Ep 187: Interview with Jim Iuorio

I've morphed into an Ed the Fed guy or even like closer, not really an Ed the Fed guy.

I think you and I could come up with like a 20 input metric and I would try to make it like we talked about CPI and CPI before.

Do we really believe in the government data? Ah, you know, a little bit.

We could figure out a metric.

That would be much, much easier to just very gently adjust interest rates because the Fed's job was not to avoid recessions.

It was to take the hardest edge off a recession if it actually happened to come.

Which, by the way, there's not even a really good economic historical argument to be made for that being a good thing.

So, you know, the fact that they killed all those three guys on the Titanic who were going to vote against it.

And I know it's a conspiracy theory, guys.

I'm just mostly joking.

Who are the three guys on the Titanic who were killed? Oh, they were going to vote against it? Yeah.

Yeah, they were going to vote against the Federal Reserve.

Astor and somebody else, too.

Yeah, right.

Yeah, it was one of the Astors.

Yeah, well, you know, Jim Grant wrote a fantastic book called The Forgotten Depression.

And he talks about the 1919, right, when World War I ended and you had the guns to butter.

And so you had this collapse in demand because, you know, during the war, the U.S. was effectively ceding and arming Europe.

Europe was selling off, you know, the family heirlooms, selling everything in size to buy more shells to throw at Germany and whatnot.

And when that ended, that was a huge demand shock.

And so everybody expected this massive depression.

And it did hit.

And at the time, Wilson's wife.

So Woodrow Wilson was sick.

I think he was basically paralyzed.