise the interest rate to try to cool it down and ease inflation.

If it looks like you're teetering on recession, then you reduce the interest rate and try to get people by and more cars, building more houses, doing more business investment. When it goes wrong, the economist called that the divine coincidence, it's not, it's all the coincidence, it's nothing to do with you. The coincidence part is usually those two, the dual mandate, they aren't in conflict.

Okay, when the divine coincidence starts going wrong is when both things start getting worse at the same time and we're somewhat in that cycle, we're kind of in that cycle, but we're kind of in that cycle, because things like oil prices going up, they drive down employment and up prices at the same time, supply chains getting interfered with and wrecked, anything that in our language is happening on the supply side, that's a stagflationary

direction, shock and that's the nightmare of the central bank. Now it's the 70s, that was the oil shock. Now it's the 70s, that was the 70s, though, as I say, it's not the 70s, this is the stagflationary direction, but if you could pull out your magic crystal eight ball and call

“in 1970s and say, hey, you guys dealt with stagflation, what do we do?”

They would say, oh, man, it's a nightmare, what's your unemployment rate? And you're going to say, well, it's a little over 4%. What? They're going to be like, what's your inflation rate? Well, you know, it's up to 4%.

Yeah, they're going to hang up on you and say, like, why are you bothering us? You're doing great. Yeah, exactly. They're going to be like, we have unemployment, that's almost 10% and inflation

is 14% and so let us never go back to the 70s, but this dilemma of what do you do when

both things go wrong? That's a tough spot. And this is where in your, so in those meetings, so you're in that place now, where it's managing, like you say, it's creeping up because of a variety of things, whether it's the Russian war or the Iran war, the Strait War Moose or anything else.

People are suffering at these higher grocery prices. Inflation is weirdly steady, but not seemingly moving in any real direction. Yes, not coming down, right, employment same. It's kind of steady, but not really, you're not seeing robust other than data centers and AI. Not really seeing the rest of the economy having much being very robust in the way that

it's creating things.

“Yeah, look, that's what I described that as the job market is stable without being good.”

And there's a weird combination that people throw around this phrase low hiring, low firing.

Usually, if there's low hiring, there's a lot of layoffs, or if there's low layoffs

and low firings, there's a lot of hiring. That both of those are low at the same time is really weird. The hiring rate is so low, it's characterized if, if I told you, we're in the depths of

“a recession, that's what you would think by how low the hiring rate is.”

But if I told you with a layoff rate, you'd think we're in a huge boom. That's how low the the layoff rate is. So it's stable without being good. Do you have a sense of why is that because the economy is being boosted by one particular sector to the, in other words, it's got a high ceiling, but it's really shallow.

Interesting. That's it. I was going to say something totally different.

I attribute that combination to a lot of uncertainty that businesses say, yeah, I

don't know what the rules are going to be. I don't know what the tariffs are going to be. I'm not going to get rid of anybody because I might need them right away, but I'm not going to hire anybody. So that's where my head is.

Your idea is smarter than mine, by the way. I don't know. You don't know. You're actually, your idea is a, I do think we should think through, if the, let's call that a sector, sector specific, just if it's all data centers, this could be a, this

could characterize it, if it's kind of like, we've got a bunch of workers that are trained for one thing, and now it's going to take a while for them to get retrained and shift to somewhere else. We better think that through.

“But the uncertainty plays into that as well because people, I think, are also not sure”

is the promise of this AI going to be a boon for us or is it going to be a disaster. And if you talk to young people, it's kind of like, hey, should I even invest in this skill set, what was a great job, you know, I'm trained to be an accountant in eight years are they're not going to be any accounts, like it's all going to be done in the computer. So, so that that might also be a part of it.

Honestly, I think the economy, the future is just all of us kind of trading health care with each other. It's all. It's 100%. It's all just going to be us changing each other's bedpants for money.

So, the thing is that health part of the economy just gets bigger and bigger as a share of the GDP over time. So they used to have this joke, but it wasn't even really a joke in the job market. There were more and more economists coming and presenting their papers about health economics. And somebody said, God, in 20 years, everybody is going to be a healthy economist.

“But that's because the entire economy will be health.”

That's right. So it may sense. I think there's something to there. Now when you guys, so when you're in the meeting and you're talking about the various nuances of things that are going on and you say to yourselves, where our only option is that 25 basis

points up, 25 basis point down, holding it steady. You're feeling the political pressure because of your humans and you live in the world and a president is using his bully pulpit to do whatever he's doing. And the guy sitting at the front of the table is somehow being investigated for mortgage fraud and the other woman is being investigated for more.

So you're feeling all those pressures. You have to be. Do you ever think I wish we had different tools? I wish we had other options. Yes, but also no, in the following sets, in the following sets, I'm going to explain.

That sounds like a cop out, but it's not. But it's not.

The answer is yes and no.

The answer, the answer is more like no, but it's for a weird reason. That's why it's yes and no. Okay. It is frustrating. But hey, let me start by saying my experience at the FOMC is that I consider this now

the world's greatest deliberative body. It's definitely not the U.S. Senate anymore. Tell me, turn on C span, turn on C span. That's for sure. The people my experience is that everybody sitting around the table takes the job extremely

seriously that we're out of the business. Look, you know, I was in the political elections business. You're out of that business. If you join the night's watch, you're out of that, everybody around the table, my experience is they're taking extremely seriously the dual mandate.

It's all about the economy. And whether it's the president or the markets or others, there are these pressures.

Is there a predictability of how people will tend to vote, given the who appointed them?

“In other words, if a Democrat appointed somebody or a Republican appointed somebody, that's”

a good question. You worked for Obama. I imagine the experience that other people have has touched upon the political world at some point. Kind of not.

Okay. I would say you're going to get, it comes out with a leg, but they released a word for word transcripts of the meeting. Right. But nobody understands any of that.

It's not a bit of existence. But you're going to say, it's not about, it's not about partisan politics, it's absolutely not. And so, so I'm pleased by that.

Now, the other thing I'm thinking, my very first meeting, I told you, you got to leave

all the phones and everything or it's very secretive. I come in. I've been in the room for five minutes. And I'm like, this is the coolest thing, this is the coolest room I've ever been in. And then I hear, dude, dude, dude, dude, dude, dude, and I'm like, what idiot has brought

their phone? Dude, dude, dude, dude, and I realize it's in my pocket because I've just started at the fed and I now have two phones. So I had left my phone, but I didn't forget my other phone. Not sure.

And then, so I'm like, oh my god, I'm going to be arrested. I've been there five minutes. I pull it out, it says, "Spam likely."

I'm like, oh god, so I've never made that mistake again.

“Now, did anybody to like the Janet Yellen turn and go?”

What the fuck? Cool, speed. There was Jay Fal. Everybody gave me this stink eye beyond belief, but I deserved it. I deserved it.

I've never made that mistake again. So this is a deliberative body that, that do the good work. It's a deliberative body and people are not responding, my experience. And the new guy, even wash, who you knew, but Trump clearly appointed him to do a job. If Kevin wash, look, I went through the financial crisis.

He was at the fed when I was at the Council of Economic Advisors. I felt like we were kind of wartime foxhole buddies. 2008. Yeah, 2009, 10. I think he left in 2011, maybe it was 2012.

I saw him at a moment of very high economic stress, and he was level-headed, and if he comes to the job, which he has seemed to, with the seriousness of purpose that kind of the room demands, it's going to be fine.

As I always say, the fed is technical, and it's founding was rooted in conspiracy.

So I understand why you're in collusion and monopoly and oligarchy. And collusion and the 10, I understand that. But now, the fed is not the bad guy. We are the guardians of the galaxy, and we're all coming down there. Oh, slow, slow, slow your role, Magneto, listen, listen in this part, and if we're not

even the raccoon one, you know, we're the good ones, we're the good ones. We're all coming down there trying to do the job as best we can. And we're not magicians, we each come from different perspectives and different parts of the country, and that we hash it out and those independent views is really critical. And we're back to the thing about fed independence, that the more uniformity and the

more that outside voices got to dictate, here's what the decision should be, that would be a best if you want inflation to come back. Right. That's how you would do it. If inflation come roaring back, if you don't have independence, oh, you know, I like to sleep

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So let's talk about the two different broader kind of macro conversation on the economy. We'll talk about the two moments that I thought were very instructive of how the government handles these types of crises. We're not going to go all the way back to 1907 or 1913 or any of those things. We're going to go 2008.

You were there, so you understood how the government reacted to that.

And then we'll go to COVID and the pandemic. Because I thought those were two really different responses from the government and I certainly know which one I prefer and I'm curious what you think of both. 2008, the response comes in that the world liquidity is an issue throughout the whole system. It's about to seize up these banks or the mortgage back securities are failing and everything

is about to collapse and the Fed actually takes on a much more robust role than they had in the past.

“Not only were they just about the interest rates, they started taking on loans, right?”

They sold treasuries, I guess, to take on, they started loaning. Yeah, they started buying up, yeah, they started buying up a bunch of bonds, the equivalent of making loans, but they're buying up these assets. Right. And I guess they offset that with treasuries, would that be the way that they would hold on

to that or no? No, not exactly, they're allowed to expand the balance sheet in the same way they would be allowed to print money, but they're doing it beyond where they had ever previously. Oh, for sure. Yeah.

And by expanding their balance sheet, now they've got an issue with somebody's got to pay the interest on their own balance sheet, would they not? Yes. Yes. Yes.

And no. I mean, in a way, it feels like you're getting, no, but I should have completed the thought of when you said, do you wish you had other tools? The reason why overall, yes, it's frustrating, but no, I kind of don't is the Fed is not the policy process.

The Fed is not politics. We're not doing fiscal policy. That should, in my mind, be decided by the Congress, the president, the American people.

“All the really important things should be decided in that.”

And the more they try to put that on to the Fed, and it was my fear, it wasn't in the Fed when COVID struck, but my fear on the Fed's behalf in COVID, where if you remember, the Congress said, we're going to spend trillions. That's right. And all kinds of loans.

Who's going to run this? Who's going to run this? They were like, well, the only people competent enough to run it are the Fed. Let's have the Fed do it. I was really nervous on behalf of the Fed because having been through 2008, if anything

goes wrong with the program, you know, they're going to blame whoever ran the program. So I thought it was an effort for Congress to kind of be like, oh, let's have the Fed do these loans. And then if people can't pay them back or if it costs money, if there's fraud, if whatever, then we'll say, ah, the stupid Fed, we asked them to do it, and they screwed it up.

So that makes me nervous in the FOMC context. If we had more, if we had more tools that were literally fiscal policy tools like taxes or stuff like that, then we would be Congress, you know, like the Fed shouldn't have that. We, we, there is no bad weather, there is only bad clothing. It's our motto, and our thing is the fiscal, those are just the conditions.

You tell us the conditions we get the right jacket. So, but the difference is, in 2008, the Fed gave the jackets to the big boys.

They basically existed their, their money hose that they were doling out at one to the financial

And you. Correct. Use highlighted this at the time. You highlighted it at the time.

“So mad, but you remember what you, you asked me, why not bail out the homeowners?”

And then wouldn't they buy by his domino effect, wouldn't that save the mortgage back securities? Why? Right. Save the mortgage back securities.

And I said that, that would be viable. Yes. If you remember the thing I said, well, you weren't in charge though. I wasn't in charge, but you, you remember, you remember what I said?

If we had done that, we would never get back the money.

And you said, what do you mean get back the money? I said, if we, if we had to use the 800 billion and put it into mortgages, it would be very hard to get people to pay back the money. But the banks were putting it in and were taking warrants. And you, incredulously said, do you honestly believe that the banks are going to pay back

this money?

“And I said, yes, I think we, it's designed so that they will pay back the money.”

And, and they did, it's not to say it's free. Let's not do that again. We gave them life. We gave them extraordinarily valuable life insurance at a, at a crucial moment. Like when the mafia said, we're coming to kill you, then we're like, we're, give

you life insurance, but it's still worth thinking about that context of, if financial

crises, if you look around the world, financial crises usually cost the taxpayer in the

country. 5 to 10% of GDP lost money to save it, that the tarp ends up costing the US government close to zero. Let me, let me push back a little bit on this. Yeah.

So, when you, you're, you're looking at it through the lens of what it costs the government, but the government is not an entity that is disassociated from the needs of its people. I agree with that. So, in 2008, it was horrible, horrible recession. They push all this money out to the big banks.

Now, you're right. A lot of that came back to them after they paid back those loans, but what didn't come

“back were the people's homes that they lost and the jobs, I agree in the foreclosures, right?”

I'm, I'm totally sympathetic to, to, to that view, but let's go to pandemic.

Yes. You're right. It may not have recouped some of that, but the economic activity of doing demand-side stimulus, rather than supply side, rather than the Fed pumping money into the big boys, but the Fed helping to pump money into the individuals, helping to run that program.

That economy did not have the unemployment that you would think of. It bounced back much more quickly. People didn't lose their homes. So isn't that what the government, the government, is not there to run a zero balance sheet. It's there to respond to the needs of the people in crisis.

I made that as a, now you're fully in the fiscal policy space. Come on. So, it's me just as a Fed person. I have no opinion on that. Before I was at the Fed, I agree with you.

Well, as somebody described, you wouldn't want to lose World War II because you had to run a zero, or we needed to, we, yeah, no exactly. Like, ah, let's, let's have a zero deficit. The debt has exploded since the tarp. Anyway, yes, there's, there's, there's no question that's true.

Come on, Goalsby, come to team, come to team. It's the same size. If that's not the Fed. Goalsby, not the Fed. The team cage, just do it, the Fed doesn't, doesn't decide that.

We just set the short term interest rate. You don't, I mean, so, as you come to the say, should that be in the Fed's toolkit, for example. So, who decided for the Fed to start that program of zero interest rate windows? Like, was that, and that was that Congress?

Zero interest rate windows. Tell me more. Tell me more. Tell the big banks to come in and take out, oh, the discount window, that's, that's, that's the lender of last resort, and that's created by Congress, Congress creates that.

But they have discretion over who they are lending to. And I'm assuming they have discretion over the kinds of kind of, not really. They have to outline a criteria. Okay. So the old J. Pierpont Morgan days were not supposed to be expressing like, hey, here's

But that is what they did, and they did choose to give it to the big boys instead of the

people. So my question to you is, in hindsight, no, but the Fed couldn't do that. It would have to be Congress to do that. Right. The Congress decided, okay.

We're going to get the Fed to run that program and they do that.

“Which do you think was a better use of the powers of the Fed and the government?”

Because I have a very clear, you can't win this to be the Fed. Yeah, you're right. Now, the word better is doing the work. No, no, no, that's, that's very fair. The better is doing the work because you're, that's very fair.

Here's a big difference between the COVID times and the great financial crisis times. That was bank, driven crisis, part of the thing that infuriated me, infuriated everybody about the bailouts is, wait a minute. We're bailing out exactly the people who are at fault for creating this. Right.

And that made for a dynamic that was a, wait a minute. Even if you told me this thing would be better for the economy, I don't want you to give these people money. And then the tea parties rise was, I don't want you to bail out the homeowners because I think they're at fault.

They were over their heads. They were buying houses.

They never had any business buying.

So that conflict was a little different when it came to COVID because it wasn't anybody's fault. So, so I feared with the PPP loans and the unemployment insurance and a whole bunch of stuff. I was like, whoa, geez, when we were going through the financial crisis and the stimulus following the financial crisis, we had massive monitoring to make sure there's no fraud because

everyone perceived if there is a lot of fraud, the legitimacy of all of these programs are going to be undermined. Somehow, because it was biology or spreading, people just kind of wanted to say, let's not speak of this again, let's just like, let's get on with our lives.

“I think there's no question that you're read of the evidence that the unemployment rate”

went higher under COVID but came down, like, pretty quickly and we recovered very quickly. And we recovered quickly to the extent that that's a lesson for dealing with other massive monumental shocks. It came a different way. It went from the bottom up, not from the top down.

That's the point. And you can go bottom up with less money than top down.

It always, it always works that way.

And it didn't turn into a financial crisis, which it easily could have. And by the way, the caveat to all of that, the code is what they told me, because you were not the only person I complained to, I'll tell you about why aren't we bailing out the homeowners, why aren't we bailing out AIG and all these idiots that did it. And what they said to me, the toughest pill to swallow in all of this was we couldn't bail

out the homeowners because of moral hazard. And then you'd be like, hey, what about the moral hazard of the banks? Well, that's what I said.

“And the answer to that was we had to land the plane.”

Yeah, look, my, my, my thing wasn't rooted in moral hazard. And I still to this day despise that we got to, I understand why we had to do the bail out once everything's on fire. But we shouldn't be happy about it. I mean, it's still awful.

I still think it could have worked the other way around. I still think it could have worked the other way around. I do think it could, but we would have had to have had of kind of a national commitment to we want to spend the money to do this in a way that we did have when it came to COVID. Everybody was, could see, let's not lose World War II for the sake of balancing the budget.

Well, Austin, it goes, let me tell you something, you know, there's nobody I like talking about this shit more than you, you know, I love this. This is I can do this forever way into weeds. Just remember. Yeah, go ahead.

The Fed doesn't just set interest rates. We're also $6 trillion a day of the payment plumbing when anybody's doing wire transfers and make it payments. All the cash in the economy is printed by the Bureau of at Graving and Printing. It's getting distributed by the reserve banks.

And if you ever come out to Chicago, I'll take you down. We'll go see the fault thing that tens of billions of dollars in there. You know, I'm doing that. We're pulling out the counterfeit. It's awesome.

And the QE days are over.

And the QE days are over.

We're not printing it. We're just handing it out. Well, this is fabulous.

“And by the way, thank you for giving, I think the most cogent and clear explanation of what goes”

into the decisions and the meetings of how these interest rates are decided and what their particulars are and when it was, that was very, very illustrative for me. And thank you for that. Hey, John, I know this is technical, but the Fed matters, the economy matters. We're going to maximize employment and stabilize the prices.

And if we do that, everything will be over, we're just going to go back to the changing work of days.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Austin, cool with me. You're the man. Great to see. President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago also goes, please, thanks for joining us. Thank you.

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That's magicspoon.com/tWS for $5 off. I love talking to that dude. I could tell. I didn't know economists were allowed to be that fun. Right?

Or that caffeinated. He's like talking to a normal human being about the economy and he's an economist. And when I don't understand something, he's not a huge dick about. He's just like, look, technically, your terms are not quite correct. But this is what it really.

And then you can actually have the conversation. Yeah, and he actually seems like a really curious person, too, and like a really animated person by what he does.

“And I think that's kind of like what you would want for somebody in that role.”

It loves it. It was the most excitement filled episode that I think we've ever done. And it was on economics. That's bad. Well, you know, part of that is, so I've known him for years.

And we did use to have in 2008, 2009. Like, I had so many arguments with the economists that were in that administration about what we were doing. And so they were, they were all just like, every time they were just be like, "Shada, no!" And so reliving that and religating that is one of the true pleasures of that era.

Because I was so mad. And I can't remember. I thought there were like certain even terminology that I was trying to make happen during that time. Like, like, wealth in competency. Like, I kept trying to make wealth in competency a tagline for what the economic crisis of 2008

was doing and that those banks had a wealth in competency that gave them an advantage over the individual homeowners and if what we see other, oh, you say them all the time. I go, you're bailing them out at a geometric level when you could bail out the homeowners at an arithmetic level and save us fucking trillions of dollars and they'd be like, "You don't understand."

I feel like the term "top down" existed then. We were top down and we were trickle down and it, but what was so odd about it was they were all Democrats.

And so that my frustration was always because it was all, this was all when my dislike of Larry

Summers began to bubble. He was kind of the central, I think, Yoda-like figure of it. He was the one that they spoke about as like, this is the unassailable guru and no-stradamus. It's kind of like what we were talking about earlier about how the economists would project, but within air of mathematical certainty that doesn't exist in the world of probability. Larry only recently stopped making those types of predictions and nobody knows why.

Yeah, I don't know. I think he just decided to take up a different hobby.

Well, I think some people when they were tired, they like to go down to a Caribbean island. Yeah. Just hang out or now, I wonder if he's going the opposite way now, he's just like, "I will only ski. I will no longer go to warm climates." He's in Scandinavia, as we speak.

And what's so funny about that is if you remember, like, whenever there's like an economic crisis,

they'll always go to him as the expert and he's always in an island.

Yes, oh my god, I'm chasing the back of you.

“Yeah, how are regular people going to get through this crisis?”

And he's just down there with like a freaking pilota and it's cool lots on. Sitting in a big chair from Margaritaville. I don't think we should bail them out at their man's level. massage me! It would be so reckless to bail them out, yeah, in quite a while.

They're like, "Handigan, Pinguacaladas." Unbelievable. But fabulous, I, I, Google Spees, one of my favorites, and whenever the arguments were,

they were never ill-spirited, they were always like, you know, a really liked him.

And yeah, I mean, I think part of that is him being such a curious person. Like, you tell he was really interested by the points that you were making. Because it's not the typical, like, economic framing, necessarily.

“And I think he wasn't bound by we have to have certainty that he was always willing to grant”

there might be a different way in a better way in all that, which is always helpful. Speaking of which, Brittany, what are the, what are the kids want from us this week? Okay, John, do you think news networks should carry the presidents from Mark's live on Thursday night or wait until they can fact check? Oh, they're not going to fact check anyway, they're not going to.

That's, but what, what difference does that mean? I think there should be a Seespan camera on the president at all times, every, every remark he makes, should be carried live, including whatever catch-up splattering tantrums he might be throwing behind the room when his gold plated new phones came out late. Like, whatever it is, listen, man,

I don't think we should have to live with the shit that he spews out there whenever he feels

“like doing it. I think you want to be ubiquitous, be ubiquitous.”

Yeah, he's still deciding the terms, even though, yeah, and we have, like, this, like, 24-hour news cycle. That's right. He can't get enough attention, like, and yet we're still just, like, hanging on whatever words he selects that we pay attention to at any given moment. Do you feel like, and this maybe gets us into the relationship portion of our podcast, I feel like the country is in an abusive relationship with a, with a narcissistic partner.

Yeah, and I don't, you know, I'm not fluent enough on the issues of the psychology of a relationship thing that I had to know. How do we heal? How do people heal from that? First of all, how do we get rid of them? How do you break up with a narcissist? And, and how do you not let the specter of the narcissist cloud and begin to rule your life? That's the problem here. Is the narcissist isn't thinking about us? It's only thinking about himself. So we're left with

the churn and bad feeling. Years of therapy, I think, is the only self. Yeah, we got to go on couples therapy on showtime, baby. What, or not? What, or not, do it? What, or help us? Could Orna sit down with the country and Trump so that we can expose what a narcissistic has because those are the best Orna episodes. It's when like the person sinks there being clever and tricky and like Orna's just sitting back, letting them expose the narcissistic asshole that they are.

Crazy. I kind of love. Do you watch that you ever, do you ever watch that? Yeah, she's fantastic. I haven't. No. Oh, oh, Brittany. I'm going to love it. You're in front of treat it. You are, there's

there's guys that are just like, you never listen to me. You don't do what I do. You don't treat

me like the king that I am. You literally. It's like fucking crazy. And then they look at her like right, and she's like, no. Right, then, then she'll always turn and she'll look at the woman and go like, I'd like to hear where you're at right now. You know what, how are you receiving his comments about how mistreated he is? You know, saying that, you know, you really began to mistreat him after he had fucked all those other people. Yeah, he's saying that he won the 2020 election.

How are you receiving that? He won't get over it. Yeah. He can't move on. Wild shit. All right. What else they want? John, what's the deal with Fetterman? Can't a man wear board shorts to work without everybody wondering. I think it's the deal with a lot of things, which is, you know, you tend to embrace the side that flatters you. And I think

working class Bonafide. He's like, yeah, like, what does he mean by socialism? Like, social security,

healthcare? Like, what the fuck are you even talking about? I think the Israel thing also has affected him greatly. But I also think there's a lot of people that can't help be flattered by the other side coming to you and saying you're the only one. You're the only one that makes any sense on that side. You're the guy, come join us. One of us, one of us. And it's so weird from where he started to, like, you wouldn't, maybe it was because he was getting the praise from the

laughter. I don't know. It's like, I guess we were talking about the phrase from the left though,

“made sense. Yeah, that's what I mean. It's like, I just don't, I mean, I don't want to speculate about”

anybody's health or anything, but it's been a, it's been a real heel turn. I think it's also,

there is a power and cinema did this and Manchin did this is something's done. There is a power in being the controlling interest, you know, and, and I think that that tends to go to certain people's head of being, you know, I'm the contrarian that can change. The Republicans are pretty good about making a performance of that with the Freedom Caucus and those kinds of guys, but when push comes to shove, they still get there, 2015 to 2014 vote or their 50 to 49. You know,

they don't get that, but they keep saying, like, he's going to switch over to their side, and you're like, on what ground? Like, on what policy ground would he be over there?

But also, like, how would it meaningfully be different? Well, I'd get a nicer office.

Yeah. Get a much nicer office. And if the Democrats actually had a majority, it would matter, somebody flipping, if that you lost the majority for any reason, but like, right now he's voting for all their nominees. He's, you know, doing everything he can to make their lives easier. So I don't, I just don't see how it's meaningfully different at this point. Right. Exactly. I should apparently. Now, it seems to be that he seems to be embracing the caricature of Democrats as opposed to the

reality of what, you know, a more populist economic platform would look like, but I have no

“fucking idea to be honest with you. I mean, I think he just, he might just like iconoclastic status.”

Yeah. I think he likes the attention, and he's getting a lot of it. Yeah. They're flat. I mean, they're, you know, they're, they're courting him. From the media to those. Oh, sure. Everyone keeps going to his. Well, if you remember cinema, what, like, that was her thing, like, I'm the one and, and it's all couched in pretend principle. I'm the one who stands on principle and integrity and you're like,

what principle exactly are we talking about? Yeah. More guns, more religion, more, like, less social safety net. Like, what exactly are you embracing on their side in terms of issues? Yeah. Other than, I think the left is a little too angry. It is real right now. Like, well, if you're not fucking angry, it is real right now. I really don't think you're watching the dudes. I don't think you're seeing what's happening. No. Yeah. And there's also, like,

there's this benefit to being a sort of swing vote, because you can kind of get more for your state. Like, look, what Markowski did with Alaska. Oh, but what does Fetterman doing for Pennsylvania, right now? That's an excellent point, Jillian. I really, the, the Markowski example is a, is a great one. She's leveraged it into and she'll still support the bill generally on her side, but she leverages provisions. I don't know that he's, that he's done that to be honest with you.

Like, you can make the case that Markowski has done well for her state in some regards. Like, I would argue not well for the woman of any state, but she, you know, has managed to get these carve outs. Right. Right. Yeah. And it's funny. Collins in the same position doesn't have the same efficacy. And maybe that's, by the way, that Alaska has a slightly, you know, less mainstream,

“sort of need matrix, but I think you're, I think you're dead on right there. Fine analysis.”

Last one. Oh, one more. All right. Come on. What do we got? Okay. Did John find that going vegetarian led to an increase in farting? I fear for my marriage. What a wonder of it. This is the kind of that you only get on the show. As someone, as someone who's, I don't wear, I don't have wearable tech. So I'm not, I'm not tracking it to the extent that I don't have a fart or a ring that is giving me a statistical analysis. I can tell you that it's very difficult to separate aging from diet

when it comes to your ability to digest anything. I mean, the idea that eating cheese burgers would somehow come the gaseous nature of your colon seems not quite, but I do understand if

beans and broccoli, like, you have to spread it out a little bit with a variety of, you know,

you got to throw a couple of slices of pizza in there to calm the waves beautifully put eloquent.

“The only thing I will say about that is the idea that that would hurt her marriage. It's the”

key to a happy marriage. It's two people. Remember, it's in health, but also in sickness.

Two people comfortable enough with their own standing with each other to let them know that their body is slowly dying from the inside and decomposing whatever has been put in it and it's got to get out somehow. I think artists at that, I think. Thank you for bringing that around.

“That's what we know is callback. Brittany, how can they get all of us to ask us more of these”

truly insightful questions? Twitter, we are weekly show pod, Instagram, Threads, Check Talk, Blue Sky. We are weekly show pod cast and you can like, subscribe, and comment on

“our YouTube channel, the weekly show a chance to hear it. Fine and dandy. Thank you very much.”

As always, couldn't do it without producer Brittany Mehmetovic, producer Gillian Spear video editor

and engineer Rob Vittola, audio editor and engineer Nicole Boyson, our executive producer is Chris McShane, Katie Gray. We will see you all next week. The weekly show with John Stewart is a comedy central podcast is produced by Paramount Audio and Bus Boy Productions.