1 00:00:05,080 --> 00:00:08,800 Welcome back everyone. I am Cass PNC. 2 00:00:08,800 --> 00:00:11,440 I'm joined as usual by my partner in crime, Mr. Bennett 3 00:00:11,440 --> 00:00:13,200 Tomlin. And the world is crumbling 4 00:00:13,200 --> 00:00:15,360 around us, so let's just stop there. 5 00:00:15,720 --> 00:00:19,520 We're joined by a special guest today, Mr. Rohan Gray, who is a 6 00:00:19,840 --> 00:00:22,680 law professor at Willamette University, and he's joining us 7 00:00:22,680 --> 00:00:24,080 now. I think this is the third time 8 00:00:24,080 --> 00:00:27,360 we've had him on, so this is one of our favorite guests. 9 00:00:27,440 --> 00:00:35,440 We he did a a particularly poignant paper. 10 00:00:35,600 --> 00:00:38,920 The 4th. 4th time, 4th time that we've had him on, but he did a 11 00:00:38,920 --> 00:00:42,920 particularly poignant paper digitizing the Fisk and we 12 00:00:42,920 --> 00:00:46,440 wanted to have him on to talk about it as as everything goes 13 00:00:46,440 --> 00:00:48,600 to hell. Rohan, thank you for joining us 14 00:00:48,720 --> 00:00:50,600 on that. On that depressing note, 15 00:00:51,280 --> 00:00:53,720 Bennett, what what do you where do you want to start this? 16 00:00:53,800 --> 00:00:56,840 This is a dense paper. Rohan, could you tell us what 17 00:00:56,840 --> 00:01:01,760 the Treasury Bureau of Fiscal Services is and why it is 18 00:01:01,760 --> 00:01:04,319 important? Yeah, it's the most boring 19 00:01:04,319 --> 00:01:07,200 bureaucrat you've never heard of with the most important job in 20 00:01:07,200 --> 00:01:09,400 the whole of government, right. This is, there's a couple of 21 00:01:09,400 --> 00:01:12,160 people in the office, of course, but it's essentially the people 22 00:01:12,160 --> 00:01:14,960 in Treasury that move the money around. 23 00:01:15,160 --> 00:01:18,360 Now, the best way to think about it is there's 3 levels, but the 24 00:01:18,360 --> 00:01:20,560 Bureau of the Fiscal Services in the middle, and it's the most 25 00:01:20,560 --> 00:01:23,040 politically sensitive. But the three levels from the 26 00:01:23,040 --> 00:01:26,120 bottom are the Fed, the Fed's like the bare metal rails, 27 00:01:26,120 --> 00:01:27,960 right? This is like the zeros and ones. 28 00:01:27,960 --> 00:01:31,320 It moves the accounting around. The Treasury's in the middle. 29 00:01:31,320 --> 00:01:33,040 The Bureau of the Fiscal Service, their job is to send 30 00:01:33,040 --> 00:01:35,880 the instructions to the Fed. So the Fed pretends that it's 31 00:01:35,880 --> 00:01:37,200 dumb. It's just sitting there. 32 00:01:37,200 --> 00:01:39,400 If somebody sends the right payments instruction, it moves 33 00:01:39,400 --> 00:01:40,960 the money around. If not, it doesn't. 34 00:01:41,440 --> 00:01:44,840 Very convenient place to be in the middle of a war to stay out 35 00:01:44,840 --> 00:01:46,800 of, right? Central banks are very good at 36 00:01:46,800 --> 00:01:48,560 this. They're moving around money in 37 00:01:48,560 --> 00:01:51,880 World War One on both sides. They're moving around Nazi money 38 00:01:51,880 --> 00:01:54,400 in World War 2. You know, pretty much until you 39 00:01:54,400 --> 00:01:57,120 get to the late 1970s and then brown people in the Middle East 40 00:01:57,120 --> 00:02:00,720 start, you know, doing politics. Up until then, the central banks 41 00:02:00,720 --> 00:02:03,440 usually don't politicize their own layer, right? 42 00:02:03,440 --> 00:02:05,480 So you've got the accounting layer at the Fed, then the 43 00:02:05,480 --> 00:02:08,000 Treasury is doing the payments instructions to the Fed. 44 00:02:08,479 --> 00:02:10,840 And then above that, you've got this other agency called the 45 00:02:10,960 --> 00:02:13,600 Office of Management and Budget, which is basically the 46 00:02:13,600 --> 00:02:18,240 president's lack, you know, lap dog, you know, and that one is 47 00:02:18,240 --> 00:02:20,800 really the legal authority. So you need the official 48 00:02:20,800 --> 00:02:24,440 signature, then you need the instruction, and then you need 49 00:02:24,440 --> 00:02:26,680 it to be processed. Bureau of Fiscal Service is the 50 00:02:26,680 --> 00:02:28,920 one that does the instructions on behalf of the whole 51 00:02:28,920 --> 00:02:31,240 government. And part of the idea is it's 52 00:02:31,240 --> 00:02:33,440 easier than the Fed getting a million people. the Fed doesn't 53 00:02:33,440 --> 00:02:35,480 even like, you know, any, any human beings. 54 00:02:35,480 --> 00:02:37,760 It would rather only deal with financial institutions if it 55 00:02:37,760 --> 00:02:39,240 could. It's perfect. 56 00:02:39,240 --> 00:02:41,720 School has no children, like the trench bowl in Matilda. 57 00:02:42,560 --> 00:02:45,000 So even dealing with other human beings in the government is 58 00:02:45,000 --> 00:02:46,560 annoying. They would rather just deal with 59 00:02:46,560 --> 00:02:48,640 one and have that person deal with everybody else. 60 00:02:48,640 --> 00:02:50,400 So you go to the Bureau of Fiscal Service. 61 00:02:50,640 --> 00:02:52,920 You've got your legal authority from the Office of Management 62 00:02:52,920 --> 00:02:55,400 and Budget, and then you get the payment instruction. the Fed 63 00:02:55,400 --> 00:02:57,120 goes, I'll listen to the Treasury. 64 00:02:57,480 --> 00:03:00,040 So that's what the office is. It's the office that processes 65 00:03:00,280 --> 00:03:04,200 about 88% of all federal payments through the Treasury's 66 00:03:04,200 --> 00:03:06,680 bank account, the Fed. And so can you talk about kind 67 00:03:06,720 --> 00:03:13,480 of the risks if a bad faith actor were to insert themselves 68 00:03:13,480 --> 00:03:16,680 into that Bureau and the broader process it is a part of? 69 00:03:16,760 --> 00:03:19,360 So hypothetically, right, completely hypothetically, 70 00:03:19,360 --> 00:03:21,920 imagine you are, I don't know, say the president and you, I 71 00:03:21,920 --> 00:03:24,240 don't know, gave up on the idea that there's a separation of 72 00:03:24,240 --> 00:03:27,320 powers such that not only do you get to control the entire 73 00:03:27,320 --> 00:03:29,160 executive branch, right? There's no such thing as 74 00:03:29,160 --> 00:03:31,640 independent agencies. There's no such thing as, you 75 00:03:31,640 --> 00:03:35,040 know, commissions and heads of agencies that everyone is just 76 00:03:35,040 --> 00:03:38,320 your loyal subject. You know, you're in a gold, gold 77 00:03:38,320 --> 00:03:42,080 plated castle and you decide that that's not enough for you. 78 00:03:42,080 --> 00:03:43,480 You also want the power of the purse. 79 00:03:43,480 --> 00:03:46,000 So you're not only really relitigating the New Deal with 80 00:03:46,360 --> 00:03:48,720 the administrative agencies, you're not only really even 81 00:03:48,720 --> 00:03:51,520 admitted litigating Lincoln, you're actually going all the 82 00:03:51,520 --> 00:03:54,520 way back and litigating like the 1600s Glorious Revolution in 83 00:03:54,520 --> 00:03:56,960 Parliament. Like actually, the king doesn't 84 00:03:56,960 --> 00:04:00,480 have to listen to Parliament. I get to run the money taxation 85 00:04:00,480 --> 00:04:02,760 without representation. Like I'm representative. 86 00:04:02,760 --> 00:04:04,600 You're welcome, right? It's a democratic king. 87 00:04:04,600 --> 00:04:06,400 So now I can tax from the King's seat. 88 00:04:07,000 --> 00:04:11,480 So the the risk with the Bureau of Fiscal Service is that it's 89 00:04:11,480 --> 00:04:15,160 the last chokehold for 88% of the government before you go and 90 00:04:15,160 --> 00:04:17,959 actually get the money. So Congress can tell you to 91 00:04:17,959 --> 00:04:21,399 spend. It can allow you to spend, but 92 00:04:21,399 --> 00:04:23,320 you can't actually access the money. 93 00:04:23,720 --> 00:04:26,520 All right, Congress has the power of the purse, but but the 94 00:04:26,520 --> 00:04:30,520 actual physical purse is still in the executive branch. 95 00:04:30,720 --> 00:04:33,800 Historically, this was an incredibly apolitical office. 96 00:04:33,800 --> 00:04:36,320 These were the most boring beige bureaucrats. 97 00:04:36,520 --> 00:04:39,320 This is the department of of lighting fixtures of the 98 00:04:39,320 --> 00:04:42,440 financial system, right? And somebody went and said, what 99 00:04:42,440 --> 00:04:45,440 if I start, you know, what if I start buttering up the IT guys 100 00:04:45,520 --> 00:04:48,120 and maybe the IT guys can help me launch a coup, right? 101 00:04:48,120 --> 00:04:51,520 And so they've found the one level of the payment system that 102 00:04:51,520 --> 00:04:55,600 is about as centralized as possible and as politicized as 103 00:04:55,600 --> 00:04:57,200 possible. As I said, you could go to the 104 00:04:57,200 --> 00:04:58,920 bare metal, go to the Fed. You know the problem? 105 00:04:58,920 --> 00:05:01,040 the Fed, there's a board, it's independent. 106 00:05:01,280 --> 00:05:03,400 They're terrified of pissing off the bond markets. 107 00:05:03,400 --> 00:05:06,920 Even when Trump says the entire government's under my control. 108 00:05:06,920 --> 00:05:09,520 You know, the one exception he put in his executive order for 109 00:05:09,520 --> 00:05:12,480 the Monetary Policy Committee of the Fed, it's the one last 110 00:05:12,480 --> 00:05:14,960 bureaucrat that he's terrified. It's like the final boss. 111 00:05:14,960 --> 00:05:18,080 He's working his way up. He needs like a + 6 sword before 112 00:05:18,080 --> 00:05:20,120 he can get through the armor or something, right? 113 00:05:20,400 --> 00:05:24,480 Everyone else has fallen flat, but the good news is he doesn't 114 00:05:24,480 --> 00:05:27,280 actually have to take over the Fed to take over the payments. 115 00:05:27,280 --> 00:05:30,200 He just goes one level beforehand and shuts off all the 116 00:05:30,200 --> 00:05:34,000 information going to the Fed. How is what is happening right 117 00:05:34,000 --> 00:05:38,520 now with Donald Trump, how is that different than impoundment, 118 00:05:38,520 --> 00:05:42,000 which I like and maybe you can explain. 119 00:05:42,040 --> 00:05:45,680 And I assume that most people aren't familiar with impoundment 120 00:05:45,680 --> 00:05:48,000 because we haven't dealt with it since Richard Nixon. 121 00:05:48,000 --> 00:05:50,800 Yeah, impoundment. It goes back to the very 122 00:05:50,800 --> 00:05:53,840 founding, but it kind of got distorted or grew time until it 123 00:05:53,840 --> 00:05:56,040 became a problem. So the idea of empowerment is 124 00:05:56,280 --> 00:05:59,400 Congress tells the president or the executive to spend and then 125 00:05:59,440 --> 00:06:01,520 passes a law and the executive gets that law. 126 00:06:01,560 --> 00:06:03,160 It's a, you know, it's a valid law. 127 00:06:03,200 --> 00:06:06,080 And then the executive goes, no, I don't think I will. 128 00:06:06,240 --> 00:06:08,360 And, and, and, and that should immediately get your kind of 129 00:06:08,360 --> 00:06:11,200 constitutional separation of powers hackles up. 130 00:06:11,520 --> 00:06:13,840 That's not supposed to be how it's supposed to go, right? 131 00:06:14,000 --> 00:06:16,440 We didn't say please spend unless you don't feel like it, 132 00:06:16,440 --> 00:06:18,000 in which case do whatever the hell you want. 133 00:06:18,360 --> 00:06:20,720 That's a different kind of law. We do write those laws. 134 00:06:20,720 --> 00:06:23,640 But when we say no, no, no, I really mean it seriously. 135 00:06:23,640 --> 00:06:25,400 Seriously, though, this time, guys, spend the money. 136 00:06:25,720 --> 00:06:28,280 You're not supposed to say that. So going back to Thomas 137 00:06:28,280 --> 00:06:30,520 Jefferson, right? And, and all through the 1800s, 138 00:06:30,520 --> 00:06:33,240 there were moments where where presidents did this, but it was 139 00:06:33,240 --> 00:06:36,000 usually quite limited. It was usually in the context of 140 00:06:36,000 --> 00:06:38,880 things like war powers, presidential powers, like very 141 00:06:38,880 --> 00:06:42,800 explicitly presidential powers, where it would be something like 142 00:06:43,000 --> 00:06:45,160 we gave you money to build some war boats. 143 00:06:45,400 --> 00:06:48,760 The war is now over, so you've decided not to spend the rest of 144 00:06:48,760 --> 00:06:50,080 the money. Cool. 145 00:06:50,080 --> 00:06:52,800 OK, we, we, we paid, we, we gave you $1,000,000 for broach 146 00:06:52,800 --> 00:06:54,720 eradication. On day two of the the Roach 147 00:06:54,720 --> 00:06:57,680 eradication program, you found a really cool, you know, 148 00:06:57,680 --> 00:06:59,440 bioengineering weapon. You've killed all the 149 00:06:59,440 --> 00:07:01,640 cockroaches. I guess we don't need to spend 150 00:07:01,640 --> 00:07:03,240 the rest of $1,000,000. Seems reasonable. 151 00:07:04,040 --> 00:07:06,560 Other examples like that have come up where they were usually 152 00:07:06,560 --> 00:07:10,480 in regards to powers considered to be inherent to the president, 153 00:07:10,840 --> 00:07:13,680 right. This is not Congress tells you 154 00:07:13,680 --> 00:07:15,280 to do a thing under Congress's power. 155 00:07:15,280 --> 00:07:18,080 You're the kind of embodiment of that. 156 00:07:18,080 --> 00:07:20,400 You're the conduit for that. It's not that. 157 00:07:20,560 --> 00:07:23,480 It's the stuff that is, is is sort of inherent to the 158 00:07:23,480 --> 00:07:26,240 president's power. By the time we get to the 20th 159 00:07:26,240 --> 00:07:27,840 century, it's starting to expand. 160 00:07:28,120 --> 00:07:30,720 The imperial presidency is expanding pretty much ever since 161 00:07:30,720 --> 00:07:33,280 Lincoln, certainly Woodrow Wilson with World War One, 162 00:07:33,480 --> 00:07:35,320 right, big World War. We need a president to manage 163 00:07:35,320 --> 00:07:37,200 this stuff. Just like we have the debt 164 00:07:37,200 --> 00:07:40,160 ceiling starting to make it easier to do debt management, we 165 00:07:40,160 --> 00:07:42,480 at the same time have the president taking over the 166 00:07:42,480 --> 00:07:44,560 budget. Eventually he gets to Nixon. 167 00:07:44,560 --> 00:07:47,680 And of course, Nixon just gloves off, Fuck it, who cares. 168 00:07:48,000 --> 00:07:52,080 And so Nixon says, I'm going to use this power of impoundment to 169 00:07:52,080 --> 00:07:55,480 to cut off funding to black communities, community 170 00:07:55,480 --> 00:07:57,760 development grants, things like that, highway development going 171 00:07:57,760 --> 00:08:00,040 to certain neighborhoods. And I'm going to justify this on 172 00:08:00,040 --> 00:08:01,720 the grounds that we don't really have too much money. 173 00:08:01,880 --> 00:08:03,440 We're running out, which was a lie. 174 00:08:03,960 --> 00:08:06,280 But also just I'm the president and I can do what I want, right? 175 00:08:06,280 --> 00:08:07,680 When the president does it, it's not a law. 176 00:08:07,680 --> 00:08:10,760 It's not violating the law. Congress threw the book at him. 177 00:08:11,200 --> 00:08:12,880 The Supreme Court threw the book at him, right? 178 00:08:12,880 --> 00:08:15,280 A famous case called TRAIN in 1975. 179 00:08:15,560 --> 00:08:19,600 And then Congress in 1974 passed the Anti Impoundment Act, Anti 180 00:08:19,600 --> 00:08:20,920 Impoundment Monetary Control Act. 181 00:08:21,120 --> 00:08:24,640 And that essentially said, no, sorry, president, when we tell 182 00:08:24,640 --> 00:08:27,040 you to do it, you got to do it. And the Supreme Court reaffirmed 183 00:08:27,040 --> 00:08:28,680 case law going back to the 1830s. 184 00:08:28,680 --> 00:08:29,880 They've been saying this for a while. 185 00:08:30,560 --> 00:08:34,280 They reaffirm a sort of version of it again in the late 90s 186 00:08:34,280 --> 00:08:36,799 under Bill Clinton. This time, because they actually 187 00:08:36,799 --> 00:08:39,320 Congress passes a law. This isn't Clinton unilaterally 188 00:08:39,320 --> 00:08:42,559 doing it, but Congress passes a law saying the president can do 189 00:08:42,559 --> 00:08:45,040 a line item veto. So if you don't like something 190 00:08:45,040 --> 00:08:47,120 in the budget, you can cut out the pieces you don't like and 191 00:08:47,120 --> 00:08:50,280 sign the rest. And, and basically the, the, the 192 00:08:50,280 --> 00:08:54,440 Supreme Court says no, that completely changes the character 193 00:08:54,440 --> 00:08:56,360 of the bill. And I think they're right about 194 00:08:56,360 --> 00:08:57,320 that. You know, if you've ever read 195 00:08:57,320 --> 00:08:59,920 Catch 22, there's a bit where the main character's in hospital 196 00:09:00,080 --> 00:09:02,000 and he's censoring letters because he's so bored. 197 00:09:02,000 --> 00:09:04,360 They give him a job while he's recovering as a former Army 198 00:09:04,360 --> 00:09:07,200 pilot and eventually gets so bored he just senses every word. 199 00:09:07,200 --> 00:09:09,640 You know, Dear, dear Janet, Janet, I yearn for you. 200 00:09:09,640 --> 00:09:11,080 Tragically. That's the entire letter. 201 00:09:11,080 --> 00:09:14,120 You know, at a certain point you can, you can cut out so many 202 00:09:14,120 --> 00:09:16,440 parts of a thing that it completely changes what you're 203 00:09:16,920 --> 00:09:19,560 saying. So Supreme Court said no, when 204 00:09:19,560 --> 00:09:22,280 Congress gives you a bill, you can thumbs up or thumbs down, 205 00:09:22,520 --> 00:09:24,200 but you don't get to pick and choose because you're 206 00:09:24,200 --> 00:09:25,920 fundamentally changing the character of it. 207 00:09:26,080 --> 00:09:28,840 Well, Trump has asserted that right all over again, right? 208 00:09:28,840 --> 00:09:31,800 He's asserted the right to ignore the line item veto even 209 00:09:31,800 --> 00:09:34,200 without a congressional bill. He's asserted the right to 210 00:09:34,200 --> 00:09:36,680 ignore the 1974 bill. He's asserted the right to 211 00:09:36,680 --> 00:09:39,560 ignore about 180 years of Supreme Court precedent. 212 00:09:39,680 --> 00:09:42,200 But to your question, what's different, I would say this is 213 00:09:42,200 --> 00:09:44,360 almost like the Stokey Carmichael line. 214 00:09:44,520 --> 00:09:47,600 If you're racist and you got no power, I don't get, he says, 215 00:09:47,680 --> 00:09:49,800 right, this is the black pen. And he said, but if you're 216 00:09:49,800 --> 00:09:51,320 racist and you got power, now I'm worried. 217 00:09:51,360 --> 00:09:55,360 Well, believing in impoundment and having no power to do it 218 00:09:56,440 --> 00:09:59,800 right, Believing in empowerment and finding the one magic button 219 00:09:59,800 --> 00:10:02,840 that lets you shut off all the money with from one seat in the 220 00:10:02,840 --> 00:10:05,120 government, like you don't even need to leave your basement. 221 00:10:05,240 --> 00:10:08,960 You know, that's a very, very different kind of power. 222 00:10:09,040 --> 00:10:13,360 Up until now, if you wanted to impound funds at, say, the 223 00:10:13,360 --> 00:10:15,320 Department of Education, what would you do? 224 00:10:15,320 --> 00:10:18,160 You would go and talk to the education secretary and say, 225 00:10:18,160 --> 00:10:21,600 hey, I'd like you to commit an unconstitutional act for me. 226 00:10:21,680 --> 00:10:24,120 And the secretary says, I don't know about that, you know, maybe 227 00:10:24,120 --> 00:10:28,600 all right. But today, President Trump can 228 00:10:28,600 --> 00:10:32,160 just bypass that with his, with his, with his lackey, you know, 229 00:10:32,200 --> 00:10:35,320 Elon Musk running the Department of Government Efficiency, AKA 230 00:10:35,320 --> 00:10:39,200 DOGE, AKA the rebranded US Digital Service, which was 231 00:10:39,200 --> 00:10:42,760 actually created by Obama to like digitize the government. 232 00:10:42,760 --> 00:10:45,040 Because, you know, we're, we're the Internet president and 233 00:10:45,040 --> 00:10:47,560 we're, you know, doing our exit interview with Wired magazine 234 00:10:47,560 --> 00:10:50,840 and kite surfing with Richard Branson and you know, blah, 235 00:10:50,840 --> 00:10:52,800 blah, blah. MIT Media Labs. 236 00:10:52,800 --> 00:10:56,160 Joey Ito is our is my, you know, exit interviewer. 237 00:10:56,880 --> 00:10:58,960 So. So Obama sets up the Internet 238 00:10:58,960 --> 00:11:02,360 government through the USDS and then Trump moves it from the 239 00:11:02,360 --> 00:11:04,560 Office of Management and Budget into the White House office, 240 00:11:04,960 --> 00:11:08,360 appoints Trump, appoints Elon Musk as this sort of informal 241 00:11:08,360 --> 00:11:10,040 director. There's this hilarious legal 242 00:11:10,040 --> 00:11:11,920 debate right now where there's actually an administrator 243 00:11:11,920 --> 00:11:14,240 written on paper. And she's just like Mia, 244 00:11:14,520 --> 00:11:16,880 everybody in Congress, everyone in the news is saying Elon Musk 245 00:11:16,880 --> 00:11:19,120 runs this and they go to court. They're like, well, no, no, no. 246 00:11:19,120 --> 00:11:21,160 He's just completely unrelated. You know, sure. 247 00:11:21,160 --> 00:11:23,240 OK. And Rupert Murdoch doesn't own 248 00:11:23,240 --> 00:11:25,480 all of the companies he owns. He just hangs out in the board 249 00:11:25,480 --> 00:11:26,280 meetings. Sure. 250 00:11:28,440 --> 00:11:32,360 But anyway, to your question, impoundment, I would say today 251 00:11:32,360 --> 00:11:35,760 is, is I have the right to not spend what I don't want to 252 00:11:35,760 --> 00:11:38,200 spend, regardless of what Congress says. 253 00:11:38,200 --> 00:11:40,160 But I also have a Big Magic button to do it all. 254 00:11:41,080 --> 00:11:44,600 And that big, Big Magic button is my prerogative as the 255 00:11:44,600 --> 00:11:54,840 commander in I am the law, you know. 256 00:11:56,240 --> 00:12:00,960 Unitary executive theory plus impoundment plus like the 257 00:12:00,960 --> 00:12:04,600 nuclear football of money. One of the things you kind of 258 00:12:04,600 --> 00:12:07,760 touch on in the paper that feels a little bit related to this, 259 00:12:07,760 --> 00:12:10,680 like the reason they wanted control of the Treasury Bureau 260 00:12:10,680 --> 00:12:13,640 of Fiscal Services is because it let them basically choke out 261 00:12:13,640 --> 00:12:15,480 every other part of government they wanted to. 262 00:12:15,480 --> 00:12:18,000 And one of the things that's interesting in your papers, you 263 00:12:18,000 --> 00:12:21,560 talk a little bit about the Consumer Financial Protection 264 00:12:21,560 --> 00:12:25,720 Bureau, which was set up to be independent and has a different 265 00:12:25,720 --> 00:12:29,120 funding structure, reliant more on like a amount it can pull 266 00:12:29,120 --> 00:12:33,000 from the Fed and its awards that keeps it outside of those 267 00:12:33,000 --> 00:12:35,960 different processes. And like, part of the reason I'm 268 00:12:35,960 --> 00:12:39,160 highlighting this is because Despite that fact that it was 269 00:12:39,160 --> 00:12:43,840 somewhat independently funded, I believe it was fed into a wood 270 00:12:43,840 --> 00:12:47,120 chipper. It's still there. 271 00:12:47,120 --> 00:12:49,840 It's just all turned into stone, like the characters on the 272 00:12:49,840 --> 00:12:52,280 outside of like, the White Witch and Narnia, You know, you kind 273 00:12:52,280 --> 00:12:54,400 of walk in the front door and everybody's there in the middle 274 00:12:54,400 --> 00:12:56,080 of doing their office, but they're all petrified. 275 00:12:56,560 --> 00:12:58,960 Yeah. No, this is a good example. 276 00:12:58,960 --> 00:13:02,480 I mean, This is why you, as I try to write the paper, you need 277 00:13:02,480 --> 00:13:05,040 to think of this as sort of three legs of the stool at every 278 00:13:05,040 --> 00:13:06,480 point in time. It's the law. 279 00:13:06,480 --> 00:13:08,120 It's the political economy, right? 280 00:13:08,120 --> 00:13:09,920 It's the money and it's the technology. 281 00:13:10,320 --> 00:13:13,440 And so so the CFPB was structured in a very interesting 282 00:13:13,440 --> 00:13:15,880 way, which is in and credit to Elizabeth Warren. 283 00:13:15,880 --> 00:13:19,200 I didn't appreciate this when I first read this about the CFPB. 284 00:13:19,200 --> 00:13:21,080 So credit to her. I've been harsh when she 285 00:13:21,080 --> 00:13:22,800 deserves it, she deserves some craze on this one. 286 00:13:22,800 --> 00:13:25,640 They designed it so that it was off budget, which means it 287 00:13:25,640 --> 00:13:30,320 doesn't have to be annually reappropriated and it was not 288 00:13:30,320 --> 00:13:32,640 going through the the Office of Management and Budget. 289 00:13:32,680 --> 00:13:34,640 So it has its own budgetary independence. 290 00:13:34,640 --> 00:13:37,280 It doesn't have to go to the president and ask to kind of get 291 00:13:37,280 --> 00:13:39,560 its monthly allocation. It's almost like grandma leaves 292 00:13:39,560 --> 00:13:41,320 you an inheritance, but your parents like, we're going to 293 00:13:41,320 --> 00:13:42,400 give you 100 bucks a week. That's it. 294 00:13:42,400 --> 00:13:43,440 You know, we don't want to spend it all. 295 00:13:43,720 --> 00:13:45,400 And you're like, well, wait a second, Which one of us got 296 00:13:45,400 --> 00:13:47,440 grandma's inheritance? Because it sounds like you're in 297 00:13:47,440 --> 00:13:50,600 charge of it, not me. This is the Office of Management 298 00:13:50,600 --> 00:13:52,320 and Budget. Congress passes a big spending 299 00:13:52,320 --> 00:13:54,120 bill. Office of Management Budget 300 00:13:54,120 --> 00:13:56,160 works out how much you get in a monthly allowance or whatever 301 00:13:56,160 --> 00:13:57,400 else. And it's supposed to be all very 302 00:13:57,400 --> 00:13:58,920 logistical. We just don't want you to run 303 00:13:58,920 --> 00:14:01,040 out of money too soon and then come to us. 304 00:14:01,400 --> 00:14:02,800 So we're just trying to help you budget. 305 00:14:02,800 --> 00:14:05,360 But it's very, of course, micromanaging and subjective 306 00:14:05,360 --> 00:14:08,000 about how they do that. So you've got kind of that layer 307 00:14:08,320 --> 00:14:10,960 and then you've got this coordinating all of the treasury 308 00:14:10,960 --> 00:14:13,760 stuff. And, and, and if you kind of put 309 00:14:13,760 --> 00:14:16,840 those things together, you end up with this system where 310 00:14:16,840 --> 00:14:19,560 there's a lot of centralized bottlenecks. 311 00:14:19,560 --> 00:14:21,800 The CFPB tries to avoid all of those. 312 00:14:22,360 --> 00:14:23,960 It gives you complete independence. 313 00:14:24,000 --> 00:14:26,240 And not only that, the other thing the Treasury is often 314 00:14:26,240 --> 00:14:29,400 required to do is essentially do debt laundering. 315 00:14:29,640 --> 00:14:31,800 So it's this other obscure subpart of the Treasury we don't 316 00:14:31,800 --> 00:14:33,720 talk about along with the Bureau of Fiscal Service called the 317 00:14:33,720 --> 00:14:37,360 Federal Financing Bank. But the idea is, I think of it 318 00:14:37,360 --> 00:14:40,520 almost like, you know, Jesus or the E pluribus Unum in the 319 00:14:40,520 --> 00:14:44,200 American, you know, sort of motto out of many into one, all 320 00:14:44,200 --> 00:14:46,960 the different agencies that have to issue their own debt. 321 00:14:47,280 --> 00:14:49,520 It would be a goddamn nightmare for them all to be out there in 322 00:14:49,520 --> 00:14:51,560 the economy, right? Department of Education debt, 323 00:14:51,560 --> 00:14:54,560 Department of Defence debt, you know, whatever else, but let's 324 00:14:54,560 --> 00:14:57,000 just all launder it through the Treasury, right? 325 00:14:57,760 --> 00:14:59,760 I'm the way, the truth and the life, nothing comes out to the 326 00:15:00,000 --> 00:15:03,160 bond markets except through me. And now we have 1 clean, 327 00:15:03,160 --> 00:15:06,200 beautiful Treasury bond, right? And so the Federal financing 328 00:15:06,200 --> 00:15:09,120 bank is laundering all of that. That puts the Treasury in a 329 00:15:09,120 --> 00:15:11,360 position to screw with other agencies, right? 330 00:15:11,360 --> 00:15:13,920 It's another choke point that the Treasury cannot let you get 331 00:15:13,920 --> 00:15:16,000 your money out. And Mnuchin did this back in 332 00:15:16,000 --> 00:15:19,600 2019 with the post office. So Mnuchin said I'm not going to 333 00:15:19,600 --> 00:15:23,120 let you issue debt that Congress told you you can issue unless 334 00:15:23,120 --> 00:15:25,840 you pre fund your pension out till the year 2600. 335 00:15:25,840 --> 00:15:28,120 You know, basically until we're in season 4 of Star Trek The 336 00:15:28,120 --> 00:15:30,240 Next Generation. I need to know that you can 337 00:15:30,240 --> 00:15:32,200 cover your Postal Service employees, right? 338 00:15:32,320 --> 00:15:34,840 That didn't work though. He eventually gave up with 339 00:15:34,840 --> 00:15:37,600 pressure, but what he learned is this is this is a good strategy. 340 00:15:37,600 --> 00:15:39,880 I just chose the wrong part of the treasury, right? 341 00:15:39,920 --> 00:15:42,680 I just needed you a must to come in and hack the the accounts 342 00:15:42,680 --> 00:15:45,440 with a with a ridiculous PR campaign. 343 00:15:45,520 --> 00:15:47,760 Well, and Russ bought. We shouldn't let him get off 344 00:15:47,760 --> 00:15:49,640 without. He has been planning this too. 345 00:15:50,200 --> 00:15:53,000 Ross Void is the architect of the the anti empowerment 346 00:15:53,000 --> 00:15:55,120 campaign. He's the head of the of the OMB. 347 00:15:55,400 --> 00:16:00,400 And like with what's his name in the first first administration, 348 00:16:00,400 --> 00:16:02,840 they appointed him head of the CFPB at the same time as head of 349 00:16:02,840 --> 00:16:04,800 OMB. I'm forgetting his name, but he 350 00:16:04,800 --> 00:16:07,160 was a former legislator. Anyway. 351 00:16:07,160 --> 00:16:11,480 I'll it'll come to me. So anyway, the CFPB, it's one 352 00:16:11,480 --> 00:16:14,280 big problem is that it's technically on the money side is 353 00:16:14,280 --> 00:16:15,640 that it's still attached to the Fed. 354 00:16:16,000 --> 00:16:18,440 So it it gets its money directly from the Fed, that's about as 355 00:16:18,440 --> 00:16:20,280 good as you can hope for. There's no government debt 356 00:16:20,280 --> 00:16:21,720 involved. There's no borrowing from our 357 00:16:21,720 --> 00:16:24,120 grandchildren. It doesn't need to get it from 358 00:16:24,120 --> 00:16:27,760 taxes or revenue or even fines if it says it needs a certain 359 00:16:27,760 --> 00:16:29,840 amount. the Fed just basically has to give it to them. 360 00:16:29,840 --> 00:16:31,560 And the Fed doesn't have discretion over that. 361 00:16:31,560 --> 00:16:35,720 But to your point, originally, it was designed so that the head 362 00:16:35,720 --> 00:16:38,560 of the CFPB was a single director who could not be 363 00:16:38,560 --> 00:16:43,000 removed except for cause. And the Supreme Court a couple 364 00:16:43,000 --> 00:16:47,000 of years ago said, no, that's unconstitutional. 365 00:16:48,120 --> 00:16:51,960 The president needs to be able to fire at will everybody in the 366 00:16:51,960 --> 00:16:56,680 executive branch, otherwise he can't do his job as the chief 367 00:16:56,680 --> 00:16:59,080 executive. And they didn't go all the way 368 00:16:59,080 --> 00:17:01,600 to saying everybody at that point, they, they only 369 00:17:01,600 --> 00:17:03,800 invalidated the CFPB on its own terms. 370 00:17:04,680 --> 00:17:07,800 And the, the, the version of an agency that's still potentially 371 00:17:07,800 --> 00:17:11,599 legal is one that has multiple members rather than one single 372 00:17:11,599 --> 00:17:13,160 head. So if you're in a Commission 373 00:17:13,160 --> 00:17:15,839 where it's sort of three, two, you know, it's the CF, it's the 374 00:17:15,920 --> 00:17:20,599 FTC, it's the SEC, they said that that might still be 375 00:17:20,599 --> 00:17:23,400 allowed. And to be clear, the current 376 00:17:23,400 --> 00:17:24,839 Supreme Court doesn't like that either. 377 00:17:24,839 --> 00:17:26,200 They're probably about to get rid of it. 378 00:17:26,560 --> 00:17:29,720 But that goes all the way back to a case in the 30s about the 379 00:17:29,720 --> 00:17:32,000 FTC, the Federal Trade Commission called Humphreys 380 00:17:32,000 --> 00:17:35,040 Executor. So, so I think hungry executive 381 00:17:35,040 --> 00:17:39,360 probably fucked, frankly, but before that, the CFPB was fucked 382 00:17:39,360 --> 00:17:42,080 along the way. So the, the fact that its 383 00:17:42,080 --> 00:17:44,840 funding structure is good doesn't mean that it's actually 384 00:17:44,840 --> 00:17:47,560 independent because you can just put your own lackey in the top 385 00:17:47,560 --> 00:17:49,040 and tell them to turn off all the budget. 386 00:17:50,120 --> 00:17:52,680 But the fact that you can design the budget to be that 387 00:17:52,680 --> 00:17:55,080 independent is a model for other agencies. 388 00:17:55,080 --> 00:17:58,080 And in fact, Trump tried to fire the head of the National 389 00:17:58,080 --> 00:18:01,920 relations, National Relations Labor Board, and the Supreme 390 00:18:01,920 --> 00:18:04,400 Court in at least the preliminary ruling, said no. 391 00:18:04,400 --> 00:18:06,880 Reinstate them while this case goes all the way through. 392 00:18:07,240 --> 00:18:10,040 So they haven't been been willing to let him completely 393 00:18:10,040 --> 00:18:12,480 fire everybody yet. We talked a little bit there 394 00:18:12,480 --> 00:18:15,080 about the problems with the current setup of the Treasury 395 00:18:15,080 --> 00:18:18,920 Bureau of Fiscal Services. Can you outline at a high level 396 00:18:18,920 --> 00:18:22,760 the new digital fiscal regime that you lay out in your paper? 397 00:18:22,840 --> 00:18:25,320 As I said, if you think about it as 3 levels, there's the legal 398 00:18:25,320 --> 00:18:29,560 authority to spend, there's the actual directive to spend, and 399 00:18:29,560 --> 00:18:32,560 then there's the processing of the account layer, right? 400 00:18:32,560 --> 00:18:35,960 That that corresponds to OMB, Treasury and Fed today. 401 00:18:36,360 --> 00:18:40,720 My big argument is we need to basically internalize as much of 402 00:18:40,720 --> 00:18:43,880 that as possible inside the legislative branch. 403 00:18:44,680 --> 00:18:46,760 So partially, this can be through Congress through its own 404 00:18:46,760 --> 00:18:48,960 legislation. Partially it can be through 405 00:18:48,960 --> 00:18:51,960 congressional committees and staffer offices and things that 406 00:18:51,960 --> 00:18:55,120 kind of negotiate with the executive branch on an ongoing 407 00:18:55,120 --> 00:18:57,080 basis. And partially, it could be 408 00:18:57,440 --> 00:19:00,600 independent agencies within the legislative branch. 409 00:19:00,840 --> 00:19:03,960 So the classic ones there are the Government Accountability 410 00:19:03,960 --> 00:19:06,000 Office that used to be called the Government Accounting Office 411 00:19:06,480 --> 00:19:08,960 and the Congressional Budget Office, which I usually hate, 412 00:19:09,000 --> 00:19:11,240 but we could repurpose it to be doing something useful with its 413 00:19:11,240 --> 00:19:13,120 life. Certainly wouldn't be hard to be 414 00:19:13,120 --> 00:19:14,280 more useful than it currently is. 415 00:19:15,040 --> 00:19:19,120 So anyway, my pitch for a digital fiscal regime is 3 416 00:19:19,120 --> 00:19:21,800 pieces of technology sort of accompanying those three things 417 00:19:21,800 --> 00:19:26,600 that I just mentioned. 1 is what I'm calling the digital fiscal 418 00:19:26,600 --> 00:19:29,680 record. The, and the idea of the fiscal 419 00:19:29,680 --> 00:19:32,560 record is basically it's, it's the Congressional record of all 420 00:19:32,560 --> 00:19:34,760 the laws passed, but it's digital. 421 00:19:35,080 --> 00:19:37,360 So they are software, which means you can bake in 422 00:19:37,800 --> 00:19:41,920 automatically executing laws, laws that expire after a certain 423 00:19:41,920 --> 00:19:46,040 point, laws that are conditional on an external fact. 424 00:19:46,160 --> 00:19:49,320 And that fact can point to a a third party trusted source that 425 00:19:49,320 --> 00:19:52,280 says, hey, if the inflation gets above a certain point, do X or 426 00:19:52,280 --> 00:19:55,360 if unemployment gets above a certain amount, do Y or whatever 427 00:19:55,360 --> 00:19:57,160 it is. And that statistic could be 428 00:19:57,600 --> 00:20:00,520 essentially baked into the law. Then the second layer I'm 429 00:20:00,520 --> 00:20:06,400 calling Congress's Treasury ATM. And the idea here is what you 430 00:20:06,440 --> 00:20:10,400 you do is you take internally the authority from the law that 431 00:20:10,400 --> 00:20:13,680 Congress passes a law. You take that authority and you 432 00:20:13,880 --> 00:20:17,080 basically get it in the form of credit, a line of credit. 433 00:20:17,680 --> 00:20:20,120 And I'm using the metaphor of a credit card, although it 434 00:20:20,120 --> 00:20:21,560 probably wouldn't be a physical credit card. 435 00:20:21,560 --> 00:20:24,600 It'd be basically a set of permissions and you access this 436 00:20:24,600 --> 00:20:26,600 ATM. And if you have the right 437 00:20:26,600 --> 00:20:29,000 permissions, you can get digital dollars in your local account. 438 00:20:29,720 --> 00:20:33,440 So the thing that you go to the ATM with from the statute is not 439 00:20:33,440 --> 00:20:35,080 money. It's like internally within the 440 00:20:35,080 --> 00:20:36,840 government. It's basically almost like an 441 00:20:36,840 --> 00:20:39,480 IOU or a credit. So I'm calling it a public 442 00:20:39,480 --> 00:20:41,320 credit card. It's the full faith and credit 443 00:20:41,320 --> 00:20:43,400 of the United States that Congress gets to issue. 444 00:20:44,200 --> 00:20:47,560 I'm an executive agency. I say, hey, here's a bill that 445 00:20:47,560 --> 00:20:50,360 says I am allowed to spend $100 billion / 10 years. 446 00:20:50,840 --> 00:20:53,240 I go to Congress. Congress says, when we wrote 447 00:20:53,240 --> 00:20:56,800 that, what we meant was 10 billion a year, cool, here's 448 00:20:56,800 --> 00:20:59,400 your credit card. It will work up to $10 billion a 449 00:20:59,400 --> 00:21:00,400 year. You could do it. 450 00:21:00,520 --> 00:21:03,240 And this is a really key point. You could do this qualitatively, 451 00:21:03,240 --> 00:21:05,360 not just quantitatively. You don't have to give them a 452 00:21:05,360 --> 00:21:07,240 number. We're so used to thinking of 453 00:21:07,240 --> 00:21:09,800 numbers like there's a certain kind of person that lives in the 454 00:21:09,800 --> 00:21:11,880 world of black Amex all the time. 455 00:21:12,400 --> 00:21:14,840 Congress lives in the world of black Amex. 456 00:21:15,080 --> 00:21:18,760 So you could, you could fund agencies on an as needed basis 457 00:21:19,280 --> 00:21:20,880 and just tell them as much money as they need. 458 00:21:20,880 --> 00:21:25,000 They can get, the CFPB is told that it can get as much money as 459 00:21:25,000 --> 00:21:27,280 it needs. And last I checked, they don't 460 00:21:27,280 --> 00:21:30,920 have, you know, they don't have luxury resorts in the Caribbean. 461 00:21:31,640 --> 00:21:35,280 They actually saved I think $600 million that they've they've 462 00:21:35,280 --> 00:21:36,600 earned. They've put it in a savings 463 00:21:36,600 --> 00:21:38,680 account for a rainy day that Congress that that Trump is 464 00:21:38,680 --> 00:21:41,920 about to drain for their own independence, basically. 465 00:21:42,440 --> 00:21:46,160 But essentially there's a lot of agencies that operate on an as 466 00:21:46,160 --> 00:21:48,280 needed basis. the Fed doesn't run out of money. 467 00:21:48,320 --> 00:21:50,160 You know, if the Fed's not spending, it's because it's 468 00:21:50,160 --> 00:21:53,080 exercising its own discipline. So you get you, you have this 469 00:21:53,080 --> 00:21:54,960 Ledger, you pass the laws on the Ledger. 470 00:21:55,080 --> 00:21:57,280 The Ledger says these agencies are allowed to spend. 471 00:21:57,600 --> 00:22:01,280 The agency goes to Congress or its or its representatives and 472 00:22:01,280 --> 00:22:04,240 says, can you turn this into practical spending power? 473 00:22:04,440 --> 00:22:06,240 They say yes, here's your credit card. 474 00:22:07,000 --> 00:22:09,680 You take the credit card to the ATM and you get digital cash. 475 00:22:10,280 --> 00:22:12,280 Why do I, why do I split it up like that? 476 00:22:12,280 --> 00:22:14,920 Couple of reasons. One is I want to split up the 477 00:22:14,920 --> 00:22:17,720 act of determining how much you can spend from the act of 478 00:22:17,720 --> 00:22:20,920 approving the withdrawal. The first one is an 479 00:22:20,920 --> 00:22:22,400 adjudication. The first one is an 480 00:22:22,400 --> 00:22:24,240 interpretation of the existing law. 481 00:22:24,520 --> 00:22:28,240 The second one is is basically rubber stamping you doing 482 00:22:28,240 --> 00:22:30,320 something. It's a different, different 483 00:22:30,320 --> 00:22:38,240 authority and and importantly with that digital ATM, every 484 00:22:38,240 --> 00:22:42,760 individual agency has their own wallet server locally. 485 00:22:42,800 --> 00:22:45,120 So you can think about this like we talked about E cash, where 486 00:22:45,120 --> 00:22:47,240 you need to have a device in your pocket to store your cash 487 00:22:47,240 --> 00:22:49,480 as a consumer. This is the institutional 488 00:22:49,480 --> 00:22:52,800 version of that, but it's not banks and and investment funds. 489 00:22:53,000 --> 00:22:54,480 It's internally within government. 490 00:22:54,640 --> 00:22:57,040 Why is it important for every government agency to have their 491 00:22:57,040 --> 00:23:00,280 own money locally, in the equivalent of a safe, not at the 492 00:23:00,280 --> 00:23:02,000 Fed? Because it means that if Trump 493 00:23:02,000 --> 00:23:05,480 takes over the Fed, which is looking increasingly likely at 494 00:23:05,480 --> 00:23:08,800 some point, then these agencies could still theoretically have a 495 00:23:08,800 --> 00:23:10,880 direct link to Congress's money power. 496 00:23:10,880 --> 00:23:15,000 Wasn't there an example recently of in New York? 497 00:23:15,040 --> 00:23:17,720 Yes, so I'll, I'll, I'll talk about that in a second. 498 00:23:17,720 --> 00:23:19,440 That's about the tax side. I've been talking about the 499 00:23:19,440 --> 00:23:22,080 spending side, but this is just as important for protecting your 500 00:23:22,080 --> 00:23:24,280 money on the tax side, because if you could delete dollars out 501 00:23:24,280 --> 00:23:27,440 of existence, you can you can take anybody's money at any 502 00:23:27,440 --> 00:23:30,480 point in time. So the last, the last piece of 503 00:23:30,480 --> 00:23:32,400 the technology. So step one is the digital 504 00:23:32,400 --> 00:23:34,440 record. Step 2 is the ATM. 505 00:23:34,440 --> 00:23:37,400 Step 3 is what I'm calling the Federated Federal Ledger. 506 00:23:37,600 --> 00:23:40,600 And the idea is that Congress has a master spreadsheet of all 507 00:23:40,600 --> 00:23:42,480 the government spending that's been done in its name. 508 00:23:43,280 --> 00:23:46,120 And every agency has its own accounting spreadsheet, right, 509 00:23:46,120 --> 00:23:48,880 separate from its wallet. Its wallet holds its money, but 510 00:23:48,880 --> 00:23:50,240 it has its own separate accounts. 511 00:23:50,240 --> 00:23:53,640 And those accounts essentially sync up to the government's main 512 00:23:53,840 --> 00:23:55,920 accounting spreadsheet. So this is almost like a sort of 513 00:23:55,920 --> 00:23:58,360 semi blockchain, semi distributed Ledger. 514 00:23:58,560 --> 00:24:00,120 I'm not going to say it. We're not putting Congress on 515 00:24:00,120 --> 00:24:02,400 the blockchain. But, but, but Congress is sort 516 00:24:02,400 --> 00:24:05,520 of the one who keeps the master record of everything. 517 00:24:05,520 --> 00:24:07,400 And everybody else just gets a little piece, right? 518 00:24:07,640 --> 00:24:09,640 Someone's like, oh, it's, it's, it's got a tail. 519 00:24:09,640 --> 00:24:11,280 And someone else is like, oh, it's got hoofs. 520 00:24:11,280 --> 00:24:12,800 And someone else is like, oh, it's got tusks. 521 00:24:12,920 --> 00:24:14,640 It's an elephant. It's just that Congress is the 522 00:24:14,640 --> 00:24:17,920 only one that can see the whole elephant, right? 523 00:24:17,920 --> 00:24:21,160 It's keeping the copy of all of the individual agencies ledgers 524 00:24:21,560 --> 00:24:24,200 as a master Ledger and each individual agency just keeps its 525 00:24:24,200 --> 00:24:26,840 own peace locally. So it's not a distributed Ledger 526 00:24:26,840 --> 00:24:29,400 because that's one common thing. It's a Federated Ledger. 527 00:24:29,640 --> 00:24:34,040 It's just that the central hub has access to every everything 528 00:24:34,040 --> 00:24:36,160 else. So to go to your other question, 529 00:24:36,360 --> 00:24:40,440 why this is in part important is so that if, if the president is 530 00:24:40,440 --> 00:24:44,240 now a hostile agent within the government, that Congress can 531 00:24:44,240 --> 00:24:48,560 still have a direct fiscal conduit, a direct fiscal channel 532 00:24:48,800 --> 00:24:51,480 to each sub agency within the government, right? 533 00:24:51,480 --> 00:24:56,040 It's the dis unitary executive. And, and what they did in, in, 534 00:24:56,040 --> 00:25:00,400 in New York is they decided to punish New York State government 535 00:25:00,640 --> 00:25:02,560 that they said that they'd accidentally gave them some 536 00:25:02,560 --> 00:25:05,520 money they didn't deserve and they just debited $80 million 537 00:25:05,520 --> 00:25:07,720 out of their bank account. They, they took it out of the 538 00:25:07,720 --> 00:25:09,600 bank. The, the Citibank. 539 00:25:09,600 --> 00:25:12,040 I think it was Citibank that the, the, the state of New York 540 00:25:12,040 --> 00:25:14,720 banks with, they took it out of Citibank's reserve account at 541 00:25:14,720 --> 00:25:17,320 the Fed and told Citibank to take it out of the, the city's 542 00:25:17,320 --> 00:25:21,040 account, the state's account. So we are at the point now where 543 00:25:21,040 --> 00:25:23,920 you can basically be unilaterally taxed as a penalty 544 00:25:24,280 --> 00:25:27,040 and your money is not safe. So putting this stuff in a, in a 545 00:25:27,040 --> 00:25:31,120 wallet that's safe in the agency means that the president can't, 546 00:25:31,400 --> 00:25:33,600 can't delete it all. And if we are really at the 547 00:25:33,720 --> 00:25:36,280 level where I think we're pretty getting pretty close to in terms 548 00:25:36,280 --> 00:25:38,280 of 11 minutes till midnight for the breakdown of the 549 00:25:38,280 --> 00:25:41,520 constitutional fabric of this country, we might really need to 550 00:25:41,520 --> 00:25:45,000 be talking about what it means to like, keep up a, a, a 551 00:25:45,000 --> 00:25:47,720 financing regime for like the part of the government that 552 00:25:47,720 --> 00:25:50,440 isn't going with the Trump side of things when it goes that way. 553 00:25:50,560 --> 00:25:53,520 We can get more into the weeds of this stuff here in a second, 554 00:25:53,520 --> 00:25:57,640 but I I feel like it's worth talking to you about this. 555 00:25:57,640 --> 00:26:01,040 And this is maybe more philosophical than like detailed 556 00:26:01,040 --> 00:26:04,520 law. But one of the things when Ben 557 00:26:04,520 --> 00:26:08,440 and I were talking yesterday about this, I, I was like, I'm 558 00:26:08,440 --> 00:26:12,520 pretty worried about the future of, for instance, Federal 559 00:26:12,520 --> 00:26:15,680 Reserve independence. I'm pretty worried about the 560 00:26:15,680 --> 00:26:18,800 Treasury Secretary doing whatever the fuck Donald Trump 561 00:26:18,800 --> 00:26:21,160 wants. Like, these are things that are, 562 00:26:21,440 --> 00:26:26,120 I'm already like, well, like you just said 11 minutes to like 2 563 00:26:26,120 --> 00:26:28,600 minutes to midnight, right? Like, I feel like we're there. 564 00:26:28,920 --> 00:26:34,400 And I guess part of what I said to Bennett was I kind of don't 565 00:26:34,400 --> 00:26:37,160 get it. Like he's doing this quite 566 00:26:37,160 --> 00:26:43,760 detailed paper where he's discussing fixing a lot of these 567 00:26:43,760 --> 00:26:47,280 problems that we now know absolutely exist. 568 00:26:48,240 --> 00:26:51,360 But you know as well as I do that this stuff takes a really 569 00:26:51,360 --> 00:26:52,800 long time to get. Yeah. 570 00:26:53,000 --> 00:26:56,200 Yeah, we'll, we'll get the Super majority in Congress to pass a 571 00:26:56,200 --> 00:26:59,040 bill doing a task force and research all this stuff, and 572 00:26:59,040 --> 00:27:01,000 then the president will slowly implement it all. 573 00:27:01,200 --> 00:27:03,360 And then we'll go, Oh no, I've got no power. 574 00:27:04,000 --> 00:27:06,960 I accidentally built the machinery of my own constraint, 575 00:27:07,000 --> 00:27:09,560 yes. And my, I guess my worry here is 576 00:27:09,560 --> 00:27:12,520 that what Bennett responded to me and I want maybe this is 577 00:27:12,520 --> 00:27:15,520 exactly what your answer is. But what Bennett said to me was, 578 00:27:16,320 --> 00:27:21,000 I think this is Rohan preparing for cleaning up after the ashes 579 00:27:21,000 --> 00:27:22,880 have settled. And I is. 580 00:27:23,360 --> 00:27:25,720 Do you think that's? Actually, partially, it's that 581 00:27:25,720 --> 00:27:27,680 partially, there's a number of countries around the world that 582 00:27:27,680 --> 00:27:31,120 actually do have parliamentary systems and saying, hey guys, 583 00:27:31,440 --> 00:27:33,600 watch out, right? Watch out. 584 00:27:33,600 --> 00:27:36,200 It's coming for you too. If you want a parliamentary 585 00:27:36,200 --> 00:27:38,280 system and think about it, right, Think about it in the 586 00:27:38,280 --> 00:27:40,160 context of a country, a place like Europe where they have 587 00:27:40,160 --> 00:27:42,560 proportional representation, where every parliamentary 588 00:27:42,560 --> 00:27:45,840 majority is a weird amalgam of three different parties. 589 00:27:46,040 --> 00:27:48,360 Imagine being able to say to them, we're going to divide the 590 00:27:48,520 --> 00:27:52,840 the Fisk so that you have a Direct Line to 1/3 of the Fisk 591 00:27:52,840 --> 00:27:54,960 or whatever it is. I mean, this is a very important 592 00:27:54,960 --> 00:27:58,600 way of, of, of, of structuralizing, you know, of, 593 00:27:58,600 --> 00:28:02,280 of, of materializing the legal divisions of power that we 594 00:28:02,280 --> 00:28:05,000 actually need to keep legitimacy of government working. 595 00:28:05,680 --> 00:28:09,040 So yes, partially it's like, hey, you know how America went 596 00:28:09,040 --> 00:28:11,120 imperial presidency, You're all kind of on the edge of that. 597 00:28:11,120 --> 00:28:13,440 If you want to have a thing called a parliamentary system 598 00:28:13,440 --> 00:28:15,760 with ministerial independence. Because theoretically the 599 00:28:15,760 --> 00:28:17,480 Treasury Secretary is supposed to be independent, right? 600 00:28:17,480 --> 00:28:19,920 Treasury Secretary is supposed to be able to say I have my own 601 00:28:19,920 --> 00:28:21,200 independent duty of the Constitution. 602 00:28:21,200 --> 00:28:23,880 Yeah, Bennett's laughing, right? Of course, he's the idea of 603 00:28:23,880 --> 00:28:26,040 Treasury independence in this day and age is a fucking joke. 604 00:28:26,360 --> 00:28:28,360 the Fed is supposed to be independent, right? 605 00:28:28,360 --> 00:28:31,320 The Fed's still doing that to a degree until it isn't, right, 606 00:28:31,320 --> 00:28:33,120 until Humphrey's executive gets overturned. 607 00:28:33,120 --> 00:28:35,200 And I don't think the Supreme Court's going to want to go 608 00:28:35,200 --> 00:28:37,000 after the Fed. So I'll be curious to see the 609 00:28:37,000 --> 00:28:40,400 jiu jitsu they do about that line, at least initially. 610 00:28:41,280 --> 00:28:44,920 But but it also, it also is is to me actually a bit of a kind 611 00:28:44,920 --> 00:28:47,960 of wartime vision, which is to say, if you, if we're at the 612 00:28:47,960 --> 00:28:52,880 point of like Confederacy money, you know, if we're at the point 613 00:28:52,880 --> 00:28:56,000 of like, which one of these agencies is going to go with 614 00:28:56,000 --> 00:28:59,720 which person, you know, or if Congress says one thing. 615 00:28:59,720 --> 00:29:01,600 And the problem, of course, is we don't have any of the 616 00:29:01,600 --> 00:29:03,640 branches. Congress is on their side. 617 00:29:03,640 --> 00:29:06,200 The Supreme Court's on there's like, who is the legitimate 618 00:29:06,200 --> 00:29:08,400 branch calling out the other branch at this point? 619 00:29:08,400 --> 00:29:10,680 Nobody. But if we do get to that point, 620 00:29:10,960 --> 00:29:12,800 if we do get to that point where he's just gloves off and 621 00:29:12,800 --> 00:29:14,800 somebody wants to say, hey, we're not, we're not going to 622 00:29:14,800 --> 00:29:17,800 let this happen. Then a vision of how digital 623 00:29:17,800 --> 00:29:23,240 money could work where you could essentially run a, a distributed 624 00:29:23,240 --> 00:29:25,760 wartime government without needing one. 625 00:29:25,800 --> 00:29:28,360 I mean, think about it also from a resiliency point of view. 626 00:29:28,480 --> 00:29:31,160 You're in the middle of a civil war and you've got one place 627 00:29:31,160 --> 00:29:32,560 where all the money goes through. 628 00:29:32,920 --> 00:29:35,240 I mean, Congress in this situation has to be the place 629 00:29:35,240 --> 00:29:36,720 where the where the authority gets made. 630 00:29:36,720 --> 00:29:38,480 But that could be a football. You could be carrying that 631 00:29:38,480 --> 00:29:40,800 around with you, right? It could be on the run if you 632 00:29:40,800 --> 00:29:44,600 want like actual locations, making money and sending it out 633 00:29:44,600 --> 00:29:48,720 to do economic organization during a, during a serious 634 00:29:48,720 --> 00:29:52,840 route, then then you don't want that all going through one place 635 00:29:52,840 --> 00:29:55,400 because then you just bomb or occupy that place. 636 00:29:55,840 --> 00:30:00,200 So partially this is a vision for a, a sort of democratically 637 00:30:00,240 --> 00:30:03,400 resilient institutional structure for the fisc. 638 00:30:03,760 --> 00:30:06,240 And that's just as relevant during the troubles as after the 639 00:30:06,240 --> 00:30:08,640 troubles. But we won't even know what it 640 00:30:08,640 --> 00:30:10,760 could look like until we start talking about it. 641 00:30:10,760 --> 00:30:13,400 So this is a vision of like, hey, if we had this working 642 00:30:13,400 --> 00:30:14,920 today, we wouldn't have these problems. 643 00:30:14,920 --> 00:30:16,400 The best time to do this was yesterday. 644 00:30:16,400 --> 00:30:17,600 The next best time to do is today. 645 00:30:17,640 --> 00:30:21,040 Well, and I can also imagine depending on how things play 646 00:30:21,040 --> 00:30:25,480 out, if there are multiple governments claiming legitimacy, 647 00:30:25,480 --> 00:30:29,000 it is likely there will be multiple currencies trying to 648 00:30:29,000 --> 00:30:30,080 claim. Legitimacy as well. 649 00:30:30,200 --> 00:30:33,760 Need to rebuild this stuff from scratch either way because the 650 00:30:33,760 --> 00:30:36,480 pieces that are already in place are not actually under our 651 00:30:36,480 --> 00:30:39,880 control on the chess board. Yeah, or just naked off the 652 00:30:39,920 --> 00:30:44,800 chess board in general. Cow sitting there with a gun 653 00:30:44,800 --> 00:30:47,840 outside of camera saying I've decided to continue. 654 00:30:47,840 --> 00:30:51,200 You know, like he's sweating on the camera, you know, and, and 655 00:30:51,200 --> 00:30:53,240 this, well, this sounds so extreme, except it's kind of 656 00:30:53,240 --> 00:30:56,000 not, right. It really sounded really crazy a 657 00:30:56,000 --> 00:30:58,520 month ago. And, and now everybody's gone. 658 00:30:58,520 --> 00:31:01,240 Pepe, Sylvia, not just me. Cass and I are across the 659 00:31:01,240 --> 00:31:03,920 Rubicon. We're like we're. 660 00:31:04,000 --> 00:31:05,600 Crossing the Rubicon in the paper, right? 661 00:31:05,600 --> 00:31:08,000 And we crossed the Rubicon a while ago. 662 00:31:08,000 --> 00:31:10,320 And, you know, even since I wrote the paper, he's been 663 00:31:10,320 --> 00:31:13,200 defying judicial orders. Yeah, which at the time when you 664 00:31:13,200 --> 00:31:16,280 initially wrote it, one of the lines is Thus far, Trump has yet 665 00:31:16,280 --> 00:31:18,800 to openly refuse to obey a federal court order. 666 00:31:19,240 --> 00:31:24,320 I was reading it yesterday as I was watching the plane land in 667 00:31:24,360 --> 00:31:25,400 El Salvador. Yeah. 668 00:31:25,480 --> 00:31:29,000 I look, I, I, I, I, I Part of what I talk about in the paper 669 00:31:29,000 --> 00:31:33,800 is that if you're smart, you can use the technology of law and 670 00:31:33,800 --> 00:31:36,920 the technology of keeping accounting as the execution. 671 00:31:36,920 --> 00:31:39,880 So you're not, the legislature is not taking over the executive 672 00:31:39,880 --> 00:31:41,680 responsibility. It's not actually making the 673 00:31:41,680 --> 00:31:43,080 money. It's not actually printing the 674 00:31:43,080 --> 00:31:44,280 paper. It's not actually making the 675 00:31:44,280 --> 00:31:46,400 payments, but it is keeping score. 676 00:31:46,720 --> 00:31:50,120 And it's got the the right to keep score constitutionally, 677 00:31:50,400 --> 00:31:52,680 right? If you control the laws, if you 678 00:31:52,680 --> 00:31:55,200 can say, hey, I told you to spend $36. 679 00:31:55,200 --> 00:31:57,440 By that I meant this. You're not doing that. 680 00:31:57,440 --> 00:31:59,920 It's sort of like somebody keeping track of the, you know, 681 00:31:59,920 --> 00:32:02,080 the soccer World Cup in their basement and something the 682 00:32:02,080 --> 00:32:04,160 referee gives the other team a goal and you're like, I don't 683 00:32:04,160 --> 00:32:06,080 agree with that. Here's the true score, but 684 00:32:06,080 --> 00:32:07,800 you're God. So now your score in the 685 00:32:07,800 --> 00:32:10,160 basement matters more than the FIFA, right? 686 00:32:10,160 --> 00:32:12,880 Like that's, that's Congress. Congress isn't the one running 687 00:32:12,880 --> 00:32:15,440 the stadium, but it is the only one whose opinion 688 00:32:15,440 --> 00:32:18,560 constitutionally is is legitimate about what spending 689 00:32:18,680 --> 00:32:21,280 has and hasn't been authorized, authorized by Congress. 690 00:32:21,680 --> 00:32:23,880 Anyway, all of which is to say, my magic source, my 691 00:32:23,880 --> 00:32:27,280 technological insight here, is if you do that with the 692 00:32:27,280 --> 00:32:30,160 technology of law itself, if you do that with the technology of 693 00:32:30,160 --> 00:32:33,960 accounting, just the act of passing the law is itself a form 694 00:32:33,960 --> 00:32:36,960 of programmable software. I don't have programmable 695 00:32:36,960 --> 00:32:38,920 software in my paper, otherwise I would have made that an 696 00:32:38,920 --> 00:32:41,800 exploding sentence. I would have made it a self 697 00:32:41,800 --> 00:32:44,760 expiring sentence requiring renewal, like you need to renew 698 00:32:44,760 --> 00:32:46,440 the appropriations authority every week. 699 00:32:46,440 --> 00:32:49,480 I would have had that sentence self delete unless I went back 700 00:32:49,480 --> 00:32:51,960 in and reauthorized it with a bit more juice every week. 701 00:32:51,960 --> 00:32:55,680 But yes, I I I underestimated how quickly it would die. 702 00:32:55,720 --> 00:32:58,480 I thought it was also interesting reading this paper 703 00:32:58,640 --> 00:33:00,440 and you allude to this in the paper. 704 00:33:00,440 --> 00:33:04,800 Elon Musk and Mario Nafal have announced their plan to put the 705 00:33:04,800 --> 00:33:07,640 treasury on the blockchain. Is that different than this 706 00:33:07,640 --> 00:33:09,560 plan? Well, I would say, I would say, 707 00:33:09,640 --> 00:33:10,840 I mean, first of all, it is different. 708 00:33:10,840 --> 00:33:12,680 I don't think you need a blockchain in general. 709 00:33:12,680 --> 00:33:15,040 And I think if you are trying to do the distributed stuff that 710 00:33:15,040 --> 00:33:18,480 I'm trying to do for resiliency, blockchain's the wrong solution 711 00:33:18,480 --> 00:33:20,920 for the same reason as I talked about with E cash, right. 712 00:33:21,200 --> 00:33:23,880 It's the wrong solution for a digital dollar for consumers. 713 00:33:23,880 --> 00:33:26,120 It's also the wrong solution for a digital dollar intra 714 00:33:26,120 --> 00:33:28,560 governmentally or a digital dollar credit. 715 00:33:30,040 --> 00:33:32,320 But of course, what he means is that the executive gets to 716 00:33:32,320 --> 00:33:34,160 control it. So even if it is a blockchain, 717 00:33:34,160 --> 00:33:36,920 like fuck it, fine, put on a blockchain, but like Congress 718 00:33:36,920 --> 00:33:38,400 controlled A blockchain, not you. 719 00:33:38,960 --> 00:33:40,840 And I don't think he's going to be as excited about that. 720 00:33:40,840 --> 00:33:44,880 What he means is what he means is, you know, I want all of 721 00:33:44,880 --> 00:33:46,760 these payments to be visible and he. 722 00:33:46,840 --> 00:33:49,280 Doesn't mean anything, but sorry, he doesn't. 723 00:33:49,840 --> 00:33:51,880 Know what he means? He likes blockchain. 724 00:33:51,960 --> 00:33:54,800 He likes the people who like blockchains liking him. 725 00:33:54,800 --> 00:33:57,200 He doesn't even particularly like blockchains. 726 00:33:57,280 --> 00:33:59,680 I think, I think the best way to understand that metaphorically 727 00:33:59,680 --> 00:34:02,560 is what he's saying is attack government corruption through 728 00:34:02,560 --> 00:34:04,520 the tech layer. And that's what they've done. 729 00:34:04,680 --> 00:34:07,840 Trump found his, Trump found his, his tech wizard, right? 730 00:34:07,840 --> 00:34:11,440 He found his Jafar. He found his magician and his 731 00:34:11,440 --> 00:34:13,880 magicians going doing magic shit with alchemy. 732 00:34:13,960 --> 00:34:17,360 Could you talk a little bit about how the digital dollars 733 00:34:17,360 --> 00:34:21,600 that are part of kind of this new digital fiscal regime are 734 00:34:21,600 --> 00:34:25,280 similar to and different from CBDC's? 735 00:34:25,320 --> 00:34:26,679 Yeah. So the first thing is they're 736 00:34:26,679 --> 00:34:28,800 not issued by the the central bank, right? 737 00:34:28,800 --> 00:34:30,880 When you try to understand what a central bank digital currency 738 00:34:30,880 --> 00:34:32,960 is, you leave feeling pretty confused and gaslit. 739 00:34:33,239 --> 00:34:35,480 And the only truth of it all is we don't know what it is. 740 00:34:35,480 --> 00:34:36,440 We don't know what it's going to do. 741 00:34:36,440 --> 00:34:37,600 We don't know how it's going to be designed. 742 00:34:37,840 --> 00:34:40,480 We do know it's going to be issued by the central bank. 743 00:34:40,679 --> 00:34:43,400 It's in the name. We spent 4 hours with the word 744 00:34:43,400 --> 00:34:45,320 central bank on the board. And what we discovered is that a 745 00:34:45,320 --> 00:34:48,080 central bank digital currency is in fact a digital currency 746 00:34:48,080 --> 00:34:50,440 issued by central banks. After furious debate, we have 747 00:34:50,440 --> 00:34:52,360 all come to consensus that that's what it is. 748 00:34:52,360 --> 00:34:53,760 And that's the only thing we can all agree on. 749 00:34:54,560 --> 00:34:57,280 What that means is that from an accounting point of view, it is 750 00:34:57,280 --> 00:35:01,360 at once a legal obligation of the federal government and of 751 00:35:01,360 --> 00:35:02,640 the Fed. You know, if you're one of these 752 00:35:02,640 --> 00:35:05,640 Fed is private guys. The case to read is USB Wells 753 00:35:05,640 --> 00:35:08,600 Fargo from 2019 in the Second Circuit where they said that the 754 00:35:09,000 --> 00:35:12,600 emergency funds that the Federal Reserve lent out to bail out 755 00:35:12,600 --> 00:35:15,520 banks, even though it never came from a quote UN quote taxpayer 756 00:35:15,520 --> 00:35:18,760 or from the Treasury. It counts as public money, 757 00:35:18,880 --> 00:35:21,720 counts as money from the constitutional treasury, the 758 00:35:21,760 --> 00:35:24,520 theoretical treasury up in the sky, the treasury in our hearts, 759 00:35:24,520 --> 00:35:25,680 right? Anywhere there's two people, 760 00:35:25,680 --> 00:35:28,120 that's Jesus church. Anywhere there's someone moving 761 00:35:28,240 --> 00:35:29,920 public money around, that's the treasury. 762 00:35:30,040 --> 00:35:34,040 So that's the kind of that's the kind of general idea is that 763 00:35:34,040 --> 00:35:36,600 this digital dollar would be a generic liability of the 764 00:35:36,600 --> 00:35:40,160 government, a monetary obligation, full faith and 765 00:35:40,160 --> 00:35:42,080 credit backed by the full faith and credit. 766 00:35:42,080 --> 00:35:44,440 It's legal tender. So you can use it to pay any 767 00:35:44,440 --> 00:35:46,600 public or private debt at its face value. 768 00:35:47,360 --> 00:35:49,680 I could could pay interest or not, depending on how they want 769 00:35:49,680 --> 00:35:51,240 to design it. Maybe different parts of it will 770 00:35:51,240 --> 00:35:52,600 pay interest, different parts weren't. 771 00:35:52,760 --> 00:35:57,280 And every agency, if it gets its authority from Congress, from a 772 00:35:57,480 --> 00:36:00,360 spending statute, from an appropriation bill, can get its 773 00:36:00,360 --> 00:36:03,640 credit card, which is to say it's set of permissions, and it 774 00:36:03,640 --> 00:36:06,000 goes to the ATM and it can withdraw that money on its local 775 00:36:06,600 --> 00:36:09,320 wallet or its local device. I'm calling it E purse, just to 776 00:36:09,320 --> 00:36:12,680 keep with the coinage metaphor. Once it's stored locally, it's 777 00:36:12,680 --> 00:36:14,120 offline. It's peer-to-peer. 778 00:36:14,240 --> 00:36:16,680 It's the same as E cash. You can send it to another 779 00:36:16,680 --> 00:36:20,680 device like that, or you could even deposit at the Fed, or you 780 00:36:20,680 --> 00:36:22,880 could put it in a check, or you could send it to someone's E 781 00:36:22,880 --> 00:36:26,880 cash, local device, wallet, or whatever else, and it would be 782 00:36:26,880 --> 00:36:29,040 monetary, right? It would not be debt as we 783 00:36:29,040 --> 00:36:31,280 understand it in the public sense. 784 00:36:31,280 --> 00:36:33,720 So there's no borrowing from our grandkids and all that bullshit. 785 00:36:35,440 --> 00:36:38,080 And the authority comes directly from Congress, right? 786 00:36:38,080 --> 00:36:40,240 It's that signature, you know, from Congress. 787 00:36:40,240 --> 00:36:42,960 It's that appropriation bill that matters first and foremost. 788 00:36:43,000 --> 00:36:45,680 And then every individual agency would essentially have their, 789 00:36:45,680 --> 00:36:48,200 their, their like piece of it. A fragmented Fisk, right? 790 00:36:48,200 --> 00:36:51,040 A distributed Fisk. The other part of it, which I 791 00:36:51,040 --> 00:36:53,520 will expand out in a later paper and is not really the point 792 00:36:53,520 --> 00:36:55,720 right now, although it was part of the point in my original 793 00:36:55,720 --> 00:36:58,000 paper when I wrote this three years ago and kind of predicted 794 00:36:58,400 --> 00:37:01,040 to a degree what just happened. And again, I don't know whether 795 00:37:01,040 --> 00:37:03,760 it's better to be able to see the future and never be able to 796 00:37:03,760 --> 00:37:06,360 change it or not, you know, going insane like Cassandra from 797 00:37:06,360 --> 00:37:08,960 from, from the Greek mythology. But the other part that I talk 798 00:37:08,960 --> 00:37:11,240 about here is how do you make sure you don't fuck with 799 00:37:11,240 --> 00:37:13,360 monetary policy, right? How you not mess with central 800 00:37:13,360 --> 00:37:14,880 bank independence? Like I've got my thoughts about 801 00:37:14,880 --> 00:37:17,360 central bank independence. This is not they, this is not 802 00:37:17,360 --> 00:37:19,040 the moment. I'm not trying to litigate every 803 00:37:19,040 --> 00:37:22,600 single fight in my life at the moment, but the way that I did 804 00:37:22,600 --> 00:37:25,520 that or the metaphor that I've used for this is, and again, I'm 805 00:37:25,520 --> 00:37:27,880 trying to use constitutional terms and almost make them 806 00:37:27,880 --> 00:37:29,800 literal. So as I said, we're drawing 807 00:37:29,800 --> 00:37:33,000 money from the ATM, We're coining digital coins, right? 808 00:37:33,000 --> 00:37:36,280 We are doing these things is that the Fed would be authorized 809 00:37:36,280 --> 00:37:38,760 to essentially take over responsibility for issuing all 810 00:37:38,760 --> 00:37:41,960 forms of government debt, which is basically how it does 811 00:37:41,960 --> 00:37:44,480 monetary policy today. It buys and sells government 812 00:37:44,480 --> 00:37:47,280 securities, Treasury securities and mortgage-backed securities, 813 00:37:48,000 --> 00:37:50,000 but it has to wait for someone else to issue them. 814 00:37:50,280 --> 00:37:52,680 It's sort of like gambling with someone else's chips that they 815 00:37:52,680 --> 00:37:54,080 manufacture. It's like, why don't you just 816 00:37:54,080 --> 00:37:56,040 make them yourself? Oh, well, I couldn't do that. 817 00:37:56,040 --> 00:37:58,760 You can. Other central banks have talked 818 00:37:58,760 --> 00:38:01,320 about issuing central bank debt. About 40% of central banks in 819 00:38:01,320 --> 00:38:04,520 the world do issue central bank debt in various forms, usually 820 00:38:04,520 --> 00:38:07,760 in places where the Treasury doesn't issue enough of its own 821 00:38:07,760 --> 00:38:10,360 to help the bond markets. Like they want the investment 822 00:38:10,360 --> 00:38:12,320 asset. So the idea is if if your 823 00:38:12,320 --> 00:38:15,400 regular money that you and I are spending is digital gold, make 824 00:38:15,400 --> 00:38:18,040 that digital silver. So they have their own separate 825 00:38:18,040 --> 00:38:20,600 parallel form of set of digital instruments. 826 00:38:20,800 --> 00:38:23,600 And that allows the Fed to do its own monetary policy if it 827 00:38:23,600 --> 00:38:26,240 wants interest rates to be positive, if it wants a savings 828 00:38:26,240 --> 00:38:29,440 instrument, if it wants to have financial markets have an asset, 829 00:38:30,280 --> 00:38:33,640 everything the treasury markets do today just put it under the 830 00:38:33,640 --> 00:38:36,920 Fed and keep it out of the out of the government spending 831 00:38:36,920 --> 00:38:39,560 process. So that's the idea is that you 832 00:38:39,560 --> 00:38:43,320 would have all of this go into coins and they would be the kind 833 00:38:43,320 --> 00:38:45,040 of retail coins that you and I use. 834 00:38:45,040 --> 00:38:47,640 And then they would be this sort of highbrow whole, like 835 00:38:47,640 --> 00:38:51,320 wholesale institutional coins that would be more like 836 00:38:51,320 --> 00:38:54,320 government debt that that that people would use for savings and 837 00:38:54,320 --> 00:38:57,760 investment and whatever else. Don't you think a lot of people, 838 00:38:57,760 --> 00:39:00,840 I know a lot of our listeners, whether we agree with them or 839 00:39:00,840 --> 00:39:07,480 not, I know that a lot of our listeners would be surprised by 840 00:39:07,480 --> 00:39:13,760 the idea that you're having. Like your concept of future good 841 00:39:14,280 --> 00:39:19,480 monetary governance is federating it more decentral. 842 00:39:19,480 --> 00:39:22,120 Like essentially trying to make it so it's. 843 00:39:22,120 --> 00:39:26,320 Centralizing it around Congress, it's centralizing the decision 844 00:39:26,320 --> 00:39:28,920 making, and it's decentralizing the execution. 845 00:39:29,000 --> 00:39:30,240 Right. But then we're also talking 846 00:39:30,240 --> 00:39:34,400 about giving the Fed the ability to like, like you said, the 847 00:39:34,880 --> 00:39:37,400 abilities they already have. Already has that power, right? 848 00:39:37,560 --> 00:39:40,320 It just has pulling. It just has it badly. 849 00:39:40,320 --> 00:39:42,520 It's like someone's already asking you to drive your kids to 850 00:39:42,520 --> 00:39:44,160 school. It's just that the car's stuck 851 00:39:44,160 --> 00:39:45,480 in first gear. Weird. 852 00:39:45,480 --> 00:39:48,280 Right, right. And now it's being threatened, 853 00:39:48,280 --> 00:39:49,960 right. Like I, I guess a lot of our 854 00:39:49,960 --> 00:39:53,080 listeners say stuff like, oh, the, the Fed control, the Fed 855 00:39:53,080 --> 00:39:55,560 controls the world, whatever, like whatever. 856 00:39:56,640 --> 00:40:00,240 Not a lot of our listeners like three loud listeners in YouTube. 857 00:40:00,240 --> 00:40:03,120 Most of our listeners are not saying that. 858 00:40:03,640 --> 00:40:05,480 They can barely control inflation. 859 00:40:05,600 --> 00:40:08,040 I wish it had more control over the shit that it claims to 860 00:40:08,040 --> 00:40:09,920 control. It knows how to throw workers 861 00:40:09,920 --> 00:40:13,000 out of work eventually. You know, in, in the sense that 862 00:40:13,000 --> 00:40:15,840 if I like, if I turn the temperature up in my house, 863 00:40:15,840 --> 00:40:17,200 eventually I'll kill all the plants. 864 00:40:17,200 --> 00:40:18,960 But like, that doesn't mean I know how to garden. 865 00:40:19,040 --> 00:40:22,360 Like, I just know how to nuke things, you know, It can nuke 866 00:40:22,360 --> 00:40:24,280 the labour market. I haven't seen it actually deal 867 00:40:24,280 --> 00:40:25,760 with inflation directly very well. 868 00:40:25,760 --> 00:40:28,640 The Fed regional banks are mediocre and even agreeing with 869 00:40:28,640 --> 00:40:30,000 their other regional banks. Yeah. 870 00:40:30,440 --> 00:40:32,320 And The thing is, the Fed regional banks don't exist 871 00:40:32,320 --> 00:40:34,440 anymore in a legal sense. You know, they exist in a very 872 00:40:34,440 --> 00:40:36,920 boring practical sense. But like, it's the, it's the, 873 00:40:37,080 --> 00:40:39,680 it's the Board of Governors in DC that runs the show. 874 00:40:39,720 --> 00:40:41,160 And they're a bunch of bureaucrats. 875 00:40:41,160 --> 00:40:43,800 Like, I wish it was this conspiracy theory about bankers 876 00:40:43,800 --> 00:40:46,480 running the world. It's, it's far more boring. 877 00:40:46,480 --> 00:40:49,480 It's, it's Ashman in Jerusalem. It's a bean counter with a 878 00:40:49,480 --> 00:40:52,720 statistics degree earning 200 grand and going home at 3:00 PM 879 00:40:52,720 --> 00:40:54,640 on a Friday. That's the that's the face of 880 00:40:54,640 --> 00:40:56,800 evil at the Fed. Stepping away from the evil, the 881 00:40:56,800 --> 00:41:00,040 evil Federal Reserve here for for a second, but my, my, my 882 00:41:00,040 --> 00:41:03,320 point here being that I think a lot of listeners, regardless of 883 00:41:03,320 --> 00:41:05,600 their thoughts on Federal Reserve conspiracies. 884 00:41:05,600 --> 00:41:08,040 Yeah, the banality of the evil of the Federal Reserve, Yes. 885 00:41:08,560 --> 00:41:10,160 Yeah. Outside, outside of that, I 886 00:41:10,160 --> 00:41:15,040 think a lot of our listeners probably think that there is a 887 00:41:15,040 --> 00:41:20,640 centralization problem or that, you know, that they disagree 888 00:41:20,640 --> 00:41:23,600 with the way money is controlled, the dollar is 889 00:41:23,600 --> 00:41:26,640 controlled. And and I think it's just really 890 00:41:26,640 --> 00:41:28,760 interesting and stunning to see it. 891 00:41:30,920 --> 00:41:34,400 It's so fragile actually, I guess is is what I'm what I'm 892 00:41:34,400 --> 00:41:37,920 coming to understand in these last few months, things that 893 00:41:37,960 --> 00:41:40,440 Bennett and I were saying in November are coming true 894 00:41:40,440 --> 00:41:43,120 already. And, you know, that is not 895 00:41:43,120 --> 00:41:47,320 something you expect that has been the reserve currency of the 896 00:41:47,320 --> 00:41:51,320 entire world for this long to fall apart that quickly. 897 00:41:51,600 --> 00:41:55,680 And yeah, it's like, I assume that this is like you being 898 00:41:55,760 --> 00:41:59,240 influenced by current events. But you know, you also said 899 00:41:59,240 --> 00:42:03,840 that, you know, you feel like Cassandra and that you you 900 00:42:03,840 --> 00:42:06,200 predicted this. So I guess I'm kind of wondering 901 00:42:06,400 --> 00:42:09,920 how you're how you're feeling and why you think it's important 902 00:42:10,040 --> 00:42:14,480 to take the monetary, the monetary governance system in 903 00:42:14,480 --> 00:42:16,960 this direction? Yeah, I mean, I, I think first 904 00:42:16,960 --> 00:42:19,920 of all, the like, rumours of America's decline as a global 905 00:42:19,920 --> 00:42:22,400 imperial hegemon are always grossly over exaggerated. 906 00:42:22,400 --> 00:42:24,040 Do you know what I mean? Like I think it's one thing to 907 00:42:24,040 --> 00:42:25,520 say the country's fucking itself up. 908 00:42:25,520 --> 00:42:27,960 It's another thing to say like the minute that Rome starts 909 00:42:27,960 --> 00:42:30,080 fucking itself up, something else is going to take its place. 910 00:42:30,080 --> 00:42:31,680 Like, it takes a few 100 years sometimes. 911 00:42:32,000 --> 00:42:33,840 You know, I'm not going to say it's take that long in this day 912 00:42:33,840 --> 00:42:37,440 and age. But like, there is going to be a 913 00:42:37,440 --> 00:42:41,720 while in which this is just a really shitty hegemonic dynamic 914 00:42:41,800 --> 00:42:44,040 because there's still nuclear bases all around the world. 915 00:42:44,040 --> 00:42:47,440 There's still the entire Western United Nations regime that's 916 00:42:47,480 --> 00:42:51,840 wrapped around American power as if it was a tumor that you can't 917 00:42:52,440 --> 00:42:54,040 get rid of without killing the patient. 918 00:42:54,440 --> 00:42:56,600 So I'm not convinced that there's going to be a reserve 919 00:42:56,600 --> 00:42:59,200 currency tomorrow because the entire thing is built with 920 00:42:59,200 --> 00:43:01,000 America at the center. That doesn't mean they're not 921 00:43:01,000 --> 00:43:02,640 going to try It doesn't mean we're not going to see a sapping 922 00:43:02,640 --> 00:43:05,960 of power. But you know, I think probably 923 00:43:05,960 --> 00:43:08,440 my favorite TV show, sci-fi show for sure at the moment is 924 00:43:08,440 --> 00:43:11,520 foundation because it's sort of the end of an empire, you know, 925 00:43:11,520 --> 00:43:15,280 based on the based on the sci-fi. 926 00:43:15,280 --> 00:43:16,960 But I highly recommend if you haven't watched it. 927 00:43:16,960 --> 00:43:19,160 But but you know, the idea is this sort of galactic empire is 928 00:43:19,160 --> 00:43:21,720 collapsing and it's going to collapse in 500,000 years and 929 00:43:21,720 --> 00:43:23,560 it's going to cause 30,000 years of darkness. 930 00:43:23,560 --> 00:43:25,240 And maybe we can slow it down a little bit. 931 00:43:25,280 --> 00:43:27,360 You know, maybe we can make it 8000 years of darkness. 932 00:43:27,360 --> 00:43:28,600 We're not going to stop it collapsing. 933 00:43:28,920 --> 00:43:31,280 The very bleak starting point, but you end up having a sense of 934 00:43:31,280 --> 00:43:34,880 the scale of what you need to do to try to arrest or, or, or, or 935 00:43:34,880 --> 00:43:38,520 lean into imperial decline. So all of that is to say, I'm 936 00:43:38,520 --> 00:43:40,080 not sure that America is going to die tomorrow. 937 00:43:40,080 --> 00:43:43,240 But when we think about it, you know, there is a centralization 938 00:43:43,240 --> 00:43:45,000 problem in a lot of different ways. 939 00:43:45,000 --> 00:43:48,280 But I part of why those problems could persist in my opinion is a 940 00:43:48,760 --> 00:43:51,600 is that they obscure themselves. They hide themselves. 941 00:43:51,640 --> 00:43:54,320 And a lot of the time we end up thinking it's the central bank 942 00:43:54,320 --> 00:43:56,720 because we think of it as the place that makes money. 943 00:43:57,040 --> 00:43:58,560 Oh my gosh, of course that's the place to go. 944 00:43:58,560 --> 00:44:00,400 Why'd you rob the bank? That's where the money is. 945 00:44:00,400 --> 00:44:04,160 You know, that's the joke, but if you actually understand where 946 00:44:04,160 --> 00:44:06,720 the, where the government works, it's the budget, It's fiscal 947 00:44:06,720 --> 00:44:08,880 policy first. Monetary policy is like a 948 00:44:08,880 --> 00:44:12,160 laundering device. It's like taking, it's like, I 949 00:44:12,160 --> 00:44:14,760 don't know about you, but when I set up my, you know, my bank 950 00:44:14,760 --> 00:44:16,960 account at the credit union, they gave me a savings account 951 00:44:16,960 --> 00:44:19,480 1st and then I got a checking account, right. 952 00:44:19,480 --> 00:44:21,560 And you get multiple checking accounts if you want to, you get 953 00:44:21,560 --> 00:44:24,520 one savings account per person. The, the, the, the Treasury debt 954 00:44:25,080 --> 00:44:27,600 is like the savings account. The checking account is a more 955 00:44:27,600 --> 00:44:30,600 practically useful version of it, but all your money goes into 956 00:44:30,600 --> 00:44:33,000 that savings account 1st. And so if you're wanting to know 957 00:44:33,440 --> 00:44:36,960 how much money the government is creating, how much of an impact 958 00:44:36,960 --> 00:44:40,320 it's having on the world, it's the budget, it's Congress, the 959 00:44:40,320 --> 00:44:43,800 Fed comes later in the story. And So what I am trying to do is 960 00:44:43,800 --> 00:44:47,320 sort of be really clear where the power is, be really clear 961 00:44:47,320 --> 00:44:49,560 who's responsible. Part of the big problem, as you 962 00:44:49,560 --> 00:44:52,400 probably know, is this what they call the exorbitant privilege of 963 00:44:52,400 --> 00:44:55,120 the United States, where it's simultaneously a domestic actor 964 00:44:55,120 --> 00:44:57,720 doing its own domestic shit like the rest of us, and 965 00:44:57,720 --> 00:45:00,440 simultaneously supposed to be this benevolent God sitting 966 00:45:00,440 --> 00:45:04,720 above us all, managing the global, you know, world on 967 00:45:04,720 --> 00:45:07,200 behalf of everybody. I just hadn't Dash, a law 968 00:45:07,200 --> 00:45:09,680 scholar, come to my school and give a talk about that kind of 969 00:45:09,680 --> 00:45:13,000 stuff, about how they're, you know, benevolent Cantians. 970 00:45:13,000 --> 00:45:15,760 And I'm like, last I checked, you're Americans, not Cantians. 971 00:45:16,240 --> 00:45:18,800 And there's a pretty big difference in, in, in, in, in 972 00:45:18,800 --> 00:45:21,680 where you universalize your rules, right? 973 00:45:21,760 --> 00:45:24,880 But this is the problem is as long as this is all in some 974 00:45:24,880 --> 00:45:28,120 neutral, technocratic Federal Reserve, that ideal, you know, 975 00:45:28,400 --> 00:45:30,680 thinks of itself as part of some global class. 976 00:45:30,720 --> 00:45:33,600 We hide these problems. If it's Congress, nobody's going 977 00:45:33,600 --> 00:45:35,600 to pretend that Congress gives a shit about the rest of the 978 00:45:35,600 --> 00:45:36,560 world. Have you met Congress? 979 00:45:36,560 --> 00:45:41,000 I've met him so so I, I think, I think the, the risk at this 980 00:45:41,000 --> 00:45:43,680 moment is that we focus in the wrong places. 981 00:45:44,360 --> 00:45:48,400 We ignore the important stuff and we we miss these sort of 982 00:45:48,400 --> 00:45:53,080 huge big red buttons that are able to be Co opted. 983 00:45:53,240 --> 00:45:55,520 We spent how many years talking about CBDC's? 984 00:45:56,400 --> 00:45:59,000 Who the hell talked about the Bureau of the fiscal service? 985 00:46:00,360 --> 00:46:01,640 Me. What you're highlighting there 986 00:46:01,640 --> 00:46:05,280 is kind of interesting to me. And you parallel this, I think 987 00:46:05,280 --> 00:46:09,680 with debt ceilings in the paper where this boring thing, whether 988 00:46:09,680 --> 00:46:12,120 it's the Treasury, Bureau of Fiscal Services or the debt 989 00:46:12,120 --> 00:46:16,440 ceiling that is meant to exist primarily for just logistical in 990 00:46:16,440 --> 00:46:18,600 managing the functions of government thing. 991 00:46:18,880 --> 00:46:22,360 Eventually one person like looks at the actual rules governing 992 00:46:22,360 --> 00:46:24,960 that thing and goes, oh, that's a gear. 993 00:46:24,960 --> 00:46:27,400 If I pull that out, the whole thing stops working. 994 00:46:27,400 --> 00:46:30,360 Wait wait, are you saying we can pass backwards in NFL? 995 00:46:30,480 --> 00:46:32,960 What if we just tried passing backwards for an entire game? 996 00:46:32,960 --> 00:46:35,480 And so and does that and like wins three games until we work 997 00:46:35,480 --> 00:46:37,400 out how to, like, block that hole, right. 998 00:46:37,400 --> 00:46:39,680 Yeah, it's, it's a totally, it's a hack, right? 999 00:46:39,680 --> 00:46:42,400 It's a hack in the most fundamental, definitional sense. 1000 00:46:42,400 --> 00:46:45,960 It's a creative repurposing of something to achieve a different 1001 00:46:45,960 --> 00:46:47,680 end and increase your kind of control. 1002 00:46:48,040 --> 00:46:50,440 And I think one of the things that it's done is it's totally 1003 00:46:50,440 --> 00:46:52,400 redrawn the map of the administrative state. 1004 00:46:53,320 --> 00:46:55,840 The administrative state had had these thousand different 1005 00:46:55,840 --> 00:46:58,640 individual islands and archipelagos and things. 1006 00:46:58,640 --> 00:47:03,040 No, it's got 33 buttons now. That's the administrative state. 1007 00:47:03,040 --> 00:47:05,240 You just turn it off. You just there's power off, you 1008 00:47:05,240 --> 00:47:07,720 know, if you've ever see, if you've ever seen that Gary 1009 00:47:07,720 --> 00:47:10,640 Larson cartoon of like electric chair operators night school and 1010 00:47:10,640 --> 00:47:12,920 there's a person with their hand up and the teachers like no, 1011 00:47:12,920 --> 00:47:15,960 stand down, then up again real fast isn't the right answer. 1012 00:47:15,960 --> 00:47:17,360 You know, does anyone else have the right answer? 1013 00:47:17,360 --> 00:47:18,280 You know, it's sort of like that. 1014 00:47:18,280 --> 00:47:20,760 How do I run a government? I just go in and press buttons. 1015 00:47:20,760 --> 00:47:22,840 Oh no, I've broken the whole budget, you know. 1016 00:47:22,920 --> 00:47:24,600 Yeah. And like, part of the reason I 1017 00:47:24,600 --> 00:47:31,080 found the paper so compelling is that I don't think there's an 1018 00:47:31,080 --> 00:47:36,280 easy path back to September 2024, right? 1019 00:47:36,560 --> 00:47:39,200 Now politicize it. You can't unpoliticize exactly, 1020 00:47:39,360 --> 00:47:42,040 just like you politicize the, the filibuster, just like we 1021 00:47:42,040 --> 00:47:46,840 politicize judicial nominations. This is a escalation that keeps 1022 00:47:46,840 --> 00:47:50,960 going until it breaks and, and you know, it is all very boring 1023 00:47:50,960 --> 00:47:53,760 and very technical unless you know where to look, then you 1024 00:47:53,760 --> 00:47:55,720 don't know. You know, I, I, it's that 1025 00:47:55,720 --> 00:47:58,720 Leonard Cohen song I love a lot. They sentenced us to 20 years of 1026 00:47:58,720 --> 00:48:00,920 boredom for trying to change a system from within. 1027 00:48:01,240 --> 00:48:03,600 Now we're coming coming to reward them, you know, and like, 1028 00:48:04,080 --> 00:48:05,920 Elon Musk is the hacker guy, right? 1029 00:48:05,920 --> 00:48:07,840 This is, as I said, this is Trump's magician. 1030 00:48:08,040 --> 00:48:09,280 I don't know how all that stuff works. 1031 00:48:09,280 --> 00:48:12,920 Everything is computer. Well, you've got a computer guy 1032 00:48:12,920 --> 00:48:14,600 and that guy knows how to hack shit. 1033 00:48:14,600 --> 00:48:17,720 And what he did quite fairly is look at the government and say, 1034 00:48:17,720 --> 00:48:20,560 I don't care where you tell me the vulnerabilities are. 1035 00:48:21,000 --> 00:48:22,320 I'm going to look at it like an engineer. 1036 00:48:22,320 --> 00:48:23,400 And there are the vulnerabilities. 1037 00:48:23,400 --> 00:48:26,440 And I'm like, those are exactly the engineering vulnerabilities. 1038 00:48:26,520 --> 00:48:28,640 You know, you're a terrible person doing it for terrible 1039 00:48:28,640 --> 00:48:32,320 reasons, but you, you did identify a piece of this that 1040 00:48:32,320 --> 00:48:36,320 everybody missed because they were just, you know, I try to 1041 00:48:36,320 --> 00:48:39,440 get my colleagues to use Element, a secure messaging 1042 00:48:39,440 --> 00:48:41,520 service that is Federated. It's like Signal, but you can 1043 00:48:41,520 --> 00:48:43,400 self host now. We wanted to talk about it for 1044 00:48:43,400 --> 00:48:45,240 years. Well, now everything's getting 1045 00:48:45,240 --> 00:48:47,480 shut down. It's starting to be now now a 1046 00:48:47,480 --> 00:48:50,160 distributed Federated system. Starting to sound a little bit 1047 00:48:50,160 --> 00:48:53,440 more important, isn't it? And I think what's also 1048 00:48:53,440 --> 00:48:57,920 interesting is in re engineering these technical things that can 1049 00:48:58,080 --> 00:49:01,560 work more fundamentally, like longer and better than 1050 00:49:01,560 --> 00:49:04,880 legislative solutions, because there's already an anti 1051 00:49:04,880 --> 00:49:07,360 impounding act. We did that after Nixon. 1052 00:49:07,520 --> 00:49:09,440 It's it's on the books. It exists. 1053 00:49:09,440 --> 00:49:11,720 It hasn't been overturned by the Supreme Court yet. 1054 00:49:11,960 --> 00:49:15,920 But with a sufficiently bad actor who's willing to grab the 1055 00:49:15,920 --> 00:49:19,640 lever and say, no, this is my lever now the laws can be 1056 00:49:19,640 --> 00:49:21,400 overturned. The technical infrastructure 1057 00:49:21,400 --> 00:49:25,000 requires more of like, you need physical people to go physically 1058 00:49:25,000 --> 00:49:27,560 do things. And that's a different tenor of 1059 00:49:27,560 --> 00:49:28,800 thing. And so that was another thing I 1060 00:49:28,800 --> 00:49:31,040 appreciated when reading through this paper. 1061 00:49:31,080 --> 00:49:31,560 Thank you. Yeah. 1062 00:49:31,560 --> 00:49:34,520 I mean somewhere in between the ninety 39,000 words or something 1063 00:49:34,520 --> 00:49:37,480 I I try to put a few memes in there to keep it palatable. 1064 00:49:37,880 --> 00:49:39,960 And, and there was an Onion headline, which I love, which 1065 00:49:39,960 --> 00:49:43,320 was sort of Trump asserts little known, no one's going to stop me 1066 00:49:43,320 --> 00:49:45,320 loophole to break the Constitution, you know? 1067 00:49:45,720 --> 00:49:49,680 And the other one was the the, the line from, from the Big 1068 00:49:49,680 --> 00:49:51,440 Lebowski, you know, well, that's just your opinion, man. 1069 00:49:51,440 --> 00:49:53,040 Yeah. Like the courts can say, hey, 1070 00:49:53,040 --> 00:49:54,480 you can't do that. And I don't know if you ever 1071 00:49:54,480 --> 00:49:57,080 remember that bit from the now disgraced comedian Louis CK, but 1072 00:49:57,080 --> 00:49:58,760 he's talking about how he goes to the airport and he has to 1073 00:49:58,760 --> 00:50:01,000 drop off his car and he's running late and he calls the 1074 00:50:01,000 --> 00:50:02,600 car people. It's like it's in the car park 1075 00:50:02,600 --> 00:50:04,800 outside the the terminal. They're like, no, you've got to 1076 00:50:04,800 --> 00:50:06,040 deliver it to us. He's like, well, I'm on the 1077 00:50:06,040 --> 00:50:07,840 plane. So what are you going to do 1078 00:50:07,840 --> 00:50:10,720 about that? They're like, man, all right, 1079 00:50:10,840 --> 00:50:12,400 we'll pick it up. And he's like, that's when I 1080 00:50:12,400 --> 00:50:15,240 realized I could do anything I wanted because they needed the 1081 00:50:15,240 --> 00:50:17,440 car more than I did. And I was like, that's a 1082 00:50:17,480 --> 00:50:20,840 terrible realization for you, knowing who I know now who 1083 00:50:20,840 --> 00:50:22,800 you're going to become or who you're in the process of being. 1084 00:50:23,360 --> 00:50:24,760 But that's what Trump found out, right? 1085 00:50:24,760 --> 00:50:26,920 I can just do what I want, and people have to stop me. 1086 00:50:26,920 --> 00:50:29,080 And it's actually a lot of work to stop people doing things, 1087 00:50:29,080 --> 00:50:31,160 especially with the system that's built to not make that 1088 00:50:31,160 --> 00:50:34,560 very easy. And so to your point, it's not, 1089 00:50:34,560 --> 00:50:37,080 I don't think technology is a substitute for law, right? 1090 00:50:37,080 --> 00:50:39,280 I don't think it's a substitute for collective political action. 1091 00:50:39,600 --> 00:50:44,400 I'm not a techno solutionist, but the, the, the technological 1092 00:50:44,400 --> 00:50:47,440 architecture, the, the, the topology of the landscape 1093 00:50:47,760 --> 00:50:49,760 matters, right? It matters whether you're on the 1094 00:50:49,760 --> 00:50:52,600 top of a mountain and you're the Swiss defending everyone 1095 00:50:52,600 --> 00:50:54,000 attacking you. Like, there's a reason the Swiss 1096 00:50:54,000 --> 00:50:56,560 get to be neutral and it's not because they're amazingly great 1097 00:50:56,560 --> 00:50:58,320 politicians. They're fucking goat goat 1098 00:50:58,320 --> 00:50:59,800 herders. They just happen to live in the 1099 00:50:59,800 --> 00:51:01,440 mountains. You know, it's a useful place to 1100 00:51:01,440 --> 00:51:02,880 live if you're trying to avoid being attacked. 1101 00:51:03,480 --> 00:51:08,400 So I think the the, the technological regime shapes the 1102 00:51:08,400 --> 00:51:10,560 power politics, it shapes the debate. 1103 00:51:10,560 --> 00:51:13,080 While you're fighting at the courts, it matters who has 1104 00:51:13,080 --> 00:51:15,120 control over the escrow account, right. 1105 00:51:15,120 --> 00:51:17,320 While you're fighting these things, it matters who gets 1106 00:51:17,320 --> 00:51:20,640 first mover advantage, who gets to control the data in the 1107 00:51:20,640 --> 00:51:24,880 meantime, etcetera, etcetera. Reminds me of the likely 1108 00:51:24,880 --> 00:51:27,480 apocryphal Andrew Jacks Jackson story. 1109 00:51:27,760 --> 00:51:30,240 The court has made its ruling now let it see it enforce it. 1110 00:51:30,360 --> 00:51:33,680 Or the Stalin 1 castle? Yeah. 1111 00:51:33,840 --> 00:51:35,560 How many divisions does the Pope have? 1112 00:51:36,040 --> 00:51:37,480 Yeah, How many divisions does the Pope have? 1113 00:51:37,800 --> 00:51:39,320 That's his ruling Letterman faucet. 1114 00:51:39,320 --> 00:51:40,880 Yeah. And, and, and we saw this with 1115 00:51:40,880 --> 00:51:43,840 the switching time that saves 9 in in the 30s if you have enough 1116 00:51:43,840 --> 00:51:48,200 material support. The problem is now sitting in 1117 00:51:48,200 --> 00:51:53,760 one seat with one button. It's an incredibly powerful move 1118 00:51:53,760 --> 00:51:57,400 that by the time you challenge it, you can do too much damage. 1119 00:51:57,400 --> 00:52:00,360 You know, you can stop basically oxygen. 1120 00:52:01,280 --> 00:52:03,040 You know, I think I remember reading somewhere recently and 1121 00:52:03,040 --> 00:52:06,400 terrified me again after I first read it, that we're sort of 96 1122 00:52:06,400 --> 00:52:10,000 hours away from a revolution in any country if you stop feeding 1123 00:52:10,000 --> 00:52:11,560 people. Oh right, yeah, it's 3. 1124 00:52:11,560 --> 00:52:14,120 Four days if. You shut if you shut energy off 1125 00:52:14,200 --> 00:52:16,440 or something like that for. We're four days of food 1126 00:52:16,440 --> 00:52:18,120 production away from a crisis in any country. 1127 00:52:18,120 --> 00:52:21,200 Yeah, energy as well. But like the government, how 1128 00:52:21,200 --> 00:52:23,560 many days can it survive when its payment system shut down? 1129 00:52:24,080 --> 00:52:26,440 Right. How many days can any agency 1130 00:52:26,440 --> 00:52:29,160 launch any effective resistance to this imperial takeover when 1131 00:52:29,160 --> 00:52:31,960 its payment system shut down? You just you, just you just zero 1132 00:52:32,000 --> 00:52:34,760 out every agency. That was the reason I I 1133 00:52:34,760 --> 00:52:37,480 particularly wanted to have you on to discuss this was because I 1134 00:52:37,480 --> 00:52:40,640 think a lot of people, maybe not people who listen to this show, 1135 00:52:40,640 --> 00:52:45,840 but but but I think a lot of people who don't maybe even take 1136 00:52:45,840 --> 00:52:50,120 in that much media at all don't understand that when you start 1137 00:52:50,120 --> 00:52:55,160 messing with the monetary system, you I mean that that's 1138 00:52:55,160 --> 00:52:58,120 everything that is everything else. 1139 00:52:58,240 --> 00:53:00,040 And so when you start clicking with that. 1140 00:53:00,040 --> 00:53:02,440 You can't coordinate an economy this complicated without it, 1141 00:53:03,040 --> 00:53:05,680 right? Even in World War 2, even when 1142 00:53:05,720 --> 00:53:08,240 all of the planners inside the Department of Defense, it's all 1143 00:53:08,240 --> 00:53:10,840 how much steel, how many planes? Like, even when they're thinking 1144 00:53:10,840 --> 00:53:13,320 at that level, they're still paying people in money. 1145 00:53:13,720 --> 00:53:15,480 You have to. Yeah, you have to. 1146 00:53:15,600 --> 00:53:18,560 And so I'd like I, yeah, I, I thought it was really important 1147 00:53:18,560 --> 00:53:21,480 to to discuss this just 'cause I think, yeah, you're right. 1148 00:53:21,480 --> 00:53:23,960 There's a lot of this that is intricate and a lot of it that 1149 00:53:24,200 --> 00:53:29,480 is maybe tough to grapple with and understand, but like, it's 1150 00:53:29,920 --> 00:53:34,480 unfortunately now our duty as citizens of America do have to 1151 00:53:34,480 --> 00:53:37,000 familiarize ourselves. We're all sentenced to 20 years 1152 00:53:37,000 --> 00:53:38,960 of boredom trying to change the system from with. 1153 00:53:38,960 --> 00:53:43,160 Yeah, complex monetary policy, you know, two to four years. 1154 00:53:44,480 --> 00:53:46,320 Yeah, 21st. I I did 20. 1155 00:53:46,320 --> 00:53:48,480 So you only take six months. That's my curse. 1156 00:53:48,840 --> 00:53:51,080 But yeah, I mean, the other, the other line I had in there. 1157 00:53:51,080 --> 00:53:52,400 Well, there's 2 two other funny memes. 1158 00:53:52,400 --> 00:53:55,720 One is from 1 is from Family Guy with the blue harvest episode 1159 00:53:55,720 --> 00:53:58,200 about about Star Wars, where they're like with Stewie's Darth 1160 00:53:58,200 --> 00:53:59,880 Vader. And he's like, we finally, he 1161 00:53:59,880 --> 00:54:01,320 built the Death Star. It's the most amazing. 1162 00:54:01,320 --> 00:54:04,480 He's like, yeah, so no problems. The guy's like, yeah, no, none. 1163 00:54:04,480 --> 00:54:06,480 He's like, couldn't help but notice you. 1164 00:54:06,480 --> 00:54:08,240 You hesitated to me. He's like, oh, it's not a big 1165 00:54:08,240 --> 00:54:09,720 deal. He's like, wouldn't be doing my 1166 00:54:09,720 --> 00:54:13,120 job if I didn't ask about what? That 1%, you know, .1%, He's 1167 00:54:13,120 --> 00:54:14,640 like, well, it's just an aesthetic choice, really. 1168 00:54:14,640 --> 00:54:17,080 But there's this one shoot where if you put a missile down and it 1169 00:54:17,520 --> 00:54:18,520 kind of blows up the whole thing. 1170 00:54:18,520 --> 00:54:21,240 And he's like, whoa, whoa, you know, really? 1171 00:54:21,240 --> 00:54:23,440 Can't we get rid of that? Oh, it looks so ugly, you know, 1172 00:54:23,440 --> 00:54:25,280 well, let's just do it. He's like, well, we can do it 1173 00:54:25,280 --> 00:54:29,160 tomorrow. If if money is no object, we'll 1174 00:54:29,160 --> 00:54:30,920 get estimates. Yes, get estimates. 1175 00:54:30,920 --> 00:54:32,360 Yes, get estimates. You know, it's just like a 1176 00:54:32,360 --> 00:54:35,920 perfect ending to the bit. But the other one is the the bit 1177 00:54:35,920 --> 00:54:38,120 from Rick and Morty where they like where he he takes over the 1178 00:54:38,120 --> 00:54:40,000 galactic government. He's like, I'm gonna blow up the 1179 00:54:40,080 --> 00:54:41,280 he's like, I've hacked into the mainframe. 1180 00:54:41,280 --> 00:54:42,960 Like what are you gonna do? You gonna destroy all the, the 1181 00:54:42,960 --> 00:54:44,240 bombs? You gonna, you know, he's like, 1182 00:54:44,240 --> 00:54:46,560 no, something better. I'm going to make the dollar. 1183 00:54:46,600 --> 00:54:50,000 You know, the currency is one of itself, worth 0 of itself. 1184 00:54:50,120 --> 00:54:52,040 And then everyone in the room's like, you can't do that. 1185 00:54:52,040 --> 00:54:54,280 The empire is great. Wait, who's paying me to say 1186 00:54:54,280 --> 00:54:57,360 this? I can tell you that for money, 1187 00:54:57,440 --> 00:54:59,600 you know, And then they all just start shooting each other and 1188 00:54:59,600 --> 00:55:02,360 turn on themselves. But like, it's amazing when you 1189 00:55:02,360 --> 00:55:05,400 take that engine out and realizing how many pieces here, 1190 00:55:05,400 --> 00:55:07,360 you know, this is Milton Friedman's great idea that 1191 00:55:07,360 --> 00:55:09,560 everybody making a pencil doesn't give a shit about each 1192 00:55:09,560 --> 00:55:12,640 other. Well, once the money stops 1193 00:55:12,640 --> 00:55:15,200 working, everybody stops giving a shit about each other again. 1194 00:55:15,400 --> 00:55:18,280 You know, I really appreciated the line in there. 1195 00:55:18,440 --> 00:55:22,200 The If political independence requires budgetary independence, 1196 00:55:22,200 --> 00:55:24,960 and budgetary independence requires being able to actually 1197 00:55:24,960 --> 00:55:28,720 spend money, then political independence is in turn at least 1198 00:55:28,720 --> 00:55:30,800 partly a function of payment system design. 1199 00:55:31,080 --> 00:55:34,400 Like if we believe. That's my syllogism, right? 1200 00:55:34,400 --> 00:55:36,640 Tattoo that on my ass on my gravestone, you know? 1201 00:55:36,960 --> 00:55:41,480 If we believe what's allegedly written in the Constitution, it 1202 00:55:41,480 --> 00:55:46,640 makes sense to hand these powers to Congress very explicitly to 1203 00:55:46,640 --> 00:55:49,440 function the way these things are supposed to function. 1204 00:55:49,520 --> 00:55:51,840 Yeah, and, and, and you know, the thing that's crazy is also, 1205 00:55:51,840 --> 00:55:54,440 if you look at the Constitution, it mentions a bunch of stuff 1206 00:55:54,440 --> 00:55:57,680 that you actually can't understand without reference to 1207 00:55:57,680 --> 00:56:00,400 physical stuff. You know, you what is coining 1208 00:56:00,400 --> 00:56:03,680 money? Well, you ask a kid in 2200, you 1209 00:56:03,680 --> 00:56:06,720 know, unless we have a digital coin to metaphorisize, they'll 1210 00:56:06,720 --> 00:56:08,360 have no fucking clue what you're talking about. 1211 00:56:09,360 --> 00:56:11,640 What is drawing money from the treasury? 1212 00:56:11,640 --> 00:56:13,320 This is a physical process, right? 1213 00:56:13,320 --> 00:56:16,760 Even if it's metaphorical, you know, it's it's if you've ever 1214 00:56:16,760 --> 00:56:18,960 seen Monty Python's Life of Brian, they're all standing at 1215 00:56:18,960 --> 00:56:20,760 the back of the the Sermon on the Mount. 1216 00:56:21,040 --> 00:56:23,000 What's he saying? Well, I think he's blessing all 1217 00:56:23,000 --> 00:56:24,680 the cheese makers. Cheese makers? 1218 00:56:24,680 --> 00:56:27,200 Well, it's a metaphor. Obviously he means manufacturers 1219 00:56:27,200 --> 00:56:30,600 of any dairy product. Took me to, I was about 14 to 1220 00:56:30,600 --> 00:56:32,360 realize he was talking about peacemakers and they just 1221 00:56:32,360 --> 00:56:34,880 couldn't hear him properly. But like the Constitution 1222 00:56:34,880 --> 00:56:38,200 specifically mentions physical acts, borrowing on credit, you 1223 00:56:38,200 --> 00:56:40,600 know, paying money, drawing down stuff. 1224 00:56:40,600 --> 00:56:45,000 So there's always been this material infrastructure that the 1225 00:56:45,000 --> 00:56:46,880 constitution lies and that material infrastructure can 1226 00:56:46,880 --> 00:56:48,880 evolve, it can change, but it's still there. 1227 00:56:48,880 --> 00:56:50,720 So I had a colleague who read the first third and was like, 1228 00:56:50,720 --> 00:56:54,920 you know, he's showing the, the kind of the, the material 1229 00:56:54,920 --> 00:56:58,040 infrastructure necessary for constitutional imaginary myths. 1230 00:56:58,320 --> 00:57:00,480 And I think that's the truth. To tell a myth, you still need 1231 00:57:00,480 --> 00:57:02,600 to set it in a period, right? There's a difference between 1232 00:57:02,600 --> 00:57:06,080 Star Wars and Lord of the Rings. So we, we've been telling the 1233 00:57:06,080 --> 00:57:07,920 Lord of the Rings story of the Constitution. 1234 00:57:07,920 --> 00:57:10,120 We need to tell a Star Wars story of the Constitution. 1235 00:57:10,680 --> 00:57:14,240 Or maybe maybe maybe maybe a gold place latinum of Star Trek 1236 00:57:14,240 --> 00:57:16,720 or something, you know? Rohan, are you excited for Trump 1237 00:57:16,720 --> 00:57:18,360 to mint the trillion dollar coin? 1238 00:57:19,240 --> 00:57:22,760 Man, God, I think I've told, maybe I mentioned this last time 1239 00:57:22,760 --> 00:57:26,440 I was on, but it's been a terrifyingly accurate way of 1240 00:57:26,440 --> 00:57:29,520 living, which is I've come to, I've got to work out how to kind 1241 00:57:29,520 --> 00:57:33,960 of get a good line of it. But the most maximally literally 1242 00:57:33,960 --> 00:57:38,800 hilarious and absurd timeline is, is usually the timeline we 1243 00:57:38,800 --> 00:57:41,720 end on like not all the time, but like it's it's the it's the 1244 00:57:41,720 --> 00:57:45,040 electron kind of ring that that's the the most resonant, 1245 00:57:45,040 --> 00:57:46,480 you know, it's the lowest frequent. 1246 00:57:46,480 --> 00:57:49,880 If we can go fucking absurd, if we can be like a FX series where 1247 00:57:49,880 --> 00:57:51,680 you're like, that's a bit out there and someone like just 1248 00:57:51,680 --> 00:57:53,720 wait, they'll lap it up. The public will love this. 1249 00:57:53,720 --> 00:57:56,000 We'll go, we'll, we'll go weed Season 6. 1250 00:57:56,000 --> 00:57:59,440 Like it's gonna go weird. Like that usually is the right 1251 00:57:59,440 --> 00:58:01,000 answer. So if somebody said to me, yeah, 1252 00:58:01,000 --> 00:58:04,120 Trump's going to mint the coin as a way to avoid the shutdown. 1253 00:58:04,480 --> 00:58:05,920 It's going to have his face on it too of. 1254 00:58:06,320 --> 00:58:07,680 Course it will of. Course, it's going to have his 1255 00:58:07,680 --> 00:58:08,920 face on it. You know what we're going to be 1256 00:58:08,920 --> 00:58:10,080 talking about? We're going to be talking about 1257 00:58:10,080 --> 00:58:12,040 the legality of putting a living person on the coin. 1258 00:58:12,040 --> 00:58:14,000 We're not going to talk about the one trillion on the other 1259 00:58:14,000 --> 00:58:14,880 side. We're going to talk about his 1260 00:58:14,880 --> 00:58:16,600 face. We a great bit. 1261 00:58:16,600 --> 00:58:19,280 It'll be a great bit. Put his face and Musk face on 2 1262 00:58:19,280 --> 00:58:21,920 coins and then have everyone debate which one they like more. 1263 00:58:22,200 --> 00:58:24,480 And before you notice, we meant $2 trillion points. 1264 00:58:24,600 --> 00:58:26,920 And then you can bet on polymarket which one they're 1265 00:58:26,920 --> 00:58:28,520 going to pick. Exactly right. 1266 00:58:28,520 --> 00:58:29,440 And then you know what? Then? 1267 00:58:29,720 --> 00:58:32,600 Then he can try to deposit at the Fed and the Fed can say no, 1268 00:58:32,720 --> 00:58:35,360 and he'll actually have a legitimate legal basis for 1269 00:58:35,360 --> 00:58:38,440 getting mad at the Fed. He'll say, hey you. 1270 00:58:38,480 --> 00:58:40,040 Don't have the right to say no. You're a. 1271 00:58:40,160 --> 00:58:42,440 I'm glad. I'm glad you're going crazy with 1272 00:58:42,440 --> 00:58:44,800 this 'cause I had to cope with this, with the Penny decision 1273 00:58:44,800 --> 00:58:46,200 when the when he was like. No more. 1274 00:58:46,200 --> 00:58:49,840 Everybody who knows me, my photo online, it's all gone. 1275 00:58:49,960 --> 00:58:51,640 It's it's completely pulled out now. 1276 00:58:51,680 --> 00:58:54,520 And he did the penny I but I love that I was my whole thing 1277 00:58:54,520 --> 00:58:56,920 was like, we got to get rid of the penny and the nickel and 1278 00:58:56,920 --> 00:58:58,600 then he got rid of the penny and everyone's like, ha, ha. 1279 00:58:58,600 --> 00:59:01,120 I feel like you, you happy about this, Cass? 1280 00:59:01,120 --> 00:59:04,120 And I'm like, well, at least he, at least he fucked the nickel 1281 00:59:04,120 --> 00:59:05,360 part up. So he still looks like an 1282 00:59:05,360 --> 00:59:07,520 asshole, you know? Yeah, yeah. 1283 00:59:07,840 --> 00:59:11,320 I mean, and, and and frankly at this point, like watching him 1284 00:59:11,320 --> 00:59:13,960 with all this stuff about going after Canada and Greenland and 1285 00:59:13,960 --> 00:59:16,240 stuff, you know, he said the other day it would look so nice 1286 00:59:16,240 --> 00:59:18,200 on the map. And I'm like, I love that for 1287 00:59:18,200 --> 00:59:20,440 him. I love that this is a man who's 1288 00:59:20,440 --> 00:59:24,760 playing Risk with the world and coloring in like a 8 year old. 1289 00:59:24,760 --> 00:59:27,120 And it's like, I don't like having to draw this line. 1290 00:59:27,120 --> 00:59:29,040 It should all be one color up here. 1291 00:59:29,440 --> 00:59:31,080 And like, that's his thinking. So. 1292 00:59:31,080 --> 00:59:34,360 Yeah, Could the coin work like when I when I wrote my coin 1293 00:59:34,360 --> 00:59:36,520 paper, I said part of the reason it's valuable is because you can 1294 00:59:36,520 --> 00:59:38,720 tell the story to 7 year olds. I just didn't think that it 1295 00:59:38,720 --> 00:59:43,600 would be the president as as the seven-year old in in mind. 1296 00:59:43,600 --> 00:59:46,760 But yeah, find the most absurd story that's going to keep 1297 00:59:46,760 --> 00:59:49,920 people eating popcorn and not turning back to HBO prestige 1298 00:59:49,920 --> 00:59:51,640 drama. That's probably the one. 1299 00:59:52,240 --> 00:59:55,000 So yeah, I'm, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not putting the meeting the 1300 00:59:55,000 --> 00:59:57,200 coin at 0%. Of course, that would require 1301 00:59:57,200 --> 00:59:59,800 the Democrats to have a backbone and actually resist on the on 1302 00:59:59,800 --> 01:00:02,000 the shutdown. So that's the actual major 1303 01:00:02,000 --> 01:00:03,800 reason that Trump wouldn't mean the coin is 'cause they wouldn't 1304 01:00:03,800 --> 01:00:05,840 get an opportunity. At least our listeners can go 1305 01:00:05,840 --> 01:00:08,200 out and purchase the brand new platinum cast coin. 1306 01:00:09,400 --> 01:00:11,800 All your favorite Put a trillion. 1307 01:00:12,040 --> 01:00:15,200 Dollars on it now and when when Congress is is in hiding and 1308 01:00:15,200 --> 01:00:18,600 running away like Estonia's digital government, you know you 1309 01:00:18,600 --> 01:00:21,440 know and it's it's the anti Pope living out in the in the in the 1310 01:00:21,440 --> 01:00:25,080 in up in Canada. You can tell them you've already 1311 01:00:25,080 --> 01:00:27,040 pre funded the war for them. There you are. 1312 01:00:27,160 --> 01:00:29,880 Listen, at some point in the next year, some currency 1313 01:00:29,880 --> 01:00:32,560 pretending to be a dollar, it's going to be a trillion to 1 cast 1314 01:00:32,560 --> 01:00:34,840 coin. This is this is partially why 1315 01:00:34,840 --> 01:00:37,520 all this crypto technology is interesting because it is a lot 1316 01:00:37,520 --> 01:00:40,880 harder to say hey, we should build our own, you know anti the 1317 01:00:40,960 --> 01:00:45,440 anti Trumpan government currency in lifetime if you don't even 1318 01:00:45,440 --> 01:00:47,840 know how to build 1. But we have the capacity to 1319 01:00:47,840 --> 01:00:51,240 actually sort of bootstrap 1 relatively quickly now in a way 1320 01:00:51,240 --> 01:00:53,280 that not as. Fast as Trump can make another 1321 01:00:53,280 --> 01:00:58,000 Trump coin, though. Not as fast as he can just shut 1322 01:00:58,000 --> 01:01:01,640 down every government agency. Yeah, I mean, this is to go back 1323 01:01:01,640 --> 01:01:03,160 to where we started with this, the Bureau of the Fiscal 1324 01:01:03,160 --> 01:01:05,280 Service. The guy was a guy named David 1325 01:01:05,280 --> 01:01:07,600 Lebrock. He was the most senior civil 1326 01:01:07,600 --> 01:01:09,680 servant in the Treasury. He'd been there for 20 years 1327 01:01:09,680 --> 01:01:11,840 plus, right? He was the guy with the keys to 1328 01:01:11,840 --> 01:01:13,520 all this stuff. And when Trump came in with his 1329 01:01:13,520 --> 01:01:16,720 Doge boys, right, Peter Pan, his lost boys came in and said, give 1330 01:01:16,720 --> 01:01:19,000 us the keys to the castle. He said no. 1331 01:01:19,160 --> 01:01:21,160 And they said, well, why not? He said, well, I've got, you 1332 01:01:21,160 --> 01:01:24,040 know, legal obligations. I'm like, I can't do this. 1333 01:01:24,040 --> 01:01:25,600 And they, he said there'd be liability. 1334 01:01:25,600 --> 01:01:27,960 And they, and the response from the Doge team was there'll be 1335 01:01:27,960 --> 01:01:30,520 liability for you if you don't. And he resigned. 1336 01:01:30,680 --> 01:01:32,640 And then he kind of did his little PR tour telling everyone 1337 01:01:32,640 --> 01:01:35,280 how terrible they are. But the fact that there's one 1338 01:01:35,280 --> 01:01:38,800 seat, there's one seat in that treasury office, one guy with 1339 01:01:38,800 --> 01:01:41,320 one set of passcodes, what does that say? 1340 01:01:41,320 --> 01:01:44,720 I mean, this is the Death Star. This is the Death Star with one 1341 01:01:44,720 --> 01:01:47,120 shoot going down in the middle. Why the hell did we build a 1342 01:01:47,120 --> 01:01:50,000 system where there was one signature that could stop 88% of 1343 01:01:50,000 --> 01:01:52,600 all federal payments? And that guy is a bureaucrat. 1344 01:01:53,360 --> 01:01:54,920 Terrifying. Thanks for having me, it's a 1345 01:01:54,920 --> 01:01:56,920 pleasure to chat. Hopefully. 1346 01:01:56,920 --> 01:01:58,760 Hopefully in a few more months we'll be able to do around too 1347 01:01:58,760 --> 01:01:59,520 without it being too late.