Megayacht Foam Parties Are In

Hello, and welcome to Sleep Money, your guide to the business and finance news of the week. I'm Felix Salmon of Axios. No, I'm not. I'm not. of Axios anymore. I am sitting on my European social. I'm Felix Salmon of absolutely nowhere except for Slate Money. I am here with Emily Peck of Axios. Emily, how's Axios these days? Well, it's not the same without you, Felix. Hello. I'm here with Elizabeth Spires of New York Times and other places.

Hello. And we are going to talk about Jeff Bezos, of course, and his wedding because that's the main news of the week. But also we're going to talk about the central bank and whether it makes sense to Donald Trump to say who the new Fed chair is going to be. to be long in advance we have a slate plus segment on blue collar workers and training them up and filling this new manufacturing workforce but first we are going to have a statement on new york city which is where we all live and work

and what just happened in the election here. So, it's all coming up on Slate Money. Let's talk about something that might be keeping you up at night. Cybersecurity. According to Vanta's latest state of trust report, it's the number one concern for UK businesses. That's where Vanta comes in. Whether you're a startup. growing fast or already established. Vanta can help you get ISO 27001 certified and more without the headaches.

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Because when it comes to your business, it's not just about keeping the lights on. It's about keeping everything secure. Okay, so two thirds of slate money is New Yorkers. Emily, you don't count. Sorry, you live in Westchester. But Elizabeth, you live in New York. Am I allowed to ask you whether you voted for Zoran Mamdani?

Sure, I did. I ranked him first. I've also worked with him on a campaign years ago. I ranked the similarly named Zelna Myrie first, but he, I think, came like 20th or something. I don't think anyone even noticed he was running. But this election of Zoran Mamdani, which let's be clear first that he hasn't actually become the mayor-elect. He's just won the Democratic primary, but this is a city which is overwhelmingly Democratic. It's like six to one, I think.

We'll talk about whether left-right politics manages to overlay on city politics, but the big reaction to this, especially among... the new york wealthy is this is terrible he's a socialist new york is a capitalist city socialism and Capitalism are like cats and dogs. They can't get along. And so therefore, we need to panic and run into the sea because we've elected a socialist ODA.

I feel like there's just a bunch of logical and weird conceptual leaps that are sort of embedded in that logic that don't make a lot of sense. But Emily, do you kind of understand where these people are coming from? I mean... Yes and no. I have so many thoughts here, but I'll try to be organized. First of all, Mamdami does call himself a democratic socialist. So I think the people that have commented on Wall Street, the Dan Loeb's and...

other hedge funders, whoever, who are freaking out and calling this guy a communist socialist. I mean, they're... And Catherine Wilde, who's not just a big hedge fund. She's, you know, she kind of represents the New York City business community. And she's like, everyone is terrified.

Yeah. So, I mean, he has socialist in his descriptor. So maybe that is just at a very basic level what's going on. And some of his policies, they don't like the idea of freezing rents, which is one of his. policies and they don't like the idea of, I guess, city owned grocery stores, which I mean, who cares? I saw the owner of Gristidi's, which is like a supermarket in New York City that I think is well past its prime.

is my understanding. Like even when I lived in the city, like no one cares about Gristides. He was like, we'll take Gristides out of the city. And it's like. Okay, great. No one cares. There's lines at Trader Joe's. That's John Katsimatidis. He's also run for mayor before as a Republican.

But yeah, I saw that and thought, oh no, the shittiest grocery store chain in New York might leave. It's like, can you take key food with you? Right. But I will say, I've been thinking a lot about New York City.

real estate the past few days because the FAIR Act, which we've talked about on the podcast, recently went into effect. That's the banning of the broker fees for rental apartments. And I've been thinking about this because rents have gone up a bit since that happened because that's another conversation.

Anyway, I was talking to friend of the pod, Jonathan Miller, about the Manhattan rental market and Manhattan real estate. And the Manhattan rental market, the city real estate market, is already socialist. Apparently. 75% of Manhattan real estate stock is rentals, Jonathan was telling me. And of that 75%, about 75% is rent stabilized, which is socialist market manipulation, I guess, if that's your kind of point of view.

This is right. And when Mandani is running on the policy of freeze the rent, what he is not saying is that everyone who rents gets their rent frozen. He's saying that if you are in a rent-stabilized building, then the Rent Guidelines Board is going to recommend a 0% rate. increase. And they have done this before.

And the world failed to come to an end. Yeah. It's like this isn't communism writ large. Like this isn't like the USSR. Like it's okay. We're not all moving to the Stalinist collectives. Yeah. But let me just also. mentioned a couple of things which are germane here.

The first of which is that there's a world of difference between rent-stabilized apartments on the one hand and rent-controlled apartments on the other. Rent-controlled apartments are a tiny minority. There are very few of them left anymore. Those are the ones which you hear. about people living in this rent control department on the Upper West Side and they pay $400 a month for a three-bedroom or something, right? That's much more, you know, caricature socialist and...

There's no way that we're getting more rent-controlled apartments. The other thing about rent-stabilized apartments is that most of the time, when you move into a rent-stabilized apartment, the landlord can pretty much set the rent to whatever they want.

It's only like once you're in there, the amount that they can increase it is limited. So landlords are basically, you know, it's not that bad given the... turnover in rentals yes there are people in new york who've been renting the same place for decades but you know those one two three percent rent increases per year add up over time. And there aren't that many people who are in rent-stabilized apartments that are paying way, way under market.

I'm just saying there's already controls over the rental market in Manhattan. This isn't like you're coming into this. Everyone says, you know, socialism is coming to Wall Street. It's like, well, actually, New York City is pretty liberal and has some progressive laws to start with. We're not. coming into some like capitalist Ayn Rand paradise or something. The problem here is that a lot of these people would view anything vaguely progressive as a threat to capitalism overall.

And they're not differentiating between Soviet-style communism and the sort of Nordic model of democratic socialism. And they're not really educating themselves about it either.

There's a kind of level of hysteria right now that is wildly disproportionate to anything that Mondami could possibly do or accomplish as mayor. Yeah, exactly. The New York City mayor, in some ways, is a very powerful job. New York City mayor, in other ways, is not. And when he's like, we're going to raise taxes on billionaires and all of this kind of stuff, it's like, you know, you're not.

You need to work with Albany, you need to work with New York State, you need to work with the governor, you need to work with the city council, which we have to remember there's a large chunk of the city council comes from... relatively conservative outer borough districts where everyone drives cars and owns their home and that kind of stuff so like realistically his ability to turn new york city into some kind of socialist paradise is extremely limited

What he can do is what the likes of Eric Adams and Mike Bloomberg and the rest have also been up for, which is up-zoning certain areas of Midtown. you know, making increasing density and building more and that kind of thing. And he said he's on board with this agenda, this kind of EMB, city of yes agenda.

I guess the thing that I always come back to is the old Fiorello LaGuardia quote about there's no Republican or Democratic way of taking out the trash. Like, city mayors are judged on things that are not... the left-right spectrum. And right now with Trump as president, everything has become polarized and everything becomes viewed through this. Are you left? Are you right? Are you MAGA? Are you socialist?

But city politics, I just feel, doesn't lend itself to that. And the people who are saying, oh, my God, we can't have a socialist mayor of a capitalist city have obviously never lived in London. Right. I mean, when London got its mayor, when was it like 20 years ago, the guy who swept in as the first mayor twice was this guy, Ken Livingston, who I feel pretty comfortable saying is.

significantly to the left of Zoran Mamdani. And the city of London was fine, and London's status as a financial center was unaffected. Well, also, you know, he's being portrayed by people who are just not familiar with him. as somebody who is you know has wild ideas about how to govern the city and most of his proposals are fairly they're either highly incremental or they're just not you know, that radical. There are things that I think progressives would support anyway.

But he won in part because he focused very heavily on the cost of living in New York, which is important to working class people. So some of his programs like free buses, those are things that if you're struggling or you're unemployed, immediately help you. And I think typically when centrist Democrats talk about affordability.

They tend to talk about high-minded policies or things that are a little bit more long-term, so things like tax credits. But if you're really struggling, that doesn't help you much. And his focus on real estate in particular... is important because New York City has become increasingly too expensive for younger people to move here in particular. And that really affects the overall labor force in a way that actually these big business people should be thinking about.

But they're more focused on the fact that he wants to slightly raise taxes on people making more than a million dollars a year. So, okay, I have two mild pushbacks to this. One is, yeah, three buses sound great, but... Buses are run by the MTA. Buses still sound bad, let's be honest.

Oh, my God, I love buses. I'm such a bus fan. I can tell you, as someone who just spent three weeks in Strasbourg, I was taking buses every day. When buses are done well, buses are incredible. And this is one of the lessons which we can learn from London is, you know...

implemented congestion pricing it put the money from congestion pricing into increasing the buses if the buses come every two minutes and if they have dedicated bus lanes oh my god it's a game changer but let me stop standing over buses for a second You know, the politics of making buses free, which, by the way, was a really good idea 10 years ago.

because buses got slowed down by everyone's fumbling through their purse to find the right change to pay for the fare on the bus. It makes much less sense now that everyone just taps in with their phone or their card because you don't get that savings of time. But also like... The MTA is run by the governor, not by the mayor. The mayor has almost no ability to do this. Felix, Zorin was an assembly member. He piloted a free bus.

program with Albany. I'm pretty sure he understands that dynamic. It's a great policy to run on. I'm just saying he's not going to do it. is all I'm saying. He actually did a free bus program. Elizabeth, I am going to enter into a bet with you right now that if Zoran Nandani becomes mayor after, what do you say, 18 months?

New York City buses will not be free. And then what? Then you pay for Elizabeth's bus rides for a year or something? I'll pay all of your bus fares for a year. You have to tell me how much you pay in bus fares for a year. And then if you lose the bet, you have to pay me that much in cash.

All right. He's not going to win the general election, I don't think. I think he is. He will romp away with the general election because the anti-Mamdani vote is going to be split three ways between... the Republican candidate, the incumbent, and Andrew Cuomo, who's also going to continue running on some, what's it called, the fight and deliver party? Well, also, there are a lot of people who...

wrote checks to Cuomo just because they thought he had it in the bag. There was a quote from a guy in one of the follow-up stories yesterday where he said, look... I was not enthusiastic about Cuomo, but everybody just thought it was going to be a landslide. And if you're a big business person, you...

want to give money to whoever you think is going to be in office. I think the appeal of Mondani is genuine. I think people are really embracing him, including some of the constituencies that would normally... embrace a more centrist candidate, partly because Adam's popularity rate is like 20%. Everybody hates him. Nobody really likes Cuomo. And they feel like he ran a campaign where he just, he ran on a sense of entitlement.

You know, he wasn't visible. He relied on Super PAC money to do all the campaigning for him via ads and other things. And I think people notice that. They think that he just swooped in and thought that he was going to. get it because he has name ID and he'd been governor. So there's not a good alternative, especially if you just really do want to vote for a Democrat. Felix was saying before, I mean, New York City is very democratic, but I mean...

I lived there when Giuliani was first elected. He's a Republican, famously. And he was so popular. I mean, people just loved him. Well, he was popular because of 9-11. No, no, he was popular when he was elected. He was popular when he was elected.

I worked for the city when Giuliani was the mayor. And well, I mean, everyone who worked for the city that was political appointee obviously quite loved him a lot. And there was just a lot of like, he's going to fix New York and he's going to save New York. And Bloomberg, also not a Democrat. was elected three times. Is that right? Did he change the law and allow himself to be elected? So I'm just saying, I don't know enough about mom, Donnie, just being very honest. I looked at these like.

economic policies. I don't know, but the New York city gets portrayed as this like big blue liberal place. But in my experience, when I live there, They elected Republicans all super a lot of the time. And, you know, and Manhattan isn't I mean, and New York City isn't just Manhattan and some areas of Brooklyn. It's like Staten Island's pretty conservative. There's pockets of Queens that are, you know, where Trump is from are very conservative.

It'll be interesting to see how that all plays out. And we know in the presidential election that more New Yorkers voted for President Trump as well. So I feel like it's not. It's sort of interesting to see. The first thing that we need to know is that, historically speaking, most of the time, nowadays, with a bunch of asterisks,

the real election for mayor is the Democratic primary. In general, in New York, if you're electing a member of Congress or something like that, the real election is the Democratic primary. Now, for mayor...

It's a little bit more complicated. As you say, Republicans have won in the past. But the fact is that the turnout in the general election for mayor is... roughly the same it's not vastly bigger than the turnout in the democratic primary and so if you just look if everyone who voted for mandani this time around just continues to vote for him in the general

And everyone who didn't vote for him kind of splits their vote between Cuomo and Adams and maybe Curtis Sliwa. There's just no way the mathematics... pens out like in order to be in order to get elected mayor as a republican you need to be someone like bloomberg giuliani fiorella laguardia you know someone like that who can just like captivate the entire city

There is no one like that in this race. Would you have Bloomberg captivated the city? Yeah, he really did. It's so bizarre. He totally did. Well, also the thing, though, is that even a Republican candidate who ends up mayor in New York City would be considered a kind of centrist Democrat anywhere else. And Bloomberg was a Democrat and he re-registered as Republican because it was the only way that he could get in the.

to the race. Even Giuliani pre-MAGA was not somebody who you would ID as a Republican in a red state. So I think the dynamics here, Curtis Lee was the only true. you know, what we understand to be MAGA-style Republican right now in this race. I mean, Adams is famously quite close to Trump because of all of the, you know, pardoning activity and whatnot. But also...

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

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

It's because it's the people speaking. It's like they're going to be covered no matter what they say. But I do think any reasonable business person with more than two brain cells to rub together will... give it a wait and see attitude. But the ones threatening the most loudly to immediately pack up and move to Florida are people who've said that before.

It's like, well, do it, man. They did. I mean, a bunch of them did do it in the pandemic. But if you didn't move to Florida in the pandemic, and your marginal tax rate, if you are... pulling down a million dollar income and you live in New York City is already on the order of 50%. And in Florida, there's no state or local.

income tax at all so also don't all those people claim residency in florida so but yeah but this is the thing like if the delta in marginal tax rates was enough to make you move to florida then you would have moved to florida in the pandemic there's the election of zoran as mayor is not number one i don't think he's going to be able to push through some massive significant tax hike but even if he does

You know, we've seen it all before. Yeah, I don't think New York loses out even if a few more millionaires leave. I think it's probably going to be OK. As a small business owner, you don't have the luxury of clocking out early. Your business is on your mind 24-7. So when you're hiring, you need a partner that works just as hard as you do. That hiring partner is LinkedIn Jobs. When you clock out...

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On the agenda. Next up is America's next top central banker starring Donald Trump with appearances from... Scott Besant. And Kevin Walsh. And two Kevins. Two Kevins. And Kevin Hassett. And all manner of people. Yeah, okay. So this is apparently back in the news again. This is actually a...

Kind of important story in that it has had a visible effect on the value of the dollar. And that's a big, important number. The idea is, and this is a... trial balloon that was sent up by Scott Besant during the general election campaign, which Stan Druckenmiller said was a completely moronic thing, and Stan Druckenmiller is like Besant's.

rabbi basically in in in the hedge fund world and besan kind of walked it back but now apparently it's back on the table which is trump does not fire jay powell but what he does do is he tells everyone well in advance who the new Fed share is going to be when Powell's term is up. And what that means is that the markets start listening much more to whatever the...

air presumptive start saying than they do to what Powell is saying, because they know that the air presumptive is the guy who's actually going to be running monetary policy pretty soon. There are deep

problems with this but i'm going to let elizabeth come out with the first and we'll just pile on with even more one is that it just creates a lot of uncertainty about what's going to happen. And you have two competing voices talking about what's going to happen with interest rates and how they plan to attack inflation if it explodes again. Let's start with that one because it's kind of the whole point of doing it. is to have two competing voices. But I'm not sure that...

is actually what would happen. Let's say he comes up with Kevin Walsh, who's on the FOMC board right now. Kevin Walsh is very unlikely to suddenly start... publicly disagreeing with all of his colleagues on the FOMC and with Jay Powell in particular, because he understands how these decisions get made. And they're all, you know, FOMC decisions jointly made by...

12 different people. And his job, even when he does become the chair, is to be as collegial and friendly as possible to the rest of the FOMC, that they will...

vote the way that he wants them to vote. And if he starts throwing bombs... in the months running up to becoming chair and start saying the FOMC is terrible and it's doing the wrong thing and Powell is a terrible chair, that's a really, really bad way to get in with all of your colleagues and to get them to listen to you when you become chair.

And this applies, mutatis mutandis, to any other potential candidate as well, right? None of them want to completely alienate the very constituency that they're going to be in charge of once they become chair. So I don't think... that there would actually be a massive amount of disagreement between the presumptive and the incumbent. I think this is also why the people that are being floated, a lot of them have said they're not interested in the job.

Because they know that whoever Trump wants to put in that place is somebody who Trump wants just complete loyalty from and he wants to be able to dictate what the Fed does. But anybody who, you know, actually cares about that job. knows that the fed has to retain its independence and that will mean disagreeing publicly with trump probably sooner rather than later so it's kind of a thankless job for anybody who goes into that position now yeah you're right

The Federal Reserve Board, with the seven presidential appointees, is the last independent agency standing right now. Trump has basically dismantled. all of the other independent agency board. bodies like the NLRB, NACUA, CFPB, FCC, FTC. He's fired Democratic appointees. The Smithsonian. Yeah. Yeah. So many places. Kennedy Center.

fired the Democratic appointees on all these different so-called independent boards and agencies. And even after it was challenged, went all the way up to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court said, That's totally fine. The president controls the executive branch and he can do that. It was like a pocket ruling, but they still said we won't do this to the Fed because the Fed, the Federal Reserve is unique and it's very different, which it actually really.

I mean, it is a little different because they have these appointees from the regional banks, which is different. Those aren't presidential appointees, but it's not that different. It's different, Emily, in that unlike all of these other places, it actually funds itself. You know, like the way that Trump manages to control most of these other agencies is by basically saying, well, I'm just going to not pay you any money and then you're screwed.

Whereas he can't do that with the Fed because, in fact, it works the other way around with the Fed. Most of the time, the Fed pays the government money rather than the government paying the Fed money. Sure. But just the point is, the Fed is the only one that sort of seemed immune from Trump's actual takeover. And I think you're right, Felix, the shadow Fed chair idea that is, I guess, back. now is not going to be as effective as he's been with the other agencies where he just went in.

fired everyone that Biden appointed and either put in his own people or didn't even bother to put in new people to either neuter or just take control. And then like Trump has been constrained with the Federal Reserve.

He's been told and he has pulled back, you know, from taking those similar steps because he knows how important the Federal Reserve is to the money, to the market. I think one of the really great things that Jay Powell has done is he's... accepted all the criticism he's been very sort of you know grown up about it hasn't hit back this goes back to trump's first term and the thing he hasn't said is look

These decisions are collective decisions. This is the collective decision of 12 different people. It's not just me setting rates. You can call me Too Late Powell or whatever you want to nickname me, but it's not about me. But he hasn't said that, right? And so what he's done is he's basically taken, he's been like the Fed scapegoat. He's the guy who attracts all of the ire and all of the vitriol from Trump.

which ends up with everyone else on the board getting none of it. I'm sure that the president of the New York Fed, who's always on the board, has voted with Powell every single time. has never received a word of criticism from Trump because he's one level down. He's a little bit invisible. And so by kind of hiding the collective nature of the decision-making, Powell has... created this body that is going to be able to continue to do what it's been doing and be independent even after he leaves.

It's a relatively strong body with smart people who vote the way they're going to vote and who aren't going to change their votes just because some Trump appointee comes in his chair. And so he's... put himself and the board in a very strong position and in such a strong position that really having any new chair or any shadow chair is not going to make really any difference i think the other thing

that I've been thinking about is that maybe it is time to cut rates. Maybe Trump is correct because this is what the conventional wisdom is saying today as we're speaking. We have not seen tariffs show up in the inflation. data really yet. And there are a lot of signs that demand is weakening and that the job market is kind of mid now. Mid is my new word of the day. Hiring is low. There's this troubling signals coming from the continuing unemployment claims and maybe cutting rates would.

actually be fine. But Trump and his administration by like badgering Jerome Powell, calling him a numbskull and being unclear with tariff policy has made it really hard to go ahead and take that action. Yeah, you can't cut rates when you don't know whether and when the tariff inflation is going to show up. So long as Trump is like, well, all of these low tariffs are temporary and they all cut.

they all suddenly kick in in, you know, 30 days time, a massively higher rate. And then suddenly they're going to be massive. Like it's impossible to cut rates in the face of impending. tariff hikes. You need to actually see the tariffs in place and not causing inflation before you can cut rates. And right now we haven't seen them in place, so we don't know.

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

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

of times big economic forces show up in our lives in small ways. Four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding. But the price has gone up, so now I only buy one. Small but important ways. From tech billionaires to the bond market to, yeah, banana pudding. If it's happening in business, our new podcast is on it.

I'm Max Chaskin. And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith. So listen to Everybody's Business on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You know how you always want to know about everyone else's money? On the podcast, What We Spend, guests will, for one week, tell us everything they spend their money on.

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Listen to and follow What We Spend, an Odyssey original podcast. Available now wherever you get your podcasts. Talking about punch bowls and people getting drunk. Emily, if you were invited to Jeff Bezos' wedding. How much would you drink? Wow. That's a good question because I think I would be tempted to drink all the drinks because it would be fun and there'd be all different kinds. And I'd be like, wait. It'd probably be very high quality.

Very high quality. And then I would want to eat all the food too. This happens to me. I get unleashed at these weddings. But I would try to rein it in because you want to not forget the memorable experience of attending the Bezosis' wedding. So it's a delicate dance. And we are going to call them the Bezosises, right? I will. I'll be calling them the Bezosises.

So yeah, let's get into this. Let's get into the Bezosis Union. It started earlier this week. Everyone headed out to Venice. I think I read more about this than any other topic for today's show. So I don't know. I'm sorry. policy is important, but... But really, the Bezosases people... The Bezosases had a foam party on their yacht and it looked actually fun. Every picture of Jeff Bezos and his wife-to-be, or she might already be his wife, I also read...

page six that they had already gotten married in the US before heading over to Venice for their nuptials. Anywho, they look like they're having the best time. Slate even ran a piece that was like, I know, evil billionaire, blah, blah, blah. But Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez look genuinely happy and in love. And like, I love their love. This was a piece in Slate.

And I agree. Elizabeth, do you agree? They seem happy. Like, I'll give it to them. Or they're just very good at pretending to be gleeful in front of cameras. But the thing that sort of stands out to me about the wedding is how much of it...

Feels of a piece with the sort of gaudiness that's the dominant aesthetic right now. It's sort of like Mar-a-Lago chic, I guess. Like the fake boobs are back in, tight dresses, like gold. The stealth wealth is out. Understatement is out. Connoisseurship is out. Bling is in. Rent out an entire fucking Italian city for your wedding is in. Bring your mega yacht to Venice and have a phone party is in.

Where, you know, brought to the inauguration. Yeah. It's all like, it's all of a muchness. Invite all the Kardashians. Invite all of the Kardashians. Yeah. I mean, yeah. And just. yolo your multi-billionaire status and be like there is literally no amount of money that i can spend or make any dent in the amount of money i have so just live your best life and do whatever

you know, six-year-old dreams that they would do if they had all of the money in the world. The slate piece kind of had a noted that the invite to the wedding looked like it had been made with Microsoft clip art. It sort of does. Because they don't care. Because the whole, like, we are very sophisticated people and we want to show how sophisticated we are. Neither of them has any desire.

This is the wonderful thing. A whole part of that signaling of sophistication is designed to create a certain degree of social status. And Bezos and... sanchez have basically single-handedly created an entire echelon of social status that is based entirely on being the Bezos, you know, and like, and that is the highest level. And so they get to do whatever they want because it isn't, you know, I feel like no one has occupied that.

role since Queen Victoria. Whatever Queen Victoria did automatically just became the thing that is the highest status. And they're like, well...

Now it's phone parties on a yacht, so eat it, snobs. These are two people who may not be capable of this sort of aesthetic sophistication that we're talking about. Bezos is kind of interpersonally a little cringy, and you can see it in the text. from him to Lauren Sanchez have been, you know, some of them have been made public. There's one that was like, I love you.

Alive girl. And it's kind of enduring in a twisted way. It is. It's genuinely uxorious. Quickly Googling. When he bought that massive mansion in Washington, D.C., which is very kind of... you know, stayed and large and used to be a museum and it's kind of dull. Like that was back when he was trying to, you know, impress people in DC and live according to their rules and make them become a player according to the rules of DC.

And ever since he's met Sanchez, he's like, well, fuck that. I'm just going to do me. Axorious, excessively fond of or submissive to one's wife. Did you know that word, Elizabeth? No. I'm sure I had to spell it in a spelling bee once, but I don't think I've ever used it. I don't think there's anything new here, actually. If you think back to the Reagan era. This is the same thing that happened back then, being rich and tacky or whatever.

was all of a sudden, and again, there were shows like, this is dating. I was very young. There was Dallas and Dynasty. And there was Robin Leach, a gentleman who had a show called Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. And like tacky, big, rich. was all like super in. And I think we are back there again with the Trumps and with the Bezezos. We're back where it's like, we're not ashamed.

really excited and proud to be rich and we're going to do whatever we want and everyone this is fabulous this is life it's the return of conspicuous consumption it's building a rocket that looks exactly like a penis going up into space it's yeah just Do you, Jeb? It's getting swole and being incredibly superficially good looking. And, you know, it's like her look.

She is leaning into the plastic second wife thing in a way that I've never seen anyone else do. And I mean, maybe like Kimberly Guilfoyle. Well, it's funny because, you know, one of the people that I guess has been supportive of her is Anna Wintour. And Sanchez will show up to these very state events with very skimpy, Kardashian-esque dresses.

And so I am curious about the relationship between Wintour and Sanchez, because those are two people I would never put together. No, I would. I can totally see it because Anna understands the power of tacky, understands the power.

glam you know like there has been a lot of Versace and Dolce & Gabbana and all of that kind of stuff in her pages over the years it's an important part of fashion it's not necessarily what she wears but she understands its power and she understands its longevity and it's not going away and can i just you know since this is a business podcast mention that prada is buying versace

product you know the really really boring everything is black everything is simple silhouettes everything is basic you know like this ultra high-end luxury understatement brand is buying Versace. They get it. What's in the foam? In the foam party? Crystal champagne, Emily. Really?

Come on. You can't take my questions seriously. All of the foam is just like the foam that you get when you shake a bottle of Cristal Champagne and they just take a bunch of bottles of Cristal Champagne. There was a lot of foam in the picture. Did you see the pictures? It was a lot of foam. It did look fun. And then you could jump off the yacht into the water to like wash off the foam. It seems like legitimately a good time. We should all have yacht-based foam parties at our wedding.

I feel like they should honeymoon in Ibiza. That feels like the right vibe for them. I feel like their entire life is one long honeymoon. They've been on honeymoon for the past two years, and they're going to be on honeymoon for the rest of their life.

We don't even need to go back to our day jobs because we are the biz officers. This is what we want billionaires to do, right? I mean, Elon Musk, like he's on X all the time. He's posting, he's getting involved in our politics. What I want the billionaires to do is just be on yachts covered in foam, taking insane pictures, like going to Venice, entertaining us with their tackiness, their gaudiness.

extraness and just to stay out of other things. Like this is what I want. I'm not saying Jeff Bezos actually. is staying out of the other things. He is in the other things. He was at the inauguration, blah, blah, blah. We're not going to get into a whole thing about Amazon, I don't think. But this is what we want for the billionaires. We want them covered in foam and off of social media.

It's sort of like when you know how people tell entertainers to stick to singing or whatever. I would like the billionaires to just stick to enjoying their wealth by themselves. Covered in foam or like with a pie in the face like Rupert Murdoch. Hi, it's Willa Paskin, the host of Decoder Ring, a show about cracking cultural mysteries. And we recently did a live show about a wicked good mystery. Why did Boston, the 25th largest city in the country,

birth a cinematic subgenre all its own. I grew up with Ima Sapi. And that is a bond that doesn't get broken. You know the kind of movies I'm talking about. Matt. Ben, Marky Mark, some cops and crimes and creative cursing. And so we gathered a panel of experts to try and get to the bottom of this trend.

It is perfect for screenwriting. You have the gritty neighborhoods. You have the accent that gives a character. You have the architecture that gives a character. You have the bad against the good. What is it about Boston?

Is it the history? The famous Native Sons? The accents? Find out now on Slate's Decoder Ring, wherever you get your podcasts. All right, it's numbers round time. I'll start. Why not? My number is 1.2 million, which is the number of

that Motel 6 was paying Tom Beaudet every year. And then Motel 6 got acquired by a company called G6 Hospitality. And upon... that acquisition tom bodette was no longer being paid 1.2 million dollars a year so he's suing motel 6 for his 1.2 million dollars a year do you know who tom bodette is or what he was being paid 1.2 million dollars a year for

I think I know Tom Bodette appears on Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, the NPR news quiz show that comes out every Saturday. So he's like some kind of comedian. Yes. And I don't know why they would pay him that much money, though. I think he was their spokesperson, right? Yeah, you guys have managed to piece it together between it. He is the man whose voice, apparently like there are commercials of Motel 6, and he says, quote, we'll leave the light on for you.

And that him just saying, we'll leave the light on for you is something for which he was historically paid $1.2 million a year. And I get like almost nothing for saying that drivers who switched to progressive save up to. There's no justice in the world. You should just call up the good folks at Progressive and ask them if they will increase your payment to $1.2 million a year and see what they say. I'll do that right after this. Elizabeth, what's your number? My number is nine.

And that's the number of teeth a real Lububu is supposed to have. So this is from a story about Lububus are these kind of little doll figures that are sold at Pop Mart, which is a Chinese chain, and they've gone totally viral because of TikTok. And now there's a secondary market and trading them. And if you can get one and they're, you know, lines out the door prop mark every time they release a new edition, they're about 30 bucks.

But people will pay insane amounts of money for limited ones. So now there's a whole phenomenon of fake ones called lefoufous, or that's what people call them informally. And now the Lefoufous, if they're crazy enough, are going for way more money than the original Lefoufous.

I love that. I love the idea of a fake Lububu being worth more than the real one. I want this to happen in watches. I want this to happen in handbags. If it's a really good fake... handbag i want it to be worth more than the real thing um i amazingly knew what libubu was because i went for the very first time this year i went to art basil the real one in basil the mothership and

The talk of Art Basel was that there was this limited edition Lububu that 250 of them got sold in the space of half an hour at the gift shop. And so, yeah. It's made it even to the highest echelons of the art world where they're selling Hockneys and Rothkos and stuff, but everyone is just rushing to buy their commemorative Lububu for 250 euros. I want one. They're really cute. I'm looking now. A life-size version of one sold for...

more than 170,000 at auction. Wow. My number is so boring by comparison. I almost just want to like, do we have to do my number? I mean. Yeah, Emily, what's your boring number? Negative 44.2. Is that how much something has gone down? Sorry, I just fell asleep. Yes, that is the decrease in job postings from federal contractors going back to 2020. They've declined by 44%. And this year alone, they're down by 15%. That is because...

The doge cuts have migrated to the private sector and big federal contractors. I'm talking about your Boeings, your Lockheed Martins, your UnitedHealth, your Booz Allens, your Honeywells. They are not hiring as many people because they don't have as much money. to spend on hiring people because the White House has stopped spending.

all that money. So this is data from Indeed. They analyze their job listings. And while job listings are up from 2020 for everyone else, for these federal contractors, they are down. And this is what I was saying before. The job market has these like, there's bad stuff going on under the hood, as they say.

We have a whole Slate Plus segment on this, which is for all that everyone wants to fill these manufacturing jobs, they just can't find humans to fill them. We're going to talk about that on Slate Plus, but if you're not a Slate Plus subscriber, which of course you should be, thanks for listening. And thanks to Jessamyn Molly and Shana Roth for producing. And we'll be back next week with more Slate Money.

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