SpaceX Just Filed to IPO — The Numbers Are Ugly

Ed Elson is joined by Patrick Boyle to break down SpaceX’s newly released IPO filing and what it reveals about the company’s financials. Then, Zed Francis joins the show to unpack the key takeaways from Nvidia’s latest earnings report. Finally, Ed shares his reaction to the news that the Trump family was granted immunity from IRS audits and investigations. Patrick Boyle is a professor at King's College London, former hedge fund manager, and host of one of the most popular finance YouTube channels. Zed Francis is the CIO & Co-Founder at Convexitas. Subscribe to the Prof G Markets Youtube Channel Check out our latest Prof G Markets newsletter Follow Prof G Markets on Instagram Follow Ed on Instagram, X and Substack Follow Scott on Instagram Send us your questions or comments by emailing [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Are your ad campaigns lighting up the dashboard? But not the pipeline? That's bull spend. And marketers are calling it out in dashboard confessions.

• 0:09Speaker 01

  My boss asked for results, so I opened my dashboard for the only positive sounding metric I had: impressions.

• 0:17Speaker 00

  Cut the bull spend. See revenue, not just reach. LinkedIn delivers the highest return on ad spend of major ad networks. Advertise on LinkedIn. Spend $250 on your first campaign and get a $250 credit. Go to LinkedIn.com/campaign. Terms and conditions apply.

• 0:30Speaker 02

  Energía baja. Falta de concentración? Nebla mental? You might be dehydrated. Gatorade Zero powders han sido diseñados científicamente para ayudarte a mejorar el balance de hidratación en el cuerpo. Hechos con la mezcla número uno de electrolitos, sin colores ni sabores artificiales. Shop now online or at retailers nationwide. Gatorade hydrates better than water. Is it in you? Signos de dehidratación leve y moderada. Consulta a tu médico si los síntomas persisten.

• 1:00Speaker 03

  Welcome to Sephora.

• 1:01Speaker 04

  I'm looking for a perfume that's not too perfumey.

• 1:05Speaker 03

  I got you.

• 1:06Speaker 05

  Serum moisturizer or moisturizer serum.

• 1:09Speaker 03

  Let's get into layering.

• 1:11Speaker 04

  My concealer is making me look worse?

• 1:14Speaker 03

  Sounds like the wrong shade. Let's get you matched.

• 1:18Speaker 06

  There's only one store that really gets what you're going for. Get beauty from people who get beauty. Only at Sephora.

• 1:25Speaker 07

  Hi, I, uh...

• 1:26Speaker 03

  Let's get you a basket.

• 1:34Speaker 08

  Money markets map. If money is evil, then that building is hell.

• 1:44Ed Elson?

  Welcome to Prof you markets. I'm Ed Elson. It is May 21st. Let's check in on yesterday's market vitals. The major indices all climbed more than 1% after President Trump said talks with Tehran are in the final stages. Brent crude declined, even though Trump also said, quote, "We're going to do some things that are a little bit nasty if the deal wasn't made." Treasury yields also stumbled. Tech rallied ahead of Nvidia's earnings. More on that later. And finally, speculation swirled all day in anticipation of IPO filings from SpaceX and OpenAI. We will get into that right now.

• 2:26Ed Elson?

  SpaceX has officially filed to go public. In a prospectus filed with the SEC yesterday, SpaceX said it will list on the NASDAQ under ticker S P C X. The company is looking to raise $80 billion or more, which would make it the largest IPO in history. The prospectus offers the first peek into SpaceX's financials before the company goes public on June 12th. So lots of numbers to discuss here. Today, we're speaking with Patrick Boyle, professor at King's College London, former hedge fund manager and host of one of the most popular finance YouTube channels. Patrick, thank you so much for joining us again on the show to discuss again SpaceX,

• 3:11Ed Elson?

  the filing for which literally came out about 15 minutes ago, 20 minutes ago. So we've had that amount of time to get up to speed on it. But there are some interesting things here. I'll just start with some of the financial data that we learned. $4.7 billion in revenue in Q1 2026, $4.3 billion in net losses in Q1. Revenue grew 15% from last year. But plenty of other things that we could talk about. Where would you like to start? What strikes you?

• 3:43Patrick Boyle?

  Yeah, I mean, you know, to be honest, it's a fairly interesting IPO document. I mean, I'm sure you saw the first 15 or 20 pages were photographs of rockets, which is a little bit unusual and somewhat reminiscent of the WeWork IPO document, where there were lots of photos in there. You know, other things that were interesting, the company has lost $37 billion since inception.

• 4:13Patrick Boyle?

  There's lots of stuff. There's some new business stuff in there. There's, you know, there's talk about point to point travel, you know, where people will be able to travel from place to place on rockets rather than airplanes. There's talk of, I believe I saw in orbit manufacturing, or at least manufacturing on the moon. But I noted down in orbit. I'm not sure if that's correct. Asteroid mining is another business that they expect to make money from as well.

• 4:43Ed Elson?

  Yeah, I mean, when we spoke with you on this topic, one of the things you pointed out is that the financials here are just a little bit concerning, especially if you're looking at a company that's going to go public at $2 trillion. That's at least what people are expecting, close to 2 trillion.

• 4:59Patrick Boyle?

  Yeah.

• 4:59Ed Elson?

  One thing that struck me is they are losing money, but they also included their adjusted EBITDA, which they reported was over $1 billion in Q1 2026. And I couldn't help but notice the fact that they, you know, in order to get to that number, you have to add back almost $2.5 billion in depreciation and amortization costs, which to your point is their whole business because they're building rockets.

• 5:28Patrick Boyle?

  Yeah, because it's the cost of the rockets, you know, there's huge R and D to build the rockets. And then the depreciation, you know, they put all those Starlink satellites up there. They last about five years and then they fall out of the sky. And so that is your depreciation. They have to constantly replace them. So it's not, EBITDA is not an interesting number for a company like this. Like you want to look at basically, you know, is it profitable or is it on the path to profitability? It doesn't seem to be. There's other stuff in there as well. I don't know if you noticed that Elon Musk will get, I think, 85% of the voting shares.

• 6:11Patrick Boyle?

  There's, you know, for, he doesn't like, as we know, a shareholder lawsuits. And so that has to go to arbitration. So essentially, if you're buying like this, this is very much an IPO for the Elon Musk fan. Like you're not necessarily that worried about profitability.

• 6:31Ed Elson?

  Right.

• 6:31Patrick Boyle?

  You know, it's sort of, you know, it's what it used to be sort of rockets. Now it's rockets, Twitter, AI in space, you know, space manufacturing, transportation by rockets and asteroid mining. And not all of these businesses are functioning at the moment.

• 6:51Ed Elson?

  Yeah.

• 6:52Patrick Boyle?

  Even if you look at. The, you know, the starship thing, uh, the starship they're talking about, uh, what is it? Uh, sorry, I've got the numbers down here. Um, but basically they're talking about hourly launches of star, starships in order to get, I think something like a million tons of stuff into space per year. Uh, at the moment, you know, I think the next starship test is tomorrow. It's never gone into orbit. It's never, uh, carried any cargo. I think it's going to carry some dummy SpaceX satellites tomorrow.

• 7:33Patrick Boyle?

  But this is, you know, this is very much a vibes based IPO. Like it's, it's for people who are excited about Elon Musk. It's not really for, for people who are going to scrub through the numbers and ask questions about profitability.

• 7:48Ed Elson?

  Yeah, just on that point, some of the company statements that we saw at the top of the document, the mission of this company is to quote, ensure species level redundancy and that the light of consciousness will not be tied to a single planet. It's also to quote, understand the true nature of the universe to ensure that humans don't have the same fate as dinosaurs. By the way, that, that phrase, the light of consciousness is mentioned 10 times in the filing and AI is mentioned over a thousand 200 times in the filing. Just looking at profitability again, they, they break out each of the businesses into space as a business. Connectivity, connectivity, which is like satellites and AI. Space lost $662 million in Q1.

• 8:34Ed Elson?

  Connectivity turned a, a $1.1 billion profit and it seems that actually the satellite business is pretty good. AI lost two and a half billion dollars. And that really struck me that maybe this AI thing is perhaps the problem.

• 8:52Patrick Boyle?

  And I think that's per quarter, isn't it, that loss?

• 8:55Ed Elson?

  That's the quarterly number.

• 8:56Patrick Boyle?

  Yeah.

• 8:57Ed Elson?

  What do you make of that, those numbers?

• 8:59Patrick Boyle?

  So, yeah, you're looking at, and I think that was growing as well, like the loss from AI is growing. And the whole story of SpaceX, it's no longer about space flight. It's no, you know, it's kind of about this data centers in space idea. You know, there are a lot of people who've done research. It's not clear why it would be cheaper to put a data center in space than somewhere on the earth. It might be cheaper to put one on the bottom of the sea. You know, it's not clear why this is necessary, but I think it's a mistake to ask too many questions about this. You just have to go with your feelings, you know?

• 9:40Ed Elson?

  So this, I mean, what do we think this will mean for this IPO? I mean, they're looking to raise eighty billion dollars, biggest IPO in the history of business. But it sounds like you are not really convinced at all. I struggle to be convinced. I like the idea of space travel. I'm excited by sci fi stories in general. But, I mean, looking at these numbers, personally, this seems insane. What do you think this means for the IPO? Do you think that this stock will actually perform well?

• 10:11Patrick Boyle?

  You know, firstly, I think they're kind of rushing it out largely because it's burning so much money, right? Like thirty seven billion in losses since inception. And, you know, you know, the VCs and whatever only want to keep putting more money in for so long. And there's, there's a very hawk market right now, you know, S and P is near highs. And, and people are excited by Elon Musk stuff. They're also excited about AI. And the, I think, you know, Elon for years said that he would never take SpaceX public until he had reached Mars. I think till there was like a colony on Mars. So we're a little bit early for that. I think the real reason is just.

• 10:54Patrick Boyle?

  VC funding is kind of drying up for this sort of stuff. They've, you know, this is worth a lot and they want their money back. On top of that, you've got big IPOs coming from OpenAI and coming from Anthropic. And even, you know, there's an argument, you know, that they basically want to get out first. Because the question is, will there be appetite? You know, if investors have to liquidate something in order to buy these new things, at what point do they not necessarily want to buy the next AI thing coming out? So I think to a certain extent, this is a race to get this stuff out before the others.

• 11:34Ed Elson?

  For the people listening who are fans of SpaceX and who plan to maybe purchase this IPO or believe in the company, I mean, what is your honest bull case for this company? Like, in what world, what would it take for this company to make sense? And for it to be, you know, a profitable and sustainable business that is worth investing in?

• 11:59Patrick Boyle?

  Well, a much lower price to start with, but that's not what's going to happen, right? Because of course, this is the whole thing with investments. Like, you're buying a thing and the question is, how much are you paying for the thing? And this is the most out there valuation of any company you can think of. Like, it's way beyond the valuation of Nvidia. And Nvidia is hugely profitable with massive margins. SpaceX just isn't. It's, you know, it's a money furnace, right? Especially with all this, you know, XAI, the AI company, you know, I think he paid 250 billion for it, like SpaceX bought that from Elon Musk.

• 12:39Patrick Boyle?

  Then, within a few weeks, he announced that the tech stack within XAI was not working. Basically, it wasn't very good and it had to be rebuilt from the ground up. And he said, well, that happened with Tesla as well. And it's like, yeah, but you just, you just got people to pay 250 billion dollars for this, right? They bought it from you. And so, you know, This is, you know, the thing is, would I bet on the price falling? I mean, in the long term, yes, just because I think it's, you know, the this sort of gravity can only be overcome for so long.

• 13:19Ed Elson?

  Yeah.

• 13:19Patrick Boyle?

  But, you know, there's the funny thing, as last time we spoke, we spoke about the NASDAQ inclusion. So fifteen days after the IPO, passive investors, whether they like it or not, will become shareholders.

• 13:31Ed Elson?

  Right.

• 13:31Patrick Boyle?

  And that is an incentive even to get in at the IPO because, you know, fifteen days later, there's sort of some new bag holders to take it off your hands.

• 13:42Patrick Boyle?

  In the long run, like any company, the value of any company is the cash flows. Like, you're buying cash flows, you're buying the profits of a company. You know, is there a version of the world where it could become profitable? Yeah, but it doesn't look like an amazing business at the moment. Like, it's a wonderful, it's a cool science experiment, but that doesn't mean that, you know, it's not obvious how you convert all of this stuff into dollars and cents.

• 14:12Ed Elson?

  You mentioned earlier the other company that is set to go public, which we actually just learned is going to go public as of yesterday, that is OpenAI. There were questions over whether this was going to happen. Even the CFO was saying that we needed more time, that the company needed more time before it goes public. But apparently, now that the Elon trial is out of the way, they are going to go public. Just before we let you go, I'd love to just get your top line thoughts on OpenAI as a business, your expectations for this IPO, and then hopefully we can have a longer conversation about it at some point, too.

• 14:46Patrick Boyle?

  Yeah, I mean, you know, once again, all of this AI stuff, it's really early in this business and it's really hard to know who the winners and losers will be, you know. So the question with OpenAI, with Anthropic, with any of these is, sort of, are they the sort of Google of search? You know, or are you investing in the Yahoo or the AOL or whatever, you know? Because

• 15:09Ed Elson?

  Yeah.

• 15:09Patrick Boyle?

  being first doesn't necessarily make you the big winner. Um. You know, it it's uh it's not something that I'm excited about just because it's kind of a roll of the dice and a hope and pray kind of thing. Um, you know, also, it's not obvious, even if AI is a huge productivity booster. It's reasonable to think it could boost the pro the the productivity of all the people using it. But that doesn't mean they get to charge that because there's sort of ten models out there. They're all reasonably equivalent to each other. And so the question is, will AI be a winner take all model? Like the way internet search was, or will we have kind of ten?

• 15:53Patrick Boyle?

  You know, it's a bit like Uber, you know, where there's sort of, you know, in every part of the world, there's Uber. And then there's a few other ones. And the problem with if there's always a few other ones, you never really get to crank up your prices. And so people benefit from the affordable taxi rides, uh, which is great. But the companies themselves never get that profitable. So with these huge valuations, the assumption is that one of these things is gonna is gonna win the whole market. And is going to be able to charge an awful lot of money for for their services in the future.

• 16:28Ed Elson?

  Very exciting time in the IPO markets. I mean, it's just incredible what we're gonna see this year.

• 16:34Patrick Boyle?

  It is for for years, people have been saying, you know, there's no companies going public. In fact, they were all going private, right?

• 16:40Ed Elson?

  Yeah.

• 16:41Patrick Boyle?

  And also, people said, you know, all these companies, they're hoarding cash, they're not investing. Now we've got all of, you know, big tech are spending a fortune on on building data centers and all of this stuff. And we've got all of these companies going public.

• 16:55Ed Elson?

  Yeah.

• 16:55Patrick Boyle?

  Um, you know, people wanted it. Yeah, but but the scale of them is sort of beyond anything we've seen before. So, uh, people are getting what they want, which is the opportunity to invest in this stuff. And um, and these companies investing in stuff rather than hoarding cash.

• 17:13Ed Elson?

  Yeah, big win for the bankers that are underwriting these companies too. Patrick Boyle is a professor at King's College London and a former hedge fund manager. And he is the host of one of the most popular finance YouTube channels. Patrick, thank you so much for joining us again. Appreciate it.

• 17:28Patrick Boyle?

  Yeah, thank you for having me on.

• 17:31Ed Elson?

  After the break, Nvidia reports earnings. And by the way, we're heading out on tour next week. So for more info and to get tickets to a show near you, head to ProfiMarketsTour.com.

• 17:49Speaker 00

  Are your ad campaigns lighting up the dashboard? But not the pipeline? That's bull spend, and marketers are calling it out in Dashboard Confessions.

• 17:58Speaker 01

  My boss asked for results, so I opened my dashboard for the only positive sounding metric I had: impressions.

• 18:06Speaker 00

  Cut the bull spend. See revenue, not just reach. LinkedIn delivers the highest return on ad spend of major ad networks. Advertise on LinkedIn. Spend $250 on your first campaign and get a $250 credit. Go to LinkedIn.com/campaign. Terms and conditions apply.

• 18:19Speaker 02

  Energía baja. Falta de concentración? Nebla mental? You might be dehydrated. Gatorade Zero Powders han sido diseñados científicamente para ayudarte a mejorar el balance de hidratación en el cuerpo. Hechos con la mezcla número uno de electrolitos, sin colores ni sabores artificiales. Shop now online or at Retailers Nationwide. Gatorade: Hydrates Better Than Water. Is it in you? Signos de dehidratación leve y moderada. Consulta a tu médico si los síntomas persisten.

• 18:49Speaker 04

  Welcome to Sephora. I'm looking for a perfume that's not too perfumey. I got you.

• 18:55Speaker 05

  Serum moisturizer or moisturizer serum?

• 18:58Speaker 04

  Let's get into layering. My concealer is making me look worse?

• 19:03Speaker 03

  Sounds like the wrong shade. Let's get you matched.

• 19:07Speaker 06

  There's only one store that really gets what you're going for. Get beauty from people who get beauty, only at Sephora.

• 19:14Speaker 07

  Hi, I...

• 19:15Speaker 04

  Let's get you a basket.

• 19:23Ed Elson?

  We're back with ProfiMarkets. Nvidia posted earnings last night and the entire economy was watching. The chip company had beaten earnings expectations for 18 of the previous 20 quarters. And this time was no different. Total revenues came in at over $81 billion, up 85% from the same period last year and beating analyst expectations. Nvidia also authorized an $80 billion stock buyback and a massive dividend hike signaling a confident outlook for quarters ahead. Still, investors weren't entirely impressed. The stock whipsawed after hours.

• 20:03Ed Elson?

  So here to give us a breakdown on Nvidia's earnings, we are speaking with Zed Francis, CIO and co-founder at Convexitas. Zed, thanks so much for joining us. Just some of the numbers here, $81 billion in revenue, up 85% year over year. The data center revenues up 92% year over year. Just these numbers are just astounding. Give us your initial read on these Nvidia earnings.

• 20:31Speaker 11

  Yeah, I mean, ultimately Nvidia has turned into an established veteran company in comparison to what it was a handful of years ago. So as you alluded to, the beat and the raise is basically what's baked in the cake. That's what everybody's expecting at this point because that's what they've been doing in the past. And we see this stock moving, but kind of benign ultimately. Like I'm a volatility guy at the end of the day, and the options market was pricing in a five and a half percent move in Nvidia on these earnings. And, you know, the entire range of after hours were obviously well inside of that. So I think we're kind of the point where Nvidia is the new Apple. Almost a, it's just a boring event, even though it used to be the main show for the last handful of years.

• 21:16Ed Elson?

  Right. Yeah. In that sense, I mean, the fact that they are authorizing $80 billion in new buybacks, they're raising the dividend from one cent to 25 cents per share. I kind of see that and I, and I love that. It's like they're, they're owning the fact that they are an established profitable company. And it does seem quite Apple like in that regard. Did that stand out to you? The fact that they are returning that money to the shareholders?

• 21:44Speaker 11

  Yeah, no, I mean, it's a very interesting sector, right? Because ultimately, semiconductors are viewed as hyper cyclical. But Nvidia has kind of disrupted that concept over the last handful of years, right? It's and I bring up Apple because I think it's a reasonable parallel. Like, Apple started as hardware, then started building their network and then started building services. So even though hardware is the main driver of Apple's business in terms of top and bottom line, there's more confidence in reoccurring revenue from that business than a traditional cyclical hardware company. And Nvidia is trying to follow that game plan and has recently been successful over the last couple of years to establish that concept with the market as a whole.

• 22:29Speaker 11

  And the reason they're kind of able to do that is they're the highest value add in their space. And a decent amount of why folks are purchasing, you know, their chips versus somebody else outside of them, you know, having this spread in comparison to the rest of the market in terms of the value add is also software. So they're they've been trying to make that pivot to have the market view them as more reoccurring revenue business rather than a pure cyclical, which traditionally the semiconductor space has been.

• 22:56Ed Elson?

  Yeah, what is what is the argument on that front? Because, I mean, on the one hand, they're just printing money right now. But so are many of sort of the memory stocks, sort of the SanDisk as an example. And the concern there is, you know, everyone there's a gold rush for data centers right now. Everyone's trying to build a data center. Once they're built, though, maybe that's it. At which point, what is Nvidia going to sell? Is that a concern for the company? Is that something that they are addressing and talking about?

• 23:27Speaker 11

  Yeah, so you bring up a perfect point. It's very much a barbell industry within the same exact sector. So you have Nvidia trying to become less cyclical. They're definitely the least cyclical of the group. And the memory guys on the other side are the most cyclical. So what does that mean in terms of valuation and how you think about the? Business. Well, Nvidia has more forecastable revenues in the out years beyond, you know, years one, two, three. And so because of that, years ago, they were the first mover in terms of valuation because people being confidence in the out years, you know, the years three plus and their ability to produce those revenues.

• 24:08Speaker 11

  And thus you get a higher valuation. If folks believe that a decent amount of your ability to produce those earnings is actually reoccurring, then you're naturally going to get a higher valuation, which is exactly what happened with Apple again from kind of 2013 through live. It went from a teens P stock to a, you know, mid twenties plus, simply because the confidence of those reoccurring revenues were grown and Nvidia is trying to follow that path. Opposite side, those memory folks, you know, they have a cliff, right? You know, it is a purely commoditized business where right now they're on the right side of the supply, demand dynamic where they're raising prices dramatically,

• 24:49Speaker 11

  expanding those margins, but the market's belief is there is a hard cliff where eventually they will go back, you know, to where they were before. And that's why when you look at a, you know, a Micron, their forward P is like a 12 ish. But ultimately that's because, well, we have confidence in the next 18, maybe 24 months of earnings. But after that, very, very little confidence. So it's all about discounting what we know right in front of us versus that longer term kind of DC of valuation of something with reoccurring revenues.

• 25:21Ed Elson?

  What do you make of the Nvidia valuation at this point? I don't have the multiples in front of me, but the stock's trading at around $220 a share. It's up 18% year to date. It's up 66% in the past year. How are you feeling about the valuation at this point?

• 25:40Speaker 11

  Yeah, I mean, it's forward valuation in mid twenties is about in line with the S and P, technically a little lighter than the market as a whole. So it still has a little bit of that cyclicality priced into it. But I would say it's in the reasonable realm, you know, where we're, it's a, you know, largest company in the world. It's tough to grow exponentially, even though they continue to do so in the short term. When you're this large, where the memory folks are on the opposite end, it's. The expectation of that massive decline in earnings has successfully been pushed out over the last, you know, six, seven weeks. And that's why we've seen massive moves in those specific stocks. But they're always going to be hyper cyclical where the earnings that you're gonna, you know,

• 26:25Speaker 11

  hopefully, you know, earn as a shareholder are right in front of you rather than over the next, you know, couple of decades.

• 26:32Ed Elson?

  Yeah. Final thing that is kind of interesting, no shipments of chips to China this quarter from Nvidia. They shipped four, four and a half billion dollars in the year before.

• 26:44Ed Elson?

  I mean, this in context with Jensen Huang jumping on the plane with President Trump going to China. I believe that was last week. I think that's right. Did we learn anything on the China front? Is China going to be a business for Nvidia? Is it not? Where are we on this?

• 27:02Speaker 11

  Well, I think we're a little in between whether or not China is actually receiving the end product via different routes rather than directly. That might still be happening on the side, but that is a potential growth engine, right? If we actually get some, you know, more level-headed relationships with China, then may reopen that market directly for them. But I wouldn't be surprised if they're getting a decent amount of that revenue through other sources.

• 27:32Ed Elson?

  Zed Francis is the CIO and co-founder of Convexitas. Zed, thank you so much for breaking down these Nvidia earnings. We appreciate your time.

• 27:41Speaker 11

  Thanks for having me.

• 27:46Ed Elson?

  More news in the world of financial corruption. Trump and his family have been granted forever immunity from investigations and audits by the IRS. This comes after Trump withdrew his $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS for allegedly disclosing tax information without information. Now, per a pledge from the Department of Justice, the US government will, quote, "be forever barred and precluded from prosecuting or pursuing tax claims against Trump or his family." In the words of the DOJ, Trump has been forever discharged from any tax crimes.

• 28:27Ed Elson?

  Now, at a certain point, there's just not much commentary I can even provide here. I mean, I can tell you that this is corrupt. I can tell you that this is what dictators do. I can tell you that this appears to be illegal, and if it isn't, then it should be. But you already know all of that. I mean, there's nothing more that I can reveal by analyzing what the headlines are already telling us, because the headlines speak for itself. Trump has taken control of our government. He defunded the IRS. He defunded the DOJ. He fired the SEC director who tried to investigate his insider trading.

• 29:08Ed Elson?

  He personally canceled 160 different white collar crime investigations in one year. Those white collar crime prosecutions have hit a record low this year. And now, he has coerced the DOJ into banning the IRS from investigating or auditing his tax claims for the rest of time, forever, was their term. So do I really need to argue why that's bad? Do I need to present my case on why that shouldn't be happening? I don't really think so. I think either you hear these facts and you acknowledge them,

• 29:48Ed Elson?

  or you hear these facts and you ignore them, or you say they're not a big deal, or you just deny that they're even true. So the only thing that I can really do here in yet another corruption scandal, the only thing that is even remotely valuable is to just tell you what happened, to tell you the headlines, and that's what I'm doing. I'm telling you what happened. And in the context of markets, I can explain why this is bad. It erodes faith in the system of markets. It creates this belief that for a certain set of people, the rules of markets and regulations do not apply, and in this case, that is true.

• 30:31Ed Elson?

  And it also just makes Americans assume, correctly by the way, that the system is rigged. But I hesitate to even make that argument, because I just don't see how you could conclude that this kind of corruption is anything but bad for everyone.

• 30:48Ed Elson?

  And so I end this episode to tell you I have nothing to add here. This is just another day of unprecedented corruption in the Trump administration, the likes of which we have seen over and over and over again. You either acknowledge what is happening or you don't acknowledge it. But I am not going to be the one to make you care.

• 31:16Ed Elson?

  Okay, that's it for today. This episode was produced by Claire Miller and Alison Weiss, edited by Joel Patterson and engineered by Benjamin Spencer. Our video editor is Brad Williams. Our research team is Dan Shalun, Isabella Kinsel, Chris Noddenhugh and Mia Silverio. And our social producer is Jake McPherson. Thank you for listening to Prof G Markets from Prof G Media. If you liked what you heard, give us a follow. I'm Ed Elson. Tune in tomorrow for a conversation about taxes with Ray Madoff.

• 32:19Speaker 12

  Looking for a simple way to thank your clients or recognize employees for a job well done? A Starbucks card is more than a gift. It's a pick-me-up, a break in their day and a reminder that you appreciate them. Whether you're shopping for digital or physical cards in bulk, Starbucks cards are the perfect gift to brighten anyone's day. Share the joy of coffee and connection when you give the gift of Starbucks. Shop Starbucks cards in bulk now at StarbucksCardB2B.com.

• 32:46Speaker 13

  For a limited time, you can get a Big Mac meal for just $8. That's a burger, fries and a drink. They don't call it an extra value meal for nothing. Get a Big Mac meal only at McDonald's.

• 32:58Patrick Boyle?

  Price and participation may vary. Promotion pricing may be lower than meal pricing.