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2:23Hello and welcome to Sleep Money, your guide to the business and finance news of the week. I'm Felix Salmon of Axios. No, I'm not. I'm not of Axios anymore. I am sitting on my European sojourn. I'm Felix Salmon of absolutely nowhere except for Slate Money. I am here with Emily Peck of Axios. Emily, how's Axios these days?

2:47Felix Salmon: Well, it's not the same without you, Felix. Hello. I'm here with Elizabeth Spires of New York Times and other places.

2:54Elizabeth Spiers: Hello. And we are going to talk about Jeff Bezos, of course, and his wedding. because that's the main news of the week. But also we're going to talk about the central bank and whether it makes sense to Donald Trump to say who the new Fed chair is going to be long in advance. We have a Slate Plus segment on blue-collar workers and training them up and filling this new manufacturing workforce. But first, we are going to have a statement on New York City, which is where we all live and work and what just happened in the election here. So it's all coming up on Slate Money.

3:37Okay, so two-thirds of slate money is New Yorkers. Emily, you don't count. Sorry, you live in Westchester. But Elizabeth, you live in New York. Am I allowed to ask you whether you voted for Zoran Mamdani?

3:51Elizabeth Spiers: Sure, I did. I ranked him first. I've also worked with him on a campaign years ago. I ranked the similarly named Zellner Myrie first. But he, I think, came like 20th or something. I don't think anyone even noticed he was running. But this election of Zoran Mamdani, which, let's be clear first, that he hasn't actually become the mayor-elect. He's just won the Democratic primary. But this is a city which is overwhelmingly Democratic. It's like 6 to 1, I think. We'll talk about whether left-right politics manages to overlay on city politics. But the big reaction to this, especially among the New York wealthy, is this is terrible.

4:32He's a socialist. New York is a capitalist city. Socialism and capitalism are like cats and dogs. They can't get along. And so therefore, we need to panic and run into the sea because we've elected a socialist ODA. Yeah. I feel like there's just a bunch of logical and weird conceptual leaps that are sort of embedded in that logic that don't make a lot of sense. But Emily, do you kind of understand where these people are coming from? I mean, yes and no.

5:03Felix Salmon: I have so many thoughts here, but I'll try to be organized. First of all, Mamdami does call himself a democratic socialist. So I think the people that have commented on Wall Street, the Dan Loeb's and other hedge funders, whoever, who are freaking out and calling this guy a communist socialist. I mean, they're... And Catherine Wilde, who's not just a big hedge fund. She's, you know, she kind of represents the New York City business community. And she's like, everyone is terrified. Yeah. So, I mean, he has socialist in his descriptor. So maybe that is just at a very basic level what's going on.

5:37Felix Salmon: And some of his policies, they don't like the idea of freezing rents, which is one of his policies. And they don't like the idea of, I guess, city owned grocery stores, which I mean, who cares? I saw the owner of Gristides, which is like a supermarket in New York City that I think is well past its prime, is my understanding. Like even when I lived in the city, like no one cares about Gristides. He was like, we'll take Gristides out of the city. And it's like, okay, great. No one cares. There's lines at Trader Joe's. That's John Katsimatidis.

6:09Elizabeth Spiers: He's also run for mayor before. as a Republican. But yeah, I saw that and thought, oh no, the shittiest grocery store chain in New York might leave. It's like, can you take key food with you?

6:21Felix Salmon: Right. But I will say I've been thinking a lot about New York City real estate the past few days because the FAIR Act, which we've talked about on the podcast recently, went into effect. That's the banning of the broker fees for rental apartments. And I've been thinking about this because rents have gone up a bit since that happened because that's another conversation. Anyway, I was talking to friend of the pod, Jonathan Miller, about the Manhattan rental market and Manhattan real estate. And the Manhattan rental market, the city real estate market, is already socialist. Apparently, 75 % of Manhattan real estate stock is rentals, Jonathan was telling me.

6:57Felix Salmon: And of that 75%, about 75 % is rent stabilized, which is socialist market manipulation, I guess, if that's your kind of point of view. This is right. And when Mandani is running on the policy of freeze the rent, what he is not saying is that everyone who rents gets their rent frozen. He's saying that if you are in a rent-stabilized building, then the Rent Guidelines Board is going to recommend a 0 % rate, rent increase. And they have done this before, and the world failed to come to an end. Yeah, it's like this isn't communism writ large. This isn't like the USSR. It's okay. We're not all moving to the Stalinist collectives.

7:35Yeah, but let me just also mention a couple of things which are germane here. The first of which is that there's a world of difference between rent-stabilized apartments on the one hand and rent-controlled apartments on the other. Rent-controlled apartments are a tiny minority. There are very few of them left anymore. Those are the ones which you hear about, people living in this rent-controlled apartment on the Upper West Side, and they pay$400 a month for a three-bedroom or something. right that's much more you know caricature socialist and there's no way that we're getting more rent control departments the other thing about rent stabilized departments is that most of the time when you move into a rent stabilized apartment the landlord can pretty much set the rent to whatever they want it's only like once you're in there the amount that they can increase it is limited.

8:25So landlords are basically, you know, it's not that bad given the turnover in rentals. Yes, there are people in New York who've been renting the same place for decades. But you know, those one to 3 % rent increases per year add up over time. And there aren't that many people who are in rent stabilized apartments that are paying way, way under market.

8:51Felix Salmon: I'm just saying, there's already controls over the rental market in Manhattan. This isn't like you're coming into this. Everyone says, you know, socialism is coming to Wall Street. It's like, well, actually, New York City is pretty liberal and has some progressive laws to start with. We're not coming into some like capitalist Ayn Rand paradise or something.

9:09Elizabeth Spiers: The problem here is that a lot of these people would view anything vaguely progressive as a threat to capitalism overall. and they're not differentiating between Soviet-style communism and the sort of Nordic model of democratic socialism. And they're not really educating themselves about it either. So there's a kind of level of hysteria right now that is wildly disproportionate to anything that Mondami could possibly do or accomplish as mayor. Yeah, exactly. The New York City mayor, in some ways, is a very powerful job. New York City mayor, in other ways, is not. And when he's like, we're going to raise taxes on billionaires and all of this kind of stuff, it's like, you know, you're not, you know, you need to work with Albany, you don't need to work with New York State, you need to work with the governor, you need to work with the city council, which, you know, we have to remember, there's a large chunk of the city council comes from relatively conservative outer borough districts where everyone drives cars and owns their home and that kind of stuff.

10:11So like, realistically, his ability to turn New York City into some kind of socialist paradise is extremely limited. What he can do is what the likes of Eric Adams and Mike Bloomberg and the rest have, you know, also been up for, which is up zoning certain areas of Midtown and, you know, making increasing density and building more and that kind of thing. And he said he's on board with this agenda, this kind of Yimby, city of yes agenda. And I guess the thing that I always come back to is the old Fierro LaGuardia quote about there's no Republican or Democratic way of taking out the trash. Like city mayors are judged on things that are not the left-right spectrum.

10:56And right now with Trump as president, everything has become polarized and everything becomes viewed through this. Are you left? Are you right? Are you MAGA? Are you socialist? But city politics, I just feel, doesn't lend itself to that. And the people who are saying, oh, my God, we can't have a socialist mayor of a capitalist city have obviously never lived in London, right? I mean, when London got its mayor, when was it, like 20 years ago? The guy who swept in as the first mayor twice was this guy, Ken Livingston, who I feel pretty comfortable saying is significantly to the left of Zoran Mandani.

11:32And the city of London was fine. and London's status as a financial center was unaffected.

11:37Elizabeth Spiers: Well, also, you know, he's being portrayed by people who are just not familiar with him as somebody who is, you know, has wild ideas about how to govern the city. And most of his proposals are fairly, they're either highly incremental or they're just not, you know, that radical. There are things that I think progressives would support anyway. But he won in part because he focused very heavily on the cost of living in New York, which is important to working class people. So some of his programs like free buses, those are things that if you're struggling or you're unemployed, immediately help you.

12:12Elizabeth Spiers: And I think typically when centrist Democrats talk about affordability, they tend to talk about high minded policies or things that are a little bit more long term. So things like tax credits. But if you're really struggling, that doesn't help you much. And his focus on real estate in particular is important because New York City has become increasingly too expensive for younger people to move here in particular. And that really affects the overall labor force in a way that actually these big business people should be thinking about. But they're more focused on the fact that he wants to slightly raise taxes on people making more than a million dollars a year.

12:46So, okay, I have two mild pushbacks to this. One is, yeah, free buses sound great, but buses are run by the MTA. Buses still sound bad, let's be honest. Oh my God, I love buses. I'm such a bus fan. I can tell you as someone who just spent three weeks in Strasbourg, I was taking buses every day. When buses are done well, buses are incredible. And this is one of the lessons which we can learn from London is, you know, implemented congestion pricing. It put the money from congestion pricing into increasing the buses. If the buses come every two minutes and if they have dedicated bus lanes, oh my God, it's a game changer.

13:22But let me stop standing over buses for a second. And, you know, the politics of making buses free, which, by the way, was a really good idea 10 years ago because buses got slowed down by everyone's fumbling through their purse to find the right change to pay for the fare on the bus. It makes much less sense now that everyone just taps in with their phone or their card because you don't get that savings of time. But also, like, the MTA is run by the governor, not by the mayor. The mayor has almost no ability to do this.

13:51Elizabeth Spiers: I feel like Zoran was an assembly member. he piloted a free bus program with Albany. I'm pretty sure he understands that dynamic. It's a great policy to run on. I'm just saying he's not going to do it, is all I'm saying. He actually did a free bus program. Elizabeth, I am going to enter into a bet with you right now that if Zoran Nandani becomes mayor after, what do you say, 18 months, New York City buses will not be free.

14:20Felix Salmon: And then what? Then you pay for Elizabeth's bus rides for a year or something? I'll pay all of your bus fares for a year. You have to tell me how much you pay in bus fares for a year. And then if you lose the bet, you have to pay me that much in cash. Okay. All right. All right. He's not going to win the general election, I don't think. I think he is. He will romp away with the general election because the anti-Mamdani vote is going to be split three ways between the Republican candidate, the incumbent, and Andrew Cuomo, who's also going to continue running on some, what's it called, the fight and deliver party?

14:53Elizabeth Spiers: Well, also there were a lot of people who wrote checks to Cuomo just because they thought he had it in the bag. There was a quote from a guy in one of the follow-up stories yesterday where he said, look, I was not enthusiastic about Cuomo, but everybody just thought it was going to be a landslide. And if you're a big business person, you want to give money to whoever you think is going to be in office. I think the appeal of Mondani is genuine. when I think people are really embracing him, including some of the constituencies that would normally embrace, you know, a more centrist candidate, and partly because Adam's popularity rate is like 20%.

15:29Elizabeth Spiers: Everybody hates him. Nobody really likes Cuomo. And they feel like he ran a campaign where he just, he ran on a sense of entitlement. You know, he wasn't visible. He relied on super PAC money to do all the campaigning for him via ads and other things. And I think people notice that. They think that he just swooped in and thought that he was going to get it because he has name ID and he'd been governor. So there's not a good alternative, especially if you just really do want to vote for a Democrat.

15:57Felix Salmon: Felix was saying before, I mean, New York City is very Democratic, but I mean, I lived there when Giuliani was first elected. He's a Republican, famously. And he was so popular. I mean, people just loved him. Well, he was popular because of 9-11. And then he was popular when he was elected. He was popular when he was elected. I worked for the city when Giuliani was the mayor. And well, I mean, everyone who worked for the city that was political appointee obviously quite loved him a lot. And there was just a lot of like, he's going to fix New York and he's going to save New York. And Bloomberg, also not a Democrat, was elected three times.

16:33Felix Salmon: Is that right? Did he change the law and allow himself to be elected? Yeah. So I'm just saying, I don't know enough about MomDommy, just being very honest. I looked at these economic policies. I don't know. But New York City gets portrayed as this big blue liberal place. But in my experience, when I lived there, they elected Republicans super a lot of the time. And, you know, and Manhattan isn't, I mean, and New York City isn't just Manhattan and some areas of Brooklyn. It's like Staten Island's pretty conservative. There's pockets of Queens that are, you know, where Trump is from are very conservative.

17:08Felix Salmon: So it'll be interesting to see how that all plays out. And we know in the presidential election that more New Yorkers voted for President Trump as well. So I feel like it's not sort of interesting to see. The first thing that we need to know is that, historically speaking, most of the time, nowadays, with a bunch of asterisks, the real election for mayor is the Democratic primary. Like, in general, in New York, if you're electing a member of Congress or something like that, the real election is the Democratic primary. Now, for mayor, it's a little bit more complicated. As you say, Republicans have won in the past.

17:44But the fact is that the turnout in the general election for mayor is roughly the same. It's not vastly bigger than the turnout in the Democratic primary. And so if you just look, if everyone who voted for Mandani this time around just continues to vote for him in the general, and everyone who didn't vote for him kind of splits their vote between Cuomo and Adams and maybe Curtis Sliwa, there's just no way the mathematics pens out. In order to get elected mayor as a Republican, you need to be someone like Bloomberg, Giuliani, Fiorella LaGuardia, someone like that who can just captivate the entire city.

18:25There is no one like that in this race.

18:28Felix Salmon: Would you have Bloomberg captivated the city? I mean, that's a funny thing. Yeah, he really did. It's so bizarre. Yeah. He totally did.

18:34Elizabeth Spiers: Well, also the thing, though, is that even a Republican candidate who ends up mayor in New York City would be considered a kind of centrist Democrat anywhere else. And Bloomberg was a Democrat and he re-registered as Republican because it was the only way that he could get into the race. Even Giuliani pre-MAGA was not somebody who you would ID as a Republican in a red state. So I think the dynamics here, Curtis Lee was the only true, you know, what we understand to be MAGA style Republican right now in this race. I mean, Adams is famously quite close to Trump because of all of the, you know, pardoning activity and whatnot.

19:09But also because Adams is so spectacularly corrupt that he lost all of his matching funds from the Electoral Commission, which is eight to one in New York. So like his ability to wage a campaign is severely hollowed in any case. The bottom line question I've been having is all these Wall Street people freaking out, speaking out.

19:32Felix Salmon: Does any of that actually matter? And like pulling out even more, I was thinking like, you know, before Trump was elected the first time and then the second time also, there are all these like economists and like different business types speaking out against against him, Donald Trump. I don't think any of that matters. I don't even understand why people are covering it to this. Am I wrong?

19:52Elizabeth Spiers: It's because it's the people speaking. You know, it's like they're going to be covered no matter what they say. Yeah, I do think any reasonable business person with more than two brain cells to rub together will give it a wait and see attitude. You know, but the ones threatening the most loudly to immediately pack up and move to Florida are people who've said that before. And, you know, it's like, well, do it, man. They did. I mean, a bunch of them did do it in the pandemic. But if you didn't move to Florida in the pandemic and, you know, your marginal tax rate, if you are pulling down a million dollar income and you live in New York City, is already on the order of 50 percent.

20:29And in Florida, it's there's no state or local income tax at all.

20:33Elizabeth Spiers: So also don't all those people claim residency in Florida. So but yeah, but this is the thing, like if the delta in marginal tax rates was enough to make you move to Florida, then you would have moved to Florida in the pandemic. The election of Zoran as mayor is not, number one, I don't think he's going to be able to push through some massive, significant tax hike. But even if he does, eh, you know, we've seen it all before.

20:58Felix Salmon: Yeah, I don't think New York loses out even if a few more millionaires leave. I think it's probably going to be OK.

21:43We'll see you next time. every bit of potential revenue. Go to ShipStation.com and use code AUDIO and get 30 days free. Therapy's biggest impact doesn't show up in some dramatic breakthrough. It shows up in the smallest moments. You bite your tongue instead of escalating. You put your phone down instead of firing off that text. You say what you actually mean instead of what would hurt someone else the most. Nobody applauds those moments, but they quietly change your life. That's what growing feels like. and that's exactly what Grow Therapy is here for. Grow is therapy that works, covered by insurance.

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23:37T's and C's apply. Let's move on. What's next on the agenda? Next up is America's next top central banker, starring Donald Trump, with appearances from Scott Besant. And Kevin Walsh. And two Kevins. Two Kevins. And Kevin Hassett. And all manner of people. Yeah, okay. So this is apparently back in the news again. And this is actually a kind of important story in that it has had a visible effect on the value of the dollar. And that's a big, important number. The idea is, and this is a trial balloon that was sent up by Scott Besant during the general election campaign, which Stan Druckenmiller said was a completely moronic thing.

24:26And Stan Druckenmiller is like Besant's rabbi, basically, in the hedge fund world. And Besant kind of walked it back. But now apparently it's back on the table, which is Trump does not fire Jay Powell. But what he does do is he tells everyone well in advance who the new Fed chair is going to be when Powell's term is up. And what that means is that the markets start listening much more to whatever the air presumptive start saying than they do to what Powell is saying. because they know that the air presumptive is the guy who's actually going to be running monetary policy pretty soon. There are deep problems with this, but I'm going to let Elizabeth come out with the first and then we'll just pile on with even more.

25:15Elizabeth Spiers: One is that it just creates a lot of uncertainty about what's going to happen. And you have two competing voices talking about what's going to happen with interest rates and how they plan to attack inflation if it explodes again. let's start with that one because it's kind of the whole point of doing it right is to have two competing voices but i'm not sure that is actually what would happen right like let's say he comes up with kevin watch who's on the fomc board right now kevin wash is very unlikely to suddenly start publicly disagreeing with all of his colleagues on the fomc and with jay powell in particular because he understands how these decisions get made.

25:57And they're all, you know, FOMC decisions jointly made by 12 different people. And his job, if and when he does become the chair, is to be as collegial and friendly as possible to the rest of the FOMC, that they will vote the way that he wants them to vote. And if he starts throwing bombs in the months running up to becoming chair and starts saying the FOMC is terrible and it's doing the wrong thing and power is a terrible chair, that's a really, really bad way to get in with all of your colleagues and to get them to listen to you when you become chair. And this applies, mutatis mutatis, to any other potential candidate as well, right?

26:37None of them want to completely alienate the very constituency that they're going to be in charge of once they become chair. I don't think that there would actually be a massive amount of disagreement between the presumptive and the incumbent.

26:53Elizabeth Spiers: Well, I think this is also why the people that are being floated have, a lot of them have said they're not interested in the job because they know that whoever Trump wants to put in that place is somebody who Trump wants just complete loyalty from and he wants to be able to dictate what the Fed does. But anybody who, you know, actually cares about that job knows that the Fed has to retain its independence and that will mean disagreeing publicly with Trump probably sooner rather than later. So it's kind of a thankless job for anybody who goes into that position now. Yeah, you're right.

27:25Felix Salmon: The Federal Reserve Board with the seven presidential appointees is the last independent agency standing right now. Trump has basically dismantled all of the other independent agency board bodies like the NLRB, NACUA. CFPB. FCC, FTC, He's fired Democratic appointees, even though - The Smithsonian. Yeah. Yeah. So many places. Kennedy Center. He's fired the Democratic appointees on all these different so-called independent boards and agencies. And even after it was challenged, went all the way up to the Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court said, that's totally fine. The president controls the executive branch and he can do that.

28:12Felix Salmon: It was like a pocket ruling, but they still said, we won't do this to the Fed because The Fed, the Federal Reserve is unique and it's very different, which it actually really, I mean, it is a little different because they have these appointees from the regional banks, which is different. Those aren't presidential appointees, but it's not that different. It's different, Emily, in that unlike all of these other places, it actually funds itself. And, you know, like the way that Trump manages to control most of these other agencies is by basically saying, well, I'm just going to not pay you any money.

28:46And then you're screwed. Whereas he can't do that with the Fed because, in fact, it works the other way around with the Fed. Most of the time, the Fed pays the government money rather than the government paying the Fed money.

28:55Felix Salmon: Sure. But just the point is, the Fed is the only one that sort of seemed immune from Trump's actual takeover. And I think you're right, Felix, the shadow Fed chair idea that is, I guess, back now is not going to be as effective as he's been with the other agencies where he just went in, fired everyone that Biden appointed and either put in his own people or didn't even bother to put in new people to either neuter or just take control. And then like Trump has been constrained with the Federal Reserve. He's been told and he has pulled back, you know, from taking those similar steps because he knows how important the Federal Reserve is to the money, to the market.

29:35I think one of the really great things that Jay Powell has done is he's accepted all the criticism. He's been very sort of, you know, grown up about it, hasn't hit back. This goes back to Trump's first term. And the thing he hasn't said is, look, these decisions are collective decisions. This is the collective decision of 12 different people. It's not just me setting rates. You can call me too late, Powell, or whatever you want to nickname me, but it's not about me. But he hasn't said that, right? And so what he's done is he's basically taken, he's been like the Fed scapegoat. He's the guy who attracts all of the ire and all of the vitriol from Trump, which ends up with everyone else on the board getting none of it.

30:23You know, I'm sure that, you know, the president of the New York Fed has, you know, who's always on the board, you know, has voted with Powell every single time, but has never received a word of criticism from Trump because like he's one level down. down he's like a little bit invisible and so by kind of hiding the collective nature of the decision making powell has created this this body that is going to be able to continue to do what it's been doing and be independent even after he leaves it's a relatively strong body with like smart people who vote the way they're going to vote and who aren't going to change their votes just because like some trump appointee comes in his chair and so he's put himself and the board a very strong position and in such a strong position that really having any new chair or any shadow chair is not going to make really any difference, I think.

31:23Felix Salmon: The other thing that I've been thinking about is that maybe it is time to cut rates. Maybe Trump is correct because this is what the conventional wisdom is saying today as we're speaking. We have not seen tariffs show up in the inflation data really yet. And there are a lot of signs that demand is weakening and that the job market is kind of mid now. Mid is my new word of the day. Hiring is low. There's this troubling signals coming from the continuing unemployment claims. And maybe cutting rates would actually be fine. But Trump and his administration by like badgering Jerome Powell, calling him a numbskull and being unclear with tariff policy has made it really hard to go ahead and take that action.

32:15Yeah, you can't cut rates when you don't know whether and when the tariff inflation is going to show up. So long as Trump is like, well, all of these low tariffs are temporary and they all cut, they all suddenly kick in, in, you know, 30 days time, a massively higher rate, and then suddenly they're going to be massive. It's impossible to cut rates in the face of impending tariff hikes. You need to actually see the tariffs in place and not causing inflation before you can cut rates. And right now we haven't seen them in place, so we don't know.

32:54Elizabeth Spiers: Well, so the one person who has suggested that maybe rates should be cut a little bit is Christopher Waller, who is one of Trump's people he's considering. And I think entirely because of that. But Waller's not recommending some drastic change. You know, he's talking about slow incremental cuts. And I think Trump would happily, you know, want to go back to a Zerp environment. And there's nobody on the Fed Board of Governors who wants that.

33:20Felix Salmon: I miss Zerp. We can talk about how special that time was. And we didn't realize it. I didn't realize it sitting at my cushy online internet job. I feel like someone has a big Zerp book out or is writing a big Zerp book. How Zerp changed everything. It did. And then now it's over. Time when we were all drunk at the punch bowl.

34:27We'll be right back. some dramatic breakthrough. It shows up in the smallest moments. You bite your tongue instead of escalating. You put your phone down instead of firing off that text. You say what you actually mean instead of what would hurt someone else the most. Nobody applauds those moments, but they quietly change your life. That's what growing feels like, and that's exactly what Grow Therapy is here for. Grow is therapy that works, covered by insurance. Sessions average$21 with insurance, and some pay as little as$0 depending on their plan. There are no subscriptions, no long-term commitments.

35:03You just pay per session. Grow connects you with thousands of high-quality licensed therapists across the U.S. offering both virtual and in-person sessions nights and weekends. You can search by what matters, like insurance, specialty, identity, or availability. And you can book a therapy session in minutes and begin in as little as two days, not the national 48-day average. See if you could pay as little as$0 for therapy in seconds at growtherapy.com slash ACAST. That's growtherapy.com slash ACAST. growtherapy.com slash ACAST. Availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan. Talking about punch bowls and people getting drunk, Emily, if you were invited to Jeff Bezos' wedding,

35:54Felix Salmon: how much would you drink? Wow, that's a good question because I think I would be tempted to drink all the drinks because it would be fun and there'd be all different kinds and I'd be like, wait. I would probably be very high quality. Very high quality. And then I would want to eat all the food too. This happens to me. I get unleashed at these weddings. But I would try to rein it in because you want to not forget the memorable experience of attending the Bezosises wedding. So it's a delicate dance. And we are going to call them the Bezosises, right? I will. I'll be calling them the Bezosases. So yeah, let's get into this.

36:28Felix Salmon: Let's get into the Bezosas union. It started earlier this week. Everyone headed out to Venice. I think I read more about this than any other topic for today's show. So I don't know. I'm sorry. I know monetary policy is important, but really the Bezosases had a phone party on their yacht and it looked actually fun. Every picture of Jeff Bezos and his wife-to-be, or she might already be his wife. I also read in page six that they had already gotten married in the U.S. before heading over to Venice for their nuptials. Anywho, they look like they're having the best time. Slate even ran a piece that was like, I know, evil billionaire, blah, blah, blah.

37:09Felix Salmon: But Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez look genuinely happy and in love. And like, I love their love. This was a piece in Slate. and I agree. Elizabeth, you agree?

37:19Elizabeth Spiers: They seem happy. I'll give it to them or they're just very good at pretending to be gleeful in front of cameras. But the thing that sort of stands out to me about the wedding is how much of it feels of a piece with the sort of gaudiness that's the dominant aesthetic right now. It's sort of like Mar-a-Lago chic, I guess. Like the fake boobs for back in, tight dresses, like gold. The stealth wealth is out. Understatement is out. Connoisseurship is out. Bling is in. Rent out an entire fucking Italian city for your wedding is in. Bring your mega yacht to Venice and have a phone party is in. Wear, you know, bra to the inauguration.

38:01Yeah, it's all of a muchness.

38:03Elizabeth Spiers: Invite all the Kardashians. Invite all of the Kardashians. Yeah, and just YOLO your multi-billionaire status and be like, there is literally no amount of money that I can spend that will make any dent in the amount of money I have. So just live your best life and do whatever, you know, a six-year-old dreams that they would do if they had all of the money in the world. The slate piece kind of had a noted that the invite to the wedding looked like it had been made with Microsoft clip art. It does. It sort of does. Yeah, because they don't care. Because the whole, like, we are very sophisticated people and we want to show how sophisticated we are.

38:44Neither of them has any desire. This is the wonderful thing. A whole part of that signaling of sophistication is designed to create a certain degree of social status. And Bezos and Sanchez have basically single-handedly created an entire echelon of social status that is based entirely on being the Bezos's successes, you know? And that is the highest level. And so they get to do whatever they want because it isn't, you know, I feel like no one has occupied that role since Queen Victoria, you know? It's like whatever Queen Victoria did automatically just became the thing that is the highest status.

39:25And they're like, well, now it's phone parties on the yacht, so eat it, snobs.

39:29Elizabeth Spiers: These are two people who may not be capable of that kind of, this sort of aesthetic sophistication that we're talking about. You know, Bezos is kind of interpersonally a little cringy. And you can see it in the texts from him to Lauren Sanchez. Some of them have been made public. There's one that was like, I love you, alive girl. And it's kind of enduring in a twisted way. It is. It's like it's genuinely uxorious. Quickly Googling. When he bought that massive mansion in Washington, D.C., which is very kind of, you know, staid and large and used to be a museum and it's kind of dull. Like that was back when he was trying to, you know, impress people in D.C.

40:09and live according to their rules and become a player according to the rules of D.C. And ever since he's met Sanchez, he's like, well, fuck that. I'm just going to do me. Axorious, excessively fond of or submissive to one's wife. Did you know that word, Elizabeth?

40:27Elizabeth Spiers: No. I'm sure I had to spell it in a spelling bee once, but I don't think I've ever used it.

40:34Felix Salmon: I don't think there's anything new here, actually. If you think back to the Reagan era, this is the same thing that happened back then. Being rich and tacky or whatever was all of a sudden, and again, there were shows like, this is dating. I was very young. There was Dallas and Dynasty, and there was Robin Leach, a gentleman who had a show called Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. And like tacky, big, rich was all like super in. And I think we are back there again with the Trumps and with the Bezezos. We're back where it's like we're not ashamed. We're really excited and proud to be rich. And we're going to do whatever we want.

41:09Felix Salmon: And everyone, this is fabulous. This is life. It's the return of conspicuous consumption. It's building a rocket that looks exactly like a penis going up into space. It's, yeah, just do you, Jeff. It's getting swole. and being incredibly superficially good looking. And, you know, it's like her look, she is leaning into the plastic second wife thing in a way that I've never seen anyone else do. And I mean, maybe like Kimberly Guilfoyle.

41:38Elizabeth Spiers: Well, it's funny because, you know, one of the people that I guess has been supportive of her is Anna Wintour. And Sanchez will show up to these very state events with, you know, very skimpy Kardashian-esque dresses. and so I am curious about the relationship between Wintour and Sanchez because those are two people I would never put together. No, I can totally see it because Anna understands the power of tacky, understands the power of glam. There has been a lot of Versace and Dolce & Gabbana and all of that kind of stuff in her pages over the years. It's an important part of fashion. It's not necessarily what she wears, but she understands its power and she understands its longevity and it's not going away.

42:25And can I just, you know, since this is a business podcast, mention that Prada is buying Versace. Prada, you know, the really, really boring, everything is black, everything is simple silhouettes, everything is basic. You know, like this ultra high-end luxury understatement brand is buying Versace. They get it. What's in the foam? In the foam party? Cristal Champagne, Emily. Really? Come on. You can't take my questions seriously? All of the foam is just like the foam that you get when you, you know, shake a bottle of Cristal Champagne and they just take a bunch of bottles of Cristal Champagne.

43:07There was a lot of foam in the picture.

43:09Felix Salmon: Did you see the pictures? It was a lot of foam. It did look fun. And then you could jump off the yacht into the water to wash off the foam. It seems like legitimately a good time. We should all have yacht-based foam parties at our wedding.

43:24Elizabeth Spiers: I feel like they should honeymoon in Ibiza. That feels like the right vibe for them. I feel like their entire life is one long honeymoon. They've been on honeymoon for the past two years, and they're going to be on honeymoon for the rest of their life. They're like, we don't even need to go back to our day jobs because we are the basis of this.

43:40Felix Salmon: This is what we want billionaires to do, right? I mean, Elon Musk, like he's on X all the time. He's posting, he's getting involved in our politics. What I want the billionaires to do is just be on yachts, covered in foam, taking insane pictures, like going to Venice, entertaining us with their tackiness, their gaudiness, their extraness, and just to stay out of other things. Like, this is what I want. I'm not saying Jeff Bezos actually is staying out of the other things. He is in the other things. He was at the inauguration, blah, blah, blah. We're not going to get into a whole thing about Amazon, I don't think.

44:17Felix Salmon: But this is what we want for the billionaires. We want them covered in foam and off of social media.

44:22Elizabeth Spiers: It's sort of like when, you know how people tell entertainers to stick to singing or whatever. I would like the billionaires to just stick to enjoying their wealth by themselves.

44:33Felix Salmon: Yes, covered in foam or like with a pie in the face like Rupert Murdoch.

44:50all right it's numbers round time i'll start why not my number is 1.2 million which is the number of dollars that motel 6 was paying tom bowdette every year and then motel 6 got acquired by a company called g6 hospitality and upon that acquisition tom bowdette was no longer being paid 1.2 million dollars a year so he's suing motel 6 for his 1.2 million dollars year. Do you know who Tom Bodette is or what he was being paid$1.2 million a year for?

45:31Felix Salmon: I think I know half. Tom Bodette appears on Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, the NPR news quiz show that comes out every Saturday. So he's like some kind of comedian. And I don't know why they would pay him that much money, though.

45:44Elizabeth Spiers: I think he was their spokesperson, right? Yep. You guys have managed to piece it together between it. He is the man whose voice apparently like there are commercials for Motel 6 and he says, quote, we'll leave the light on for you and that, him just saying we'll leave the light on for you is something for which he was historically paid $1.2 million a year.

46:07Felix Salmon: And I get like almost nothing for saying that drivers who switch to Progressive save up to...

46:15Felix Salmon: There's no justice in the world. You should just call up the good folks at Progressive and ask them if they will increase your payment to$1.2 million a year. See what they say.

46:25Elizabeth Spiers: I'll do that right after this. Elizabeth, what's your number? My number is nine, and that's the number of teeth a real Lububu is supposed to have. So this is from a story about Lububus are these kind of little doll figures that are sold at Popmart, which is a Chinese chain, and they've gone totally viral because of TikTok. And now there's a secondary market in trading them. And if you can get one, and they're lines out the door at Popmart every time they release a new edition, they're about 30 bucks. But people will pay insane amounts of money for limited ones. So now there's a whole phenomenon of fake ones called Lefoufous, or that's what people call them informally.

47:04Elizabeth Spiers: And now the Lefoufous, if they're crazy enough, are going for way more money than the original Lefoufous. I love that. I love the idea of a fake Lefoufou being worth more than the real one. I want this to happen in watches. I want this to happen in handbags. If it's a really good fake handbag, I want it to be worth more than the real thing. I amazingly knew what Le Bubu was because I went for the very first time this year, I went to Art Basel, the real one in Basel, the mothership. And the talk of Art Basel was that there was this limited edition Le Bubu that 250 of them got sold in the space of half an hour at the gift shop.

47:46And so, yeah, it's made it even to the highest echelons of the art world where they're selling Hockneys and Rothkos and stuff, but everyone is just rushing to buy their commemorative Lububu for 250 euros. I want one. They're really cute. I'm looking now.

47:59Elizabeth Spiers: A life-size version of one sold for more than 170 ,000 at auction. Wow.

48:04Felix Salmon: My number is so boring by comparison. I almost just want to like, do we have to do my number? I mean... Yeah, Emily, what's your boring number? Negative 44.2%. Is that how much something has fell down? Sorry, I just fell asleep. Yes, that is the decrease in job postings from federal contractors going back to 2020. They've declined by 44%. And this year alone, they're down by 15%. That is because the doge cuts have migrated to the private sector and big federal contractors. I'm talking about your Boeings, your Lockheed Martins, your UnitedHealth, your Booz Allens, your Honeywells. They are not hiring as many people because they don't have as much money to spend on hiring people because the White House has stopped spending all that money.

48:54Felix Salmon: So this is data from Indeed. They analyze their job listings. And while job listings are up from 2020 for everyone else, for these federal contractors, they are down. And this is what I was saying before. The job market has these like, there's bad stuff going on under the hood, as they say. We have a whole Slate Plus segment on this, which is for all that everyone wants to fill all these manufacturing jobs. They just can't find humans to fill them. We're going to talk about that on Slate Plus. But if you're not a Slate Plus subscriber, which of course you should be, thanks for listening. And thanks to Jessamyn Molly and Shana Roth for producing.

49:30And we'll be back next week with more Slate Money.

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