when it comes to the more bigger macro issues, what we've learned-- Thanks to--

things-- Some things I think we suspected - but I know I'm much more confirmed - is
that there are huge differences in priorities perceptions between the small wealthy
minority and the population at large. The-- I'm now seeing in the last four days, I
think four different articles that used [F. Scott Fitzgerald?]. And so yes, the
very rich are different from you and me. You see that very clearly on an on a
couple of big issues. One of them is taxes. The polling overwhelmingly says that
people believe that the rich don't pay enough in taxes and the taxes on top incomes
and corporations should go up. And yet an enduring piece of the political agenda
has been to cut top tax rates. When, when, when Bowles Simpson produced them
initial draft PowerPoint, cutting marginal tax rates was right at the top of the
agenda. And what was that doing in a document that was allegedly about fiscal
responsibility. The social safety net, the public wants to spend more on social
security and on health care. But we know from these very difficult to conduct but
illuminating surveys, that the the point 1% is wants to cut taxes at the tops, not
surprisingly, and wants to cut spending on entitlement programs, diametrically
opposed to public opinion at large the web. What you see, of course, is that to a
remarkable extent, the policy agenda set in Washington reflects the preferences not
of the general public, but of this very small, wealthy minority. And sometimes that
has extremely not just just kind of unfair consequences but extremely deleterious
consequences for the conduct of of economic policy. So the the case in point that
were some of my thing interests come together with all of this is how did we deal
with the aftermath of the great financial crisis? For the first few months, we had
more or less of a response that was at least in the right direction, fiscal
stimulus, monetary easing, then a weird thing happened. Somehow, even though
unemployment was still above 9%. Everyone inside the beltway was talking about the
great threat posed by budget deficits, and the urgency of entitlement reform. And
this was not, I'd like to say it was debate but it didn't even feel like a debate
it felt. You can actually document this to a remarkable extent both the political
establishment and the and the media simply stated as fact that this was what had to
be done. So there was a great article by Ezra Klein at the time about the trouble
with Alan Simpson, where he quoted various reporters who would ask, so will
President Obama do the right thing? These were not opinion writers. These were
supposedly reporters. And the right thing meant cutting social security and
medicare. It simply became defined as this was the responsible the right thing to
do. The What happened? What happened very clearly was that Oh, I'm sorry, I should
say that. And it was also very clear that this was not the right thing. If there
was if there was one, I mean, the peculiar thing about the aftermath. Nobody really
saw the financial crisis coming except for except for people who saw five other
crises coming that didn't happen, right. But once it happened, the we all
understood hadn't quite realized just how much havoc the bursting housing bubble
would wreak hadn't realized how much shadow banking restored