Capitalisn't

• How The Democrats Lost Labor And Found Capital, with David Sirota

  The Democratic Party has become too focused on appeasing its billionaire donors and has failed to communicate its commitment to the working class, argues long-time political journalist David Sirota. The question moving forward, he says, is if the party can ever refocus its brand orthodoxy from prioritizing social and cultural issues to economic populism.Sirota joins Bethany and Luigi to dissect the outsized role of money in American politics and how it has rendered Democratic messaging incoherent by prioritizing wealthy donors over the public. He describes the current moment of populist rage against the Democratic leadership, as evidenced by polls, as a “long overdue” opportunity and offers an explanation for how economic populism became pivotal to winning elections – thus shedding light on how to reclaim the platform moving forward. He describes how former President Barack Obama's "selling out" to Wall Street and big banks became a “generational tragedy,” why Trump’s tariffs are more of a power grab than legitimate economic policy to revive manufacturing, and responds to Luigi’s hypothesis that populist rhetoric and policy are much easier from the right than from the left.Sirota is the founder and editor of the investigative news outlet The Lever, served as a speechwriter for Bernie Sanders, earned an Academy Award nomination for screenwriting the 2020 Netflix climate apocalypse drama Don’t Look Up, and has written three books, including one on how corporate interests have shaped American economic policy.Over the last four years, Capitalisn’t has interviewed conservative thinkers like Oren Cass, Patrick Deneen, and Sohrab Ahmari to understand how the political right developed a new platform after President Joe Biden’s victory in 2020. With this episode, we continue the same project with the left, by asking: What could be the economic basis for a new progressive platform?Also check out: How Democrats Forgot to Be Normal, with Joan WilliamsHow Big Money Changed the Democratic Game, with Daniel ZiblattWhat Happened to the American Dream? With David Leonhardt

  --------  

  49:36
• Why Cliff Asness Believes Markets Are Getting Dumber

  Are financial markets becoming less efficient? Famous investor Cliff Asness certainly thinks so. In his paper published last year, “The Less-Efficient Market Hypothesis,” Asness argues that social media and low interest rates, among other factors, have distorted market information so that stocks have become disconnected from their true values. This distortion has directed funds toward undeserving assets and firms and staved off necessary market corrections.Asness is the founder, managing principal, and chief investment officer at AQR Capital Management. He is an active researcher on various financial and investment topics and received an MBA and PhD in finance from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. From her early days as a journalist reporting on Wall Street, Bethany recounts Asness as an outspoken, successful quant investor: one who invests based primarily on the fundamentals of the market rather than those of the firm. She also remembers him being “colloquial” and willing to be “experimental” with ideas. Asness’s recent paper continues that experimental style as he challenges the legacy of the efficient market hypothesis on which his PhD advisor, Nobel Prize laureate Eugene Fama, made his name, and which argues that asset prices reflect all available information, making it impossible to “beat” or outperform the market.Asness joins Bethany and Luigi to discuss how the market has fundamentally changed due to new technologies and macroeconomic trends and how investment strategies must adapt, what these changes mean for long-term productivity and growth, how researchers and investors should think about emerging market factors like tariffs and artificial intelligence, and why he's not investing in TrumpCoin anytime soon.Disclosure: In October 2024, Chicago Booth received a $60 million gift from Cliff Asness and John Liew to name its Master in Finance program.Bonus: Revisit our recent episode with Eugene Fama, Why This Nobel Economist Thinks Bitcoin is Going to Zero

  --------  

  51:24
• How Democrats Forgot To Be Normal, with Joan Williams

  Back in 2016, Joan Williams, distinguished professor of law (emerita) at UC Law San Francisco, wrote an essay for the Harvard Business Review on why President Donald Trump attracted so many non-college voters. It went viral with almost four million views, becoming the most-read article in the 90-year history of the publication.Williams’ new book, Outclassed: How the Left Lost the Working Class and How to Win Them Back, outlines how the seemingly common view that her fellow progressives must abandon their social causes to win back those non-college-educated voters is wrong. What is required, she argues, is a renewed understanding of class. She introduces her conceptualization of the “diploma divide,” or the gap between Americans with and without college degrees. Her worldview divides the electorate into three class-based groups: the college-educated, upper-class “Brahmin left”, the low-income working (middle) class, and the right-wing merchant class, which pushes for economic policies that benefit the rich. Her argument is that a new coalition between the latter two has shifted politics to the right.In this week’s Capitalisn’t episode, Luigi and Bethany invite Williams to discuss whether our society indeed breaks down so neatly. If it does, how does her breakdown help us understand recent electoral shifts and trends in populism and why the left is on the losing end of both? As she writes in her book and discusses in the episode, “[the Brahmin] left’s anger is coded as righteous. Why is non-elite anger discounted as “grievance?” Together, their conversation sheds light on how the left can win back voters without compromising on progressive values.Over the last four years, Capitalisn’t has interviewed conservative thinkers like Oren Cass, Patrick Deneen, and Sohrab Ahmari to understand how the political right developed a new platform after President Joe Biden’s victory in 2020. With this episode, we begin the same project with the left by asking: What could be the economic basis for a new progressive platform?Show Notes:Read an excerpt from Joan Williams' new book, “Outclassed: How the Left Lost the Working Class and How to Win Them Back,” out now at St. Martin's PressQuiz: “Are You in a Class Bubble?”What So Many People Don’t Get About the U.S. Working Class, by Joan Williams, Harvard Business Review, November 10, 2016

  --------  

  43:46
• Lina Khan's Vision of Capitalism

  Lina Khan recently concluded her term as one of the Biden administration’s most controversial leaders. Her tenure as chair of the Federal Trade Commission raised the profile of the relatively obscure antitrust agency charged with protecting competition. Her anti-monopoly outlook and more aggressive enforcement strategies, particularly toward Big Tech market power and protecting workers, earned the ire of the business community and the dedicated vitriol of the Wall Street Journal editorial board.Khan began her term as the youngest-ever appointee of the FTC. She initially rose to prominence for her 2017 Yale Law Journal article, “Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox,” which went viral among the antitrust community for its argument that scholars and regulators must look beyond prices to understand what constitutes a harm from a lack of competition, especially in today’s digital economy where many services are nominally provided for free to consumers. Fresh out of law school, Khan appeared on a Capitalisn’t episode in our first season and wrote for our sister publication at the Stigler Center, ProMarket, as far back as 2018. She also delivered two keynote addresses at the Stigler Center’s annual Antitrust and Competition Conferences while FTC chair.On this episode, Khan returns to Capitalisn’t to reflect on her tenure, her vision of capitalism, and how her approach to enforcing existing laws with new thinking may have impacted the everyday lives of Americans. How does she respond to her critics, who include major Democratic business leaders? How does she view the new Trump administration, which is continuing many of her transformative policies, including revised merger guidelines and major lawsuits? As a senator, Vice President JD Vance said she was “one of the few people in the Biden administration actually doing a pretty good job.” Reflecting on her work, Khan also touches upon how conflicts of interest among corporate lawyers and consultants, former bureaucrats, and academics distort policymaking, court rulings, and market outcomes. Finally, she highlights the antitrust issues to pay attention to moving forward, such as algorithmic collusion.Show Notes: Also, check out ProMarket’s series on the future of the Neo-Brandesian movement, of which Lina Khan is an emblematic figure.

  --------  

  47:54
• The Economics of Law Firms’ Resistance to Trump, with John Morley

  The rule of law is essential to the flourishing of liberal democracy and capitalism. Yet, it is now under pressure in the United States, and corporate law firms are in the eye of the storm. Over the last few weeks, President Donald Trump has issued executive orders against several prominent law firms that represented his political adversaries and promoted diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. Some of these law firms have caved into the administration’s demands to end such practices and provide pro bono services to the government, whereas others are fighting back.To discuss the financial reasons why some firms have capitulated while others have held out, and what the consequences are for the survival of the rule of law, Bethany and Luigi speak to John Morley, Augustus E. Lines Professor of Law at Yale University and an expert on the economics of law. Are Trump’s orders unconstitutional, and if so, why have so many law firms reached a deal with him? How have changes to law firms’ business models left them particularly vulnerable to a moment like this? Why are some firms more vulnerable to political attacks than others? Together, the three discuss the firms’ reciprocal agreements with the administration, the possibilities for a collective-action response, and how this moment may profoundly reshape the future of law, democracy, and capitalism in America.Show Notes:Watch a recording of the panel “Antitrust and the 1st Amendment” from the 2025 Stigler Center Antitrust and Competition Conference, featuring Greg Day, Eleanor Fox, and Matt Stoller, and moderated by Maciej Bernatt. The panel highlights how antitrust may stand in the way of collective action, competitive markets, and free speech.

  --------  

  48:03

More Business podcasts

Trending Business podcasts

About Capitalisn't

Capitalisn't: Podcasts in Family