Show Notes
Kevin Hassett is this episode’s guest on Liberty & Justice. Kevin was President Trump’s Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers. Kevin and Matt discuss the current state of the economy, inflation and what to expect in the future.
Kevin Hassett is a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution. Hassett recently served as the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers since 2017.
Prior to his White House service, Hassett was an economist at the American Enterprise Institute. He also served as a senior economist at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. His academic background includes being an associate professor of economics and finance at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Business, as well as a visiting professor at New York University’s Law School. He has also been a consultant to the U.S. Treasury Department, and an advisor to various presidential campaigns.
Matthew G. Whitaker was acting Attorney General of the United States (2018-2019). Prior to becoming acting Attorney General, Mr. Whitaker served as Chief of Staff to the Attorney General. He was appointed as the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Iowa by President George W. Bush, serving from 2004-2009. Whitaker was the managing partner of Des Moines based law firm, Whitaker Hagenow & Gustoff LLP from 2009 until rejoining DOJ in 2017. He was also the Executive Director for FACT, The Foundation for Accountability & Civic Trust, an ethics and accountability watchdog, between 2014 and 2017. Mr. Whitaker is Author of the book--Above the Law, The Inside Story of How the Justice Department Tried to Subvert President Trump.
Mr. Whitaker graduated with a Master of Business Administration, Juris Doctor, and Bachelor of Arts from the University of Iowa. While at Iowa, Mr. Whitaker was a three-year letterman on the football team where he received the prestigious Big Ten Medal of Honor.
Mr. Whitaker is now a Co-Chair of the Center for Law and Justice at America First Policy Institute and a Senior Fellow at the American Conservative Union Foundation. Matt is on the Board of Directors for America First Legal Foundation and is a Senior Advisor to IronGate Capital Advisors. He is also Of Counsel with the Graves Garrett law firm. Whitaker appears regularly to discuss legal and political issues on Fox News, Newsmax and other news outlets. He splits his time between Iowa, Florida and Washington, D.C.
Eposode Transcript
Matt Whitaker [00:00:00] Welcome to Liberty and Justice. I'm your host, Matt Whitaker. I'm excited to be joined by Kevin Hassett, a man who really needs no introduction but former head of the president's National Economic Council. So Kevin, glad you could be with us.
Kevin Hassett [00:00:14] It's great to be here with you.
Matt Whitaker [00:00:16] Yeah, and I am, you know, I've been bringing on people to talk about the border. I've talked to people about kind of every aspect of this Biden administration's situation, but except the economy. And so you, as a real expert in this area, are my guest. And I really, you know, I think it's coming out of this week. We saw the inflation monthly inflation for I guess that would have been what march at eight and a half percent. What what does that mean? First of all, I think a lot of people see that number. And does that mean just in March, prices went up eight and a half percent? Or is that a trailing 12 month? A little bit about that?
Kevin Hassett [00:00:57] Yeah. Well, what happens is that the Bureau of Labor Statistics. And you know, you're always going to start to really scintillating podcast. We mentioned the Bureau of Labor Statistics, right? Yeah, right. I mean, absolutely. Yeah, bills that they report are based on a really good survey. What's happened to prices every month? And so what they do is and they'll basically keep the same people in the survey for a little bit, but they'll sort of say, you know, you know, what did you buy this month and what did you pay? And, you know, bring your receipts, you know, they're really try to make the data good. And then what they'll do is, is that for like, say, food, then you know, if it's the Hassett family that you know, we're buying milk, we're buying bananas, we're buying hamburger, you know, things like that. And then what we could do is we could say, well, we buy a hamburger. And we paid five dollars a pound last month. And then this month we pay $5 a 50 a pound. And then the price that means the price of hamburger went up by 50 cents. You know, for my family and what they'll do is they'll aggregate. They actually have, you know, like a very large sample of real Americans who are actually going to stores and buying stuff and keep their receipts. And then there and then they're, you know, adjusting for the fact that maybe last month you bought a pound and a half a hamburger. This led to about a pound, you know, so they get it all lined up just right. And then they take like the average of the change in the price and call that inflation if it's going up and deflation if it's going down. And now, of course, you buy, you know, lots and lots of stuff every month, probably a little fewer hair products than me. But right? But but the point is our bundles are different, right? No shampoo, no hair. Yeah, but but so what they'll do is that if you wanted to have like Kevin's inflation, then what you would do is you would look at like the bundle of stuff that I buy and, you know, allocate the price change. So say, say, 10 percent of what I spend my money on every month is hamburger. Then 10 percent of the Kevin index would be the price of hamburger, right? And then, you know, I spend money on other stuff in the weights that they get. When you're calculating the Kevin inflation is basically just the percent of your consumption, that is that thing. And then the price change of that thing and you take the weighted average of all those that gives you like the Kevin inflation rate. And then if you want to know the aggregate inflation rate, you're sort of averaging the inflation rates for everybody in the sample. So in the end, you're basically weighing more the things that are consumed more. And so if there's something that you really, really don't consume very much, you know, like a book by AOC, the price that change that price change is probably not going to affect the that Whitaker price index now. So sort of in the inflation data, then there's basically it's broken up into something they call core and something that they they call food and energy. And the reason they do this is that food and energy prices are really volatile. And they could go up and down for month to month and crazy ways, but core things, you know, which are going to be like shelter and haircuts and stuff like that. The core things tend to be a little more stable. And so if you really wonder, like, where's inflation going, then looking at core can be a better thing to look at them to look at the overall top line now in the latest data. You mentioned the eight and a half percent or so what that is and it just think about it is like, you know, math inflation because, you know, there really is a sort of different one for each person. Abstract, right? Then what it means is that,
Matt Whitaker [00:05:03] for example, yeah, or
Kevin Hassett [00:05:05] this stuff that you bought a year ago. Is eight and a half percent more expensive today. That's what it means. So that's the stuff that you bought a year ago is eight and a half percent more expensive today. Now the reason why that number, I think, is being pointed to by the mainstream media as the measure of inflation that we should look at is it really understates how bad inflation is right now. And since inflation is a political thing, and since the media totally dishonorably in the tank for Democrats, you and I've seen it over and over would be served in the Trump White House. These guys are scoundrels. You know, don't get me started on, you know, Bob Costa. You know it just anyway. So, so so the fact is that they will look at the year over year number. But remember that the inflation basically began to accelerate when Biden took office. And so the numbers, like through last August or September, didn't really start to be that bad. And then they got worse and worse and worse and worse and worse. And so if you look at the year over year number, then what you're doing is you're sort of averaging inflation from some really bad months at the end with some really good months at the beginning. And that's why it's only eight and a half percent that I know that that everybody who who's listing is probably thinking TS, it's worse than eight and a half percent. What's that? Well, that's because inflation is way above eight and a half percent right now. And so for the latest month, if you were to put it at an annual rate, if we have it all, the months for the next 12 months are the same as March, then inflation's running at about 15 percent, not eight and a half. And so if we repeat the March report 11 months in a row exactly like it is in March, then when we look at what max buying, then it's 50 percent more expensive a year from now than it is today. And so that's like really very much a definition of out-of-control inflation.
Matt Whitaker [00:07:12] Yeah. And and and. Most Americans are not making 15 percent more, so this is completely eroded their buying power and suddenly it really suddenly because you're to your point, this high inflation is only happened in the last several months. They've felt a real pinch in what they can buy with their resources because maybe, you know, let's say that their salary went up four or five percent. I mean, they also now have 11 percent less buying power. Right? I mean, that's that's what the net net effect for most
Kevin Hassett [00:07:46] Americans is right and the way that that ends up being like a macroeconomic phenomenon. Yeah, is is this that there are two ways to calculate, you know, the output of the economy and there's gross domestic product, which is sort of adding up like the number of things that are made. Yeah. And gross domestic income, which is just looking at how much income is made by all the people in society, businesses, individuals and so on. And because wages right now are growing at a rate like probably about five, five and a half percent annual rate. If we were to get the the sort of 14 percent inflation that would happen if March repeats itself for the rest of the year, then you're going to see the decline in the real wage or the real purchasing power of your salary. That would be perhaps the largest on record. Yeah. And so wage hikes, wages to accelerate, to try to keep up with inflation, but they're not going to. And remember that as the wages go up to try to catch up with inflation, you know, the wage bill for a typical firm is 70 percent of their cost. Mm-Hmm. And so if they give everybody a 10 percent raise, then they've got it. It's going to raise. They've got to raise their price by about seven percent just to cover the 10 percent raise. And so that's where the wage price spiral starts, and it's really just an ungodly mess that happened for a number of reasons. People say, Well, why did it happen? You know, the first thing is the don't forget that that when Biden came in, you know that there are all the Democrats. We're talking about this modern monetary theory, which is basically that we can spend as much as we want and print money, and it's not going to cause inflation. And they were they were literally, you know, pitching their cockamamie theory. The problem with that is, you know, it's fine to have the theory. That's correct. I do it all the time, but then I falsify to move on to another one. But the problem is that if you actually think that the government believes that stuff, then you yourself sort of say, Well, OK, they're going to do a really irresponsible policy. Inflation's going to go out of control. And so your expectations of inflation start to become untethered to the two percent that you've always seen and you begin to act accordingly. You can sort of like we'll say, Hey, you know, I've got a five year contract, but instead of going up two percent a year, I'm actually I want to go up three percent a year or because I'm worried that Biden is going to make inflation get out of control. So that's why I like the minute that Biden took office. Inflation started to go up because of that. The second thing is, and they're calling it the Putin price. You know, it's really quite comical that they would. Yeah, because the price has been going up long before. Putin is the evil man that he is invaded Ukraine in our hearts. Of course, we have to pause and go out to the poor people of Ukraine, and the suffering of the debt is just horrible. But it's not Putin's price, right?
Matt Whitaker [00:10:54] And this is imported from Russia as oil and gas. And so that's like you said, that's excluded from core because of the volatility. And so, you know, we're not getting our eggs and our milk and our hamburger and all those things from Russia. And really, Russia has no impact in those markets, right?
Kevin Hassett [00:11:11] Well, yeah, there might be a little bit. But the fact, though, is the energy prices started going up the minute Biden took office, and I wrote a National Review article about this recently. But they wanted Biden's first moves when he came into the White House was that he established a commission to estimate what they called the social cost of carbon, which is like the harm to the Earth from burning fossil fuels. It's a quantifiable number, and there are social cost of carbon basically gave an estimate of like if you had put a ton more carbon into the atmosphere, you know, what does that cost society? In actual dollars now, in economic theory, then if there's something that's a pollution, you know, like a really obvious one would be sulfur dioxide coming out of a smokestack. It's really noxious to be around that stuff. Then, you know, economists do estimate the social cost of that pollution. And unanimously, economists agree right wing left wing that an optimal policy is to is to impose what they call a Pigou Tax Pago, be a tax on the good to make it so that the cost of the good is the same as the social cost so that therefore you don't get it all the pollution right? And so you're basically making the polluter internalize the cost to society of his pollution. And so this digression seems like it's just like academic claptrap, but it's not because of it. But the cool thing is that in in like one of the first reports put out by Biden, they put out a higher new estimate of the social cost of carbon. I took that estimate. Now they're telling. They're saying a ton of carbon. You're buying a gallon of gasoline. And you know, we know how much carbon comes from burning a gallon of gasoline or, you know, gallon of oil to hit your house or, you know, natural gas on your stove. And so what I did in this article is that four of you very easy to find the title is mission accomplished is I estimated what the price of oil would be is the Biden administration. Were able to get oil producers to internalize the social cost of carbon or to put another way, what is the Biden administration's target oil price? They've actually they printed it. They put out a report and said, OK, our target oil price is blah. And the answer is about 50 bucks more than it was when they started. Or like about one hundred five hundred ten dollars a barrel.
Matt Whitaker [00:13:50] That's about where we are.
Kevin Hassett [00:13:51] That's where we are. And so it's so, you know, they waged war on fossil fuels. And you know, I said this to our friend Larry Kudlow on the air the other day, and there's like only one war Joe Biden's ever going to win, and he already won it. And it's the war on fossil fuels. And the reason why that leads to inflation is that fossil fuels are a key component for everything, like everything takes energy to make and so on. And so fossil fuel prices go up, then that's a shock that makes prices everywhere go up. It's so, you know, there are multiple layers of the inflation story, but I think that the energy prices are probably the leading factor. And then, of course, the runaway spending.
Matt Whitaker [00:14:32] Well, and you know, I am not an economist, nor am I a biologist. But I do want to ask, you know, Milton Friedman said that inflation is a monetary phenomenon. There's always a monetary. I remember his exact quote, but long story short is it's a it's a complete supply and demand. The more dollars you put into the system chasing fewer goods and inflation goes up, is that at least part of what we're seeing here because of the six trillion dollars that was spent in the first year of the Biden administration, that all of that cash sloshing around has driven up the prices for these goods. I mean, I understand that obviously the the carbon regulation certainly is a piece of that. But can most of it be explained just by the oversupply, by the Fed especially and the monetization of the debt and all those those types of things that
Kevin Hassett [00:15:25] just, yeah, you know, know? And I can say, by the way, that, you know, I'm right now at the Hoover Institution and you're right where Milton Friedman was for for a long time. And, you know, right near his office, my office is right near his office that I was friends with Bill knowing really well and then
Matt Whitaker [00:15:43] realizing a lifelong goal of talking to me.
Kevin Hassett [00:15:47] Yeah. And and so, so anyway. So Milton Milton and I would a hundred percent agree what's going on right now. And not, of course, he's so smart that he thinks that things you didn't think of every time or every time you talked to him. So I'm not asserting that I can channel Milton. But basically what happened was that the Biden administration really jacked up spending, and they did that at a time when they didn't need to anymore because the economy was recovering already. Like basically, President Trump gave us two recoveries, one from COVID, one from Obama. And so the economy was fine when Biden took office. Now it's true that President Trump did mail checks to people during the COVID crisis, right? But suppose that your income is $100 a month, and then I tell you, you can't go to work. And then if you don't go to work, you don't get paid. And so then suppose the government gives you a hundred dollars a month. Well, that's just enough to keep yourself going and you don't have more money chasing fewer goods because basically you're going to have one hundred before you got 100 now. And we just filled the hole that we created because we told you, you can't go to work. But, you know, fast forward to Biden, and what he did is everybody is back at work. And then he still gave you 100 bucks a month, say here is actually six hundred bucks or whatever. And so you were filling a hole, which is what Trump was doing. You were piling up on top. And so then all of a sudden, there's more money chasing fewer goods because we're not refilling the hole, we're piling on top. And at that moment, when that happens, then the Fed has like multiple choices. But one thing that can happen would be that the Treasury has to borrow the money to mail the checks to people. And so they have an auction and the Fed could refuse to participate, and they could sort of say, Nope, nope, we're not going to monetize this spending. We're going to make you find customers elsewhere who are willing to do this. If they had done that, then what would happen to interest rates? They go way up, way up. OK, so what happened was that the Fed decided to buy all that debt, in fact, and we were following it closely during the COVID period when I was meeting with Jay Powell all the time and my office was your member of the West Wing that did what for some auctions when we're borrowing money from around the world in order to mail checks to people. We had to buy like one hundred and fifty dollars worth of bonds by the at the Fed in order to sell a hundred dollars with the bonds. The the because because basically what happened was that we were issuing so much debt that we were losing existing customers. Yeah, right. So the Fed bought an enormous amount of debt and on
Matt Whitaker [00:18:42] their balance sheet, their balance sheet absolutely exploded.
Kevin Hassett [00:18:45] Yeah, with like that, it's so, so so now what's happening? And this is where the monetary phenomenon is there. So now what's happening is that the Fed is printing money and it's giving it to the Democrats, and the Democrats are mailing it to people who are opening up their mailbox and fighting these great checks from the government. And then they're going out and trying to buy things. And so this is almost exactly a helicopter drop of money, right? You print money and you throw it out to people
Matt Whitaker [00:19:14] burn archetype helicopter.
Kevin Hassett [00:19:15] Yeah, it's a real it's it's absolutely a real helicopter job, but there's like one subtle difference. But but since we're kind of doing a mini economics class, unless you're like Superman and you can fly, there's no expectation that when you get a helicopter drop of cash that you're going to give it back. But in this case, you know, the taxpayers have been mailed checks, but future taxpayers are going to have to pay it back. Right. So it's not exactly a helicopter drop. And so if people are fully rational, then they would say, Oh, well, they gave me a dollar, but tomorrow they're going to take it back. So I'm not going to spend it. And if people so it a perfectly rational world, it could be that this wouldn't have a big inflationary effect. But as we see it did, as we see it did what so?
Matt Whitaker [00:20:02] Where the Fed expands there, their balance sheet to over eight trillion, nine trillion dollars from, I think about four, so they added, I mean, they're just like literally printing money, putting it into the system. And do they ever have to unwind that?
Kevin Hassett [00:20:20] And do they ever? In fact, Lael Brainard, who had lunch with many, many times when I went over to have lunch and talk policy with the Fed governors and to the Fed chair, came out and said that they have to sort of unwind that balance sheet. And the reason is inflation's so out of control. The question is, are they going to be fast enough? And I think, you know, most everybody believes that they're not. I think that there's actually like some hubris that started with Ben Bernanke, who's a friend of mine. So I don't want to be too critical. But another friend of mine, Alan Greenspan, you might recall you're old enough that Greenspan, when he was fed chair, he would talk about like the steering. The economy is like steering the Queen Mary. I guess he's old enough that he knows what the Queen Mary is, but he does. It's a big boat ride to Queen Mary. And so if you wanted to go somewhere, you got to start turning like way before. And if you don't do that, then you're going to not end up where you want to be. And so he was constantly anticipating future events and trying to get out in front of them. Ben Bernanke, on the other hand, message that we can sort of stop inflation in its tracks. We can turn things on a dime. We actually used phrases exactly like that. So he had the sort of confidence that the Federal Reserve was, you know, driving the Formula One car, not the Queen Mary. And I think that that confidence sort of stayed institutionally part of the Fed all the way through to today. And I think it's about to be proven wrong. But you know, Ben's a brilliant guy, and it could be that I'm surprised and that inflation suddenly goes down to two percent over the next few months as the Fed acts. But I think it's extremely unlikely. I think it's extremely unlikely. And you have
Matt Whitaker [00:22:11] the other challenge to additional to the monetary supply and all of the, you know, a lot of dollars chasing a few goods as you overlay the supply chain challenges. And so if you're a small business owner, you would love to sell as many widgets as you can, but you only have a limited supply of widgets. And so you have pricing power suddenly, which they haven't had in a long time, at least in my experience with small business owners. And so I mean, there's there's a lot of phenomenon that I just don't. I think the Queen Mary is a much better analogy than a Formula One race car because I just don't think the Fed can, can, can twist these dials. I mean, you sat at the White House, you know, trying to direct the economy, if you will. Kevin, how did you feel as you're watching these, you know, rearview mirror numbers come in trying to figure out where it's going? Moving forward,
Kevin Hassett [00:23:14] yeah, it's pretty hard. It's pretty hard. And that's why, you know, we believe in free markets and free enterprise and that the people who are best suited to make decisions are the people closest to the decision, the people on the ground. And you know, that's why why we deregulated and cut taxes and sort of lift the economy to the American people. Biden reversed all that and we're paying the price. And the one thing you mentioned, though, that I want actually clarify this because it's something that I think is a misconception that it's out there. But and it's the misconception that our troubles are being caused by supply chain disruptions. OK, OK. So so a supply chain disruption like like in my mind, when I think what's the supply chain disruption, it's kind of like, you know, there's a crash on the bridge and you can't go across the bridge because there's a crash on the bridge, but they'll clear the wrecks and then we can go across the bridge again. So there was a supply chain disruption, but we kind of it's so supply chain disruption kind of implies like easy to fix. Right? Which is why it's temporary, which is why the Democrats love to use that phrase. It's no, it's not really inflation. It's just a supply chain disruption. But let me tell you, let me tell you that there's this is a historical pattern. I just turned 60. You know, I've seen over and over in my life, and let's just start by asking you a question that so suppose we pick a random socialist country and then you go into a store? What do you see? Empty shells, empty shells. Exactly. So that's suppose you start out with a healthy capitalist country and then that healthy capitalist country, for whatever reason, lacks far-Left people that celebrate socialism and then pursue a whole bunch of policies and enact a whole bunch of policies that mar the country toward socialism. So what's going to happen to the shelves in the stores? Well, you know, at the beginning, the shelves were full because it was, you know, Donald Trump's favored free economy. But as we march slowly toward socialism, all of a sudden the shelves start to empty and the stuff that's left there on the shelves becomes really expensive because there's not much left and people look ahead and say, well, pretty soon the shelves are really going to be empty, so I better buy it now. And so I think the one, you know, another key factor to understand what's going on in inflation is that Biden declared war on America's businesses threatened massive tax hikes is already strangling them with new regulations. So they're, you know, basically take it off. They say, that's it. I'm not, you know, I'm not going to do this anymore. Why should I, you know, work 20 hours a day to keep my business going where they're going to tax me within an inch of my life? Or why should I build a new factory when they've threatened big tax increases and promised that they would pass them? And so I think that the way to think about what we're going through right now and this is why the American people, even, you know, Democrats have unanimously rejected what Biden and the far left Nancy Pelosi. Democrats on the Hill have been doing to our country is that they've been marching us rather rapidly towards socialism. And so, of course, the shelves are empty and of course, the shelves are empty because that's what happens in a socialist country. The shelves are empty and it's not a supply disruption, right? It's a supply disruption. And that's what they've been doing. And it's important that people recognize that.
Matt Whitaker [00:26:39] Well, that's pretty bleak, Kevin.
Kevin Hassett [00:26:42] You know, I just saw Spielberg's West Side story, I thought it was fantastic. Just try to get some, some other thought, right? Sometimes Jason subject completely
Matt Whitaker [00:26:52] false but hopeful, finish well. So I am, you know, I have a law degree. I have an MBA. I've read The Wall Street Journal since I was a freshman in college, and so I am fascinated by the economy and how it works. I'm always led to a very simple conclusion that that the less government's in the way of private transactions, the better. And it's, you know, it just seems to me, to your point, the more that the government tries to regulate tries to put their thumb on the scale, tries to pick winners or losers, tries to tax, tries to incent people to do what they prefer versus what people actually want to do. That's where we end up with with these huge masses. And I still, you know, we could. I don't I don't have a good answer. You know, you've given me a smart answer is anybody's ever given me on this fed balance sheet expansion. But to me, it looks very dangerous. And you know, I know if you look at the numbers and they publish them, you can see at the beginning of Trump, they were trying to bring that four trillion dollars of assets down ever so subtly. And then when COVID hit it, just like you said, it just was an exponential increase. And I just don't know with monetary easing what the American people expectations. I just can't see the Fed getting out of this mess and and that's going to just lead to more and more inflation because they because, you know, we're stuck in this kind of low rates situation where the whole thing and maybe, maybe it does need to seize up. I think that's a lot of pain and discomfort for a lot of Americans. But unless they raise rates and try to sop up some of this excess cash in the system, I don't know any other way that this thing doesn't just spin out of control and we end up walking around with barrel wheelbarrows full of cash.
Kevin Hassett [00:28:52] Yeah. You know, I don't I don't know about hyperinflation, but I do know this that we've got the highest inflation rate now that we've had since the early 1980s and that we're probably in a recession right now because incomes haven't kept up with prices. And so that means that real consumption is going down. And so it could be next quarter or it could be the current quarter, but a recession is virtually a sure thing this year. And so we've got stagflation. And so, you know, the worst president since Jimmy Carter has given us problems just like Jimmy Carter. I think that, you know, Jimmy Carter, unlike my people. Forget this, do you think, Oh, jeez, you know, he really did take the country into a very bad corner? Jimmy Carter actually had a lot of good economic policies. People forget this. He was a moderate Democrat. You know, he couldn't get elected anywhere in the country as a Democrat today. But what of Jimmy Carter's main economic policies? Key part of his platform was deregulation. And he meant, you know, Jimmy Carter was like, That was a brutal deregulator. And a lot of like legacy stuff like the Interstate Commerce Commission that states that were really strangling the economy, he relaxed. Despite that with is sort of the rest of his democratic agenda. He gave us stagflation even though he was actually getting part of it, right? Biden's worst since Jimmy Carter. Because while he's doing the sort of, you know, ideological Democrat stuff that's going to cause stagflation, he's also doubling down on regulation. And so the so he is an absolute like. It's indisputable he's way worse than Jimmy Carter. And so if we end up with Jimmy Carter's economy, then I think we'll actually get off easy. And that I would be positively surprised and relieved if the only thing that happens is we get Jimmy Carter's A. I think it could get way, way worse
Matt Whitaker [00:30:57] if all we'll have to live with that. Kevin Hassett, how can people learn more about what you're doing? Obviously, you're Hoover, but any other way?
Kevin Hassett [00:31:06] Yeah, sure. You know, go to Amazon and buy my book The Drift Stopping America Slide to Socialism. Second, I regularly write for National Review, the economics. Part of that review called Capital Matters, and I encourage everybody to go to National Review online. And, you know, look me up and I write just about every other week, at least sometimes every week there. And if you go to the Hoover Institution website, then I have a scholar page that links to everything I've been doing lately, if you'd like to check in on.
Matt Whitaker [00:31:37] All right. Well, Kevin Hassett, thank you so much.
Kevin Hassett [00:31:39] Thanks, Matt.
Matt Whitaker [00:31:40] Craig Emerson Justice We every Friday, seven p.m. on CPAC now and then anywhere you get podcasts or and my website. Whittaker Dot TV's So Kevin, thanks for joining us. Thanks.
