Speaker 1: My opinion around here these days is laugh for while
you can, monkey boy, ask not what your country can
do for you, Ask what you can do for your country.
Speaker 2: Mister gorbachaw tear down this wall.
Speaker 1: It's the Ricchet Podcast with Charles C. W. Cook and
Stephen Hayward. I'm James Lillax. Today we're going to talk
to Charlie Gasparino about his new book, Go Woke, Go Broke, on.
Speaker 2: The inside story of the radicalization of Corporate America. So
let's episodes a podcasting.
Speaker 3: Grocery prices of skyrocketed.
Speaker 4: Cereals are up twenty six percent, bread is up twenty
four percent, butter is up thirty seven percent, maybe formulas
up thirty percent, flowers up thirty eight percent, and eggs
are up forty six percent, and many items are at
much higher rates than that.
Speaker 1: Welcome everybody. This is the Ricochet Podcast. Number seven oh
who cares? Who cares what number it is? I mean,
it's not like you can go back and say you
said something at seven oh two that I believe was
contradicted by a guest in number two hundred and four. Now,
no what he's keeping drat Okay, it's seven four and
We're very proud we have got this far. It's a
rainy day here in Minneapolis. I'm joined by Stephen Hayward
somewhere and Charles CW which does not stand for conventional
Wisdom Cook, who I believe is still being the ultimate
Florida man down there. The nation's waning, and you know, gentlemen,
it's those who forget history are doomed to repeat, et cetera.
Speaker 2: Et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 1: But how about a good round of price controls on
food that's worked out so.
Speaker 2: Well everywhere it's tried.
Speaker 1: What do you think of a VEEP presidential hopeful, Kamala
Harris's proposal to do that?
Speaker 2: And Hi, thanks for being here.
Speaker 3: Well, all right, I'll go first, since I'm at Steve
Hayward sitting in for Peter Robinson again. You know it's
bad when even the Washington Post economics columnist Catherine Rampel says, well,
her subhead is, it's hard to exaggerate how bad Mala
Harris's price gouging proposal is. Yeah. I actually remember having
done research years ago on Nixon's wage and price freeze
from the nineteen seventy one and one of their problems
was how do you enforce her set price controls on food?
And one of the more comical elements was orange juice.
The price of frozen orange juice wasn't defrozen, but oranges
were not because they're seasonal, right, And so all became
arbitrary and ridiculous. And I'm trying to remember there are
a couple of other categories. I don't know, it was
tomatoes or whatever, where they just it was chaos and
you couldn't possibly make it work. So this is just
an attempt to deflect blame for inflation that everyone's mad
about and say it wasn't our fault, it was the
fault of Albertson's and Kroger and Win Dixie or something
like that.
Speaker 5: Charles Well, I think that's right. I think that's primarily
why she did it. It's a political ploy, not an
economic ploy. She is aware that, despite how many attempts
to sinuate otherwise, he is still called Harris, that Harris
being the Harris of the Biden Harris administration. She is
in the office of the Vice President as we speak,
and massive overspending later inflation, and people are angry. So
she wants to point at the mustachioed man from Monopoly
and say he did it. That said, although I have
been a leading exponent of this idea that this is
a political ploy not an economic one, I do think
it's incumbent upon voters to take it face value what
candidates say they want to do, and not least because
although he hasn't gone this far, Biden has been with the.
Speaker 6: Federal Trade Commission doing.
Speaker 5: Some of this stuff already, And there are people within
the FTC who are very much in favor of this
sort of thing. And once again, Harris has not mentioned Congress.
This is a running trend. She never mentions Congress. Back
in twenty nineteen, she said over and over and over
again she could do anything without Congress, including gun control.
Even she was going to ban the AAR fifteen without Congress.
So when Jason Furman, Obama's economics friend, said this morning, Wow,
this is a terrible idea. So it won't happen, Yeah,
under our constitution lawder that's probably true. But if she's
going to leverage the administrative state, which is already poised
to try this sort of thing, then you should be
worried about it. And I think she should pay a
price for having proposed it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean there's there's an epicycle to these things too.
That comes up a lot here in California. When oil
prices are high, the left says, oh, it's collusion, price
gouging by the oil companies and the refiners. Let's investigate.
The government at all levels has been investigating high prices
and gasoline and so forth for forty or fifty years now,
and they always come up empty because it's wrong. But
then the other side of the mouth, they say, we
should have higher tax on gasoline to discourage consumption. Well,
which is it. It's actually an easy lesson. The left
is only happy when high gasoline prices are because of
taxes and not because of market forces. And the same
thing's happening now on groceries. And you're right, though, Charlie,
I mean again an old story. When the Reagan people
came into office in nineteen eighty one, they found the
Federal Trade Commission had an open investigation not of my
dog marking in the background, but of the serial company,
you know, Kellogg and Posts. And the argument was they
were monopolizing shelf space in grocery stores and that had
to be stopped. And the Reagan, people scratched their head
and said, go away, this is stupid, which of course
it was.
Speaker 5: If I could just very very briefly out another cycle
to that which has amused me enormously, that is that
when prices go up when a Democrat's president, it's price gouging. Apparently,
big companies don't price gouge under Republicans. You think they
would be more likely to do that because evil Republicans
love corporations, but they price goug when Democrats come in.
When the price is when the prices go down, that's
because of the president. So we've seen the most hilarious
trend under Biden where prices are gone and he would
say this is outrageous collusion from the supermarkets and the
meat producers. And then he would go down and he
would say, happy Thanksgiving, Joe Biden wishes to tell you
that your potato is a less than they would have
been last year.
Speaker 1: Right, Well, how do you think that this Let's say
she gets elected president and she does she decides to
go around Congress to do this. How do you possibly
think that would manifest itself as an executive order that
would say what because I know that this is just
thrown out there for as you said, for political means,
but it is revelatory of what somebody wants to do
and thinks they can do. How would she possibly keep
the grocery stores profit margins within an acceptable amount for
her executive order saying.
Speaker 3: What, well, I think Charlie put his finger on it.
That'll use things like the Federal Trade Commission to harass
big business and the grocery Chaine and so, I mean
they aren't The Justice Department is trying to block a
big grocery store merger right now. I think it's I
forget it's Albertson's and somebody. It might be Kroger, I
can't remember, but they'll do that kind of thing. And
you know that that always has some effect. But what
the effects that we will see as consumers are shortages
hoarding black markets pop up. It's the old story, especially
with supermarkets and low margin items, is that's why you
run out of toilet paper when there's price controls.
Speaker 5: For example, I mean, the profit margin for supermarkets in
the United States is about one point one eight percent,
it's the latest figure. One point just very low relative
to most American businesses. That's lower even than health insurance,
which always get told that they're making gobs of money,
which they're not. One point eight percent. So the actual
capacity of the Federal Trade Commission to do anything here
is limited, and as Steve says, the product of that
will not be a change in profit margins, but shortages.
But that doesn't mean that the attempt won't be extremely difficult.
I mean, it's a bit like being sued. Even if
you're right on the law. You could be one hundred
percent right on the law, but if somebody decides to
make your life hell, the process becomes the punishment, and
you end up having to spend all your time.
Speaker 6: Complying with this or that and paying lawyers and frankly
just worrying at night.
Speaker 5: And I think you know, if indeed I am right,
which I am sometimes, and this is a political rather
than an economic thing, then that sort of harassment will
be more likely, not less, because she'll want to point
to it and say, look at all of the stuff
that I'm doing. I'm an outsider, I didn't have anything
to do with this. I'm trying to stop it, and
that will make it worse for publics, not less.
Speaker 1: People don't understand the percentage of the American workforce that
it is involved in compliance. It tells you something about
the reach and the power of the regulatory state when
you have so many, when you have entire departments as
companies engaged in compliance, the name of which just sounds
as if we're in a state of constant servitude with
our heads bent and arms manacled. But you're right about
the profit margins, Charlie. They are absolutely thin. And how
do they make their money then.
Speaker 2: Well, with really highjacked up stuff that people pay for.
Speaker 1: I mean the profit margins on ready to eat meals.
You walk into the store and you see a sandwich
for twelve dollars, you see an entree for fourteen or something,
and people pick it up because they can and it's
convenient and the.
Speaker 2: Rest of it. And that's where the profit really comes from.
Because the margins are so huge, Is that in itself gouging?
Speaker 1: Are we to have the never blinking eye of the
pentopticon fall upon the deli meat section and called their
margins too fat? If it all ends with people, as
you said, a black market, people in going to an
alleyway some or where somebody sells them a plastic baggy
full of Captain crunch. That is not exactly the America
I signed on for. Then again, I'm speaking as one
of those people who owns a house and isn't troubled
by the market today, which is very expensive and bad
for first time homeowners. I think the best way to
stabilize the homeownership market, get more people in, and bring
the price down is to give everybody twenty five thousand
dollars if they're buying a house.
Speaker 2: Some say ridiculously that that would just mean that twenty
five thousand dollars would be tacked under the price. I
don't understand this.
Speaker 1: Thing called echoonomics, but that's what they say. Is this
another serious proposal or is it just another bit of
political grand standing?
Speaker 2: And I think we know the answer to that.
Speaker 3: I mean, wage and price controls are one thing, but
proposing this kind of substy for housing really does remind
us once again how economically illiterate leading Democrats have become.
I mean, one of the reasons, in fact, one of
the main reasons thatigher education costs have risen I think
at twice the rate of healthcare is the government subsidizing
student loans, having lots of grants and the colleges are
even though they're nonprofit quote unquote institutions, they capture those
subsidies in higher prices and can get away with it.
And why you would think that wouldn't happen in housing
is beyond me. And you know, the rent control proposal
is also that Biden has already floated and Harris is
doubling down on, will have the same effect on rents.
It's just gonna raise prices or raise rents.
Speaker 1: And I don't know what remind me again with the
rent control proposal is because we've had it here.
Speaker 2: In the Twin Cities and it has been disastrous.
Speaker 1: They put a I mean they captained at three percent
or something like that over the course of X number
of years, and what it meant was that just about
everybody who's going to build something said, nah, no, I'm
not gonna do that. I'm I'm gonna go build it
over here across the border from your tout.
Speaker 2: It never works.
Speaker 1: But are they remind me again, because I've had a
busy week and I have been able to follow every little.
Speaker 2: Detail of rent controlled national rent control laws well as I.
Speaker 3: Understand that the Biden proposal was to apply this to
large corporate owners of multi family housing, so that would
be you know, your large apartment reads like avalon Bay
and people like that. But also supposedly hedge funds have
been buying a lot of residential property, both single family
homes and apartments, and so they want to gouge the
big guy. But eventually that's going to trickle down to
the little guy. It just has to, because it seems
to me if you're going to be consistent about it,
which they have been in places that have rent control,
like you know New York. From New York's rent control
started as a temporary measure in World War One, just
to remind people, and we still have a century later.
So there are a few liberals. I'm surprised to find
them out here in California, and maybe, James, you have
some in Minneapolis who are been saying I never thought
I'd live long enough to hear this, that the problem
with housing is we over regulate land use and building
too much. And there's actually so of this left wing
it's actually here in California called the NIMB movement, NIMB
Meeting or nimby sorry, yes, in my back back yard,
and they actually say pretty sensible things along with a
lot of nonsense about you know, segregation and redlining and
stuff like that. But you would think that this would
trickle up to the Biden administration or Democrats at the
national level, but so far not much progress on that front.
Speaker 5: Yeah, this is this has cracked me out. It's like,
you know, you have someone who's a heroin addict, and
he's like, it's causing me all sorts of problems being
a heroin addict. I'm I'm late for work and I
can't remember to do stuff and my work's really low quality.
And you say, well, what are you going to do
about that? And they go, I've seen you getting up earlier. Well,
this is certainly one option. Well, okay, any other ideas well?
I was Thineking of setting alarms that tell me to
do my stuff. You know, I'm going to take some nanacs.
Maybe stop being a heroin addict.
Speaker 6: Like it's it's.
Speaker 5: Obviously a complicated issue, but one of the core problems
with housing in the United States is that it is
so regulated, especially in places like California, and union rules
and environmental rules make it so difficult to build at
cheap prices that people are struggling to get into the market,
and the fact that the inflation that we cause led
to high interest rates has not helped people get into
that market either. And the one thing I mean, she
says nothing for a month, nothing. She's an avatar candidate.
The press does all of her work, and she says,
I'm going to make a big speech, and the one
thing she can think of is give people money. On
the demand side, you can't see, you can't see all
of the stuff that everyone's been talking about.
Speaker 6: You want to give people money on them.
Speaker 5: It's just astonishing, totally inability to see the problem.
Speaker 1: Well, at this point, of course, everybody in her side
are saying, well, what about Trump and troosts, And that's
another versation. We can have all of these conversations, but
at the moment we have our guest, and our guests.
Speaker 2: Popped up and we're glad that he did.
Speaker 1: It's Charlie Gasperino, senior correspondent for Fox Business, also columnist
for The New York Post and an author, most recently
of Goo Go Broke, The Inside Story of the Radicalization
of Corporate America.
Speaker 2: Charlie, thanks for joining us today. Charlie.
Speaker 1: I know that this is a this is a nation
that has many problems that afflict it, many deep societal
problems that were eager and keen to grasp with some
of them.
Speaker 2: Some of them we are too painful and we turn away.
Speaker 1: But I know that when I want guidance in where
the soul of America should be headed, I look to
tractor companies and motorcycle makers. So let's talk about the company,
the ones that I just mentioned, for example, the problems
that they face may not be.
Speaker 2: Instantly knowable to the people who aren't on Twitter and
the rest of it.
Speaker 1: But Harley Davidson is the most recent company for people
to look at them and say, wait a minute, iconic
American brand, symbol of the open road, the throaty engine, roar,
the smell of the gas, the great American icon, and
they're they're lecturing us about the need to reinvent capitalism.
Speaker 7: Sadly, they're not alone.
Speaker 8: I mean, I mean, one of the things in my
book that I point out is just you know, how stupid,
just just how pervasive wokeness is at companies. And now
you would think corporate America is a right wing pursuit
right capitalism. Uh, it is within the confines of wokeness.
At least lately. I mean, all these companies have evolved
into sort of messaging the the cultural dynamics of the left.
And I know this sounds really sort of academic when
I explain this, but you read the book and you'll
both get a laugh out of it, because watching corporations
do stupid woke stuff is really fucking funny.
Speaker 1: Right, it's a New York Post.
Speaker 2: We mentioned New York. It absolutely is. It is.
Speaker 1: It's amusing and its cluelessness and their and their inability
to read the room and the rest of it.
Speaker 2: Let's go down.
Speaker 1: Let's go down some of the examples you talk about
in your book, and then let's also get to the
important question, do they really go broke? I mean, Disney
still trading, Harley still selling cycles, that farm supply guys.
Speaker 2: You know, they may have taken a little hit, but
they're going to be still around.
Speaker 1: Do they really first example, your favorite example of a
company that went woke for no good reason at all.
Speaker 8: Well, it's gotta be Budweiser. Well, you know, it's it's
a brand. Budweiser is a brand in the people. The
Anheuser Bush owns Budweiser. It's it doesn't. It's sold that
two thousand and nine, I go through the buyout. The
Bush family became very rich by selling it for billions
of dollars to a company called ab Imbev, which is
essentially a bunch of Brazilians and uh and uh and
Belgian you know, the businessmen very Davos who bought the
brand and uh. And you know, that's where you could
trace the increasingly sort of progressive branding of Budweiser and
there and other brands to that purchase. And you know,
it reached its sort of high or low part point
with the Dilla mulvaney trans woman in a bubble bath
drinking a bud light you know, yeah, which, yes, did happen,
but I, you know, sort of that to me was
the most infuriating and the funniest and also it just
really captured you know, why this is this this occurred.
Speaker 7: And I'll tell you why.
Speaker 8: I you know, I covered this when it went down
in twenty twenty three, and the company tried to blame
it on you know, a couple of misfits in the
marketing department, and as I found out, it was much
more than that. It was literally those misfits in the
marketing department. First of all, if it weren't such misfits,
were actually good marketers. But they were under some pretty
strict sidelines too, to impose DEI diversity equity and inclusion
in various parts of the branding of their of their beer,
including the use of influencers. So what happened was they
want they abm that was increasingly going there. It wanted
to include in its you know, in its DEI mandates
for influencers. Uh, trans you know, the trans community essentially
as part of that DEI mandate.
Speaker 3: And if you're going to go to the.
Speaker 8: Trans community to sell beer, you know, Dil mulvaney becomes
like someone that you go to even though the company
like sits there and says, oh, we've never heard of
this person before. I mean, Dil Molvaney is a famous transactivist.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 8: She interviewed Joe Biden before the before those ads hit,
and you know, and and it became sort of a
cultural touch touchstone, the whole the whole Budweiser lap or
bud Light flap. She chronicled on Twitter or on Facebook
and Instagram and TikTok her three hundred and sixty four
days of Man of becoming.
Speaker 3: A woman girl.
Speaker 2: No, it's called being a girl.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I mean it was really and and by the
way she did doing it was pretty off brand if
you did any research into her, her brand was bizarre
because it was so activist. I mean, no, I listen,
I have trans friends, no problem with people that want
to go there, and that's your business. I have a
problem with proseetizing, obviously, but you know, you could make
a case that you might have proselytized kids. There was
a Ted Cruz told me, and it's in the book
the Senator from Texas about how she had some did
some skit on on Instagram or TikTok about her name
being Eloise and she's six and she's dancing around. I mean,
it's it's I mean, it's just it's bizarre that that
Budweiser go there. But if you know d you understand
why they went there. And that's part of the whole
corporate woke movement. Now when I say go woke, go broke, listen,
I mean, obviously I'm not prone to exaggeration here, but listen,
there is a there is a brokeness to this. Budweiser
went from the number three brand, number one brand to
number three best selling beer brand. Disney Stock has not
moved since now since twenty fourteen. You know that I
can go down on the line. Target took a hit
to its bottom line. You know, we can go on
and on, and you know, I don't think this stuff sells.
I mean, I don't think my book Bruce doesn't sell
And it's so stupid.
Speaker 7: That you wonder why they go there.
Speaker 8: But then you have to kind of get a handle
on the woke ecosystem, which I tried to get my
hands around.
Speaker 3: So, Charles, it's Steve Hayward out in California, and I
want to I wanted to take us back to the
very beginning a little bit of how this happened. What
were the invade routes. I've had two theories about this
that are complementary, but I've only really worked on ones.
As an academic, I used to say, yeah, it's really
bad that our universities are so left and into identity politics.
But if you ruin the English department, in the philosophy department,
it's no big deal. But it broke out of the
confines of the campus and found its way into the
corporate boardrooms. Starting My point is the Silicon Valley fifteen
years ago, and I think it's the HR departments are
large part of it, because if you've got a degree
in gender studies, you can't actually do anything in a
real business, but you can go in the HR department
and the new DEI Department, which it's one thing to
have an HR department that's trying to advance civil rights
and affirmative action and all those problems. Right the DEI people,
what do they do there? Just exists to make trouble.
And I haven't gotten into your book very far yet,
but I'll bet you've got lots of stories. And I
keep hearing stories of DEI offices that tie units of
companies in knots with their MAOIs struggle sessions over and
what statements they should put out and tyway. And then
I think the big business lobbies at the other end
of this world economic forum also put pressure. Oh and
CEO wives I think are a big problem. I don't
know if you get to that or not. But how
did this happen? Take us from the top?
Speaker 8: For us, well, I did trace how it happened. Again,
this is not a history book, but history is important.
Here in my view, listen, like all cultural revolutions, that
happened slowly at first, and then you know, you know,
so I traced, I tried to trace. When was the
first time I've heard of ESG. You know, that's a
key plank bokeness, environmental social governance investing. The first time
I saw it was in you know, when I went
back in my in databases, was nineteen ninety five. Now, coincidentally,
in nineteen ninety five, I was hired as a reporter
for the Wall Street Journal. I spent nine years there
and covering corporate scams and you name it, all the
stuf uff that and the reporters do at the Wall
Street Journal. And I noticed at the time I was
covering mutual funds, and in nineteen ninety five there was
this sort of sort of small but kind of growing
movement of social responsible investing.
Speaker 7: And it wasn't like quite a thing.
Speaker 8: I mean, you know, when I got hired at the Journal,
as I remember, it was literally I was in the newsroom,
you know, I got offered the job. Today Netscape went public,
and I don't know if you remember Netscape, it was
like the first browser, right and at the time the IPO.
Speaker 7: So, you know, I spent a.
Speaker 8: Lot of time initially covering you know, these you know
tech funds that were blowing up, people were getting involved
in dot com stuff. But there was this sort of
side business over here about social responsible investing, and I
remember stuff like the Dominie Index that would bring company
mutual funds under social responsibility. So it started to grow
out of that. Now you know, why wasn't it just
ignored and thrown to the side. Well, there's a lot
of there's a lot of factors because of that. Okay,
So you there's a group think on in corporate America.
There's no doubt about them. Right, So part of the
group think gets together in Davos, and like all bad ideas,
you know, I find that all bad ideas begin at
the UN, all bad court company ideas, and most ideas
begin at the UN and maybe Davos, right, Yeah, it
all starts inculcating these sort of classrooms of of influencer
professors like Jeff the jeff Sonomfeld to the world at
Yell where you know, progressive corporate responsibility become a huge thing,
and and corporate responsibility was defined broadly in terms of
your left wing policies in the boardroom.
Speaker 2: Right, what?
Speaker 3: Right? Well, I remember Charles that around two thousand, what
caught on for a while before ESG solidified was you
may remember this too. It was the triple bottom line.
There's some profit people and planet. It's the same thing
as the SG and the name changed. And you do
pick up on one thing I think is quite important,
and I think more should we said about this. You
quite rightly single out the people who call themselves stakeholders.
This has been around for a while, but you know, shareholders,
We understand that there are people with skin in the game.
They bought the stock. Who is a stakeholder? And how
do you become one? It seems very sinister to me.
But give us your take on.
Speaker 7: That, well, stakeholders.
Speaker 8: You know, the whole notion of stakeholder capitalism started to
seep in around the time that you mentioned two thousands.
You know about that where we actually, you know, live
in a global community. It's and and CEOs need to
think more holistically, not in the Milton Friedman fashion of
shareholder capitalism. And I think the two thousand and eight
financial crisis took in another step further. I mean, you
did have congressional pressure on companies, the emergence of Elizabeth
Warren at a powerful leftist progressive force in the US
and others. And then you had business caving into it.
And I think two thousand and eight was one way
to cave into it. You know, it was what because
remember what happened with big business. There was massive government bailouts.
You had a wicked sort of backlash, populous backlash of
tea partiers, but mostly Occupy Wall Street, which was you know,
just you know, galvanizing cities. And these CEOs started to like,
you know, essentially virtue signal to buy to buy themselves
covered from from the left, the populous, you know sort
of revolt that.
Speaker 7: Was going on.
Speaker 8: And there was something interesting that happened in twenty eighteen
or twenty nineteen, I can't quite remember. They was twenty
eighteen is when the Business Roundtable, which is the business
lobby group, right, it's where the one hundred top CEOs
you know, essentially set the agenda for or public companies.
The Fendistry did Milton Friedman and shareholder capitalism for stakeholder
capitalism where you are we think more broadly, and that
was Jamie Diamond of all people, the great banker at
JP Morgan, who actually turns out to be kind of woke.
I mean, it's a funny scene in my book, you know,
during the George Floyd, by the way, the George Floyd,
and this just shows you how absurd it is. A
cop kills maybe accidentally, probably accidentally, but whether he used
brute force too much forces a matter of contention, a
guy that was trying to pass a counterfeit check in
a convenience store in Minneapolis. That's George Floyd. The guy
has spent it all in the system and he resisted
the rest. Now I'm not saying he deserves the death penalty,
far from it, but you know, in that struggle, he dies,
but that death sparked these riots and all this sort
of It was like a weird, woke, come to Jesus
moment for every corporate ceo, like they need. It was
so absurd that Jamie Diamond, Brian moynihan, a Bank of America.
I go down the list all of them that virtue
signals about this, you know, use that example that the
country isthmically racist in need of change, and they did,
and like, how does people how do people that are like,
supposedly smart Jamie Dimond, graduate from Harvard Business School, runs
a big bank.
Speaker 2: He's not.
Speaker 8: He's very smart. How do these people go there? Because
it's actually quite stupid if you think about it. My
conclusion in the book is they did that for for
virtue signaling reasons, to gain good publicity, to get higher
because there is a corporate woke ecosystem that's developed. The
Human Rights Campaign grades businesses and it does have impact.
ESG is now catching on in twenty twenty, and the
G and ESG and the the S and ESG is
very much about social justice. And so Jamie Dimond, so
Brian moynihan, a Bank of America, doesn't you know, tells
all his direct reports to read the collective works of
Roger Chetty. I don't know if you know that name.
That's a yeah, that's an.
Speaker 7: Economist that at very progressive.
Speaker 8: And then he says we're going to start at one
point five billion dollar fund for you know, for racial equity, right,
and everybody's like, well, how we're going to hand out money?
I just get it to the communities fast, so they're
just low interest loans. Jamie Diamond reads that and says
we're going to do bigger one, We're going to do
thirty five billion.
Speaker 7: Dollars and he does it. You know, so I raised
with them. Okay, so are you telling me that George
Floyd had a low interest loan.
Speaker 4: That day?
Speaker 8: And Neil and their answers, I meant, I put their
answers in the book. It's stupid, you know. And what's
also interesting about this is like Jamie Diamond and you
know at the time, was was he went to visit
a branch because remember this was during the COVID lockdowns.
He went to visit a JP Morgan branch at Mount Kisso,
New York, and he was in the took a picture
of him taking a knee and it like went viral
and we all asked, you know, it was like a
group picture, and we all asked, We said, you know,
he is he like, now, you know, a social justice warrior?
And they were like, well, you can write whatever you want.
You know, we're not going to call you know, So
they had no problem letting let you know that that
impression for four years. So when I went back and
I checked and this is in the book, I said, yeah,
I'm just saying, oh, I'm gonna write about this, and
the pr people at JP Morgan were like, oh no, no,
Jamie didn't take it. Just wanted to make it clear
Jamie is not a BLM supporter. He took a knee
merely to fit in the photo because he was didn't
want to obstruct the people behind him. And I said,
that's so stupid. Why'd you wait four years to tell
me that?
Speaker 5: Well, I just had a question for you child's cook care.
Speaker 6: So how do we fight this?
Speaker 5: Because there's a paradox in that you're right to identify
a host of examples of where companies that have gone
work have suffered to some extent, and yet it's still spread.
I mean, there's still an ecosystem that in some sense
seems to be impervious to outside influence. And in so
far as the examples you've given are of a diminished
fortune for a company that's gone work, they're not going
under right, I mean, Disney, it still exists. It's flatlining
in the stock market, you're right, and the movies aren't
doing so well with one exception. So if you're a
consumer and you can't do what was done to Budweiser
with the Dylan Malvanian nonsense. How do we fight this
so that it goes away because its influences pernicious.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 8: One of the things I noticed about the Target situation,
which is kind of interesting, is that for many years
Target would have these very sort of expansive.
Speaker 7: Pride Month celebrations, right and.
Speaker 8: The they do it, and there was there was increasingly
there was stuff on social media about like parents being
outraged and you know, I'm taking my kid to the Target,
and you know, I see this and that, and you know,
I don't I just want to shop there. I want
to know, I want to get diapers, so to speak,
you know, which is why you can shop at Target,
right right, So you want you know, good good, you
want some quality at a low price. They reached a
tipping point in twenty twenty three, when you know, woke
reached it's I guess a potheosis that the best way
to put it. All the stuff's happened in twenty twenty
three where you know, people had enough and literally people
took to social media and the company was totally caught
off guard to just sort of do what the press
would most of the press wouldn't do. The media wouldn't
do and just report about what was going on inside
the store, which was at another level, literally rainbow colored
ones I mean, first off that the probably it wasn't
just I have just you know, I have no problem
with pride display. I you know, I don't and I
don't have kids, So that's a whole other story. But
if I go to a Target and I see a
pride display, I will walk by it and it probably
might not even register with me, but it does with
a lot of a lot of Middle America American people.
When they see a rainbow colored onesie next to a
tuck friendly bathing suit for men who haven't transitioned, next
to a row of books about you know, children transitioning,
that rubs them the wrong way. There's a cultural there
is a cultural they're proselytizing the cultural change that most
people hate. And they took to social media and guess
what happened. Target backed off it. Budweiser backed off it.
Now here's the funniest thing with Budweiser. Because I did
a lot of reporting on this, they tried to blame
it on the the you know, the poor the two guys,
the two people in the marketing department, which it's much
more than that. But if you want to know how
absurd the overreaction in Budweiser is right now, So they
go from Dyla mo'vaney drinking Budweiser half naked in a
bubble bath, right, and there were social media spots now there.
Now they cut some massive deal. They actually paid up
wickedly for it with the UFC, right, the Dana White,
the very unwoke Data White, very unwoke you know, cage
match boxing, right, guys ripping their head off, the bud wise,
the antis of Bushes, the main sponsor that as part
of that, they're thinking about one of the antiser Bush
brands is thinking about partnering with one of Dana's other
side hustles he's doing right now, which is called power Slap.
That's literally two big guys slapping each other in the
face until one falls. Now, think about that. The guys
that brought you Dyla movaney a year ago, almost a
little more than a year ago, is now are now
back and now supporting or promoting and sponsoring something where
two lunatic guys smash each other in the face. That's
how bad their brand has been damaged and how They're
to put them Genie back in the bottle. And that's
how much the consumer backlash did work. Now you're never
going to put companies. Putting companies out of business is
very difficult. As someone who's covered business for years. I mean,
you know, you know, Lehman Brothers, Bearsterns, you know that
sort of stuff. I broke a lot of stories. Dart
a financial crisis. There's a whole bunch of reasons why
that happens.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 8: I don't think Budweiser is going, you know, necessarily going
to go out of business tomorrow, but slowly but surely they.
Speaker 7: Are losing a lot of money.
Speaker 8: Disney stock, the fact that its stock hasn't moved since
twenty fourteen will tell you something.
Speaker 1: Disney's getting hammered for what it did to Star Wars.
Target is getting hammered for what you said exactly. I'm
here in Minneatolis so I was here during George Flood's
still here, and the Target headquarters I can see it
up my window if I crane minex so I'm in
the epicenter of all this. You're absolutely right about what
tapped to Target. For years, they had pride displays and
nobody really cared. Suburban moms didn't care, you know, they'd
go in, they'd see it, they'd wave whatever. But it
was when they went specifically, really heavily lean into the
trans stuff that the moms who shop at Target all
of a sudden reared up and it became known on
social media and elsewhere that one of the artists with
whom they had partnered, who sold stuff in the Target
website was actually, you know, a Satanist, which is you know,
tiresome and had was giving little buttons that had Satan
all respect your pronouns, that had a guillotine for the turfs.
Target completely completely misread the fact that when this got out,
the moms who would just absolutely who would show up
at the Pride parade when I went down the suburban street,
would look at this and say, wait a minute, hold on,
hold on too far. And I don't think that any
of them have come back in the same way because
I used shop at Target all the time, and now
on the back of my head.
Speaker 2: I hate to use the word, but they're just weird.
The whole feeling I get about the place. Is it
just that they did that and they're just you know,
they're weird and they got their options.
Speaker 1: But you're right, they do come back and they try
to tell us that they're not that anymore. As if
I see Kid Rock blowing up some you know, some
cans of beer of the competitor with a shotgun and
then saying I'm a bud Light guy myself, Like I'm
going to just robotically turned towards them again and say
all this forgiven. No, we all remember, it's going to
take so long for budd Light to come back. It's
going to take so long for Disney to regain the
trust that they've lost amongst the Pontes.
Speaker 7: What problems bud Light has is that it's kind of
a shitty beer.
Speaker 2: You know, that's part of the problem there too.
Speaker 8: Yes to go to keg parties and buy bud because
it was like you know, Spuds McKenzie and everything. I mean,
it was that was in my head. You know, I
don't like if I'm going to drink a beer, I'm
not going to drink bud. It doesn't taste very good.
But you know, so if there was an image that
bud you know, it just gives you an impression. If
you really get into buttet which I did. There's this
amazing add they did with the Clydesdales right after nine
to eleven, right where the Whitsdales walk up in a
field and you see the twin towers and then you
see them gone and then Clydesdale's take a knee and
I still get shivers like watching that ad. It was
a just amazing As someone who worked listen, I was
two minutes. I worked at the Wall Street Journal at
the time. We were across the street from the Trade Center.
You know, I remember that day very well. I mean
I was I was at a doctor's appointment, like five
blocks uptown, so I saw the whole thing unfold.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 8: That was chilling and just and you go from that
to dyl mulvaney, and I think that will.
Speaker 7: Tell you, you.
Speaker 8: Know why so many people who revolted and we'll still
revolt now.
Speaker 2: And it tells you about the shape of the overculture.
Speaker 1: Charlie, we gotta, we gotta get out here and U
but we got to tell people to buy your book,
which is Go Woke, Go Broke, the inside Story the
Radicalization of Corporate America. And I hope there's a second
edition and it has some addendum at the back that
tells us more because it's not over.
Speaker 2: It's not done. It's still going to ripple through our
through business.
Speaker 3: For a while.
Speaker 2: But thank you for joining us today. It's been a pleasure,
my pleasure.
Speaker 7: Thank you guys.
Speaker 2: Bye bye. The Yeah, it's going to keep on going.
Speaker 1: You know what I find interesting is we were talking
before about Charlie was talking all we're talking about how
they don't sometimes realize that what they believe to be
the absolute proper way to think is actually no, the
luxury beliefs of an overclass that are not.
Speaker 2: Shared by everybody else. And I find this most notable
in the media, where there are words.
Speaker 1: That do not have quotation marks around them all the
time the meaning is accepted. Climate change is one of them.
I mean, it's indisputable that it's happening. Equity is another
equity has replaced equality. You guys notice that that whenever
somebody talks about equity, it's an automatic, positive good, and
nobody seems to.
Speaker 2: You know, I don't know.
Speaker 1: All I know is that if you want to feel
as good tomorrow as you did the day before when
you wake up, and that's a form of equity, isn't
it equality or something like that. We got to be
careful about how you actually do your party.
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Speaker 2: Well, gentlemen, we have a few minutes here before we
wrap up. Ah, I've been asked.
Speaker 1: To mention the Ricochet Fantasy Football League. And as much
as I do love football, I don't do the fantasy
football thing. I don't even know where I would start.
I don't need that in my head. I don't need
to worry about it. I don't need another way to lose.
Speaker 2: As a Minnesota Vikings fan. Shall we say, but Charles,
of course you are a great football guy. What is
this Ricochet Fantasy football thing about?
Speaker 5: I love fantasy football. In fact, I won my family
league last year, which means I expect to do really
badly in the Ricochet Fantasy Football League. Not that I
will be included as eligible for the prizes, but I
will be taking part, and you too can take part,
providing that you are a member of Ricochet. It is
a member's only fantasy football league. I think we had
a post up on it last night. And as far
as I understand, the idea is to get as many
leagues together as Sweeney and I think that's probably a
limit on how big each one can be. But we
can have five or six of them, we can have
divisions and then at the end of the whole thing
to hand out prizes. Now, am I right in saying
Steve you're going to be involved in this too?
Speaker 3: I am. You know, I've never really understood or participated
in the fantasy baseball or football leagues, but I want
to learn about it. And you know this sounds like fun,
so I'll be all in. But I have to say, Charlie,
I haven't heard yet. If Henry Olsen is going to
be part of it. He probably will look out for him.
He does fantasy baseball, Oh my goodness. He absolutely kills
every year in fantasy baseball. I know, because he's such
a numbers geek. And I'll bet he'll be just as
good football.
Speaker 5: So look at you know, one of my favorite things
is to be checking Twitter and some random evening, you know,
Thursday night or something. And Henry Olsen is giving extremely detailed,
granular analysis of the election in Lichenstein and saying things like, well,
of course when you he went to the Palace region,
then the party de from Boise is expected to do
well this year given support for the bat two platform.
That was anything, Wow, I know you could do this
in America. How can you do this in every single
country in the world. So it doesn't surprise me that
he's extremely good at fantasy baseball.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then and on the other hand, John, you
will just bet on the Philadelphia Eagles. He'll just do
hometown stuff, so he'll be easy to pick his pocket.
Speaker 1: Yes, well, I was going to show up as I
walked to my computer to sign up. Actually, I tore
my meniscus, and so I'm going to be.
Speaker 2: Out for the.
Speaker 6: Your quarterback new quarterback.
Speaker 2: Yep, yep, one game. That's all. We're dead. We're dead.
We're absolutely dead. Yeah, it does, but that's part of
being a Minnesota Viking fan.
Speaker 1: The self delusion that is required year after year, week
after week is really quite extraordinary. It says something about
the character of the state, either our ability to be
deluded or our tenacious loyalty, or a combination of the two.
You know, I was going to ask, for example, that
we're coming down to the end of summer. Here, you've
got a fortnight left. I guess, if you want to
look at it, calendrical summer, that is, meteorological summer will
last way into September. But nobody in these parts believes
that at all. I just thought it's kind of ridiculous
to ask you fellows how you feel about the shank
of summer since Charles is in Florida and.
Speaker 2: Steve when you're in California.
Speaker 1: Now, yeah, I mean, you guys live in a in
a perpetual bliss of clement weather. You know nothing of
the character that develops when the when when the world
itself turns and paints itself into these most beautiful ways.
Speaker 5: Yes, can I can contradict you slightly. I include know
something of it, which is one reason I now live
in Florida.
Speaker 6: We're up in England for twenty six years.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, I imagine so. And it was that that
drove you away. Is the English? Is the English faull?
Speaker 1: Does it lacked that bittersweet I thought, with Keiths telling
us the fruits, the mellow fruits of autumn and all
the rest of it.
Speaker 2: Or is it just another dismal, drizzly interval.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's dismal and drizzly and gray.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 5: I looked this up recently. The closest analog I find
to being rather as Seattle. And for years I said
to people, so, what's thing them like? What's the weather like?
And I would say, it's like Seattle. Seattle has one
hundred days more of sunshine. So even the one example
that I could find, there's actually a really good map
I saw that shows how much sunshine places in the
world get, and America in general, even you know, you're
joking about Minnesota, but Minnesota too they're just so much
lighter and sunnier and brighter than all of Europe, with
a couple of exceptions. And it has to affect the
national character in your outlook.
Speaker 2: Oh, it absolutely does.
Speaker 1: I mean I was in England in the end of
July or the end of June and the beginning of July,
and we had five six glorious days in Suffolk.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's just it was hot. It was actually hot.
Speaker 1: People were putting on shorts and they were fanning themselves
and complaining about the lack of air conditioning and all
the rest of it. Although the place where I stayed
had ac because it was by civilized, sane people. But
then of course we get in the train and we
go to Glasgow, and Glasgow rained. But as in Minnesotan,
I don't understand the sort of Scottish rain until I
get there, in which it rains and then it doesn't,
and then it rains a little bit, and then it
miss for a bit, and then it rains very heavily,
and then then the clouds blared through like trumpets from barrios,
and then they cloud slam shut again with a claak,
and the rain comes in and again over and over
and over again. And I think the Scottish must haves
have had as many names for rain as the Eskimos
do for snow. That that old canard and it said, no,
they don't, it's just rain, which was followed by four glorious,
four glorious days in Edinburgh which it barely rained at all,
and everything was absolutely wonderful. But Glasgow, in the rain
and the griminess and the and the sort of sodden,
care worn nature of the place, really brought through the
spirit of it in a way that if I'd gone
there during nothing but sun, I don't think I would
have understand understood much. So I'm glad my vacation was
completely rained in Glasgow.
Speaker 2: I understood it a bit more, and I understood it.
Speaker 1: Why perhaps that shaped the Scottish temperament as it did Steven.
Your summer it's been going fine, I assume make it
interesting to everybody in the next few minutes that we have.
Speaker 3: Oh that's hard to do. I mean, summertime for an
academic is when you try and catch up on unfinished articles,
read books that have been piled up in a corner,
try to get outside and enjoy things. I will say
that this climate change business can go on forever. But
this summer has been very unusual. Where I live on
the Central Coast, it has been thick fog almost the
entire summer until this week. And that's partly because our
producer Perry visited me, and I think he brought some
good weather with him. It's sunny outside and beautiful right
now and I'm looking at the ocean. But part of
it is get off on this for a minute. You
and listeners may remember about a year and a half
ago there was that enormous volcano eruption in the South Pacific,
and the honest climatologist said, ah, this is going to
affect the planet's climate over the next two years. And
so there's a little wlag in it because it threw
up so much high altitude water, vapor and particulates, and
it's going to have both the cooling and warming effect
depending on where you are. And I think that accounts
for some of the weather patterns that otherwise the media
is freaking out about this summer, which are to be
entirely expected. If you're honest about it.
Speaker 2: It's going to make it cooler or warmer.
Speaker 1: That is just a climate change of advocate dream because
you can go in to absolutely everything. And also, but
it means that if you're looking at coughed up water
vapor in particular, and you look at subterranean jets coming
out from the depths of the ocean warming things up,
and if you look at the fact that the Great
Barrier Reef seems to be doing okay, and if you
look at the fact that Antarctie ice is not a nightmare,
and you consider that sunspots, that big, huge glowing nuclear
furnace up in the sky.
Speaker 2: Might have something to do with our climate.
Speaker 1: It means then that all of the stuff telling us
to do to get out of our cars into evs, which.
Speaker 2: Are powered of course by some magic that's generated somewhere.
Speaker 1: Uh, that that that that falls on deaf ears, and
we can't have that, because we've all got to have
an electrified future, right. That's one of the things that
I fear the most about a Harris administration would be
the continuing war against the most effective means of generating
power you possibly can. Then again, maybe she'll be pro nuke.
Then again, maybe whatever. I don't particularly trust the gray
matter behind those sparkling joy filled eyes. And by the way, guys,
I'm tired of hearing joy. You know, I'm really tired
of hearing joy, not because I'm not a joyful person,
because they're about this close to saying that America will
achieve strength through joy, about this close without realizing.
Speaker 3: James, are you really pining for the sour countenance of
John Kerry? Is that you're nostalgia?
Speaker 1: Now I better better lurch than this, this, this empty effervescence.
Speaker 2: Charles.
Speaker 5: I just hate being told this stuff that we all
know is not true. It's it's it's an in junction.
They are joyful, they're not joyful.
Speaker 7: You know what.
Speaker 5: It reminds me of that old nineteen nineties version of
Superman with Dean Kin and Terry Hershe.
Speaker 6: So I watched this when I was a kid.
Speaker 5: I love this show and there was this particular episode
in it where this guy, I think, I guess in
the show he was running for an elected office and
they found some brain control technique that would allow him
to broadcast out to the people of the city. There's
one phrase that he was a darn nice guy, and
so everywhere Lois went during this episode, she starts to
notice she woulday, what do you think of this guy?
And they would say, well, you know, I think he's
a darn nice guy.
Speaker 6: And everyone said it and it just got really, really creepy.
This is the joy thing. The people who are promulgating this,
they are happy.
Speaker 5: They are joyful because there was a period of a
few months where they thought they were going to lose,
and they thought they might lose Minnesota, in New Mexico
and New Hampshire and Virginia, and so they were crying
themselves into their breakfast cereal. And now they're all happy
because they've got this candidate who looks like she's marched
in the ahead, and they feel joy. But they're using
this brain control technique where they're trying to convince everyone
else that they feel joy and they see joy and
what this is is joy and it's joyful. And the
thing that defines it is this joyfulness. And I keep
watching these rallies and I'm like, what are.
Speaker 6: You talking about, you weird people?
Speaker 2: Oh no, no, no, no no, no. Weird is the right. Joy
joy joy is the left. These are the two words.
It's joy versus weird, Joy versus weird.
Speaker 1: Just repeat that to yourself until you are convinced, and
vote accordingly and correctly. That'll do for us, folks. Thanks
guys for showing up your thanks for Zibiotics for sponsoring us.
Go to Apple Podcast give with those five star reviews,
five big bright stars so more people can find Ricochet
and joyful about it, though very joyful about it. Yes,
press hard with joy and join us joyfully at ricocheted dot,
where if you're a part of the member feed, which
means you're a member, you get all sorts of stuff,
not just the fantasy football, but you get the meetups
and you get to have conversations that you know. They're
in private, and they're all over the place, and it's
a great community. I was just there last night about
twelve o'clock or so, typing out and reading.
Speaker 2: And go there every day a couple of times.
Speaker 1: So I'm not just a flap and mouthpiece here. I'm
an actual contributor and I'm also a flap and mouthpiece.
Speaker 2: Thank you, guys. We'll see everybody in the comments at
ricochet for point zero well next week