Interview With Bill McBride: Masters in Business (Audio)

and asking follow up questions and going uh huh uh huh. Yes. But here's the thing. I know Bill since the first day he started blogging, we were exchanging emails. I was linking to him. I could I think I could honestly say I linked to Calculator Risks before anybody had an idea who they were. And um, I have been using his research and his charts for the better part of I don't know, ten eleven years, and we have always

had an email relationship. I think we had a couple of telephone conversations, but I had never met Bill before until the night before we recorded this podcast. We went to dinner and I purposefully, with with eight people, I purposely did not speak to Bill and told him, I'm not going to talk to you until the two of us are in the studio, And so this is supposed

to be an interview, but it's not. It's it's supposed to be a podcast Q and A. But it really is a genuine conversation between two people who know each other for a decade and really have never sat down and had a conversation before. So if you're looking for the usual Q and A that that I try and provide each week on the show, this isn't it. This is me and Bill just shooting the breeze. It's two guys who know and respect each other for a long time,

and I found it illuminating and fascinating. Um, there's probably too much of me and it relative to what should be, so I'll apologize for that in advance. But hey, if you've ever known someone for what seems like forever but never met them, when you finally get to meet them, there's gonna be a lot of back and forth, and

truth be told, I thought the conversation was fascinating. I'm biased, So let me stop babbling because you'll hear enough of that throughout the rest of the interview with no further Ado my two hour bull session with Bill McBride of Calculated Risk. This is Masters in Business with Barry Ridholts on Bloomberg Radio. I have a very special guest here is somebody I have known for quite a long time. Let me give you a quick background on Bill McBride,

who is the proprietor of Calculated Risk. He launched the website in two thousand and five. The idea behind it let's put simple opinion free analysis and charts about economic data out in public where everyone can easily access it and understand it. Uh. It has been called the best of the economic blogs by such luminaries as Paul Krogman, The Wall Street Journal, Business Week, Time. Pretty much everybody puts the blog in its list of top twenty, or Top fifty, or top one hundred or top ten blogs.

Bill's background is uh. He has an NBA from University of California, Irvine, with a background in management, finance, and economics. And he had been running a public company or involved in a public company in the he retired and was looking for something to do. UM. Bill McBride, welcome to bloom Bark. Thanks for having me, Barry. Let's start with your background so you're you're running a public company. You're one of the co founders of a medical devices company,

is that right? That's correct. Yeah, I was the head of R and D. So so tell us about this what what was this company about? Ultimately it got sold to a larger company. Yeah. Where we started in the eighties, we were designing cardiac telemetry, which is it's it's like a little box that you wear on you in the hospital that connects the picks up your e c G and sends it to a central monitor in the hospital. It's for in hospital use. Did you have a background

in in medicine? I had. I had worked previously in a telecommunications company, so it was more technology than medical. Yes, and my mindergraduate grease and chemistry, so you know, it's kind of a mix of things. And so what we did is we um we kind of revolutionized that industry because in the eighties was when everybody was making the transition to digital in a out of different areas, and we used some of the cell phone technology to make

the first digital cardiac telemetry. So so when someone gets an e KG in a hospital or the monitoring UM, well, you know, if you're in particular awards in the hospital, um, postcardiac surgery. If they once they like to take you off the bedside monitor and put you on a little telemetry unit so you can get up and walk around and still be monitored. And so that's the use for it.

There's other We also pick up other parameters in addition to E c G and then we sent it back to a central monitor with With that, then they can have a nurses station, they can monitor the people walking around the hospital. So what happened with this company in the nineties, So well, we we we grew very quickly. We we designed telemetry for most of the major medical device companies. They started using ours under their own name, and then uh we took it public in nine and

then sold it to ge Medical. And at that point you are gainfully unemployed, that's correct, as one of the founders. So the site launches in oh five. What led you to say, I have an idea, let's analyze economic data. Well, economics is always a hobby for me, and uh I specialized that and when I got my m b A, that was my focus. Um, you know I in the early two thousands, I had a few things that I was doing in two thousand four. I remember thinking, what is a blog? And I think I stumbled across yours

said the big picture. Uh I if you remember Angry Bear when it was rich the three PhD economists, and so that kind of inspired me. I said, well, you know what to really understand that, I'll just do one. So I'll start a blog, but I'm not going to write it about politics like most of the blogs I saw, And what I want to focus on is housing because of what I was seeing in southern California had just

gone off the rail. Yeah. You know, I was at the gym one day and I was talking to this attractive young lady who was a secretary for the Hurly T shirt company. Oh sure, I know exact stuff. And and uh, one day she came in and she goes, Bill, I just bought a condo. Now this condo she bought, she bought for four hundred and some thousand dollars. And she had already told me she was making. She had moved up. This is No. Four, This is a No. Four,

and she was she was probably making. You know, she had had gotten up to about forty a year and income, so forget the old rule of two times tend to tend to one with no money down. And so after she told me the story, I said, how can you afford that? When she started telling me about the teaser rate she had for the first year or two, and I said, well, what happens when that that comes do? And she goes, well, I'll just either you know, might either I will have more income, or I'll sell the unit.

And I thought, well, she if this is happening all over the place, there's gonna be no one to sell it to. So I went home that day and started calling, you know, some mortgage bankers I knew, and I said, is this really possible? Oh yeah, you know, you don't have to have you know anything, you know in um you know the ninja loans, no income, no job, you know. She she was, yeah, no, acid she was. She was a great client, she had a job. Okay, So so you launched the blog and you decided to do something

a little different than most blogs. Calculated Risk is fairly opinion free every now and then, and it's much more rare than the average blog. You'll come out and say this is my opinion about X y Z. I mean, that's like an annual event. Most of the time, you're just saying, here's the data, Here's what it means. Why get why do you know? I do slip in a sentence or two here and there about what I think

is happening with that data. And then every once in a while, I will, like you're saying, right, a overview piece of where I think we are in the economy and where we're going. You know, back in in two thousand five, one of the things I focused on was, uh, I was actually calling up regulators and asking them why they're not doing anything? So I I, you know, I and I would write about how which either regulators are not doing their job and here's why I'm Barry Ridolts.

You're listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio. My guests this week is Bill McBride. He is the founder and chief author of the highly regarded economics blog Calculated Risk. Let's jump right back into this. You've developed an expertise in in mortgages and housing and real estate economics. Was that something that you had done in a previous life or is it just you gravitated it towards that because you were in southern California and real estate in the

early two thousands had just gone insane in California. Well, it really is a combination of things. My dad was in real estate, and he was and he was a builder. My mother was a real estate agent. So it was always supper time conversation. Did you have that sort of I at least saw what he was doing and chatted with him about it. Uh, you know, after I started my career, I was more science and technology oriented, but

I always have been interested in real estate. And so you know, I mean I and and you know, I had that a little bit of a background of what they went through. And I saw my dad go through the ups and downs. Where was he a builder? What part of the country in down to San Diego? Ah, So that was really an interesting and fast growing But your dad was in the Navy. There's a huge naval base since in fact, I think that's how we ended

up there. That makes sense, Cornado Island in that whole area, So we went from the Navy to San Diego to San Diego and housing. So post war that had to be just a huge boom over there. Yeah, san Diego was booming the whole time. I you know, when we moved there when I was five, and so you know, I was there until I went away to college. It was boom time back in the it was the sixties and seventies and and but even then there were big waves cycles. Yes, you could you could see the ups

and downs. There were times when my dad was clearly struggling financially, you know, elctially, my mom was a elementary school principle, so she had a good, steady income. Uh so they could offset each other. So so, how do you respond to the comment that was everywhere back in the early two thousand's, you know, we've never had a downturn in the price of housing in the United States. Well, well,

first of all, that's not true. It's utterly false. There have been repeated examples all the way back to the Great Suppression. You know. One of the things is if if you remember, I'm sure you do, back in two thousand and five, is the data wasn't very good or very available, especially on house prices. You know, we we had the what's now the f h f A house pricing decks just based on the Fannie and Freddie mortgages.

But we didn't have Case Shiller publicly available, or core Logic public or several of the other you know, Zilo, that was just that wasn't even somebody's thought yet, you know. And so now we have so much better data, and some of those guys case Shiller and core Logic have published their data back to previous times, and you can't see those ups and downs. And so the people that were saying there were no ups and downs, there was no real good data for them to make that argument.

And and obviously they had never lived in southern California, because I had seen the ups and downs in the house prices absolutely and and like there was a there was a real boom in the eighties. House prices peaked around nineteen nine in my area, and they slid all the way to the same exact experience in New York seven crash shakes Wall Street, a little bit alan Greenspan cuts rates. You have a little bit of a surgeon in real estate throughout the eighties, and then it rolled over.

If you bought a condo or co op in New York in nine, you did not get back to break even on that purchase price until plus or minus. And you can see in the charts. But during the Great Depression, we know real estate prices of course plummeted, and I think it was someone at Columbia, I'm not positive did a study on Manhattan real estate and they estimated that real estate price has dropped sev during the Great Depression. I mean, how do you just shrug that off in

your models? It's it's impossible. I never understood why people say real estate prices I never go down. I never understood it because there's there's plenty of evidence. Even though we don't have the data that we have today, there was still plenty of evidence. So so let's talk about I've I've been using the charts and the information you put on cafe thank you for for how long? I mean,

it's got to be at least a decade. And I got into a fight with the Wall Street Journal about it was I want to say, oh six or oh seven, and they were doing the look real estate prices are improving, and the response was, well, no, it's June. They oh, you're looking at it month over month. You have to look at it year over year. So I grabbed and I brought a copy of it. I'll put it up

on the site. I grabbed your existing home sales year over year by month that shows the same seasonality it right, you know it it's at its nata in December and January, it slowly rises throughout the spring, peeks later in the fall and rolls off. You can't just look at June versus February and say, oh, housing is fine. But that's what a lot of media was doing. Yeah, you know, I think that was one of the issues back in two thousand and five was the media. I don't think

they really knew how to report housing. There was some but to say that people missed it completely is wrong. There were some excellent articles, for sure, and and there were some award winning articles. And and give us David Strettfield, who was at the l A Times at the time, now he's in New York Times. He won awards for his housing articles. They were excellent. And uh, you know, I mean so so there were there were plenty of good articles, but I think they got lost in the

bad articles. And and you know, and you know how the balance media works in classic false equivalent. If you if you, if you talk to somebody who was very concerned about housing, it could make a good argument on the making mortgages. They would always go talk to somebody who was impressive background who would say they own house prices never go down. Uh, there's nothing to worry about, you know. And and so I think for the average person who was getting their information that way, it was

difficult to see that there was a problem. Now. I run into people all the time to say, you know, I thought there was something really wrong. So most people in the back of their minds, especially people in areas like you know, southern California, Florida, you know, Nevada, they were thinking, I think a lot of people are going there's something wrong here. How much of that is hindsight bias where but by the way, it could be. You recall the number of people legitimately in prints in a

verifiable way warning about housing prices. There were a handful of people, a handful of us. You were one, well, you me, you know, I, I know a few other people they were doing it. But now every person I met, Oh, of course I knew the housing crisis was about to collapse. Well, well, I just I just looked at certain data and said, this ratio which has been consistent home price to meeting income,

the cost of renting versus cost of owning. You covered a ton of this stuff how how frustrating was it when you saw the train wreck coming, but you couldn't really convince the average person that hey, something wicked this way comes. Well, you know, I I was really focused on trying to to to get the regulators to pay attention to it, and and that was a very frustrating process because they because they were paying attention to it, but they couldn't do anything. Their hands were tied. And uh,

you know, the the regular person. Uh, you know, I started my blog, I was writing. I was writing for friends and relatives, you know, so I was mostly just saying, hey, you know, if they asked me, I would tell them don't buy please, don't buy anything. You know. Uh you know it's but you know, you put a blog out there in public, and so all of a sudden people start reading it. I'm very hults you're listening to mass was in Business on Bloomberg Radio. My special guest this

week is Bill McBride. He is the founder of the Calculated Risk website, lauded by everyone from Business Week, Wall Street Journal, uh New York Times as the single best economics blog there is. Um I put out a request on the Big Picture as well as on Twitter uh, if any of your readers had questions for you, and I got a long list of stuff, let's let's jump into some of them. I think some of these are really interesting. First question, you're one of the few bloggers

who still maintains a comments section, and it's a mess. Sorry, but I think that's honest. Why maintain comments? That's a great question. And and uh, you know, comments early in the blog were unbelievably outstanding, amazing. As a matter of fact, I thought the comments, who are one of the key elements to the blog. The comments turned more into just a at session about unrelated information, off topic, trolls, spam, it's gone off the right. Yeah, well you know, NPR,

by the way, just killed their common sense. You know. We we do have a comment section where people have to register so that you can't just get the drive by commentors, so the trolling goes down, but the it's it's basically off topic most of the time. BuzzFeed does this thing now where you can comment, but only if you register through Facebook, which is your real identity, so you lose a lot of the really off the change. But the racist nonsense, yeah, you know, the they and

we don't have that for the most part. And you know, those people that are racists are bigoted in some way. We've tried to band but the I keep it because a lot of the old timers are still there, but they chat more than they more than the economic content, and they're kind of friends so they so, you know, I just I leave it for them. If people don't like the comments, then don't don't participation, don't read the

comments exactly. That's my view. And I if there's you know, if there's ever you know, the anti semetic things I banned so many people, well, it gets to be a giant curation time sockets complicated. I had some people write me when I killed comments on the Big Picture, which is years ago. Um, well thanks for the site, but

I'm done. If you don't have comments, you know, you understand how many hours a week it is to maintain the comments, and you guys don't see the really horrific comments, and it just got to be a total dreg But that was a lost era. I thought the comments were fantastic on you could read a really interesting article and then spend a half hour reading some really smart, insightful

feedback on that audit there. Well, you know. I'm sure some of your commenters are asked you any many of mine were, Uh, one of the one of the I'm sure we're going to talk about my code blogger, Tanta. At some point I met Tanta through the comments. Yeah. She she showed up and was commenting, and every time

she would either correct something I had said. If I said something about the mortgage industry, and I would call it my mortgage banker friends, and they go, oh, yeah, she's right, all right, So I instantly corrected on my blog and I'd credit Tanta and and uh, or she would say, hey, yeah, that's you know. She she was really sharp, she knew everything, and she was very quick witted. And so that's how I actually got to know my code blogger. Through the comments. That's where I met her.

So so let's talk about that she starts writing for you, and well she this is what happened, and she commented a lot in two thousand five. In two thousand six,

she disappeared from the comments. About six months later, she reappeared and she told me that she had been diagnosed with stage four ovarian cancer, had had left her job, uh, and she had stopped commenting because she wasn't able to and she didn't even think she was going to live and so uh, I then asked her, well, why don't you come and write for the blog if you're not working, because she's working in the mortgage industry, and uh, and it took me a little convincing, but she started in

I think her first post was in December two thousand six, and almost two years before she passed away. So she was a regular on the side for a while, but and ultimately succumbed to the illness. Yes, but you know, she was stunning before she started writing for the blog. I probably wrote longer pieces. And then when she showed up, she undergraduate Greems in literature. Her pieces were brilliant. Uh, they were they they One of her goals, she said, was to make blogs entries could be long and still

well read. And she accomplished. Uh. She would explain mortgage uh issues in complete detail and all that stuff still on the blog. Um. And you know, people from the Federal Reserve were crediting her and in papers they were writing because they were learning from her too. And you know, she was real mortgage banker. She knew the banking, the

mortgage banking industry inside and out. You know, she was absolutely terrified and and and she was scared because they were they were all the mortgage industry was pulling back on the risk management sign and his money to be made, yeah, and worry about risk later, oh yeah. And and and you know, and in the in the whole industry changed. They went away from the three c's. You know, where you're you're looking at credit and collateral and capacity to pay. And

we just went to FICO scores. I'm Barry Ridhults. You're listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio. My guest today is Bill McBride. He is the founder and proprietor of the highly rated Calculated Risk Economics blog, well regarded

by many people. You don't have a PhD in economics, you don't have a you have an m b A. How did you go from essentially a medical devices h company founder to one of the leading lights in in financial economics writing well, I don't I don't know if I'm a leading light, but but it's very nice all those things people have said about me. But you know, I I I've had always had an interest in economics. I've always had an interest in housing. I study hard. I I dig hard to try to understand the data.

And uh, and I've a lot I've worked with a lot of economists since I started the blog, a lot of economic academic economists that that I call friends. Now give us some names, Jim Hamilton's down fantastic, Mark Toma up in North another one, Tim Dewey. Sure, so you're

you're just named my starting lineup of that economists, right, Yeah? Yeah, I mean so so, uh, you know those guys I chat with, I chat with several of them all the time, and uh, and you know, it's it's so it helps me focus on what on what's important in economics and how to understand it. And and I think they liked that I really dig through the data and and so it's kind of a mutual thing. So, so let's talk a little bit about the state of the U. S. Economy.

I'm going to throw some things out that I hear and see and read online that I question pretty um significantly. And I want to just get your your feedback on each of these. Um. You know, the recession never ended, the economy is still spiraling downward, and we're going into a depression. Well that's that's that's unrealistic obviously. UM. I mean employment is up substantially since two thousand nine. Um, the you know, the economy is growing slowly from a

GDP perspective. Uh. That's driven in my view by two main things. One is, for some reason, productivities down, um, something that I don't think anybody can really control, at least measure productivity, right. But also and a key thing that's very rarely mentioned is demographics. We've we've the prime working age population started decreasing, not not workforce but population in about two thousand and ten and decrease for five or six years. And that's because of all the baby boomers.

So if you were born in the fifties or sixties, so let's say you're born in nineteen fifty, that would make you sixty six today, you're you're thinking about retiring, right, and you're out of the prime working age. You know, when as you get past sixty, which I can say is happens you you you have less energy, you know, So are you're speaking personally? You know? Yeah, you know

I'm t talking about myself. So so you know, when when you get a little older, you you know, I'm still doing things, but uh, yeah, I don't think I'm as excited about spending a lot of hours a day working, but you do spend a decent amount of I spend a decent amount, nothing like what I was spending in two thousand nine. But that's that's not age related, that's just crisis crisis related. Yeah, you've got to be doing two, three, four hours a day. Yes, oh yeah, at least you're

what my wife describes as gainfully unemployed. Right, It's like you would be doing this whether there was money in it or not. And h is there money in it? That's a question that people ask, well, what is there money and blogging? Well, first of all, when I started the blog, I didn't take any advertising. For two or three years, I didn't even think about it, so it really was just a hobby. People said, hey, take advertising,

and so I eventually did. Uh. There's not a whole lot of money in it, but but you know, there's pays for some nice dinners out there you go. So so it's still more or less a hobby that that keeps you Uh yeah, active, Yes, you know. I I guess I have this thing. I promise my readers that I would call our try to call the next recession, I said, And you've been pretty consistent saying we're knowing

your recession anytime. Yeah, So I I'm gonna say I I hope to hang around long enough to do that, and I don't see one in the near term at all, So I guess I'm gonna be around for a while. Let let's look at the indicators that you track in order to identify a recession. And you track everything from rail car waitings to two ships coming into the l A port. It's not just GDP employment. You look at it a ton of stuff. What what are some of your favorite indicators to look at? Well? To me, the housing,

new home sales, housing starts. I always start there. You know employment, of course, it's the big big dogs, right, So I mean employment went negative for several months in a row. I would really be Now. I heard from some political candidate that all of the employment data is fake. Well, I I think I don't think there's probably a better organization than the b l S as far as telling us being transparent on how they do their work. They

publicly announced all the changes. It's always you think pademically driven. You can go to their website, you can understand exactly what they do, what they don't do, and and how any changes which have been minor over the years in how they gather data. Uh, so they're completely transparent and you call them up and ask them question. Yeah, and

they're and they're very they're very helpful. So the the the it's possible to disagree that, oh there there's a different way to measure it, but to say that they're doing it fake is outrageous. And there's outrageous. Yeah, this was what three thousand statisticians, PhD s, economists, etcetera. Could you really fake something and not have that leak out somewhere? They're not all from one party or the other. It

seems like an impossible claim. It is. It is impossible, and and there are independent ways to measure some of that and and and it looks good too. You know, whether you look at a dB employment, which is a private measure, they're on it. Also, they're they're part of the part of the conspiracy. That's the always the answer, you get it. Those those numbers are very very good and and uh, you know, do they describe everything? No, the model isn't perfect by any stretch. But but but

the but the methodology is transparent. It so you can go in and it's the same as like new home sales or housing starts. You can go and see what they count, what they don't count, you know, how they add them in. Uh. You know that was very important during the crisis because you had to see you had to see, like a new home sales, how they canceled you know, they handled canceled contract was a whole separate Yeah, and they handle the completely different than the public companies.

So and so you could you could kind of say, well, gee, you know they're going to catch up on this and they're following and uh, you know, the public companies basically have to here's what here's what we got there reporting net sales where the UH Census Bureaus tracking a house and then if it gets canceled later, then they take it out. So it's it's uh, but those sales that they originally reported is still there. It's kind of it's so it's's important to understand that methodology right now that

that's irrelevant because everything's tracking. The you know, if you follow the home builders and you follow the new home sales, they're pretty much tracking. So let's let's talk a little more about housing. My friend Jonathan Miller, who's a highly regarded appraiser and data assembly on housing, has been talking for a good couple of years about the problem with no equity and low equity homeowners and it sort of gums up the chain of purchases. In other words, Hey,

we're in a starter home. Up, we have a second kid on the way. Let's sell this house, move up to a four bedroom, the people selling that house move up to a larger house, and those people move up to the big mansions. But as long as the people at the bottom starter home are are kind of stuck there because they don't have enough equity, the whole system is sort of compromised, and it means that there just isn't enough supply out there. How does how does that sound? Yeah? Yeah,

well you know that that is a problem. And and and housing historically always has been this kind of chain reaction. One guy sells and he can buy in another sell and buy and sell and buy, and so the situation

we're in today's is pretty unique. Um. One of the things that's rarely mentioned is is that the reason there's such low inventory, especially at the lower ends, is because of all those investors buying millions and millions of by the rent, by the fix and flip, by the Yeah, yeah, the fix and flip doesn't hurt the market, but the but the by the rent, by to rent, there's a there's millions of homes that were bought to rent and at a huge discount right the height of the crisis.

And and so those guys and and and I talked to some of those guys in private equity or orstors combination. You know, I know moms and pops that bought six eight places. I know some larger investors that bought thousands and and uh and for the most part, none of them are selling really Yeah, so they know why is that? Well, okay, if they sell, they have to play capital gains and then and there's one short way to make sure you

never pay capital gains taxes. Don't have a capital gain. Yeah, So that's always to me, not a great reason not to sell. Yeah, but but where else they're gonna put them up? But then they have to move it to somewhere else, right, and and you know, what are you gonna do? And and those guys rents have gone up substantially. They were buying these things with cap rates of when they bought them, and the and the rents have gone up dramatically, so on their original money, they're just they're

just cranking it. If they sell it, even if they can avoid paying capital gains. If they sell it, avoid capital gains, where do they put their money and get that same return? You get one five one on the tenure. Yeah, yeah, that's not negative yet, it's a positive. So those you know, I I know several people personally that own you know, maybe three or eight. They'd rather just get the income and they're never going to sell them. We've been speaking

with Bill McBride. He is the founder and chief blogger at Calculated Risk. Be sure and check out the site Calculated Risk for just an incredible slew of economic data, charts and analysis. If you enjoy this conversation be shown check out our podcast extras, where we keep the digital tape rolling and continue to discuss all things economic and digital. Check out my daily column on Bloomberg View dot com or follow me on Twitter at rid Halts. We love

your emails and comments. Please write to us at m IB podcast at Bloomberg dot net. I'm Barry rid Halts. You're listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio. Welcome to the podcast. This is Barry ridhalts Bill. Thank you so much for doing this. You know, you and my pleasure. You and I have been ranting each other, no exaggeration. It's got to be ten twelve years. I think we had dinner this week. I think that's the first time you met in person. Is that right? So I have

tons of of of stories and anecdotes. There's so many questions to get through. And before I get to my standard questions, there's there's just there's just so much stuff I have to do. Um. By the way, before we get to those questions, how are you enjoying your your week in New York. I'm having a great time. The weather couldn't be nicer. Yeah, yeah, thank you so much. You you it was miserable, ninety and humid last week. It's been it's been perfect today. I went for a

walk in the Central Park this morning. But it's been it's been delightful. So so you're now spending to three four hours a day blogging in the midst of the crisis, oh eight oh nine, how much time will you devot into the sun? I was probably spending maybe eight hours a day full, a full day's work. But but I was up, you know at five in the morning, uh, and and doing work. And I was, you know, right before I went to bed, I was doing work and not it's not nine to five, it's it's all day.

It's digital sixteen seventeen hours a day. I did sleep a little, and every once in a while they have to set my alarm clock for the middle of the night because I knew something crazy was coming when oh really, so you would wake up to see, especially when stuff was coming from Europe. You know, I'd be going all great, I see my attitude as always, well it'll be there, Yes, it'll be there in the morning. That's my attitude. Now when when did you realize that the site was really

catching on? Uh? You know it kind of it kind of just build. It's a boiled frog. Yeah, it happened over time. You know. It was interesting because at first, I'd say the first month because you see the traffic data. You know, I was just sending it to friends and relatives. All those posts now have lots of his but that's because people have gone back in time, you know, maybe in February two thousand five, Dr David, I'll tag of

Cleveland FED or Atlanta FED. Now, I guess he stumbled on my blog somehow and he mentioned something that I had written, and all of a sudden, my traffic was, you know, a hundred readers a day out of the blue readers a day, and and uh, and I went wow, what happened there? And then something interesting happened is one of those readers was one of the three PhD economists at Angry Bear, and he called me up and say, hey,

could you write a weekly column about housing? Because that's because I was completely focused on housing at the time, and so I wrote a good reason. Yeah, I wrote that, and within several months I was up to two thousand readers a day. And what was the peak traffic in oh eight oh nine? Yeah, probably averaged throughout oh eight and in oh nine probably add twenty thousand readers a day. What does that work out to be on a monthly basis? Uh?

I was probably four million, three four millions. It went crazy. It was crazy. It was crazy. And then I'm probably less cut and half after that. Yeah, I'm probably now right, you know, maybe forty readers a day. But these are forty important influential readers. Yeah, well they're you know, they're obviously people that are very interested in economicus. And we talked a little bit during the broadcast portion about comments. How frustrating is it that comments was once so crucial,

so seminal, and now they're just a wreck. Well, you know, in general, I don't I mean our our comments since you have to register. It's they're they're okay, but they're they're more clicky, and and there their long term people who just talk about off topic subjects with a queue, not not web click. Yes, yes, like like it's groups of people. Yeah, they they have their topics they want

to talk about. It's unrelated. It's really it's completely different when when in two thousand five, two thousand and six, when I would post something, the topics were on topic. I mean the comments were on topic, uh and insightful. Yeah, and that's why I met a lot of great people, including my code blogger you know, to me, I was talking about this a little bit earlier. Is I remember using Yahoo Finance when it first came out. That's you'd

comment on a company and the comments are great. It didn't take long since they were all public for that just to go completely downhill and be completely useless. In the nineties, I very vividly so I began as a trade in the in the mid nineties, and I very vividly remember stumbling into Yahoo comments and a family member had this huge position in I Omega had split two one two for one. What started out as a ten thousand dollar investment was like a three million dollar holding.

And I remember following the Omega Yahoo message boards with people driving I think the factory was in Utah or some crazy thing, driving by the factory on a Sunday and all Wall Street is underestimating the revenue and profit numbers. Hey, the factory parking lot is filled with cars on a Sunday night. These guys are working double and triple shifts, like it was that sort of serious investment was It was awesome. You get that, You get that kind of

local color. Somebody knew something about the company, not insider information, driving by just a parking lot. That's public, man, It's it's amazing, so and and and you the only you could get a little bit of that on tweeter. Now somebody might take a picture of the parking lot. Of course, then you got and you don't really know if it's real or not that that's become and there's been a lot of scams and hacks and things. You really have to be careful with with what you see. You know,

I've talked about this very very little. I wrote Bailout Nation with my commenters. I would post up three word of forenger word thing in the evening that I had written during the day. What do you think about this? Tell me your thoughts, and people would say, have you seen this article in the Christian Science Monitor off? You know, because obviously the front page of the Wall Street Journal

in the New York Times everybody sees. So you have this huge research team and people making suggestions and comments. The golden age of blog comments was unlike anything. You know. It's funny because one of my commenters wrote a fiction book partially in the comments, called American Apocalypse. He's a lawyer.

Unfortunately has passed away now, but he It became a pretty good seller on Amazon, and he wrote it in the comments and people with It was a fiction thing about, you know, if the financial crisis had really gotten dad, I mean total second great depression or worse. And but but you know, it's just kind of like you and bell on Nation, except for he started it in the comments and it was fun. It was kind of fun.

Have you ever gotten invites to speak or or take a meeting with anybody from Treasury, Department, Federal Reserve, House, Joint Economics Committee, anything like? Nothing? Well, the Treasury invited me back once. Um, but that that was it. Uh. When you say he invited you back, they they. If I came, I got to to, you know, meet some senior people. But but I was in California, so it wasn't very union for me. I got the Tim Geithner invite, which I think was the public relations Yes, did you

go to that? See, that's the one I was talking about. And did you go to that? No, I was in California. It's too far. It was in New York. It was too far because it just smelled like one of those things. Come on in, he'll come in, shake some hands to a photo op. And why did I travel three hours each way for this? It was? I politely responded and said, hey, let me know the next time Tim is in New York. I'm happy to meet with him, but I'm not interested in a photo op. And that's that was the sort

of outreach trip. Oh, these bloggers are causing us trouble. Let's let's did you ever get a sense that you were causing trouble too, elected officials? Not at all. I never felt that at all. I um no, you know, there there was a time I think there was a lot of resentment from the media about blogging. Let's talk about that. I used to do this thing, and I

know Tanted did something similar called read it here. First in the beginning when so I launched the Big Picture and oh three, but before that it was a Yahoo Geo City site. And after No. Eleven I had written a piece that kind of had gone viral. So it's like, oh, this internet thing going to be big one day. And so I would notice the amazing coincidence. You'd write about something and then a day or a week later it would show up in Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Barons,

Business everywhere, the whole media. And my initial well, no one would just steal this. I must have picked something up and other people from wherever whatever motivated me to write this, so they must have been motivated by the same thing. I don't want to say it was in the ether. But if I'm looking at an economic news release, and Bill is looking at an economic news release, and a reporter at x y Z paper is looking at that, we're all looking at the same thing. And I assumed

it was a coincidence. And that changed. In two thousand and four, I wrote a long form piece called Radio's Wounded Business Model that basically trashed Clear Channel Communications and trashed Infinity Broadcasting. It was really just rant and a maybe it was. Three weeks later Barons has a cover story and I'm a music buff and I hate program radio. This wasn't motivated by anything out there. This was just

me going on a jag. And then Barons has a cover story called Losing the Signal, and it was practically a point by point thing. And that was a moment where it dawned on me that hey, it's not in the ether. These people are ripping you off. What Tanta did something, well, tell us what what she did with a similar bit of a thievery well, you know. But first I was working with a lot of reporters on

on their stories, and you were anonymous back then. Yeah, I would have people would call me up um and and and uh we would chat about a story, possible angles, ways to write it, and and every time they would go, I, my editor will not let me mention that you're writing a blog calculator risk. Can can I mention that you used to be the executive this company? Use your real name? I said, no, you know, if you can't, I'll help you the on stories all you want that's there and

that good will over time paid off. But the you know, I said no, I I just want to stay anonymous. I didn't know why at the time, but it was just kind of fun for me. And and you were retired, you weren't looking to Yeah, I was. I wasn't. I wasn't trying to make any money. I wasn't trying to start a war. Uh Tanta. When when she came on, she used to call me up. Yeah, she go, Bill, they ripped off your story or they ripped off my story.

And and so then she wrote a piece about how you know, if if if you want to use our information point you really should mention that you where you got it from. That's just kind of standard practice in journalism. And uh yeah, and and and several journalism professors have told me they use her piece two and they teach it in their classes, colleges, and and and it was immediately after that that we started getting mentioned everywhere. And you know a lot of the reporters I know wanted

to mention us much sooner. So it was editorial and publishing, not the actual right. Yes, the writer. Listen, writers, I write a daily column. It's drummed into your head from day one. Always source, always link, always quote, always footnote, don't just take. And my nightmare is reading something and kind of subconsciously ferreting it away and then it comes out and it's like, oh, I I ripped someone off

by accident. That's my nightmare scenario. Yeah, you know you and and and I think that's always hard for a writer. I I I try to be very very careful and linked to everything and and uh so what what I started doing after the Baron's piece that to me was clearly, oh, this isn't even nuance, this is just blatant. So I started a series of reading here first columns, and I would do side by side the two column I'd highlight stuff I'd put on the blog, and especially with the

the outlets that included the author and editors. I never had that from Bloomberg, and I'm not just saying that because I'm here, but I've had it from because their sources they have a really crazy strict sourcing mechanism. But a lot of other places, I would take the two pieces, say what a coincidence. I wrote this on Monday, you published this on Tuesday. I would send it to the reporter. I would send it to the editor, and I would sort of politely on the blogs say read it here first,

And eventually I think they became embarrassed. So like oh four or five, oh six, once you got into oh seven and oh eight, and I was you know, I had an official job title where I was a media a market strategist and a media spokesperson, So it was easy for me to say, hey, you don't have to quote the blog, but at least credit the source. You don't even have to link to it, but you know

you're stealing my work products. Well, you know, they would the media would mention people like professor Jim Hamilton and San Diego or Mark Thomas um but they'd always mentioned that, oh, Mark Thomas a professor at University of Oregon. There was an official tie. Yeah, not that he's writing a site called the Economist View, which had the information you know and say, so you know that that's what they were

comfortable doing, but not the referencing the blogs. It took a different but they shifted and they sure, well what first they rolled out their own blogs? Yeah, and and then they realized that that it's all complimentary anyway. In fact, uh,

we would drive traffic for them. We mentioned that, oh hey wait they you know, this guy had a good thing about this, and and people would go read that traffic And it got to the point where, uh, journalists would send me their articles and say, hey, if you like this, could you could you mention it or linked to it or or if yeah, and and and uh it really helped them. They would they when did that lip take? When did it go from O blobs we could steal with impunity and no, it had to be

in two thousand seven. Two thousand seven, that's when you first started noticing people asking yeah, and and and all of a sudden we were and it really boosted our traffic to did did you ever get day loosed with pr pitches? Hey would you like to meet the executive sales? Well you get that every day, you do, Yes, every day I relentlessly, relentlessly black Matt Black um list those

the people that just sends ridiculous. It's one thing that it's unsolicited, but I don't really care about the sixteen year old girls new pop song that's not relevant to what we're reading. Yeah, well, you know I I I think I saw the other day there's more PR people now than there are journalists in America two to one, or something that explains. That explains, that explains a whole lot. Oh my god, that's awful. That that is a horrible, horrible thought. Um On on the terminal, you have this

option on the bloomber terminal, you have this option. So every now and then a reasonable PR pitch comes in or or read will say so. I had Jeff Maggian Calda, who is the founder and former CEO of Financial Engines, which they work with Nobel Laureate Bill Sharp, and they were really one of the first entities out there to do what people are calling robo advising today. But it was Bill Sharp and an entire four way to manage for one case through a series of intelligent algorithms, and

they run like a hundred plus billion dollars. So someone who worked for the company, sends an email, I love the podcast. Are you familiar with Magine, Calda and Financial Engines? No? I never even heard of them. Their public company this and that. So I look them up. I'm like, how have I never heard about these guys? They are all rock stars. So that sort of pitch from somebody, that's what It's a relevant pitch. Chin It's right and that

that wasn't even a PR person. I think it was. Um, it was a quarry doctor at Boing Boing said, uh, he published a whole list of so all these PR shops email you and your black blacklist the PR shop. So now you're getting these pitches from Gmail. So he went out and published, I think was him. I hope I'm not. He's getting the wrong person. A list of everybody on this list is a PR wanker who is using Gmail. They're multiplying so fast you can never So here's a list. Add them to your black list and

you won't ever see anything from that. And I just read that Apple and Google are now doing something similar on the phone side. Um, it's amazing. How how this problem so far, I've digressed so far. Let me jump back to some of the questions that we just didn't get a question, a chance to discuss. You mentioned your you're we're publishing anonymously. What made you decide to come out from behind the cloak of anonymity. Well, first, I started that way just because I thought that's how you

did it. I mean, I just, oh, yeah, calculated risk. I thought it was fun. You know, people don't need to know who I am. The people who I originally sent it to knew who I was. The when Tanta came on board, Tanta was very concerned. She was very obviously very hopeful that she would recover, so she wanted to maintain and she she was very concerned if she said certain things, she may never get another job. And actually,

people in the industry knew who she was immediately. Yeah, there's only so many people that could be writing what she wrote, and uh and and then there are very few of those were women, so so uh uh. But so you know, then as long as she wanted to stay anonymous, I stayed anonymous too. I didn't want pressure on her. And so, um, the first time my name actually came out was in the obituary in the New York Times. Really for Tanta no kidding. That was the

first time. I believe that was the first time my name came out. Uh. And then after that, my name is in the open. So I went ahead and just started saying yeah. And that was pretty much because they quoted me in the New York Times talking about Tante and obviously they had her real name in that article too. So I posted on the blog, asked calculator risk anything, he's a little blast for the pet from the past. Yeah, I look at that. I pulled the old header from

the blog spot days. Yeah, I like I like that picture. I like that picture. I always like that. The path right down the middle between the trees. I took that up in Canada. That that's really so you guys can see that on on the big picture. So the anonymity just kind of ended. It ended when Tonta passed away. It just it wasn't a conscious decision. Soon as soon as she passed away, my name was in public anyway.

I I you know, I obviously linked to the New York Times the Bituari, which was actually a lovely, lovely it was they wrote a beautiful piece and and and I think that's probably the first time anyone got im obituary for being a blogger. She was so famous. I think that that might very well be the case. So let's talk about a related issue. What is the war on data? I wrote a piece I don't know last month or whenever that was the Bookmarke did and saved

it knowing this was coming up. By the way, for listeners, Bill lives on the other side, literally about as far away in mainland, United States. You're in Newport Beach, and we knew you were coming in five months ago, four months ago. So I started saying saving stuff. Oh, let me ask him about this. That one has been with me for a while, So let's let's jump into it. What what is the war on data? Well, it's we

were talking about a little bit earlier. Um is there's a sense that the data is false by a certain group of people, not just the employment not just flogyment data, but but they they you know, I'd have to go back through my piece, but I forget all the things I was pulling out. Some of it's political, some of it's with people with positions, I mean market positions or housing positions. Yeah, they're just there. There's there are a

group of people. It's just like people that reject climate change. If you will, you know, uh, what do you say in climate change is real? Now I gotta go, I gotta go rethink everything. Um. But you know, there's there are people that are that are rejecting data and going with what they want it to be. The data wanted. They want the data to be this for whatever reason, whether it's political or or cognitive dissonance. Yeah, I think I think some percentage of these folks don't even realize

what they're doing. Some are just outright lyne but there's a healthy percentage that simply can't acknowledge well or or they see their own circumstances and and maybe believe that that's more widespread. You know, maybe maybe for whatever reason, they're seeing more inflation than the inflation data shows and because of where, how how they spend their money. Uh, you know, no question, rent's gone up faster than than inflation.

So if a rent, if a rents a big portion of somebody's monthly spending, they're going to think what those inflation numbers are are incorrect. So, you know, there's some of that. It's just that I think people are taking that people in positions of of of some power are taking that and or or commentators and and just attacking data right and left. And you know, if if like we were talking earlier, you you have to have a good system of collecting data and you have to be

transparent on the data. And that's what we have at the United States probably has the best data in the world. But who's even close. There's no one even said well, Western Europe is far behind us, and um um. And at dinner last night a reporter who is hometown in London was saying, the UK has terrible data competed in the United States. Yeah, I mean and and and they're and they're actually very good. It's you know, in the world.

World in the United States is just excellent. And well we started post recession and post Great Depression in the thirties and forties. This really came about, um from from a number of people where it was pretty clear there was no data to measure progress or lack thereof. Well, you know that anytime you have something that you want to understand, you have, the first thing you have to do is measure it. Uh and and because then if you say you make a policy change, well, how do

you know if it did anything? If if you're if you can't measure it, and it's like it's like, you know, losing weight or something. If you don't get on the scale, how do you know if you've really lost weight? I guess you could check. Yeah, but that's another measurement system. I guess it is. Yeah. So um, yes, After the Great Depression, they started doing really collecting much better employment data.

I was kind of hoping after the Great Recession that there would be an emphasis on collecting better housing data. I think they could improve the housing data in what way? So so we have so let's go over some of the housing stats. So you have the existing home sale, which is reported by the National Association of Realtors. You have a new home sales, which is UH Census Department Bureau UM, which is sort of kind of self reported

by the builders themselves well independently, independently. And I recall writing something that you can want to take a three month average anytime you have an outlier to the upside or outside and invariably flip reverses the fire. That's right, we had a huge upside. Yeah, yeah, I would, I would. I would say, hey, it's great, it's a great, great number.

I wouldn't say, yeah, yeah, that's that's And if you go back and look at the data, you can always spot the outlier and the month the following, because what ends up happening is people, well they'll revise that down and and the whatever follows it will be a terrible month, and that will eventually get get revised up. And that's one of the reasons I do graphs anyway. It is because it kind of can show you where you're at. Yeah, this would be a little spike up and and but

it's within the range of variability. We're getting there anyway. I you know, it's only six fifty, that's not even that big of a number. So that's right. So, so we have new home sales, we have existing home sales, we have contract signings, we have permits for for building housing starts. Is a very important number. Why is that? Um, well, that's one of the biggest impacts on the economy is how many from the housing industry as opposed to existing

home sales. Existing home sales is just there's a mortgageys. Yeah, that's the Yes, people do frequently buy a little more furniture. But but but it's it's more from the direct sale. That's all it is is the broker's fee and a few other fees mortgages. That adds to the economy. But when you build a new home sales, the whole prices is new. It's that you've added to the existing wealth of the company, the country. Uh so it's it's a big deal. And what's the ratio of existing to new

home sales more or less? Uh, it's about eight to one, maybe tend to one, even he used to it used to be closer maybe six to one existing to the new. Um there's there's been ever since the crisis, a lot more existing home sales. New homes got slaughtered. Well, because you're you're competing against foreclosures, you're competing against dramatically. Although let's talk a little bit about foreclosures and and before I get to foreclosures, I almost forgot multi family homes.

That's been a big uptick post crisis. Also, yes, And is that just a reflection of rental demand or well? Yeah, Well, you know, one of the nice things about for multi family is there's the demographics have been incredibly positive for him. At the same time you had all these people moving out of foreclosed homes, and and and looking for a

place to rent. Now, a lot of those houses were bought to to rent, and so that you would think, oh, well, would you wouldn't have this multi family But but you do have this huge surge in people in the twenties and that's the main rental a demographic. So there's a big cohort there. They're not going to buy. There's well they're starting to move into the buying years. So we were moving out of parents basement. They're certainly renting. Are

they forming households? That's another great data. Yeah, and they will household formation and they will and and uh, you know the problem with household formation data. See, there's an area that we could really improve is everybody uses the HVS Housing Vacancy Survey or whatever and and uh, and that data is not consistent with with the annual census or the ten year census. So and the Census Bureau is aware of that and they're trying to figure out

why that data is so inconsistent. Um, but that's something they can do a much better job of, I think is is uh household formations. So the next president gets elected and they say, I want to see some better data on the economics side, and they pick up the phone and say, Bill, you mind coming to d C for a year or two. We have some work for you. What sort of stuff would you would you look to add, refine, improve,

or eliminate. Well, I think housing is is so important that I would definitely go through the methodology of each of those. Um. One of the interesting things I think is h for housing starts. If I'm remembering this correctly, it might be new home sales, they don't include certain condos, right, so if if if if they're side by side condos, they include them. But if their high right condo condos,

they don't. And it's really complicated, and and and there's there, and we're moving to where there's more of those being built, so we could have more units coming on the market than anybody's really aware. That has to be fixed. Yeah, that that just needs to be resolved. What what aren't we measuring that we should? Well, you know, I I'm not completely confident in the private sources of of data.

So let's talk about the National Association of Realtors and I'll throw them under the bus because I know you don't want to do that. We all so everybody who blogged about realistic and economics used to make fun of the chief economists for the n R because they were from the peak and oh six to the bottom in they were just relentlessly optimistic. And I figured that guy's named David David Young, that's the current guy. Um Laria. Yeah,

so he had the same book. So the fantastic thing about that book is the same book came out two or three times, same picture, same everything. This is a blog post somewhere about it. And they just changed the name of it. So the first name was something like I'll google it and see if I can find it. Why now is the time to buy housing? It was right at the peak, and then two years later they reissued it with a different house and take advantage of

the decline in housing. And then the third the third cover was We're all going to die run for the hills sort of thing. And and by the way, that was at the bottom. It was it was quite quite amazing. Well, you know when we're talking about than are you know, I have a good relationship with a lot of the industry people at nb A Mortgage Bankers Association, which I find to be a much more realistic Those guys are. They're straight shooters and and they and they do an

excellent job. National Associated Homebuilders same thing than are For some reason, they're more cheerleader oriented because it's it's real estate agents and uh and and uh here it is. I actually found it the O five, Um, David Laria, are you missing the real estate Boom? And then and then um the second version of the cover in two thousand and six was why the real Estate Boom Will Not Bust? And then the two thousand and seven and by the way, there's a house floating and a couple

with a kid looking at it. In the first two editions. The third edition, All real estate is local. The house is missing, it's just at and that is actually, this is not fabricated. This is true. It's the same book. You know, could not have been more wrong with with three different covers. It's quite it's quite uh quite astonishing.

But their role is a cheerleader, right, I mean National Associated Homebuilder their role they they they they're the homebuilders really want to know what's happening, and so when they gather data from them and distribute it, it's real. And same with Mortgage Bankers Association. I'm not saying the NORDS data isn't real. They just they they spin it. They spent it very positively, and it's not really gathered in a very scientific way. So, um, so isn't it based

on on on what McCall it on? Actual closings? Don't they? Yeah? But you know they they're they're sampling. It's mushy, Yeah, they were. They sample. What they do is they sample certain large multiple listing services and that's they based it off that. And then every what they were doing is every ten years they would go to the Census Bureau and and look at how many houses have sold, and

then they would try to rejigger. Yeah, if you will, so and so I I to me, you know, we're getting to the stage where why can't we count pretty much every closing in America? I don't understand why not either? Yeah, I mean, I I so that I know that's been discussed. When you're in DC. Can we get the BLS or i'd really Commerce Department? I like I'd like to see

them do that. And and you know the other thing is is when they're calculating GDP, they're just estimating the percentage that the salesperson gets and which has been under pressure, and it's actually yeah, and and and I think that, you know, it's very possible that that's being overstated a little bit. So we really who knows, who knows? I really don't know. Nobody knows. And and uh, I mean there's a lot of estimating that goes on, but that

that whole industry is undergoing dramatic change right now. And and uh, you know the online sites have just changed it dramatically, so you you, you know, they could measure that a lot better. And and so we've talked about how they commit. They might be missing some high rise condos. The the existing home sales and commissions I think could be measured a lot better. Um house prices I think is an interesting thing. The f h f A. It does an excellent job, and they have an expanded series,

it doesn't get the publicity it deserves. Are they tracking the same house over time? Yes, exactly. So that's what's really fascinating. Supposed to repeat sales. But you know, even even that, you know it's right away seven years apart on average something like that. Yeah, something like that. And but you know, even that has obvious flaws. What if the people didn't maintain it what if they put in a new kitchen, you know, uh so just put it in the bathroom. Yeah, they and they try and and

they try to do some permitting. It was something permitted, but you know a lot of people put in a new bathroom without permitting it and nephews. So in my town of Oyster Bay, unless you're changing the footprint of the house or running a natural gas line in like I'm in the midst of doing, you don't need a permit. A permit for the natural gas. You could redo a kitchen, you could redo a bathroom. You don't need a permit.

If you if you extend the house, if you change the footprint, if you replace a make a deck bigger, and it impinges on the name, you you need a permit. But you know, it depends on what you do. Obviously. I think in any area you can retile your bathroom without a permit. I think if you move the electricity around, yep, change the plugs, whatever, I think most places would require

a permit. Makes sense. You have to have the electrical inspector to make sure it was done to so, you know, But but a lot of people do that without permits. So there's because you don't want to pay an increased tax rate. You pay a fine at the end five years later, so instead of paying a thousand dollars more a year, you pay two. They never they never even

catch them. Sometimes you need a CEO, a certificate of ocupancy when you do the sale, so people run around before a closing in order to make all that um On the spin from the National Association of Realtors, I'm going way back two thousand and seven, there was a quote in the Palm Beach Post. Some realtors are grumbling about prices falling. Guess who they're not falling. Guess who

they're blaming. A growing number of realtors in Florida are frustrated with the state and National Realtors Group efforts to spin the market as one that is strengthening and where home prices are stabilizing. We people can take Customers continue to list their homes at prices that are unrealistic, and as a result, sales volumes and thus commissions continue to

be depressed. So the net impact of the n a R spin in oh seven was that agents were saying to people, these prices are unrealistic, and they're saying, well, I read the paper. Things are getting better. Yeah, that's the problem. That's what the home builders don't tolerate. But the agents, but on a national level have have mess wet. Yeah, you know, but there's there's more than the National Association of Realtors there they're compliding about. And if you own yeah,

well they are clearly. But if you if you own a home and it's pretty much equivalent to your neighbor and he sold it for six hundred thousand, and the agents tell you when you're only gonna get five hundred thousand. For years, you think that agents crazy. And and yet that might have been a very fair price or maybe even too high. How many times did you have that conversation with people and they said, when did the neighbors

sell the house? Well they sold it to know five. Well, it's oh eight and we have five million foreclosures exactly. If you want to sell at that price, getting a time machine, go back to oh five, you get that price. Yeah, but you have to. It does take extra effort. You do have to explain that to him and go through. I do know a family member, my mom, who wanted to sell in like two thousands heaven and uh and moved to a retirement community and it worked out great

for her. But I I went down, we went and looked at the local houses and they were the inventory was really expanding, and I said, let's underprice everybody, and and uh and we sold it right away and and and you know what, that guy's got a nice house and it's worth more than he paid for it. So ten years later and yeah, he's he's fine, and he and you know, he loves the house. And but my mom got that money out. It made her her retirement easy,

you know. But other people were sticking to their prices, you know, and or chasing them down, which is probably the worst thing you can do. I did that with a house we tried to buy, and thanks to technology, you could look at every listing price and then you find out so it's here, and then it's a hundred thousand lower, and then it's a hundred thousand lower, and you're watching them, but they're a hundred thousand or more behind the market, so they're just following it down and

not selling it and just creating this paper trail. Or chasing the market is one of the worst things you can do. You gotta skate to where the puck is gonna be not to where it was five minutes ago. And really, you know, selling a house is so emotional. Hey, we lived here for twenty years, we raised our kids here. How could this only be worth x? It's worth three X well to you, but you've already bought it. You've gotta it's coming to somebody who doesn't have the memories.

You gotta get realistic. So we mentioned foreclosures before. Let's talk a little bit about the foreclosure crisis way back when. Um, what took place, uh during the from the O six peak to bottom more or less? Um? And what did we do right as a country and what are we doing wrong with that? You know, I personally think it's some areas of the country are still trying to recover. So New Jersey, but that has that New Jersey has

its own specific Yeah. But but you know, but if you go and look the states that have been slowest to recover all have judicial foreclosures them. That's taken forever. Yeah, and and you know by half the states are judicial. You gotta go to court. The other states, it's it's

a straightforward system. What about the rocket courts that Florida set up yeah, you know, I guess they've supposed to be horrible by the way, I'm sure because people have complained that they haven't even gotten noticed they've come home and well, you know that it really didn't help. It made things obviously much much worse for everybody that the

mortgage industry was cheating on the foreclosures constantly. Yeah, and so ham Bondi, a g of of Attorney General of Florida, got elected and stopped but with a lot of real estate developer and real estate owners backings, and stopped all the mortgage foreclosure cheating investigations that her office her predecessor Edward not my favorite age in America. Yeah, but that you know, to me, that that was that made things

a much much worse. Is if if they had just followed the rules and and done things correctly, what do you do when you can't find a note. We're missing the note? Now, well you can always go recreated. I mean, but they were paying there was actually I could cost you a lot of money. That's one of the things

that Tanta was talking about. They they had cut the back rooms so much that they that whole they just kind of assumed, well, we're never going to have foreclosures, you know where when when Tanta was working in that industry, that was very important to check every file, to make sure every file was completely correct. You know, you had all every single piece of document, which is what they do again today. So so what about let's talk a little bit about MERS the Mortgage Electronic Registry. I like

the idea. I think it's greatly see I think that it's a scam and it exists to not pay recording tax or transfer tax county by county. They've been sued by a number of people. Well I I yes, but and it allows you to to put you could sell a mortgage so many times that supposedly you're tracking it through this electronic registry, but you weren't. There was some any times we didn't couldn't tell who won't the house. Well, first of all, it was implemented poorly. Once it's implemented poorly,

it's a bad system. So you don't there's no argument for me on that. The general idea. I kind of like, well if it was done with full congressional authority and local authority, but that didn't happen. I mean, I mean the idea of that that you because because what they wanted to do was put the mortgage the mortgages into

mortgage backed security. Sure, and nothing wrong with that. No, it's nothing wrong with that, But it's gotta you can't have just some random companies saying wouldn't in my opinion, we can't bypass the local authority because it's faster, easier, cheaper. I'm convinced that mirrors is an underwritten story of the crisis. But for mers, we may not have had as deep and bed. You couldn't have cranked out as many houses

and as No, yeah you need you needed to that. Yeah, So so that was that was you know, it was a little bit of a grease enabler. But we want your cause, so sure. No, definitely not a cause, but definitely an enabler. God, there's so many questions I haven't gotten to and I want to make sure I leave leave some time to our standard questions. Um. So here's an interesting question A reader had asked. Asked McBride what policy choices he would make to improve a lot of

the bottom even if it hurt corporate America. Well, uh not not. You know, I think that one of the key things is is you've got to have wages up. You have to get wages up for the lower income workers. So how do we do that? And so with the the to one thing you can do is you can mandate a higher a minimum wage. That will help. How many people earned minimum wage? It's not that many, but it pushes up the people that are just above minimum

I guess everybody. And then but but I think the key is more bargaining power for workers of some sort. So that means stronger unions. Yeah, well we've crushed the unions, yes, other than the public union um, which which have plenty of problems still, you know, I mean because they have all these pensions that are crazy. So with the public unions, I'm kind of like, well, we should take a lot of effort and and and work on those the pensions.

But but if when we're talking about improving a lot of the lower fift I think getting some sort of bargaining for workers, um and you know, whether they're unionized or some other way. I'm not a labor expert, but I do think that that's where one of the keys. The the full of the may be a coincidence, but the full of the strength of unions and the full and middle class income is seems to be quite the coincidence. One would imagine they're related. Oh, they're They're definitely related,

there's no question. And in raising the minimum wage is going to help some. So you know, there's a policy that we can do. I don't think that there's a big negative impact for for I mean, for you know, in most areas, especially in the course if you look right, if you look in the Seattle and Portland and San Francisco in l A, they could raise a minimum wage to fifteen dollars and it's fine, may not work in the heartland. Yeah, basically in l A you had to

pay that anyway. So um, well, you see Walmart McDonald's raising the minimum that's telling you they're having trouble getting workers. So so it's it's how you can either let the market do it or speed along and do it legislatively. I know a lot of people have a mandate. Yeah, I mean, working for the minimum wage is pretty minimal. And you're at even at at fifteen dollars, you're still at a at a forty hour week, you're you're more or less right at the poverty level, depending on how

many kids. I don't know, how you live in l A or New York can It's it's impossible. You've taken a second job working off the books. It's it's rough. Uh. Interesting question that came in from another reader. Um, we keep hearing about quote the next subprime. Where do you see excesses in the credit market that might be the next subprime? You know? Right now? It's I I think

we're okay in most areas. Um. I mean a lot of people focus on the auto loans, but you know auto loans at car the cars are easy to repossess. The technology that's built into it now is you buy a car if you don't have a good credit rating. I wrote a column about this a few months ago. And they building a remote kill switch, so you miss a payment, they shut the car off. Yeah, people, you want that car, you gotta water the money. And yeah in in l A, you want your car bad for sure.

That's how you get to work or get to anything. So you know, people pay. During the four closure crisis, people were paying their car loans, but they weren't paying their house loans. The story was you'd pay your visa, you'd pay your car loan, you would skip the student loan. You would skip the mortgage because what are they gonna do. It's gonna take three years. Yeah, you know, I'm not I'm not that concerned about student loans either. I I

think that there's things we can do, um, lower interest rates. Sure, I I you know, when I went to school cool, Um, you know, it really dates me. But I paid. I went to University of California, Irvine. Paid two hundred dollars a quarter to go to school. I went to Sunny Stony Brook. My first semester was semester, not even quarter. Two semesters four fifty. Yeah, so you know, uh, I could go. I paid my way through school. I could work on the weekends, pay my rent, pay my my tuition.

I think that that's kind of Now it's twelve thousand a semester. What do you do? Yeah, I mean, if you can't work on the weekends to go to school, it makes life completely different. Sure, you know, not everybody did that. Luckily, a lot of people when I was young, their parents paid it because it wasn't that much either, you know. But so you know there's I do like the idea of making some education less expensive makes sense. What, um, what asset classes do you see as expensive or is

that something you really don't pay close attention to. Um, you know, I I I know it's not something I don't write about. But you basically everything is at least fairly valued now I don't see you know, like in two thousand twelve, it was clear to me that if you should be out buying as much real estate as you could, um, the in two thousand nine, you should be jumping in as hard as you can into the stock market. So what do you do in two thousand six, Um, Well,

earlier this year I did buy. I put some money into the stock market when we had that nice yeah, and and so that was well, you know, luckily I'm not sitting on any cash right now. I don't know exactly what I would do today. You know, It's funny. One of the things is I don't know what I'm gonna do until I need to do it exactly. Uh. I like that. I don't give advice on investing on a daily basis. You know, back when, because we were talking about the commenting and I participated in this site

called Silicon Investor for a little while. And they, by the way, they came to fame in the late nineties screaming bubble, and they were right eventually, but getting timing on that is really you know, we would talk with some you know, as as happens on every commenting thing. At first it was really good, and uh we talk

about different stocks and and uh. One of the things I discovered at the time is I could mention ten stocks that I thought were good, and nine of them would do great and one of them would really underperform. And then people, every time I would say anything, people come back, weren't you the one who liked x y Z? Yes?

Out of the ten stocks I mentioned x Y And after a while you go, I'm tired of this, you know, I let's let's chase let's chase away all the good commenters and just get it to the point where it's just garbage. And that's what they do. The nice thing

about you have an NBA. The nice thing about law school is you learn the rules of rhetoric and debate, and so you could very I can very quickly identify that's a strong man argument, that's an ad hominum attack, that's arguing from extreme that's all right, Like you start to notice all than not and comments are us they're all that. It's just a place where logic and reasoning go to die. It's unfortunate. So last question before I get to my standard questions. I asked everybody so you

said you don't see a recession anytime um soon? And I never asked people for what where, what's your favorite stock, what's what's your with is the market could be what's your forecast? So I'm reluctant to ask this as a forecasting question. But how long? So I'm gonna phrase it slightly differently. How long do you see this economic expansion continuing? Is this something that could go on for eight thirty six months or a wee closer to the end of

the cycle than we are to the beginning. Oh, I would say we're probably closer to the end in the beginning because we've been this seven years, seven years, it will go another seven years. It could actually because because of the slow growth. I don't think it's gonna have Yeah, I don't think that's going to happen. But you know, you look around, look at mortgage I could be withdrawal is still basically zero. You know people are really yeah people you we used to we used to look at

that data point. It was. It was enormously you know, people are pouring money out of their houses, you know, and and yeah, we're I think we're I think we're right at that starting to turn positive again. But that can go a long time positive. So you know, the in the economy, so so I you know, as far as the cycle, I think we're mid cycle somewhere, maybe

late in mid cycle. I'm of that camp that sixth inning, that metaphor no but no, yeah, but I'm I'm of the camp that they recovers, don't expansions, don't die of old age, they die for other reasons. And so we need to see some real excesses. Um. You know, some people it's easy to point out excesses, uh you or or imagined excesses. You could say, well, look at the bond market. The bond deals are so low. Clearly that's going to blow up someday. Yeah. But I mean I'm

not I'm not so I'm not in that camp. I I think that we're not seeing the excess as yet. We're not seeing the inflation that the Fed really would need to fight. I think that's going to be slow to come. Um, the demographics is improving, in the US. Um, you know, they forget about the baby boomers, they're moving on. But we're getting that nice group in the in the twenties or gen X, gen y, Yeah, millennials and and don't and and you know there there could be a

little bit more inflation as they compete for products. But but you know, I don't see it picking up dramatically like we saw in the seventies at all. All right, so let's jump into my standard questions. Already told us about your background. Who are your early mentors, um as far as economics as anything. Uh, I was very fortunate to have some very good CEOs that I worked with, Don Judgen. Don Judson at vital Com, I was absolutely brilliant guy. Uh. I was kind of the number two

guy there for for a number of years. Um, you know, he just he just would see things and and uh and so he was great. And uh Don Barry two Dons, the two Dons was at the at the telecommunications company. He was the founder of that and just another brilliant, positive person you know who just was a hard worker. Both those guys really promoted my career. Um. So yeah, those those two guys, I want a lot to the

two dons. How about investors, any particular investor influence your approach to investing, be at real estate stocks whatever, um some Warren Buffett. I can't go wrong with that. Yeah, so uh could do us. Yeah on real estate, you know a little bit. My dad Uh uh, you know that's nice. My dad, My dad had. My dad's still around. He's ninety four. So he got to see the blog blow up. He got to yeah, you're all of your

post career success. He must have appreciated that. It's funny because it's the only what's the only thing he ever really understood that I did. Really he come and see he come and look at the heart monitors and go, what the heck is this all a that that that you know when I started writing the blog. He understood that. And uh but he you know, he had he had

some funny sayings. One was, the deal of the century comes along every year, so you know you don't have to like a year, flood comes along every five Yeah, you don't have to. You don't have to jump on anything. There'll be another good opportunity six months from now or a year from now. He goes on the deal. Deal of the century comes along every years. Um, let's talk about books. What are some of your favorite books, be

they economic or otherwise, fiction or nonfictional. Well, I just finished reading, Um, well I can I'll mention a few economic books. Um. A book called Big Ship Ahead, Big Shifts Ahead. Yeah. I don't have the whole title, but that's the first person on the side. Yeah, it's a it's I don't know if it's available yet. I read a preview. It's by Chris Porter and John Burns, both real estate guys. And Chris Porter's a demographic guy. And uh, and this is really driven by democrat like Harry Dent

used to be Mr Demography. Yeah, well this book is about the shifting demographics and what it means for businesses and primarily for the real estate industry and housing. And you enjoyed it and and yeah, because it's it's something I think that that's very very important to understand. And uh and you know what, how people are going to be building different projects. Um. And I think they did a really good job. It was very interesting to me. Um. But else I really liked. Um. Uh, let me think,

what's the house of debt? House of debt? I could see and I could see it sitting on my bookshelf on the and yeah, and uh and dr she's in California somewhere right or or he he's I think he's in the Midwest. I'm thinking of a different book then. Yeah, but it's got like the torn sort of page of of I'm trying to remember what the cover looks like. But House of Debt, and you can look that one up. House of Debt, all right, okay? And that that what

they did with the two professors. What they did is they looked at micro data in available in each city to see how much um people, how much household debt people had, and how that related to the strength of the recovery or the depth of the recession. And it was very very interesting and very insightful. So you know, the more people could borrow, obviously, the more more trouble they got into House of Debt. How they and you caused the Great Recession? Can prevent it from happening again?

A mir Sufi and a tief me on, yes, all right. And the other one was called Big Shifts, Big Shifts Ahead by Porter and Burns John Burns and Chris Border. Big Shifts Ahead Demographic Clarity for business that's not coming out until October. Give me one more. What else have you read that you've really enjoyed? Uh? The kersh Act Ben Bernink? Oh? Really? Yeah? I thought that was fun.

You know, it's interesting because it's just from his perspective. Now, you and I were writing about, you know, anything that that's um about the crisis, the courage to act, a memoir of a crisis and its aftermat Yeah, anything about the crisis. I always disagree with something, and I'm sure you would too, but that's but I'd like to see other people's perspective. Did you really enjoy this? Because this book has been sitting on a shelf, untouched, unloved, not

even I have. I didn't. I didn't read all of it, but I read several chapters and not not even in my It's like, do I really Although I will say I've I've really enjoyed his blog. Yeah, and I like the post the I like the post crisis per Nanke better than the pre crisis. He was too blase and too willing to you know, rubber Stamwood Greenspan was doing pre crisis, but in the midst of the crisis and after couldn't have had a better guy there when he

stepped up. We were very fortunately, yes, And I was a big critic prior and in hindsight during the crisis. Really you want a guy who's a student of the Great Depression. He was slow to react to what was happening. But then once I think one day he woke up and said, holy count, you know, and and this everything I've studied all my life, it's happening right now as I'm sitting here. You know. It's it's really quite amazing. Yeah.

So you know, we we remember when he first got appointed by George W. Bush and I thought, oh, three something like that. He must have not not as chairman, but just on the board. He was ce a counseled Economic Advice Yeah, and that, you know, and that him

up to go on the FED. Yeah and that. And I felt sorry for him when he was the c A because he was saying things that really didn't make sense in my view, and I thought, oh man, he there, he's got to be political a little bit, right, And but when once he got but I'm still really happy that he got appointed because you could have got anybody, and uh, we could have got somebody really bad who felt like the FED shouldn't do anything right. And and there are lots of people who think, just let it

run its course. It'll be really painful, but then we'll come out the other end, cleansed and better. Well, you know, and I you know, you kind of understand that except for the realistic, it's not realistic, especially when you look at all the people that are seriously injured during the downturn. And and um, I mean instead of instead of picking at ten percent, the uneployment rate might have piked at

twenty or twenty five percent. And then and it's not only those twenty percent to get hurt, it's the next ten or they are pulling way back. They're afraid they're going to lose their jobs to paradox of thrift. Yeah, and and and then and then you get I mean you get you get suicide's divorced. Yeah, I mean you can't. You can't let that go on for five seven years

and hope it's going to resolve itself. And besides, I think, you know, Cain's kind of pointed out that you've got a problem and it may never ever resolve with something that but you know, if if the if the FED can step up and you can get some physical policy. Gee whiz, we turned it around from a financial crisis perspective. We turned this around better than just about anybody. Ever, the rest of the world certainly is still lagging behind the US. All right, last two questions before they throw

us out of the studio. We've been here for almost two hours. So a millennial or a recent college grad comes up to you and says, I'm interested in blogging real estate, um writing, What sort of advice would you give them? Go ahead, have fun? You know. Look, people ask me how I built my traffic. I could ask you how you built your traffic in relentlessly through ten years of brutal work. I just becoming overnight sensation. Yes, I just wrote and wrote and wrote and and people

started picking up. People liked what I wrote, picked it up, spread it around, you know, post go viral and and uh, you know, so I don't people ask me, well, how did you advertise? Not? I didn't how to spread the word. I didn't um ever send out emails to journalists that hey, this is an interesting piece, you should look at it. Never so I've never I've never advertised it at all. So I mean, I guess I'm advertising it now. But yeah, but you're talking about after a decade of putting it out.

This this is less advertising than a a victory lap slash retrospective. It's not like look at look at Bill out Um promoting look at him hyping calculated risk. I've asked you full disclosure. How many times have I said, Hey, let's let's get you, let's do something, let's talk about this. I recall linking to you back in I don't know, oh five oh six I was doing. That's probably where

my traffic came from. I was first I was doing the link fest for the street dot com, and then I was doing them on the Big Picture and I recall and you sent like a really lovely email. I have it somewhere. Hey, thanks for the link, but you you know, you crashed our site. You took it offline. And it wasn't like I was getting that much traffic. But in the scheme of bloggers, if you were getting a thousand a day, that was a lot, you know,

way back in the early days. But so your advice to someone who wants to start today this late date covering housing or you would say, go for it. Yeah, I think I think anybody can I think anybody can do it if I mean, if there if they have something to add there. I mean, you just have to work at it and be and put up with a low traffic to start. And you know, how how how do you it's not I wouldn't consider a money maker.

I mean if it's if it's somebody's career, but if it's somebody's sidelight, uh, something they do because they're passionate about their passion about it and they've got something another real job, which is what really most bloggers do. What's up with you and zero heads? You've you've written some some critical things. He's not happy with me. Oh I I you know, I have no relationship with him at all.

I just think the sits a joke. Really, yeah, because every now and then there's something of interest because he has an expertise and derivatives what have you. But how do you how do you know? How do you can't find it's you know, I only have so much time

every day. I think this is a good lesson for everybody is you have to you have to learn the sites or the newspaper journalists that you want to read, and and every once in a while you branch out and pick up other people and and then decide whether you want to keep reading them. You know, if I see John Hills and Wrath at the Nick Tamaris, I love both the work at the Walston Journal, I read

the article. It's just automatic, you know. I read everything by Paul Krugman, and I read you know, um, I have my group of people that I always read, and I branch out and read other people too, and then and sometimes they fall into that group, and and then I'll start reading them if I see their name. Oh yeah, I gotta. I think everybody has to have that filter. I can't waste my time going through a hundred posts to find the one little nute um and and you know, uh,

way back when I don't. I don't think I've been to zero hedge site in five years. Really, Yeah, that's fascinating. I have friends who are always sending me stuff, and one out of five things are are kind of interesting them. I know a lot of people read it. I don't know why. And you know what, maybe they're better today, you know, maybe maybe I maybe I've been I've been blaming zero Hedge. I've been blaming that site for hedge fund under performance for the past five years. They've been

relentlessly negative. They missed a giant move in equity, but they were they were saying short uh in March of two thousand nine when the market would hit six six six, good time and uh. And they've never changed as far as for you know, I was I used to go for entertainment purpose, well you know back when, back when I first did and and I'm sure this is true for you too, is that. Um there was kind of

like camaraderie among the blogs. Absolutely. If I saw something wrong or on on another side, or they saw something wrong on mine, I we would exchange emails. Yeah, yeah, hey, I think that maybe you're looking at this. And it was great because then I could correct my article. Um I zero Hedge came along. You know, they didn't call the recession at all, obviously, didn't call it recovery. They didn't see the housing bubble then, none of that because they yeah, they came out way after and it was

all gloom and doom, yellow journalism. But like somebody sent me an article from it and I said, oh, a new site, you know, and I read it and I said, well you I sent the guy an email and uh, and I got the rudest reply and I went, I went, what the hell I here? I am reaching out. I'm not I'm not publishing it on my side. I'm not embarrassing these guys. They just just just you can't you really can't look at the data this way. You need

to do this. And it's something I knew really well, and and you know, screw you kind of response and and okay, fine, you know, you know, I had a lunch with Chris Whalen set up a lunch with him and me and a bunch of other people because I was interested in the derivative stuff he was writing about was excellent, and the high freagency trading stuff. He had some really good insights. And then everything all kinda went to just a degree of negativity and well being. Well

being negative drives traffic for a lot of people. I guess you know, you if you if you're constantly bearish. I always say that blogs having in centator to be bearish because it drives traffic. It's kind of like, you know, Wall Street Dalis having in centator to be bullish, you know, and and it's the rare great economist on Wall Street who can say we've got a problem. Um, and it's it's you know, the very few bloggers are willing to

go both ways. So let's let me ask you my very last question, my favorite question, and that is, what is it that you know about real estate, about mortgages, out writing and blogging that you wish you knew back in two thousand and five when you launched the site? Well, I wish I had met Tanta two years earlier. As far as mortgages, Uh, everything I know I learned from her.

So uh as far as real estate, you know, I it was it was so much fun early on reading through all the technical documents and all of the sites that would provide that as to how they gathered their data, and so I really learned a lot. Um. If I'd known that a little earlier, maybe I could have put all the pieces together just a little bit earlier. Um, you know, I I it was. It was a weird thing in two thousand five. To me, I could clearly see that the market was overvalued, that there was really

bad mortgages. But I kept asking myself, well, why why are they making these mortgages to people that are never going to pay them? I personally would never learn money to people that aren't going to pay me, you know. I it took me a two or three years to finally really understand how they were rating based on two nine nineties methodology. The methodology had changed. How that how you know that you had this real uh originate to

to distribute model that that was just pulling. You know, people were investing in these things that they thought were triple A and they paid a higher yield than other triple as, which wish you can sell that you can sell an infinite amount of that because people can can arbitrage between the triple as. You know, I mean it's crazy how that whole worked. Once you realize how that whole mechanism worked, and then it was obvious how it happened.

You know, I just couldn't understand originally why they make loans that were never gonna get paid. Well, if you can my my favorite. I did a ton of research for Bailout Nation. One of my favorite little research discoveries were that the primarily located in California, private sector mortgage lenders who would then sell it to Wall Street would sell it to Wall Street with a nine day warranty. They would guarantee that this mortgage won't default, This thirty

year mortgage won't default for three months. Now, stop and think about how misaligned those incentives are. I have a question for you that's not on my list. I have to ask, because I've been thinking about it. Are we ever going to see a calculated risk book from you? I don't think so, really, because I think that could be really interesting. It looks like a lot of work to me. Yet it's a lot of work. But when you're done, I have a pH d. That's what it

feels like. Okay, Well, I think people would buy the Calculators book, and I think it could be. That's very nice to you to say, so you don't you know how much work goes into it. I know. Hey, listen, it's been five years and I've been thinking about, well, I'm just now five years later on my Alright, maybe I'll start thinking about, well you could you could see five years. I'm sorry it's seven years later, but you know, your master's in business, You've You've had over a hundred

interviews on my list. That's I've had two different publishers reach out. Three different publishers reached out to me. Hey, would you like to do this as a book? Sure? I think it would be a great book. It could be fun. Bill. Thank you much for for doing this. This has just been really fascinating for for those of you who listened, I apologize for babbling. I know Bill for so long, and literally it's the first time we've

actually sat down and chatted. I was very chatty, and it's because when you know someone virtually for twelve years and you finally get to sit down and talk, you feel compelled to uh, to hold up your half of the conversation. For those of you who have enjoyed this conversation, be sure to look up an inch or down an inch on Apple iTunes and you can see any of the other hundred plus conversations we've had, which is in

itself a mind blowing data point. I would be remiss if I did not thank my producer and Today's recording engineer, Charlie Volmer, our booker Taylor Riggs, and Mike Batnick, who is the head of research. We love your comments, feedbacks, criticisms, and and other assorted responses. Be sure and right to us at M I B Podcasts at Bloomberg dot net. I'm Barry Ritolts. You've been listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio