Pod Insights Prof G Markets Nasdaq Posts Best Day Since May as Fear & Greed Collide About this episode Ed Elson is joined by Robert Armstrong, U. S. commentator for the Financial Times and author of the Unhedged newsletter, to unpack recent volatility in the markets. Then Kathryn Anne Edwards, Labor Economist and host of the Optimist Economy Podcast, returns to the show to dig into the September jobs report and what it tells us about the state of the labor market. And finally, Ed shares his takeaways from the disbanding of the Department of Government Efficiency.
Check out our latest Prof G Markets newsletter
Follow Prof G Markets on Instagram
Follow Ed on Instagram and X
Follow Scott on Instagram
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Transcript 5,902 words · 13 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Speaker 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.
0:09 Speaker 01 My boss asked for results, so I opened my dashboard for the only positive sounding metric I had: impressions.
0:17 Speaker 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.
0:30 Speaker 02 Energía baja. Falta de concentración? Nevra 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.
1:00 Speaker 03 Welcome to Sephora.
1:01 Speaker 04 I'm looking for a perfume that's not too perfumey?
1:05 Speaker 03 I got you.
1:06 Speaker 05 Serum moisturizer or moisturizer serum?
1:09 Speaker 03 Let's get into layering.
1:11 Speaker 04 My concealer is making me look worse?
1:14 Speaker 03 Sounds like the wrong shade. Let's get you matched.
1:18 Speaker 06 There's only one store that really gets what you're going for. Get beauty from people who get beauty. Only at Sephora.
1:25 Speaker 03 Hi, I, uh...
1:26 Speaker 04 Let's get you a basket.
1:29 Ed Elson? Today's number: 75. That's how many minutes it takes for a banana to produce one positron. We have no idea what a positron actually is, but there's something about a banana joke that we find appealing.
1:47 Speaker 08 Money markets mad. If money is evil, then that building is hell.
1:56 Ed Elson? Welcome to Rough Jew Markets. I'm Ed Elson. It is November 25th. Let's check in on yesterday's market vitals. The major indices rallied on optimism for a rate cut in December. The odds of a cut currently stand above 80%. Meanwhile, the yield on 10-year Treasuries declined, the price of gold rose, and finally, Bitcoin clawed back from its recent lows near $80,000.
2:22 Ed Elson? Okay, what else is happening? Tech led a second day of rebounds Monday after a week of whiplash in the markets ahead of Nvidia's earnings last week. The S and P was on track for its worst November since 2008. Then Nvidia's earnings came out. It calmed nerves for a moment. The entire market was lifted. The next day, however, the stock gave up all of its gains and the rest of the market followed. And then on Friday and yesterday, stocks rallied and the Nasdaq closed up nearly 3% for its best day since May. So we went down, then up, then down, then up again. A lot of mixed signals coming from the market. So to help us make sense of all of this, we're speaking with Robert Armstrong, US commentator for the Financial Times, author of the Unhedged Newsletter and fan favorite on Prof G Markets. Rob, thank you for joining us.
3:07 Ed Elson? It's always fun to talk with you. So we want to get your reactions to just the up, down, up, down, whip sawing that we keep seeing in the markets. Obviously, things look bad and then Nvidia reports earnings and then things look good and then the next day, things look bad and now apparently things are good again. What is going on? How do we make sense of this?
3:29 Robert Armstrong? Well, these are, uh, these are the kinds of days, as several of my readers have pointed out, that are designed to make market commentators like me look stupid. You know, it's like, you know, and the short, you know, you don't want to spend too much of your energy predicting or analyzing short-term changes in the market. But I do think the volatility is telling you something here, which is there is, it's a market in conflict with itself where strong fear is meeting with strong greed. You know, the market is always a contest between those two emotions, but I feel like right now, both emotions are very strong.
4:13 Robert Armstrong? In other words, there is a strong sense, and you get this when you talk to people too, that if you're not in the market right now, you're missing out on a huge opportunity. And, you know, there may be some truth to that. And we know that the market is expensive and there are some scary things going on we don't quite understand. So it's like, it's the push and pull between two opposing strong emotions, I think is the metaphor that probably.
4:40 Robert Armstrong? Captures it best.
4:41 Ed Elson? What do you make of those two arguments? I mean, the on both are pretty compelling to me and that's probably why we're seeing such huge amounts of volatility. We'd had as well to motor and who I know you wrote about in in your newsletter, who is very bearish. Um, but then at the same time, AI is transformative and video had these great earnings. I have my gripes with that earnings report, but you know, there's, there's a lot of reason to be bullish as well. I mean, where, where do you lap?
5:08 Robert Armstrong? Okay. So one thing that I've been writing about lately that is really important to keep in mind, you know, when people are making bearish talk recently, including the great Demeterin, he's talking about extremely peak evaluations that for every dollar of present earnings you're paying for the market or even near term earnings, you're paying a lot of money for each dollar of earnings. Right? That's what we mean when we say markets are expensive. And the important thing for investor to keep in mind is that over the short term, like a year or two or three years, that is not predictive information. Like I've put scatter charts in my newsletter, right?
5:49 Robert Armstrong? Where you have the PE ratio on one axis and the price return on the other axis. And it's just dots all over the place over one year. It's only after five, seven, 10 years that the valuation, you know, as they, you know, some people say investing is a game you win or lose on the first tee.
6:07 Ed Elson? Yeah.
6:07 Robert Armstrong? In other, in other words, if you, if you tee off from a place where it's really expensive, you've kind of lost the game already. That is true, but it's true over 10 years, not over one. So what, what's going to happen next year? Valuation gives us no information. So that's one thing to keep in mind. If you're thinking as a long-term investor, maybe it is a good time to shade back, you know, like as as well said, a little more cash, maybe diversify a little more, be a little more careful, but it doesn't mean we're not going to have an absolutely ripping year in stock markets over the next, next 12 months.
6:42 Ed Elson? Yeah.
6:42 Robert Armstrong? So that that's point number one. Point number two is I think the environment politically, and you and I, I don't know if we're going to agree or disagree here, but I think as a starting point, the environment politically is probably risk friendly.
6:59 Robert Armstrong? For the very unfair, but nonetheless possibly true reason that this administration is going to pull every lever they can get their hands on until the midterms.
7:11 Ed Elson? Uh huh.
7:12 Robert Armstrong? Because I was talking to, you know, a, a, a politics guy about this today, you know, the, the betting is they lose the House, just as a starting proposition, they lose the Senate too. Trump just is sitting in a room alone for the next two years.
7:29 Ed Elson? Yes.
7:29 Robert Armstrong? So whatever it takes in terms of a stimulus package, if things start to go sideways, either in markets or in the economy, we're going to see some stuff from this administration. Maybe it'll be a mistake, maybe it's stimulus checks, maybe it's inflationary, whatever, they're going to give it all a try.
7:47 Ed Elson? I think the important point there, and this was part of the bull case that you laid out for 2020 stocks, you called it fiscal largesse, interventionist White House, the point being if the government spends money, history shows us over the short term, that's good for the stock market.
8:01 Robert Armstrong? Sure is absolutely good. If they spend deficit money.
8:04 Ed Elson? Yes.
8:05 Robert Armstrong? In other words, if they borrow to spend, that's just cramming money into the economy because if they tax just as much, they're pulling the economy out. So the crucial thing is it's deficit spending.
8:14 Ed Elson? Right.
8:14 Robert Armstrong? And I think, I mean, we know already that some of that's coming. It was also pointed out to me today that the tax relief that is for companies and for households that is in the one big beautiful bill is retrospective to this year, which means it's going to show up in people's refund checks in March and April. That's going to be money into the economy.
8:39 Robert Armstrong? Now, I probably share the fears you've expressed on this show, that a lot of the action in the market in particular rotates around a few themes and a few stocks. I think that's probably a legitimate worry.
8:51 Ed Elson? Yes.
8:51 Robert Armstrong? Is that how you guys are feeling?
8:53 Ed Elson? Yeah, I think that that is our, our general concern is that we're going to see the demand that seems to be artificially inflated. It will run out at some point. It sounds like what you're describing is that the government is going to have the ability and the incentive to keep kicking the can down the road. In which case, maybe 2026, things will be good. AI continues to rip. But you did also lay out your bear case for 2026, where you bring out some of these issues. You got inflation, you've got Nvidia stock cracks, uh, margin contraction, Tanco, which was interesting. Just take us through the bear case.
9:29 Robert Armstrong? Okay, so the bear case is one, it becomes very politically hard for the president and his allies in Congress to do a lot of fiscal fiddling around and a lot harder for the central bank to do monetary fiddling around if inflation comes back. Uh, I think inflation is the economic variable that I am always wrong about. Uh, and I'm even wronger than most people, which is very wrong. So I'm not going to sit here and tell you I can predict inflation.
10:07 Robert Armstrong? What I can tell you is the like escape hatch of monetary and fiscal looseness for the market closes if we have inflation run past, say, four. Then it becomes just in, you're going to pump more money into the economy when we have 4% inflation. No, then you're not going to get away with it. So then the wheels really come off. Nvidia, look, company's worth $4.5 trillion, right? Like, that's a mighty big boat. If it hits an iceberg, you know.
10:40 Robert Armstrong? Uh, and I, you know, Tanco, the other one I mentioned, you know, I think we've done, we've been lucky as people, as investors, that the president chickens out, you know, in the taco line.
10:53 Ed Elson? Yes.
10:54 Robert Armstrong? Uh, which will be written on my gravestone, whether I like it or not.
10:56 Ed Elson? For those, for those who, who are not aware, Robert Armstrong created the term taco.
11:02 Robert Armstrong? Yeah, for Trump always chickens out.
11:04 Ed Elson? That's right. And I think you, you filed for a patent as well, right?
11:09 Robert Armstrong? Well, you know, I asked about that, but you can't, as it turns out, you can't copyright a short phrase. Anyway, very frustrating.
11:15 Ed Elson? Yes.
11:15 Robert Armstrong? Anyway, uh, Tanco just means like, there's always the worry that Armstrong is wrong about Trump. He's really a true believer and he stops chickening out.
11:25 Ed Elson? Right.
11:26 Robert Armstrong? In other words, if he starts, if he like gets into a real ideologically driven trade war with China rather than a posturing war, I don't like that much.
11:37 Ed Elson? Yeah.
11:37 Robert Armstrong? Right? Uh, so that, that's the stuff I'm worried about. I mean, it's really hard to, to say much of interest about what the stock market is going to do over a one year period, but these are the things.
11:51 Ed Elson? Yes.
11:51 Robert Armstrong? If I had to pick the things that could go right or wrong, these are the things that I would pick.
11:56 Ed Elson? Yes. The other thing that's been really interesting watching over the past week has been what's happening to Bitcoin, which is just barreling down every day.
12:04 Robert Armstrong? Yeah.
12:05 Ed Elson? What do you make of that? What does that say about sentiment? I mean, we're really just trying to assess vibes here. That's all we can do right now. What does that say about the vibes?
12:15 Robert Armstrong? Ed, there is an age line at which point, once you pass it, it becomes impossible for you to say something interesting about Bitcoin. And I am past that age. You are below that age. So I should be asking you what you think about this Bitcoin thing. Obviously, I mean, all I can make the obvious point only, which is that it behaves like a highly speculative asset.
12:38 Ed Elson? Right.
12:38 Robert Armstrong? All this stuff about how it's digital gold or it's a store of value or whatever. It just looks like it trades like NASDAQ after 10 drinks.
12:47 Ed Elson? Yes.
12:47 Robert Armstrong? Basically.
12:48 Ed Elson? Exactly.
12:48 Robert Armstrong? You know, I don't know what, I mean, I don't understand the thing well enough to say more.
12:52 Ed Elson? Yeah.
12:52 Robert Armstrong? About it than that.
12:54 Ed Elson? Yeah. So, uh, just before we let you go here, is there anything that you're looking at right now that you think that we should be paying more attention to? I mean, I think it's very interesting what you're saying about inflation there. That scenario that you bring up where our backstop is federal spending or deficit spending from the government, which is only going to be even remotely acceptable if we don't have run. Away inflation that gets up over 4%. It doesn't seem to indicate right now that we're not headed for that. We've been going up and up and up 2.3 to 2.5.
13:29 Robert Armstrong? Yeah.
13:29 Ed Elson? Now we're up to three.
13:30 Robert Armstrong? I think, I think the market's okay with three. I think we have evidence before us.
13:34 Ed Elson? Yeah.
13:34 Robert Armstrong? That the market is okay with three. So, but it's as we, it's the direction of change and you get up towards four and the politics of it are going to change a lot.
13:46 Ed Elson? Yeah.
13:46 Robert Armstrong? And I think that is, I mean, what should we be watching? I mean, I think the, the thing I always watch is when companies do well and the stocks don't respond that much, as was the case with Nvidia. That tells you something. And I'm going to be watching for that pattern we saw with Nvidia. Does it recur in the quarters to come? In other words, is absolutely everything priced in everywhere? Where companies are beating or meeting targets or they're growing at the rate they've been growing and the market just doesn't care.
14:28 Robert Armstrong? And once that happens, it's like everybody, what that tells me when that's the general pattern is that everybody who can be in the market is in the market.
14:38 Ed Elson? Yeah.
14:39 Robert Armstrong? And the only door that works is the exit door. Because everybody is inside.
14:44 Ed Elson? Right.
14:45 Robert Armstrong? So that's, that's what I'll be watching.
14:49 Ed Elson? All right. Robert Armstrong, commentator for the Financial Times, author of the Unhedged Newsletter. I recommend it all the time. I recommend it again today. Really great read. Robert, really appreciate it. Thank you.
15:01 Robert Armstrong? Anytime, Ed.
15:04 Ed Elson? After the break, a look at the latest jobs report. If you're enjoying the show, give Prof G Markets a follow.
15:15 Speaker 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.
15:25 Speaker 01 My boss asked for results, so I opened my dashboard for the only positive sounding metric I had: impressions.
15:32 Speaker 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.
15:46 Speaker 02 Energía baja. Falta de concentración? Nevra 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 tu médico si los síntomas persisten.
16:15 Speaker 03 Welcome to Sephora.
16:16 Speaker 04 I'm looking for a perfume that's not too perfumey.
16:21 Speaker 03 I got you.
16:21 Speaker 05 Serum moisturizer or moisturizer serum?
16:25 Speaker 03 Let's get into layering. My concealer is making me look worse? Sounds like the wrong shade. Let's get you matched.
16:33 Speaker 06 There's only one store that really gets what you're going for. Get beauty from people who get beauty. Only at Sephora.
16:40 Speaker 10 Hi, I, uh...
16:42 Speaker 03 Let's get you a basket.
16:49 Ed Elson? We're back with Proffty Markets. Well, it's almost December, so naturally, we have just received the September jobs report, and it was quite mixed. Employers added 119,000 jobs, which was stronger than expected, but the unemployment rate went up to 4.4%, and that is the highest rate we have seen in four years. So some people are focusing on the unemployment rate, others are focusing on the job growth number, including the White House. Which said, quote, "This strong report is more proof that President Trump's pro-growth, America-first agenda is already making great progress." That is certainly up for debate. So here for a full review of this jobs report and what it means for our economy.
17:30 Ed Elson? We are speaking with Catherine Ann Edwards, labor economist and host of the Optimist Economy Podcast. Catherine, welcome back to Prof you Markets.
17:38 Kathryn Anne Edwards? Thank you.
17:39 Ed Elson? And we should also say that you are sort of coming out of maternity leave, coming out of, you called it semi-retirement. So thank you for that as well. We really appreciate it. We need your insight.
17:50 Kathryn Anne Edwards? Happy to be here.
17:51 Ed Elson? So this jobs report, we added 119,000 jobs, which was good, but then we also saw that the unemployment rate went up to 4.4%. That's the highest unemployment rate we've seen in four years. Give us, give us your reactions. Give us the breakdown. Was this good, bad, or something else?
18:11 Kathryn Anne Edwards? Yeah, good, bad, or ugly. I think the way that I've tried to make sense of it is the labor market is cooling. It's slowing down. And every month, we're going to make maybe two steps forward, one step back towards that cooling. So some months, we add a lot of jobs, but then we'll see a heavy revision. Some months, the unemployment rate stays stable. Other months like this one, we saw it jump to 4.4. You know, it's, it's all kind of telling us the same thing that which is that we don't have a strong labor market right now. It's not robust. It's not expanding. It's not hot. We're just seeing it cool kind of at different paces according to different metrics. Maybe another way to think of it would be, you know, if you're driving a car, like the light's red.
18:56 Kathryn Anne Edwards? The cars are slowing down next to you at different rates, but we're all going to come to a stop. And it's not as if there's a green light ahead and everyone's just got their foot on the gas. So it's, it's just at what rate things slow down and not if they're getting better.
19:09 Ed Elson? That 4.4% number, which, I mean, when you look at it on a chart and you see it's this very, very high point compared to back in 2021, it was the, the last time it was that high. Is that significant, you think, that it's, it's gone up, that it's the highest we've seen in four years? At least when I look at a chart and the line's as high as it is, it looks concerning to me.
19:34 Kathryn Anne Edwards? Well, the pushback would be that historically speaking, 4.4 is pretty low. And that we should, there's a little bit of a, shouldn't you be grateful for a 4.4%? You know, back in my day, we lived at five, right? There's this, you know, historical comparison of where the US unemployment rate has lived over various points in history versus the kind of much more contemporary context of where we have been in the last five years. It's worth noting that when the unemployment rate was this high in October of 2021, it was falling. It was falling dramatically in each month as we were coming out of the pandemic. So think of this as around the fall after hot vac summer, when we all got our vaccines in 2021. This was the fall when like everything was reopening and stuff was coming back online.
20:18 Kathryn Anne Edwards? That's where we are in the unemployment rate now. And in the period since, the unemployment rate fell to a record low in the spring of 2023. It rose for about a year afterward. It's been stable for about a year and now it's starting to increase steadily again. And the last three months have seen an uptick. Now, part of me has wondered if because of the nature of the last two recessions, one being the pandemic and one being the financial crisis and associated recession, we're not used to a recession coming from a slow uptick in unemployment. We're used to the car crash, you know, the economy falling off of a cliff. But that's not how the US typically enters a downturn. It just slowly marches its way there.
21:03 Kathryn Anne Edwards? So yes, you could write off 4.4% as being historically low, but you know, 1980 doesn't matter to what's going on in the economy right now. The unemployment rate has been rising for three months.
21:15 Ed Elson? Yeah, a lot of mixed signals in there. One thing that also stood out to me was the numbers in the manufacturing data. 6,000 jobs lost in manufacturing. That's the third straight month of falling employment in manufacturing or rising unemployment, which is just ironic because this administration was going to bring back manufacturing. And I'm sorry to point it out, but that was the whole story that we were told. That was the pitch and the opposite is happening. I mean, manufacturing is getting battered, it seems. Your reactions?
21:51 Kathryn Anne Edwards? Tariffs are not an industrial policy.
21:54 Ed Elson? Yeah.
21:54 Kathryn Anne Edwards? If you want to have revitalized manufacturing in the United States, you can't just put up a poster board and the rose guarded and then clap yourself on the back and say, I did it. All right, it's manufacturing in the 21st century economy, a global economy in which you have integrated supply trains, in which, you know, as many of things we produce inside the United States are made with parts that are imported from outside the United States, it doesn't, you know, it's not as easy as that. You have to have very thoughtful, very deliberate and very well-designed industrial policy to revitalize manufacturing in the United States, and you've got to do it coordinated across workers, across employers, across, you know, training schools for making those workers qualified for the job. And none of
22:37 Kathryn Anne Edwards? that happens when you just institute a tariff. And if you look through surveys of manufacturers, Texas has one, there's a national one, they'll tell you, here's what's going on in my business, here's what's going on in my company. And you've heard it, you know, since that April 1 liberation day, they are plagued with uncertainty and rising input costs. And they can't expand and hire aggressively when they don't know what their bottom line will look like month to month. And some manufacturers will make out in this situation. You are going to have some manufacturers, some parts of the manufacturing base that are doing very well right now, and you'll have a lot that are outright suffering, and then the rest that are kind of muddying their way through a lot of uncertainty. And two of
23:21 Kathryn Anne Edwards? those scenarios do not lead to hiring.
23:24 Ed Elson? Yeah. The final piece that, I mean, a lot of investors like seeing these jobs numbers because it basically tells us something about what we'll see with the Fed's decision and the interest rate cut. Will we get a cut? Will we not get one? It appears we probably will. But we're also missing a ton of data. BLS, they canceled the October jobs report, also the October CPI report, the Consumer Price Index, which will tell us about inflation. We're not going to get the November CPI report until the Fed has already met. We also just learned that we're not getting the first estimate of GDP data. I mean, this government shutdown has basically meant that we're getting a giant shutdown in terms of lots of data,
24:09 Ed Elson? which means that the interest rate decision for the Fed, which investors are very interested in because it moves markets in a big way, it's not very clear what's going to happen there. I just want to get your reactions. What do you think is going to happen in terms of interest rates? And what do you think of the fact that we basically are operating with no data right now?
24:31 Kathryn Anne Edwards? It's a deliberate choice. Our hands are not tied. The federal government could have had emergency operations include data collection at this time. They could have rescheduled data collection. They could have prioritized it and said this needs to come out before the Federal Reserve meets. They could have done all of those things and they chose not to. So we are not here because of some, you know, random act that has forced us into this position. We have chosen this path from the federal government and this is where they want us to be. I think the Fed's decision, I would be surprised if they actually moved rates. With this much data uncertainty, I know that there are a lot of private data sources that have come up, but especially for the unemployment rate, the gold standard is the
25:13 Kathryn Anne Edwards? BLS and nothing will compare, especially for those really small numbers. Like, you know, what I thought was the most concerning part of the 4.4% unemployment rate this past month, you know, data release back in September,
25:27 Ed Elson? Yeah.
25:27 Kathryn Anne Edwards? was how much of it is comprised of the permanently, like, permanent layoff. It's not new people coming to the labor market. It's not people coming back to the labor market or people finishing up a temporary job. A quarter of the unemployed had, were laid off.
25:41 Ed Elson? Hmm.
25:42 Kathryn Anne Edwards? Meaning that they lost their job due to business conditions or their firm closed due to business conditions. That's a very high share for a non-recession time period. You will not have a private sector unemployment manufacturer give you anything like that type of detail. That's something only the BLS can provide, but it's so important for understanding where our economy is. The administration has decided that they are not going to give us the data we need. I think there's a chance the Fed will react, but I'm, I would put my money on them not doing anything because without knowing how it'll impact the economy, it's risky to move in either direction, so they'll hold still. This Fed in particular has shown that they like to err on the side of not moving too quickly.
26:23 Ed Elson? Yeah.
26:23 Kathryn Anne Edwards? That's been used to condemn them, that's been used to praise them, but if that is their mode of behavior, I would be surprised if they did something in December.
26:30 Ed Elson? Catherine Addad Edwards, host of the Optimist Economy Podcast. Catherine, really appreciate your time. Thank you.
26:37 Kathryn Anne Edwards? Thank you so much and y'all have a good Thanksgiving.
26:42 Ed Elson? It's official. The Department of Government Efficiency is no more. The agency has reportedly disbanded, eight months short of its original mandate. Scott Kupor, the Office of Personnel Management's director, confirmed this news. He said after being asked about Doge, quote, "That doesn't exist." All told, Doge lasted about 10 months. According to their website, the department terminated roughly 13,000 contracts, 16,000 grants, and 300 leases, although these numbers have fluctuated a lot in the past few months. All in all, the agency estimates its efforts saved the American taxpayer about $200 billion. However, we should also note that Doge has also cost the US quite a bit as well.
27:27 Ed Elson? There's the estimated $10 billion we lost in productivity because of cuts at the NIH and the NSF. There's the $135 billion that we lost because the government fired a bunch of workers by mistake, and now they're going to have to rehire them. And then there's the $500 billion in tax revenue that we lost because of cuts to the IRS. In sum, Doge will end up actually being a net loss. Yes, we pinched a few billions here and there, but ultimately, we bled a few more billions over the long run. And when we look back, I think we will all agree that this was a giant waste of money. But that's only when we measure Doge by the dollars that went into it.
28:08 Ed Elson? It says nothing of the time and the energy and the attention that was wasted on Doge, starting from that original tweet that established Doge and got hundreds of millions of views and was retweeted hundreds of thousands of times, or even the thousands of memes about Doge that were strewn across every social media platform by Elon and by the president himself, and all of the general chaos, both online and in the real world, that was fomented because of this movement, which really disguised itself as some form of fiscal responsibility, but was, in reality, all about controversy and all about sticking it to this woke establishment.
28:47 Ed Elson? Few political movements in history have gotten more attention and had less impact than Doge. It sucked up all the energy in the room for many, many months, and yet, here we are. It got us nowhere. And remember what Elon said about Doge? He said that Doge was going to save us $2 trillion. That is what he told us.
29:10 Speaker 12 How much do you think we can rip out of this wasted $6.5 trillion Harris Biden budget? Well, I think we can do at least $2 trillion. Yeah. Yes.
29:25 Ed Elson? At least $2 trillion. That's what he said. In just a few months, instead of that, we have actually added roughly $2 trillion to our national debt. And that doesn't even include the big, beautiful bill, which is going to add another $4 trillion to our national debt. So if we're evaluating his performance here, Elon's performance, I think it is fair to say that Elon Musk was the least effective political leader in modern history. Not only did he not accomplish his goal, he actually achieved the opposite. He increased our debt by the amount that he said he was going to cut. He increased government waste and he pissed off millions of people on both sides while he did it. But now it's over. Doge is dead.
30:10 Ed Elson? That's the end of it. And it's a reminder of a larger flaw with this administration. And that is, like Doge, they are almost always all talk and no action. Whether it's these deals with nations that never actually materialize or government agencies that make a huge fuss and then quietly shut down, they're really good at making headlines that go viral and really bad at getting any of it done. And the result is actually worse, weirdly, than doing nothing. Because at least if you do nothing, then the people, we can just kind of go about our lives and find other things to worry about. But when you actively create drama, when you actively sow division, when you cause
30:54 Ed Elson? unrest through these performative acts of cruelty, all while getting nothing done, well, that is something different entirely. That's something much worse. And Doge was a great example of this. Now, to be clear, when history is written, when it's all said and done, Doge will be completely forgotten. It was an inconsequential agency that got nothing done. No one will recognize the name Doge. No one will know what it was. No one will remember it. But I will remember it. And I hope you do too. Because it's movements like Doge that slowly but surely ruin America. It's movements like
31:37 Ed Elson? Doge that we need to prevent. Movements that are void of substance, that are rooted in grievance, that are driven by some weird online need for attention, and that, most importantly, do nothing for anyone. Doge is what it means to be inefficient. Doge is waste in its purest form. It is a blueprint for how not to run government. It might have lived a ceremonious life. It might have gotten a lot of attention in its day. But as with all bad leaders, it died an unceremonious death. It was quietly buried away in the annals of history, and it
32:17 Ed Elson? will be forgotten. But for those of us who care about America, who care about government, who care about the systems that run our government, for those people, let's be clear, Doge must be remembered.
32:36 Ed Elson? Okay, that's it for today. This episode was produced by Claire Miller, edited by Joel Patterson, and engineered by Benjamin Spencer. Our associate producer is Alison Weiss. Our research team is Dan Shalon, Isabella Kinsel, Kristin O'Donoghue, and Mia Silverio. And our technical director is Drew Burrows. 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. I'll see you tomorrow.
33:09 Robert Armstrong? Today is D.B. Cooper Day, which is one of my favorite days of the year. So like in 19, I think it was like 1973, this guy who was not named D.B. Cooper, but that's his name, he put on the passenger list when he signed on, kidnapped a plane in Seattle, like hijacked this plane. And he said, you know, we're gonna land in, I think it was Spokane, and you're gonna give me a million dollars because I have a bomb. And, uh, and he had something that looked like a bomb, which later turned out not to be a bomb. And so they landed in Spokane or whatever. You can look all this up. I'm getting some of the details wrong. And they give him the million dollars. And he's like, okay, take the plane off again. And they're flying over the forest over there at Oregon. And what he has in his other
33:52 Robert Armstrong? bag is a parachute. And he takes his million dollars, puts on his parachute, and jumps out of the plane into the night on the 24th of November, 1974, or whatever. Never heard of again.
34:06 Robert Armstrong? So, D.B. Cooper, as his name might be, is like the patron saint of people who are trying to get away with it. You know what I mean?
34:17 Robert Armstrong? And today is D.B. Cooper Day. Anyway, there's like songs about D.B. Cooper and, you know.
34:23 Ed Elson? I love it because the takeaway is so bad.
34:30 Ed Elson? Terrible moral.
34:31 Robert Armstrong? Terrible moral.
34:32 Ed Elson? Was the worst fable of all time.
34:34 Robert Armstrong? Yeah.
Previous Even Nvidia Can’t Rescue the Market From the Fear Cycle Next Google vs. Nvidia: Is the AI Chip King Finally Under Threat? Page updated September 28, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated
