923 - The Banks Are Out of Money feat. Dave Weigel (4/7/25)
Semafor reporter Dave Weigel returns to the show to look at the political angles to Trump’s tariff regime and the global economic shocks. We discuss the various attempts to backfill justifications, responses from GOP and Democrats, and how this is all somehow about wokeness and masculinity or something. We also discuss last week’s special election in Wisconsin, and what it can tell us about Trump (and Elon)’s strength going forward.
Find Dave’s work on Semafor here: https://www.semafor.com/author/david-weigel
Comments (110)
We don't need elections, we just need to handle things like Czar Nicolas. In a basement. And keep the jewels.
Love the Zizek-inspired Groucho Marx reference
With all this shit going on with the economy, I feel it's time for another Professor Richard Wolff episode
ep title the Wolff of Wall Street
Update (Thursday) Zero hedge was just on Bloomberg live for getting let into the White House press pool as “new media”…wierd…also being a chapo sub will now get you put into an internment camp…fun times!
Dave please do not turn into a transformer 39 minutes into the ep please
I really hate to sound like an ungrateful broken record but I’m so bummed that we don’t have Matt’s wisdom right now. Imagine his Cushvlogs and how much light he could shed for us.
WI was an abortion election, way more than Elon, that was just cherry.
trump already pussied out on the tariffs, what a bitch
The market is the true master. When the bond market got shaken he backed off. Trump, the classic debtor, wants lower interest rates. When there was the threat of bonds not getting sold, he needed to stop the tariffs.
Love Felix and Hesse crossovers... looking forward to it
Felix begins speaking at 4 minutes and 37 seconds
WI was about abortion first and Elon second
I voted for Susie Crawdad and then myself in every other category
these people need to go visit a factory in america and see the kind of people who actually work there. when i did unskilled assembly work all my coworkers were pillheads, drinkers, prison regulars, and low-level weed dealers. that kind of work really doesn't inspire the pride you think it does. you end up needing to abuse substances or act out to cope with how soul-crushing it is. it's not as dignified and honorable as people imagine it is
Not to mention boring. Repetitive assembly lines can drive anyone crazy. The only thing dignified about it is when workers at those factories organize.
Broke: taxes are theft Woke: prices are theft
It's very funny to claim "madman" is a legit negotiation strategy when it was proof that nixon was stupid as hell
BACK TO THE MINES, MY LORD! Thank you me lord for this factory job shaving off pigs’ ears!
been a while, but Felix mentioned a fighter jet at 19:15 or so, Lockheed Martin F-35 ‘Lightning II’
Itty Bitty Titties & A Bob has been compromised to a permanent end.
Were the last 15 minutes a repeat?
"To become the new economy, you have to kill your old economy. Don't be afraid to let your market die. Long live the new tariffs."
Anonymous account with random Russian actor as avatar... is this Travis View's Wario?
Wow. They even put a tarrif on latency
At 59:50 "if you really hated DEI programs, if you didn't want your office to have a tra-....." lol Dave caught himself
it’s dangerous to impute a logical reasoning to anything Trump does, but paired with his other goal of American Energy Dominance, he many be banking on countries importing more LNG/refined petroleum products to bring down their trade surplus (and thus reduce their tariff %). in other words, it’s a literal fire sale, in the sense that it will burn the world to the ground
oh and like Felix said, turn us into 90’s Russia - a gangster petrostate with mass reduction in quality of life for >90% of the population
What’s the best class to play as for Great Depression 2.0? I’m thinking about doing hobo with specialization in train riding but also interested in okie.
Become a folk rapper.
Love thinking about Trump saying “Dave WEIGEL.”
The Devo on the outro confirms CASINO.
Hats off to Benny Johnson for the greatest quote on the tariff stock market crash. “Losing money costs you nothing.”
That was amazing. “Losing money can teach you about yourself” ok that’s a great way to make economic policy I’m sure
Indeed “the sheer Brandon-ness of it all.” No country in the world has ever industrialized, de-industrialized and then re-industrialized again.
i’ll be honest this episode was depressing as fuck
Hahaha as someone who is currently on Suboxone for using so much kratom for almost 8 years (after being dependent on opioids and trying kratom as a form of MAT) the last bit killed me lol! I'm so called out 😭
Damn dude how much kratom were you using every day? I’ll check the kratom subreddit sometimes and the amount some people are using is wild
MM3 episode one will be either Network or Casino, calling it now
I swear Will said something about them covering Casino. So, you may be right
Mere weeks away from Morgan Wallen doing ‘Swanee’ in full Jolson blackface on the south lawn
Smart investors shorted the market. Me? I shorted my penis.
You have to do one to do the other
Incredible fart ripped at 41:49
Dave Weigel is on, and for some reason you end with Devo. (Yes, I know you're a fan, Chris, but Dave Weigel wrote a book about the greatest musical movement of all time.) The proper pick is either "Money" or "Get 'Em Out by Friday," given the topic. You're welcome.
great ep, def chose the wrong time to quit my corporate job but i enjoyed listening to this from my new retail gig
I was JUST mustering up the courage to try to move up from my wretched dead-end job, but now I'm in full "hunker down and cling to what you've got" mode. Looks like I'll just continue to be downwardly mobile from my parents!
"There's a difference between being afraid of John Wick and being afraid of a guy in the supermarket with his dick out and shit stains on his sweatpants who has a gun" Perfectly put
The road to the top was a rocky one for Josh Fenderman. And he had no idea it would lead to the bottom.
I wonder what movie episode 1 of movie mindset will be about?
Fuck.
Ah yes, the obligatory Wagner montage.
Movie mindset 🤩🤩🤩 Enjoy the standard eps but i am literally only on the patreon for mm
Same I also really hope they have a Lynch episode this season.
THE CHILDREN OF GAZA ARE LAUGHING AT US! THEYRE OVER THERE LAUGHING AT US!
Devo 🫡
What's the video they reference like 42 minutes in?
Yeah, those of us that don’t use Twitter need reference materials
I saw a really great video from the creator Jesse Gender hypothesizing that the tariffs are meant to sew chaos because that's an environment that Trump succeeds in, I found that super compelling. Like these will bring misery, and misery fuels the forces that elected Trump.
About as believable as the TikTok that says he’s doing 9999D chess to refinance the national debt. There is a lot of rationalization going on, beware of getting too deep in it.
First Rule of Acquisition: “Once you have their money, you never give it back.”
First Rule of Acquisition: “Once you have their money, you never give it back.”
*Walking into the bank with a AA-12 and full clown makeup.* "You know it's a negotiating tactic to have people think you're crazy, I'm here for a buisness loan."
Like Felix, I'm one of those people who's always more than a little wary of such one-to-one historical comparisons, but the comparison with the Yeltsin government--before and after the constitutional crisis and his showdown with the Supreme Soviet of the R.F.--are interesting, especially if you compare it to the normalization (in other words, "where we've been for 25 years") of concentrated but specific powers in the presidency and the executive relative to the weakened State Duma and Senate--is interesting. After all, Yeltsin was his own prime minister (as president) both before and after the dissolution of the USSR. On the other hand, unlike the RSFSR, the US has basically always merged the two officers (callback to "Hell of Presidents" pointing out how Washington basically was made elective monarch, except by then many monarchs had separate heads of government). Yeltin's successors, including Putin, who came out of that power arrangement, have taken a lot greater care to dance around that, with formal appointments if only to avoid the whole stigma of "Yeah, I'm gonna' take all these tanks, and make my own legislature, with blackjack and hookers," of 1993, the original sin of the Russian Federation and a hyper-publicized embarrassment within human memory. Obviously, Trump comes from a completely different background from those vaguely-centrist conservative political insiders from hastily-formed Moscow and Leningrad political machines, and benefits from theatrics in a way that even Yeltsin didn't, or at least believes that he does. There also isn't an external power that's singing his praises enthusiastically with each decision (maybe Tel Aviv comes close), that he can reliably point to and say has his back and make flattering comparisons between him and Abraham Lincoln. We may be looking at a very similar dismantling of the federal bureaucracy and management bodies and selling off of valued assets, but Trump seems to sell it on his own force of personality rather than a sense of post-Soviet inevitability? Would that mean he has a weakness even beyond what forced Yeltsin's successors to walk back some (not all) of those decisions in era of United Russia's domination of the presidency and the legislature, in that the enterprise isn't sustainable without him and can't endure in a bunch of zero-charisma blood-and-soil conservative upstarts coming out of Florida and Texas who could never have their own New York-based reality TV shows? Maybe? By the way, to Will and particularly Felix: I'm sure you guys get a lot of video game recommendations and are sick of them, but I suggest checking out 'MULLET MADJACK', a Brazilian-developed indie speedrunning shooter that's on Xbox and PC currently. Aside from being a fun game (even for people bad at speedrun games like myself), it also feels like a game made for the Chapo boys, whether for its visual homage to late '80s, early '90s ultraviolent Japanese OVAs (BUBBLEGUM CRISIS, A.D. POLICE Kenichi Sonada-style in particular), its on-the-nose ethos delivered in comedic one-liners ("Winners never quit and quitters never win!" "Work only comes after success in the dictionary!" "Let's kill some [robot] billionaires!"), or its use of brightly-colored vending machine soda as the sole life-restoring item. You kill waves of robot billionaire goons while livestreaming through a synthwave-copy of Nakatomi Plaza; I can't think of a more Chapo Trap House videogame in years. Finally, here's to more Movie Mindset! t's what pushed me to subscribe to the Patreon after all, you boys are doing your homework here.
Holy shit, the robots got Dave!
You could argue that moving the embassy to Jerusalem partly caused October 7th.
It felt like Will and Felix took the initial reference as ironic but then realized Weigel really thought the move had no repercussions and went along with it so as not to alienate Weigel.
Boris Yeltsin speedrun wooo
Screaming and pissing at the 3rd grade girls singing "Girls rule, boys drool!"
On the one hand, my retirement plan is "die," on the other hand I'd like to minimize my suffering on the way there. On the one hand, we richly deserve this, on the other hand, the people who deserve it the most will be most insulated. What do I think? Who cares? I'm not an accelerationist, but acceleration seems to be happening anyway. From this vantage point, it looks like we're heading towards a brick wall though. I wish I could read a history book from the future; I'm interested in how this plays out in a weirdly detached way. Probably the depression talking!
We should aim to retire to Valhalla. Look what 1 single Luigi accomplished.
I shorted the market, made a killing and am now worth 100s of millions. Why are you people so jealous that I'll never be homeless or have a medical bill thats unpayable? It's like you hate me for my hard work and talent
If you don't like monopoly you can't just throw a tantrum and nock the board over. I know you never wanted to play in the first place but, I win.
Brother-in-law who voted Trump literally said, “ALL I care about is my stock going up. And Trump will make that happen.”
Love to see an idiot prosper.
It still baffles me that anyone in finance misunderstands Trump’s economic policy. What policy did you think a guy who has never paid a supplier or contractor in his life would have?
did Felix call Bada Bing “the porn store”?
he said pork store, Satriale’s
Has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like?
Curious about Shawn Fain’s angle in all of this. Is it as simple as he thinks supporting these tariffs will get this administration to support the UAW? Because that seems shortsighted.
the trading gap shuffle, we’re in a heap of trouble, doing the trading gap shuffle, yes sir!
It’s funny that MAGA guys are now coming around to sounding like Jimmy Carter or the Klaus Schwab song.
OMG zillennial mention ‼️
TULSA SHOUTOUT!!!
This is what happens when a god damn cheeto gets in the whitehouse
Not enough people are talking about the fact there is a snack food in our nation's highest office
Okay. I am a day 7 subscriber and I am wracking my brain trying to figure out what the most referenced movie is. Tell me what I am missing. Casino No Country for Old Men Robocop/Starship Troopers/Verhoven Manhunter Evita Terminator Videodrome.
I think they already revealed that it was Casino.
At 39 minutes Dave Wiegel exits the matrix.
Some idiot probably didn’t fit the data probe into the guy’s headjack correctly.
From take him seriously but not literally to take him seriously and literally to I have such sights to show you.
To anyone worried watching their portfolios, their private pensions, their 401Ks dropping in value this week, I just want to offer these encouraging words from the bottom 50% of Americans who own no financial assets: JUMP BITCH, JUMP! (Also, Wall Street will just be bailed out by the Fed again anyway, so who really cares? This is all a huge joke.)
The increasingly frequent reminder money is fake, but not even a lil cool or gay.
Whole steel industry is gay
What are doin’ with my money, Fred?
BREAKING: There are reports that the banks are out of money.
Someone posted they want to get rid of FDIC. So that was probably not far from happening.
Oh I see you libs love money now. VERY CONVENIENT.
The banks, they’re eating the money, they’re eating the liquidity!!!
Where's MY adrenochrome?!
Jes Staley took it to Epstein island
The economy is gay
It is fake.
many dogs dicks are pointed at your mother's anus
Having, or caring about having, money is woke and gay now. This is my strongest-held belief that I’ve had for about 2-4 weeks
You’ve always said that and so did I!
Folks please run don’t walk to your nearest branch and demand every penny you had
The banks are out of money
Good morning from Stockholm
GOD MORGON!