March 2026 Q&A: America Going Broke, Working for Trump, Books You Must Read

0:00Welcome to Open Book. I am your host, Anthony Scaramucci. Happy March, everybody. In New York, it's still cold, but the spring is on the way. So good news and good times ahead. So I've gone through almost everybody's comments. I just want to say thank you to everybody. Those of you that I didn't get to, please send them because we're doing this once a month. And we're looking at YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram, and it's just really great stuff coming in. And I really do appreciate your support for the show. And if you enjoy Open Book or any of the other content that we're putting out on our channel, could you do me a favor?

0:36There's a subscribe button somewhere. Could you hit the subscribe button? It just helps us out with the algorithm. And I would be grateful. Okay, so let's get into it. And we will start with YouTube. This is Ida Sandoval, 4164. Citizens United was a pivot in our politics. How could that be reversed or reformed to separate private money and influence in American politics? So no question. I talk about this all the time. That decision in January of 2010 has been a disaster for the United States because literally the rich people, the rich corporations bought the Congress and ultimately the president.

1:18And I'll just go back 15 short years ago. these guys are now spending five times the amount of money that they were once spending in the political theater so this is just a staggering sum and i'll just let people know if you look at the legislative agenda over the last 15 years it's big food big business big pharma it's corporate tax cuts it's corporate welfare bailouts for banks bailouts for other industries and the little guy, now the little guy's not in there. And that's the big problem. And that's why you're seeing the systemic rise of populism and this great frustration with the system. So what do you do?

2:01Well, you could have the Supreme Court reverse the decision. They did that on a racial discrimination case. They said Plessy versus Ferguson, you could have separate but equal facilities for blacks and whites that caused tremendous amounts of segregation in the South and other areas. It took 80 years. Brown versus Board of Education sort of reversed that decision. So they could reverse it. You could get to the Congress and say, hey, we got to stop it. And you could congressionally legislate it away. I don't really think you could do it through executive action. Actually, I've looked at that. So those are the big ways to do it.

2:40But it does need to be reversed. We probably would even, if we had the strength to do this, we would probably prefer a constitutional amendment, something that really codifies this. Okay. Instagram, island construction, will the federal debt hurt us significantly? It's a big maybe on that. I can't say definitively if the federal debt is going to hurt us significantly. We have$40 trillion of debt, but we really do have a tremendous economy and tremendous resources in the country. I remember the United States itself owns about 28 % of the land of the 50 United States. And so there's assets, resources, oil, natural resources under the land.

3:21Somebody did a balance sheet analysis of the US and said, probably have over$100 trillion in assets on the balance sheet. And with$40 trillion of the debt, it's serviceable and or manageable. Where things would get hairy is if our tax base started to shrink and we couldn't meet the interest payments through the tax base. If we ended up having to borrow the money to pay back the interest on the money that we borrowed, that would cause what my friend Ray Dalio calls a super debt cycle. And so we got to hope that that doesn't happen. So could it hurt us? Yes. Are there ways to correct it? Sure. But again, this would require the Congress to slow down the growth of spending.

4:05And if you do that just slightly and just let the economy's growth catch up to the growth in spending, we probably would be fine. You can't spend 27 % of the GDP from the federal spending. The right numbers, and when Clinton was running a budget surplus, is closer to 20%. Now, maybe you can't get there overnight, but you can get there, and that's something that we should really be considering. LinkedIn, Karey Ivar Gascrud. Man, I really hope I pronounced your name right. If I didn't, I apologize, but what is the biggest risk to global markets over the next five years that most institutional investors are still ignoring?

4:47So, you know, listen, there's lots of risk. I don't want to say that there isn't, but there's also a tremendous amount of opportunity. So some of the risks are dislocation in jobs. We have to be really careful about that. We have to manage that process as it relates to AI and the introduction of robotics, the introduction of technology that can help people work less. We just want to make sure they don't get paid less while they're working less because that could set up a nightmare. Second risk is always geopolitical. Everybody knows that we're in a fight right now with Iran. I, as an institutional investor, of course, would like that to simmer down because we like more tranquility for markets.

5:26It allows for capital to flow around the world and decrease prosperity globally. But yeah, those are the risks basically. And I don't really see unknown unknowns like Donald Rumsfeld used to say that people aren't really talking about. But if I think of things in the next question and answer session, I'll bring them up. But those are the big ones. I think those are the most important ones. okay now this is uh benjamin 79783607 in the darkest times what philosophy should we adopt well listen i'm obviously a uh practicing catholic i've said that often i'm a roman catholic raised catholic and so i have my faith that helps me get through a lot of uh difficult times i have talked about stoicism on this program and the idea that we're only here really for a minute and to just take in today.

6:22If you can live in the present, you can really de-escalate your anxiety. And so Lao Tzu, the Chinese philosopher from many thousands of years ago, once said, if you're thinking too much about your past, well, guess what happens? You have regrets. Of course, you do. You made decisions that you wish you didn't do. You really can't go back and change them. And so sometimes we live with some level of depression or regret. If you think too much about your future, well, guess what? The future is unknown, at least it's unknown to us. And so as it's unfolding, it can create anxiety because we recognize there's just so little about life that we ourselves actually control.

7:02So what Lao Tzu said, don't think too much about the past, you'll get depressed. Don't think too much about the future, you'll end up getting anxious. but think about the present. Focus your mind in the present and let the past go away. Get that millstone of regret off your neck. I mean, I got my ass fired from the white house after 11 days. I don't sit around and kick myself in the pants every morning when I wake up. Take the millstone of regret, put it down, go forward, and don't worry about the future because there's only so much of it that's in your control. Focus on today. That's where lots of the variables are that you yourself can control.

7:42Okay. This is Ort Slamro 9661. Hi, Anthony. In a recent reel, you said you decided against working at a law firm after finishing law school. Why did you make that choice? So it's a great question. It's about a calling. I worked at a law firm for the summer. Actually, two summers I worked in law firms. And listen, a lot of my friends now, 40 years in the law, they've had amazing experiences. They've made great money. It's a phenomenal career. I don't want to underestimate the phenomenal nature of the career, but it just wasn't for me. And I knew if I found my way to Wall Street and I found my way ultimately into money management, that was more interesting.

8:29I feel like I love business and the business of understanding other businesses is being a capital analyst or a capital allocator on Wall Street. So it's about a calling. And remember the word vocation, it comes from the Latin derivative of the word calling, vocare. And so you have to feel it in yourself, what you like, do what you like, and guess what? You never work a day. So like the law, but I don't love the law as much as I love business. So anyway, Instagram summit, Timis, how many hours a night do you sleep? What's your exercise like? Any alcohol intake? It's a great question. So last night I did not sleep well, hence the coffee.

9:13I got iced coffee here to get me revved up. But I'm typically trying to sleep seven to eight hours a night if possible. When I'm traveling, that is completely impossible. And so what I would tell you about your sleep, don't stress about it. Get up, do your best. Who cares? Try to get the seven or eight hours. You will feel better. It'll help your immune system, but don't overly stress about it, particularly if you have a high stress job. Exercise, I'm in the gym at least four times a week. I'm doing a lot of walking at 62. I got to protect the joints a little more. I'm doing a lot of running at 32, doing a lot of walking at 62.

9:53Incline walking is probably the best way to lose fat. But yes, I also lift weights to the extent that I can. And alcohol intake. I'm not a teetotaler. Don't want to say that. I'm not a pedantic guy. If you enjoy a glass of wine here or there, you should do it. Of course, who cares? Just don't tip it over into too big of a harmful habit, but I'm not a drinker. And so if I have an occasional glass of champagne here or there to celebrate somebody's birthday or anniversary, I'll certainly do that. But I'm actually, you won't, you won't see me drinking a lot. And Katty K often teases me about that.

10:29My podcast host on the rest is Politics US. It's not European enough for some of these people, but that's how I am. Okay, Aslan Kat, this is coming out of X, is the ex-Prince Andrew's arrest going to put pressure on the U.S. DOJ to appear to be doing more about the Epstein files? I do think that, actually. And I have said that on the politics show, the rest is Politics US. I said that if I was his defense attorney, I would be getting people like Ghislaine Maxwell to testify because it would open up a seam of worry for the Department of Justice. There's a cover-up going on at the Department of Justice.

11:08I think it's pretty obvious. And so we'll just have to see how it unfolds. But all of these variables out there are going to put some pressure on the people that are orchestrating this cover-up. Okay. YouTube, David Dement, 4647, I would love to hear more about your kids' journeys in the arts. It's something I wanted to do but fell into a job I don't love. what the success looked like to them and would you ever encourage a safety net so listen it's a tough question for me because i always try to create space for my children don't want to be um too pedantic here where i'm taking too much credit for my kids or anything like that uh we've just been fortunate uh where uh i have done reasonably well to provide that safety net that you're describing and I'm doing my best that I can to help them.

12:02I did not have a safety net. So you don't need a safety net to do what you really love. I guess the big message here about the journey is find something that you really love and see if you can get the gumption and the courage to go do that thing. Because what is happening is the universe starts coming your way in so many different ways. Okay. So that's my best answer for that one. How do you structure your calendar to allocate time for kids, marriage, and the firm? This is Richard Lorenzen from Instagram. So good question. Okay. So let me think about it like this. Here's a jar. We got a jar. You got rocks and you got sand.

12:44Okay. This is how you got to think about your time. The rocks are the most important things. They go in the jar first, your family, your kids, the employees and the partners at the firm, uh, their needs to go in the jar first, right? Those are the rocks. Then the sand goes in. So that could be things like exercise even. Okay. That could be things like, um, I don't know, reading books, going on vacation, whatever it might be, but you take that and you pour it in after. And if you think about it from that metaphor, it finds its way through the rocks. If you take the sand and you put the sand in first, then you try to put the rocks on top of the sand.

13:26You don't have enough room for everything. So prioritize. You're not going to do everything every day, meaning it could be all business for 72 hours and then it could be all family for 75 hours. Who the hell knows? but don't hold yourself and again don't be upset if it's not going perfectly i think that's the best way to manage stress is not to be upset when it's not going perfectly who do you believe will do a better job running the country this is barry s barry um so you're i guess you're saying is democrats or republicans who would do a better job of running the country i actually think independence would do a better job of running the country.

14:09I think people who are of reasonable mind and don't want the tribalism and want to focus on the kinetic things that put us together as opposed to the cultural things maybe that may pull us apart or even the economic things. And so I'm really hoping that we go into some type of post-partisan mode at some point where people just get fatigued from the nonsense and we get to something that's a little bit more post-partisan and we get to something that's a little bit more beneficial for the country than the hard left swinging or the hard right swinging that goes on right now. Okay. This is Brighton Gann, 6256.

14:48Hey, Anthony from Australia. I'm a fan of yours. Thank you. Listening to the rest of the policy at Open Books, I just started my first year studying at law school and I know you studied at Harvard. Any tips and advice? Yes. Go to your upperclassmen, second and third year law school. Try to find some friends in the upper class, maybe even have an advisor or student advisor and get copies of last year's tests. Totally legal to do that. Tests change all the time, but get copies of the tests so you can see what the professors think are important about what you're studying. If you're in law school and you've got 1500 pages to read and you start at page one and you read from page one to page 50, it's going to be a very hard time in law school.

15:35You have to reverse engineer what's important and you've got to work off a summary sometimes or maybe use AI to get the gist of what people think are important and study that. That's my recommendation and that's what I tried to do. And there were a lot less services available back in that day, but you've got a lot of services now. Take advantage of them.

15:57Anthony Scaramucci:Okay. Libetine, maybe. Instagram. What are your top three favorite historical periods to read about in any book recommendations? Well, listen, I've always got books around me, tons of books. I've been reading a lot about the Revolutionary War. I would say Atkinson's book about that war are phenomenal. I would say Pauline Meyer on the Declaration of Independence. She's now passed now, but she was a professor at Harvard, constitutional scholar at Harvard. Anything that she's written, I have read about that period of time. Other great period of time for me is the World War II. And I've read most of that stuff.

16:36H.W. Brands is coming out with a book on George Washington. It's coming out this spring. I would certainly recommend that to you. He's also written a book called Traitor to His Class about FDR, which I also think is a brilliant, brilliant book about the war and about getting through the Great Depression. So those periods of time are important for me because they really shaped America. And if America is one of the greatest countries in history, if not the greatest in terms of its economic prowess, its military footprint and general freedoms, I would say to you that those periods of time really shaped America.

17:14So those are my favorites there. let's keep going thank you for that question by the way instagram uh i'm sorry x this is uh x i a a web 3 i'm curious to know what your thoughts are on the next big shift in finance well it's crypto and it's tokenization that's the next big shift whether people like it or not and apparently there are like left-leaning economists that write yeah screeds against crypto peter shifts still out there hating on crypto. And I get all that, but the technology is going to transform the financial services industry. So it is crypto. So let's go there with crypto. I think that's going to be the big shift.

17:57Learn about that. Okay. I think it's very important for you to learn about it. And you don't have to invest in it, but you have to learn about it. Okay. Jack, Carlo, what impressed you when working with Mark Carney at Goldman early in both of your careers? Well, I actually didn't work with Mark, so I don't want to talk about that because he was actually on the investment banking side. I was on the asset management side. We were in a training class together. I know Mark a very, very long time. I really got to know him through the World Economic Forum more closely and with his time at the Bank of England when I was on both the Romney and the Trump economic teams in 2012 and 2016.

18:37And so what impresses me about him is he's kind. And what impresses me about him is that he has a vision for Canada and he's also a tough technocrat. And so he's not going to back down in a situation if his principles are anchoring him to that position. And so real leadership requires that. And I would say the best thing I could ever say about Mark Carney, he's very trustworthy. And so he says he's going to do something, he's going to do it. I think that's great for the Canadian people. And he's the right leader at the right time for Canada. So I wish him continued success. I've got the bit, you know, probably flattering myself by saying this, so forgive me, but I had the opportunity to speak to him at my wine party in Davos after his speech in Davos, which I think will go down historically as one of the best speeches rendered at the World Economic Forum.

19:32And pay close attention to him. He's a great role model. Okay, let's go to Wilson2394. Two questions. In today's world, if you had a 14-year-old and you wanted to give him and her the gift of judgment with all the fake info, with AI becoming increasingly hard to success, what lasting advice would you give them to navigate? Who are the three people in the financial and economic world when they speak, you listen? Okay, so let's talk about giving advice to kids. So you got to be careful. you don't want them to live your life you want them to live their life there's a lebanese uh poet by the name of gahil jabron it's probably from the turn of the 20th century early 20th century literature uh lebanese christian writing about children he said you could really only be the bow they're the arrow so you've got to just be firm in your guidance but when they leave you They're going to a place that you could never get to.

20:32It's not your place. It's their place. And so I think the philosophies and I think that we have to teach people is to follow their guts, follow their insights, follow their enthusiasms and their love of life and don't spend a lot of time judging them. I think that's probably the best advice I can give on three or four people. Well, for sure, Warren Buffett, Jamie Dimon, I think is probably one of the smartest people in the industry. I don't agree with everything that he says at all times. but when he's talking, I'm listening. And by the way, if I don't agree with him, I say, okay, he's smarter than me.

21:05Let me go figure out what he's thinking and why. And maybe that will influence my point of view. Ray Dalio, I think he's somebody that I always look up to. He's somebody that I think really has good insight on what's going on. There's so many others. Stan Drucker-Millier is more quiet. Ken Langone, a founder of Home Depot, who's now Langone Medical Center at NYU. Those are people I look up to and I talk to and listen when they're speaking. Okay. YouTube, Scott Cunda, 7VW. Can you explain the conflicting view of trade deficits and the overall deficit? I hear the tariffs have brought the overall deficit down, but the trade deficits are still big.

21:49Can you explain? Okay. I can explain. And so I want you to think about this from your own life. I trade deficit would be if you're buying something from China and you, you get the, you send them your money. They now have your money in their account. You have their goods. Did China buy anything back from you? Like, let's say they sold you an electronic. Did you sell them oil or did you sell them a car or something like that? And so the difference in the account between what you bought from China and what you sold to China is the trade deficit. Okay. And so that's the best way I can describe in the simplest terms, the trade deficit.

22:31The overall deficit is very different. You have tax revenues that are coming in and a result of which you are then using that money to spend on the military or resources or social spending or whatever it may be. And unfortunately those tax revenues are below what you actually want to spend. So you go into the capital markets and you borrow money from people to spend on top of that. And so as you do that, you start to accumulate a deficit. So you have an operating deficit, which is our annual deficit per year. And then you have an overall debt to the American people, which is now closing in on$40 trillion.

23:11So it sounds staggering, but it is manageable. And when you talk about tariffs, I'll just be very clear with you on tariffs. I think this is an important thing to say. They've marginally helped the deficit. They've brought in some revenues and marginally helped the deficit, but they've also hurt the industries and they've also hurt our manufacturing here in the United States. And so Wall Street Journal had a great article on this a few weeks ago talking about how they have actually hurt. because if you have a airplane, as an example, and Boeing's making that airplane here in the United States, well, 60 % of the components of the airplane are coming from overseas.

23:56So if you're taxing all of those components, you're really disrupting the supply chain in the US. You're not getting the effect that you would like. There are better things to do, enterprise zones, tax-free enterprise zones, things like that, I think would have been more successful. But that's the best explanation I can give you. Lynn Fleury, what is the most influential book that you've ever read? So most people are gonna say the Bible of the Bibles that I have read, the King James Version is probably the most influential. But other than that, I would say Aurelius' book, Meditations. I think that if you read Aurelius' book, Meditations, or any of the Ryan Holiday books around stoicism, I think you'd be very well grounded.

24:43You'd also have to read, in my opinion, the Iliad and the Odyssey. Everything's in there. If you really want me to be philosophical, you read the Iliad, the Odyssey, Aurelius, and Shakespeare, and you've got yourself a liberal arts education, and you'll be very well grounded in a lot of different things. Okay, let's keep going. If you could pass Change 1 law, what would it be, and why? Pass Spona from Instagram. So listen, I'm going to be greedy here. I'm going to give you two laws. Number one, I would end Citizens United. Number two, I would end gerrymandering in the United States, and I would force these people to leave their adversaries in their districts so that they could compete on ideas as opposed to be in a gerrymandered system where the politicians are picking the voters.

25:36I think if you're in a true democracy, the voters should pick the politicians, not the other way around. So those are the two. As an obvious, the Civil War is a major gap in my historical. This is from Joel Wendy on my historical knowledge. Can you recommend a couple of good books on the subject? You know, I'm going to recommend one book to you, sir. Okay.

25:59Anthony Scaramucci:And it's a short book, but I have it here. And it's Lincoln at Gettysburg. And it's written by Gary Wills about 35 years ago. And read that book. After you're done reading that book, take a deep breath. And you could read Bruce Catton's books about the Civil War and things like that. But take the book on Lincoln at Gettysburg. It's a short book. You read that, and I think you'll be well ahead of the game. UCSFI at X. How did you miss all the negative character judgment of Trump when you supported him? Very good question. I didn't. I didn't miss it. I didn't miss it. I mean, you know, when you're in the political world, you got to take the good and the bad.

26:39I didn't miss it. I didn't think it was going to go ballistic or as crazy as it's gone. People don't remember this and they want to attack me for it and they have the right to do that and that's fine. But he started out as a Democrat. He always spoke for 20 years that I knew him as a centrist Republican. The fact that he went this sort of alt-right proto-fascism is something that did surprise me. A lot of people say, oh, no, I saw that, and I knew he was going to do that and all this other thing. And so they're obviously smarter than me. But I guess what I took into play was he was a 70-year-old guy going to the presidency, had some reasonable success in his career, and I thought he was going to try to take the country in a postpartisan way.

27:28I got that wrong. But at least I was smart enough and honest enough to admit that and tell people that. So it can't be anything more than upfront with you about it, but I did get it wrong. Okay, that's a wrap on today's Q &A episode of Open Book. I'm reading all your comments. I love hearing from you guys. Keep sending in the questions. Make sure you subscribe, please, to see the latest episodes and also to be able to submit the questions. If I miss something, which of course I did, we'll be back next month with another round of questions. Until then, let's keep the conversation going. and I'll see you next time.