WWDTM: Austan Goolsbee

0:04From NPR and WBEZ Chicago, this is, wait, wait, don't tell me, the NPR News Quiz. I must be a dumb thing you said at a party because you can't stop thinking about me. I'm Bill Curtis. And here is your host at the Studebaker Theater at the Fine Arts Building in Chicago, Illinois, Peter Sagal. Thank you, Bill. Thank you, everybody. Thank you so much. We have such a useful show for you today because we are going to be talking to an absolute rock star of the economics world, Austin Goolsbee. Now, he last appeared on our show to explain tariffs back in 2018 and compared them at the time to unclogging your kitchen sink with an explosive.

0:51Now, I don't know enough to tell you if that was accurate, but immediately after that, he was put in charge of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. So, we are going to wait for him to come on with an appropriate metaphor for this situation. But in the meantime, we want to hear from you. The number to call is 1-888-WAIT-WAIT. That's 1-888-924-8924. Let's welcome our first listener contestant. Hi, you're on Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me. Hi, this is Jen Ainsley calling from New York City. I'm in Harlem. You're in Harlem, New York City. Well, that's fabulous. That's a great neighborhood. What do you do there?

1:27I'm an executive admin to the president of a luxury fitness company. A luxury fitness company? I'm just imagining what the culture and the offer is. must be like? Does everyone wear spandex all the time? And do you have meetings while people are like on their exercise bikes? Oh, absolutely. Do you ever just want to come in wearing baggy pants and just sit there and eat yodels? I won't tell about the secret snack closet that I have. Okay. Well, it's great to have you with us, Jen. Let me introduce you to our panel this week. First up, he's a reporter for The Washington Post, where he writes the fabulous Style Memo newsletter.

2:09It's Shane O 'Neill. Well, hello, Jen. How are you? Hi there. Hi, Shane. Hi. Next, you know her from her TikTok show, Boy Room. It's Rachel Koster. Hi, Jen. You sound strong. And an actor and writer who can be seen in the show Two Square on Thursday, April 24th at the UCB Theater in New York. It's Peter Gross. Hi. Hi. Hi, Peter. So, Jen, welcome to the show. You're, of course, going to play Who's Bill? This time we start the show with Bill Curtis performing for you. Three quotations from this week's news. Your job, of course, correctly identify or explain just two of them. Do that. You will win our prize.

2:46Any voice from our show you might choose for your voicemail. Ready to go? Very ready. Let's do it. Here we go. Your first quote is from a financial specialist giving his careful analysis of the economy this week. This is bonkers. everything went bonkers this week after president trump couldn't seem to make up his mind about what the tariffs the tariffs that's right this week the president continued his economic strategy of chaos and capriciousness with short breaks for insider trading the markets cratered recovered and then they cratered again the dow jones went in directions we didn't know it could It went up, it went down, it went left, then it went directly at you.

3:31The tariffs so far have been terrible for financial traders, consumers, farmers, basically everybody except people who make graphs. Great, great era for graphs. Were you guys freaking out all week? I have not invested at this time. I understand. I can't wait to have some money to put in there when things chill out. You keep your retirement account in like a half-filled-out frequent customer card for Starbucks. That's your investment. There's maybe 20 bucks in there. Yeah, I understand. Reports say that Trump decided to reverse himself on the tariffs after he saw people on Fox News saying the tariffs were really bad for the markets.

4:12He gets all his ideas from TV. That's why he insisted Don Jr. and Eric get separate bedrooms after he watched The White Lotus.

4:24I was waiting in TSA for 25 minutes today on the way here. Yeah. And so I started making small talk with some gentlemen with me. And the guy in front of me was like, oh, yeah, I work in finance. And I was like, oh, quite a week. And he went, well, when people buy or people sell, I still get a commission. And I was like, oh, my God, there's someone I can hate more than the TSA right now. It's never happened before. That's hilarious. Good for him. The tariffs remain. Prices will go up, and many Americans are stockpiling certain goods already. Among them, this is all true, European brands of cat food, seaweed.

5:03Ew! If you're buying European brands of cat food, you deserve to lose a ton of money. Absolutely. My cat won't eat anything but el jamón. Spanish Iberico cat food. Yes. I think you've never met my aunt. She would go absolutely broke buying your pink outfit. What's wrong with, like, I don't know, frisky Shiba? Yeah, exactly. I'll tell you what. Mittens, I'll tell you what. A lot. All right, Jen, your next quote is from a scientist in the news this week. Holy crap. That's the first time in 12 ,000 years that this species has howled. He was responding to the announcement that geneticists have brought back a long, extinct type of what?

5:47Dire wolf. Yes, the dire wolf is back.

5:54If you've never seen a dire wolf, just picture a wolf, but it's much bigger and never should have been brought back from extinction. They claim to have brought this extinct prehistoric animal, the dire wolf, back from extinction. It's news that has many Americans asking, can we shoot it? Now a direwolf is like bigger and stronger and more powerful than a regular wolf. Pretty much. How did it go extinct? Like, isn't that against the all of evolution? Well, here's the funny thing. So many animals went extinct around 12 ,000 years ago, which is when the direwolf apparently went extinct because we humans ate them, which is not the case with the direwolf.

6:33What happened with the direwolf, so many other predators went extinct because we ate their food. Basically, the last major mass extinction happened because of some human being going, are you going to finish that? Well, hopefully we can learn our lesson and eat these new dire wolves. Exactly. You have to say, well, why did they choose a dire wolf when there are really cool animals they could bring back, like the 12-foot tall giant sloth or the huge carnivorous, and these are very real, terror birds? I think they made a good choice. Scientists are cowards. I know. But they brought back, they did.

7:07They brought back the direwolf because of Game of Thrones, which featured direwolves rather prominently, made them famous. Guys, that show also had dragons in it. What are we thinking? Why can't they make more of the buff guy? Just some of my friends are asking. The one buff guy? I mean, I'm not sure, but I do not believe Jason Momoa is extinct yet. We could always go for a couple more. Okay. All right, Jen. Your last quote is from the New York Post. They're not looking for love. They're looking to file. The Post was writing about a new survey that suggests one in three singles have used a dating app to find someone to help them do what?

7:54Someone to file an accountant? Yes. They're looking for someone to help with their taxes on the dating apps. young people are flocking to the apps seeking not love but the opposite of love an accountant and if you happen to be an accountant or tax expert and your hinge date just showed up with a shoebox full of receipts she may not want you for your body you look so taxy I think boys are an incredible resource and if you're using dating for anything other than to learn information then you're missing part of the point they can be so helpful I just broke up with someone before we enter a recession.

8:35Do you know how many questions I'm going to have to send to my dad instead? That's such a bummer. You think boys are a good source of information? I think they're incredible. Girl, we know different boys.

8:47This information, the survey was from the dating app Hilly, which asked more than 2 ,000 users if they would look for a date who could help with their taxes. A third of them said yes. Also, another third, I guess not the same third, said they find people who do their own taxes sexier than people who hire an accountant, right? It's a little bit of a contradiction. So if you're on a date this weekend, the right thing to say is, well, I do my own taxes, of course, and I'd be happy to do yours, but you're too beautiful to need that. People who do their own taxes are also sexier because they're probably like in a lot of trouble with the law, which is always hot.

9:27If you're on the run, that is so... I mean, I know. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. I know that bad boys have always had an appeal to women. But you're telling me that a bad boy is someone who does his own taxes and might not have all the receipts? Yes. No, it's like you picture a guy who's like, listen, Rachel, I can't stay. I'm on the run. I killed three people in Idaho. Also, April 15th is coming up, but I have to finish my taxes. I don't mean to take air out of this, but like, is this, I mean, when I was waiting tables once, Once I went on a date with a customer I didn't like because I knew he had a hot tub.

10:02I mean, what's the difference here, you know? It all comes out in the wash in the end, right? Exactly. Bill, how did Jen do on our quiz? Well, she can check off a perfect score. Well done, Jen. Thank you.

10:25Right now, panel, it's time for you to answer some questions about this week's news. Shane, a new study should be encouraging to all the single folks out there. Well, being married, we all know, does enhance your happiness and well-being. It turns out you can get the same boost from what? Sherbert. You have to say it's true. I'm guessing you do, Shane. I don't know if that wasn't the result of a Sherbert. It's Talenti? Absolutely. No, not Sherbert. You can get the same boost of being married as having a pet? Yes, exactly right. All right.

11:03Researchers in Britain just found that the psychological benefit of owning a dog or cat is basically the same as what you get from marriage. And of course, pets would be way better than marriage if you didn't have to pick up your dog's poop. Or, I guess, if you did have to pick up your husband's. I mean, I've let my cat do my taxes for the last 10 years. I would never buy a human being European food. That's all I'm saying. You want Nutella, honey? Find another husband.

11:41Coming up, it's a collectible Bluff the Listener game. Call 1-888-WIT-WAIT-TO-PLAY. We'll be back in a minute with more of Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me from NPR.

11:56From NPR and WBEZ Chicago, this is Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, the NPR News Quiz. I'm Bill Curtis. We are playing this week with Peter Gross, Rachel Koster, and Shane O 'Neill. And here again is your host at the Studebaker Theater in Chicago, Illinois, Peter Sagal. Thank you, Bill. Thank you so much. Right now it is time for the Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me Bluff, the listener game. Call 1-888-WAIT-WAIT to play our game on the air or check out the pinned post on our Instagram page, at Wait, Wait, NPR. Hi, you're on Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me. Hi, this is Rachel from Maple Grove, Minnesota. Maple Grove, that's a suburb of the Twin Cities, right?

12:37It is. Yeah, and what do you do there? I work in HR technology. HR technology. technology. So yeah, it's like the good parts of HR. I don't have to deal with people, just computers. I see. So it's like, it's the best part of human resources because you're not dealing with any humans. Exactly. You just get to do the resources. So that's the best part. I get it. Okay. You work in R. Well, welcome to the show. Welcome to the show, Rachel. You're going to play the game in which you must try to tell truth from fiction. Bill, what is Rachel's topic? Collect them all. Who doesn't love a collection? Star Wars figurines, stamps, the still beating hearts of those you vanquish.

13:19Our panelists are going to tell you about a new collectible out there, one we hadn't heard of before. Pick the one who's telling the truth and you'll win our prize, the voice of your choice on your voicemail. Ready to play? Yep. Okay, first let's hear from Shane O 'Neill. Boomers traded baseball cards. Millennials traded Pokemon cards. Gen Z traded their childhoods for a lifetime spent on algorithmically driven social media platforms. But Gen Alpha has a new hobby, trading OG-san cards. What are OG-san cards? Why, they're trading cards featuring middle-aged men. Eddie Miyahara, the Secretary General of the Saidosho Community Council, was looking for a way to bridge the town's generation gap.

14:02The obvious solution? Create trading cards featuring local men. Incredibly, it worked. The Sidosho Community Council just can't meet the demand of local youth eager to trade Mr. Honda, a 74-year-old fire chief, for Mr. Takashita, an 80-year-old soba noodle maker. The most coveted card is Mr. Fuji, a 68-year-old former prison guard who has become so popular that local children are asking him for his autograph. As of now, there are no plans to expand the trading card game to include the town's middle-aged women, presumably because no female in Sidosho or the world would want to be involved in something this stupid.

14:43The kids in a town in Japan are collecting trading cards with the middle-aged men of the town on them. Your next collectible chronicle comes from Rachel Koster. After their Xbox exploded at a sleepover A group of 11-year-old boys from Syosset, New York Resorted to watching an old Sherlock's Home DVD Which caused a new obsession that is a huge mystery to their parents The six boys who attended Frankie Giovanni's 11th birthday party Have begun collecting tobacco pipes and smoking jackets Each boy has amassed dozens of velvet, silk, and satin jackets Their fresh new lifestyle has begun to interfere with their extracurriculars.

15:26Frankie missed his soccer game because he was weeping over the beauty of an Hermes handkerchief, said Rebecca Giovanni. Kevin wouldn't come down for his dino nuggets because he was in a bidding war for the jacket from Scarface, said Tony Farina's mother, Trish. The boys now eschew playground time to gather in their finest velvet suits, holding unlit pipes and discussing their bones growing weary, the turbulent market, and the long forgotten days of third grade. Boys collecting the accoutrement of the Edwardian era. Pipes and smoking jackets. Your last new collection comes from Peter Kroos. The latest fad to sweep rural America?

16:07Everyone's crazy for cheese wax. 11-year-old Celine Duchamp and her family moved to the small town of Coldwater, Ohio from Evron, France, where baby bell cheese, those little round red spheres of wax covered cheese, is made. She was tray homesick, so her classmates bought Celine 100 wheels of baby bell as a welcome gift. She gleefully gorged the cheese, and after the constipation cleared up, she thanked her new friends by stringing the used wax together to make them jewelry. Necklaces, hoop earrings, and clunky bracelets that would have made Mrs. Roper proud. In a conservative small town, the trend caught on with lightning speed, and soon everyone was collecting baby belt wax and making red plastic jewelry, hats, bags, and even dresses, which one girl wore to the spring dance this week where she was crowned queen.

16:51Kids in nearby towns have started doing it too, and it's led to a full-blown red wax panic. Parents are in an uproar, local politicians are furious, and a Presbyterian preacher got so angry he tried to forbid everyone from dancing, and wait a second, that's actually Footloose. All right. Somewhere out there, somebody is excited

17:16somebody's excited about a new collectible was it from shane o 'neill the kids in a small japanese town who are all collecting and trading the cards depicting the middle-aged and older men in their town with other stats in the back i presume from rachel costa a town in long island where a bunch of boys are all really into smoking jackets or from peter gross a town in ohio where everybody's collecting those wax rinds from little baby bell cheeses. Which of these is the story of a new collectible we read about in the news? You know, I think it has to be the baby bell wax. I just feel like that's something I would have done as like a 12 year old.

17:59So you can see yourself as a 12 year old just like going, mom, I just need more of that baby bell, throwing away the cheese, keeping the wax. Well, to bring you the real story, we spoke to a reporter covering it. The community center actually created the cards to be just collectible, but it was the kids who added the battling aspect. That was Andrew Corbley of the Good News Network talking about the collectible old man cards in the town in Japan. So even though Peter's idea was delicious and tempting, to me as well, sadly he was lying to you, and Shane was telling the truth. So sadly you didn't win, but you earned a point for Peter.

18:40and the right to go out and have some Babybel whenever you want it. Oh, good. Thank you. Well, thanks for playing. Take care. Bye-bye.

18:53And now the game we call Not My Job. Austin Goolsbee was chair of Barack Obama's Council of Economic Advisors and then he became a professor at the University of Chicago and in 2022 became the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. which we assume means he's in charge of finally winning the war with the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. We thought it would be a great time to hear from somebody who can tell us what the hell is going on. So Austin Goolsbee, welcome back to Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me. It's great to see you again. Great to be with you again. So I guess I'll just start with this.

19:26How was your week? It was a bumpy week, wasn't it? It was, a little bit, a little bit. This is a day or a week or a month or a year, or this is the life of the Fed. You know, the Fed was invented coming out of the panic of 1907. So we've been dealing with financial stability and market chaos and cleaning up messes for a long, long time. So as I said, you were named to be president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. What does that mean exactly? What do we do all day? Exactly. I still ask myself that question. There's five functions of the Fed. I kind of think of it as being on your hand. At the base is monetary policy.

20:16It's the opposable thumb. It's what separates us from the animals. And we have a research department. We go every six weeks or so to Washington, D.C. for the Federal Open Market Committee. The shades come down. There's a giant table, and they go around the room. and it's kind of, I don't know, it's kind of paradise if you're an econ nerd. Let me interrupt. So I understand that there are 12 Federal Reserve banks and some of them, some of you presidents, get to be in that open markets committee. And that's like this weird arcane thing where you meet and everybody stands outside like you're naming a new pope.

20:53There's no pope and there's no flyers. But other than that, yes, that's pretty much how it is. Is Ray fines in it because he was so good at it. And then what always happens is the head of the Federal Reserve comes out and he announces that if you're going to raise or lower or leave interest rates alone. Yeah, pretty much. Now, everybody sits around the table. There are boards of, the board of governors are political appointees and they're at the Washington D.C. Fed. And then 12 of the 19 people around the table are from the 12 Reserve Banks. The Chicago District's kind of heart of the Midwest.

21:29It's most all of Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan. I feel a little regional pride. Do you guys get into like rivalries? Like, you know, you start trying to learn majorly. Like, like, give me an example of like how you, how you guys, like how you would talk trash with like the head of the Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank. Yeah. The head of the Atlanta Federal Reserve is Rafael Bosick. He's an old friend of mine. And he was in fact, the guy that yeah but he's not here man like say something so you talk about him when i was applying for the job actually he's the first guy i called i said what do you do all day you know tell me about this job um i try when i go to make my statement i try every meeting to come with some receipts about why we're the greatest district in in america like that something on the order of 90 percent of the pumpkins grown in America are grown within a 100 mile radius of Peoria, Illinois.

22:30And that's insane. So if we have a meeting, if we have a meeting around Halloween, you bet I'm trotting that one out. Oh man, Austin's going on about the pumpkins again. There's no question. All right. I have no problem with that. Can I ask a personal question? You may. Go ahead, please. Mr. Goolsbee, I'm sorry. I'm sure you're tired of people asking this, but just in light of the tariffs and everything that's happened this week, should I buy or sell my Beanie Babies?

23:02Please say buy. It's all about the price. What can you get for them? Exactly. Well, it's also an emotional commitment. We did in fact want to talk to you about what's going on. You may remember that when you joined us back in 2018, we asked you if you could explain what tariffs were and how they worked. And you gave us this wonderful metaphor of using a tariff to fix your economy is like using an explosive to clear a clogged drain and that you may get good results. And my Aunt Trina's lasagna. Exactly. It was amazing. And so, so if your Aunt Trina's lasagna was sufficient to explain the relatively low tariffs that were, that President Trump was putting in place then, what would be adequate to explain what he's doing now.

23:47Well, look, at that last, the last time we talked about tariffs, I forgot to give my Aunt Tarina any warning that I had talked about. All her friends began calling her up. And they said, is it true your lasagna? She was like, I thought it was a pot roast. But she did basically. Oh, that's a huge mistake. I mean, those are two. If you're looking at a pot roast recipe and lasagna comes out, you need to read that recipe. But now, I mean, instead of, I'm guessing, and maybe you can't speak about it because of your position now, but I'm guessing like instead of Antrina's lasagna being stuck in the pipes, now it's Antrina.