Preet Bharara:

From CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network, welcome to Stay Tuned. I’m Preet Bharara.

Daron Acemoglu:

If it’s done by a president who has been known to use coercion in a coercive manner, in the context of a Supreme Court that has vastly expanded presidential powers, that should alarm everybody.

Preet Bharara:

That’s Daron Acemoglu, he’s an Institute Professor of Economics at MIT and a co-recipient of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences. His research focuses on how political and economic institutions influence growth and opportunity both on the national level and in people’s daily lives.

This week, he joins me to discuss the economic stakes of shifting institutional norms in the US, including President Trump’s desire to fire Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, and the announcement that the government will take a roughly 10% passive equity stake in the company, Intel. Then I’ll answer a question about the latest developments in the Kilmar Ábrego Garcia deportation case and discuss Governor Gavin Newsom’s recent use of satire on social media. That’s coming up, Stay Tuned.

Nobel Prize winning economist, Daron Acemoglu, studies how institutions impact economies. He joins me today to talk about Trump’s recent moves. Professor Daron Acemoglu, welcome to the show. It’s an honor to have you.

Daron Acemoglu:

Well, thank you very much. It’s my true pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me on the program.

Preet Bharara:

We need you to educate us, me in particular, but lots of people about a lot of things that are going on in the economy. But can I ask you a personal question first?

Daron Acemoglu:

Please.

Preet Bharara:

So you won the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences. Does your life materially change when that happens? Do you get invited to do cameos on TV shows? Do you get invited to do more lectures? Does anything happen or is it-

Daron Acemoglu:

I was looking forward to the cameos on TV shows. That has not transpired yet, but I’m waiting. I’m waiting.

Preet Bharara:

The best you can do is appearance on Stay Tuned with Preet.

Daron Acemoglu:

Right, exactly. That’s fantastic. No, yes, I’m getting more invitations for lectures from China, which I’m turning down.

Preet Bharara:

Oh, that’s so interesting. So they are a credential oriented society, aren’t they?

Daron Acemoglu:

They are very much so. I used to get invitations from China about 10 years ago, even though my book, Why Nations Fail, was very critical of China. But China since then sort of became less open to criticism, and my subsequent books have been even more critical of China, so the invitations had ceased. I did not receive any for eight years. A virtual talk that I was asked to give was canceled at the last moment. But now after Nobel Prize, invitations are following.

Preet Bharara:

So the Nobel Prize washes away all of your critical thinking skills from before?

Daron Acemoglu:

Exactly, they do. And then probably means that when I go there, I won’t be arrested. Isn’t that a double whammy?

Preet Bharara:

Does it mean that?

Daron Acemoglu:

I don’t know. I don’t know. We can try that theory.

Preet Bharara:

So I didn’t know we were going to go in this direction, but does it mean that they think you have some advice to offer them in how they deal with their economy?

Daron Acemoglu:

No, no, no. I also went to China and met with some high-level policymakers, including the premier at the time, Wen Jiabao, and it was very clear. Even when they say we want to exchange ideas, they’re not interested in that. They have their own approach, which is both economic and political and you cannot agree with everything, but there is some consistency in what they’re doing, but they definitely don’t want advice.

Preet Bharara:

So the trick to getting a Nobel Prize, to be honest. Do you call up Prime Minister Modi and tell him to nominate you? Is that the secret?

Daron Acemoglu:

I think right now you have to go with Donald Trump. You call President Trump.

Preet Bharara:

For the Nobel Prize. Yeah, because some people really, really, really, really crave the Nobel Prize, but we can leave that there.

Daron Acemoglu:

Yeah.

Preet Bharara:

So I want to ask you about some things that are confusing to people.

Daron Acemoglu:

Please do.

Preet Bharara:

And people use terms in my area of expertise, legal terms, they use them sometimes incorrectly. And then sort of one concentric circle outside of my expertise, when we talk about sort of democracy and society and the rule of law, people sometimes misuse words like autocracy, fascism, demagoguery, dictatorship, all those terms have different meanings and there’s no common usage. So in your field, there are a couple of phrases that people use. One of which, dare I say, it begins with an S, socialism.

Daron Acemoglu:

Oh, no.

Preet Bharara:

Everyone likes to say everyone else is a socialist.

Daron Acemoglu:

I know. I know, in the US.

Preet Bharara:

In the US, and that’s a slur.

Daron Acemoglu:

Yes.

Preet Bharara:

But it depends on what you’re talking about. So the thing I want to talk about is the share that the US government either does or will soon own in a private profitable company called Intel, what is going on there? And is that, or is that not socialism?

Daron Acemoglu:

Well, look, first of all, I am not a socialist. Let’s get that clarified.

Preet Bharara:

Notwithstanding your invitation to China, sir.

Daron Acemoglu:

Yes, exactly. And my very close relationship with all kinds of Scandinavian governments. Social democracy is not socialism, but I don’t like the term socialism. Neither do I like the term capitalism because they have so many different connotations, and I don’t think the label of socialism is particularly useful in the current context. But if it’s going to turn Rand Paul against Donald Trump, fine, I’ll go with that. But I think the fear-

Preet Bharara:

You’re pragmatic, that’s why you won the Nobel Prize. Pragmatism plus scholarship equals Nobel Prize.

Daron Acemoglu:

That’s right. Well, it’s because of my adherence to the thoughts of Dr. Rand Paul. That’s right. Look, I think the image you should have in your mind that should scare you is not Lenin, but it’s Vladimir Putin. So what I’ve said consistently is that the agenda that President Trump is pursuing, especially in his second term, but there were signs of this in his first term, is to increase his power over key domestic, sometimes international, but mostly domestic actors. And that is a path to the kind of situation that we are seeing in Russia.

There were people in Russia after Yeltsin’s era ended that welcomed Putin establishing his power using his KGB credentials and other tools over the oligarchs who were running amok with the country, but that was the wrong attitude. The oligarchs were terrible, probably worse than our current oligarchs, which are many and very, very powerful. But the solution to oligarchy isn’t to make a powerful president pull the strings of the oligarchs. And many of Trump’s policies, both legal and political, should be understood as part of this agenda. And if we get closer and closer to Vladimir Putin, that is the worst of all words.

Preet Bharara:

Okay. So putting inside the nomenclature, socialism, communism, control the means of production, whatever phrases you want to use, I take it from your answer that you don’t think it’s a good and salutary thing for the US government to own equity in Intel. Correct?

Daron Acemoglu:

Some social democratic governments have sometimes owned equity in companies. I would not make a blanket statement that it’s always wrong. It’s not desirable, but I think it was fantastic for the Swedish government to take over some of the banks during its financial crisis.

Preet Bharara:

What about the US with a car company?

Daron Acemoglu:

It could be accepted during exceptional times. I am not dogmatic on that. What is problematic is that being done in the current environment, in the way it’s being done via threats, not legally. And in the context of a presidency that is taking very clear steps towards what you might call imperial presidency or unitary presidency with no checks from Congress, no checks from agencies, and unfortunately no checks from the Supreme Court. So that is the Putin path, not Swedish government or Denmark having 10% stakes in some company will not get us to Vladimir Putin, but our current path would.

Preet Bharara:

Make the case from the Trump administration’s perspective as to why this stake by the US government is a good thing.

Daron Acemoglu:

So far as I understand, the only semi-coherent argument is that we’re giving them money. This way, we take it back. And very, very disappointingly, some Democrats are agreeing with that, which I think is yet another step in Democrats shooting themselves in the foot. This is not legal. The government gives subsidies. It can change the laws via a deliberative process and then change certain things about the tax code. I’m all in favor of debating those, but this is very different from the CEO of a company being squeezed in the Oval Office and being forced to give up 10% of their company and it’s being done in the context of a presidency that is not under any kinds of checks and balances. It’s a very, very different.

Preet Bharara:

And your assessment is that this is coercion?

Daron Acemoglu:

This is absolutely coercion, 100%.

Preet Bharara:

Right. So what does it normalize going forward?

Daron Acemoglu:

More of the same. More of the same. And it also will most likely take a form that none of the guardrails that should exist when the government has a stake in some companies are not going to be there. So one of the reasons why Rand Paul is right, and your first question was right, that it’s undesirable for the government to own a stake in a company is that the government has its fingerprints all over the economy through the procurement process, trillions of dollars through other support or regulations of companies. And the temptation of any government once they have a stake in one company and not in their competitor would be to tilt the playing field.

That was also the danger, which was very present when Elon Musk was so influential within the administration. Elon Musk’s companies are all entangled with the government and he would obviously ask for special treatment. It was already quite clear. So those are the reasons why I think you want to keep the government away from having ownership stake in these companies.

And then the second reason is that once their ownership stake is significant and 10%, we can debate whether it is significant or not, they may start putting even more pressure on these companies to do things that are in line with the administration’s objectives, not with their bottom line.

Preet Bharara:

So how does a 10% stake work? Is it the same as if you had 10%? Do you have voting rights that are equivalent?

Daron Acemoglu:

That’s the part that’s unclear. It may well be that there are special shares that don’t have voting rights. So it will have to be worked out whether … So if it’s just 10% non-voting shares, that will be slightly better than 10% voting shares. Because imagine a government bureaucrat coming from the heart of Donald Trump’s movement going to the shareholder meetings. If you go there with 10%, that’s a huge deal, because many of the smaller shareholders don’t turn out to these meetings, so you can really sway some of the direction of the company.

Preet Bharara:

We don’t want to call it socialism necessarily. Is it fair to call it anti-capitalist?

Daron Acemoglu:

Again, as I said, I don’t like the term-

Preet Bharara:

You don’t like capitalist?

Daron Acemoglu:

I don’t like the term socialist.

Preet Bharara:

Undesirable. It’s undesirable.

Daron Acemoglu:

Undesirable, undesirable. But again, I want to emphasize what’s undesirable is the political economy of it in a given context. So that’s what makes it alarming. If this was done again by the prime minister of Denmark, I would be very suspicious. I wouldn’t be so happy. I would want to know about why they are doing it and what are the guardrails. But if it’s done by a president who has been known to use coercion in a coercive manner, in the context of a Supreme Court that has vastly expanded presidential powers, that should alarm everybody.

Preet Bharara:

Did Intel have a choice? When you say coercive, how coercive? Will future companies have a choice to say, “Thanks, but no thanks,” or not?

Daron Acemoglu:

Well, my understanding, again, I wasn’t there, is that there was a threat that the subsidies might not materialize either at all or as long as the CEO was in place. So perhaps the CEO did what’s good for him, not for the company, I’m not sure. But once you come to that place with this type of offer from a president who has so much power, saying no, it’s like saying no to a mafia boss. If the mafia boss came and made an offer to you, even if it looked like an innocent offer, would you be so cavalier as to say, “No, I really don’t like this offer?”

Preet Bharara:

Depends on if I was still the US attorney or not.

Daron Acemoglu:

Right.

Preet Bharara:

If I had the power of the government-

Daron Acemoglu:

Now, you used to be the US attorney, you’re probably great at it.

Preet Bharara:

I said no all the time to them. So just to take a step back for a moment, it seems to me that a lesson of the last 10 months is that … And tell me if this is right, is that if you’re a business, if you are a fledgling business or an established business, you’re a university, you’re a municipality, you are a foreign aid organization, that the best possible practice would be not to take any money, not to taken any money from the federal government given current circumstances and given the whims of the current president and that self-sufficiently is the order of the day. And going forward, try to minimize your reliance upon US federal government largesse, whether you’re … This goes also to towns and municipalities, because then you don’t have to bend the knee.

Daron Acemoglu:

100%.

Preet Bharara:

Is that fair? And is that what’s going to happen?

Daron Acemoglu:

Let me try to make the point, Preet, that’s not possible or even enough. First of all, the government is everywhere in the United States and there’s a different discussion perhaps that should remind us that we want the government to do the essential things and there are costs in government being everywhere. That’s a different discussion.

But take Apple, Apple does not take money from the US. Why was Tim Cook in Trump’s inauguration? Well, for a very good reason, Apple crucially depends on myriad regulations and its supply chain depends on trade policy, which was very clearly going to be one of Trump’s targets. And in the same way that you shouldn’t think of the Intel saga as a mainly economic one, it’s a political economic one. Trump’s tariff policy is also a political economic one. There is no trade theory. There’s no economic theory, none whatsoever, and I’ll go to my grave on this, that could even come close to justifying what Trump is doing.

There may be reasons for supporting tariffs in certain situations, but tariffs that are unilaterally imposed differentially on different goods for depending on which country we’re talking about with the threat of renegotiating them up or down, there is no possible justification. But it makes perfect sense when you look at it from a political economy point of view, from the viewpoint of a would-be autocrat wanting to increase his power, that’s exactly what you would want to do. That’s concentrating a lot of power in your hands, not just against your foreign adversaries or allies, but also over Apple. Trump can destroy Apple by putting tariffs exactly on Apple’s supply chain. So that’s the kind of power we’re talking about that exists even if you don’t have a federal contract.

Preet Bharara:

Is it a fair statement? Because this is an alarming thing.

Daron Acemoglu:

Oh, absolutely. You should be alarmed. I mean, we should all try to be not alarmists because I think we are paying the price that we were people on the more left-leaning democratic side. We were absolutely wrong on thinking about, “Oh, well, Russia stole the 2016 election.” That sort of alarmism did not serve us well. But right now, this is the time to be alarmist.

Preet Bharara:

But I’m going to talk about a particular kind of alarm. So I spent a lot of my time thinking about the rule of law and order.

Daron Acemoglu:

Thank you. You’re one of the few people left doing that.

Preet Bharara:

And I’m deeply concerned about the separation of powers and conflicts of interest, and justice by whim and fiat, and all of those kinds of things, and have examined. I spent a lot of time examining the ways in which a president can either by deploying troops to Los Angeles or to Washington D.C., or the threats of deploying troops to Chicago and elsewhere are very problematic and he has a lot of power. And that’s the area that I think about political power, military power, law, enforcement power.

But I guess what I have thought less about and why we have you on is to assess whether or not it is also true, even though we believe we have a capitalistic society, even though people have said that the richest people in the world are more powerful than the politicians in the world, that in reality, the President of the United States, if he chooses to press on the various levers of power that he has, can destroy any company he chooses.

Daron Acemoglu:

Absolutely. 100%. That’s exactly it.

Preet Bharara:

So that’s a remarkable thing that there are no people talking about-

Daron Acemoglu:

That is a remarkable change.

Preet Bharara:

Professor, how can that be true? In our advanced economic, capitalistic, I know you don’t like the term, capitalistic country that believes in free markets, how can the president have such power in a non-dictatorship?

Daron Acemoglu:

Well, first of all, the US government is very, very powerful. We should not ignore that. It was very powerful under Obama and Biden who’ve also both misused some of that power, by the way. So some of the blame should go to these presidents as well that have definitely pushed the boundaries far too far in many ways, and Trump is following some of the fault lines that they have created.

But I think we have to hold a couple of different thoughts in our minds at the same time. Bernie Sanders, whom I respect but often disagree with, put out a tweet after the inauguration saying this is oligarchy, because the heads of the largest corporations were behind Trump. Indeed, US has had an oligarchy. We should be aware of that. These companies are more powerful than probably Rockefeller and Carnegie Steel were at their time, but-

Preet Bharara:

But still at the mercy of the President.

Daron Acemoglu:

Exactly, but that picture wasn’t a picture of oligarchy. That picture was the opposite. That was the picture of the largest corporations being subdued by the President. So Bernie Sanders was misreading it. And if we misread the situation, I think we will react to it differently.

And indeed, I think if Obama was in power, despite some of the mistakes he made, and despite some of the ways in which I disagreed how he used executive privilege, I think there would be more checks and balances against him. Because many of the checks that come on a president are norm-based and many politicians don’t want to break those norms, and many of them come from the Supreme Court or the judiciary system. So what the problem is that once you get rid of the norm-based things and the Supreme Court gives you carte blanche, that’s when the US president or the US government has this incredible power over corporations.

Preet Bharara:

So where’s the outcry among first while Republicans and free market activists? Where’s the outrage?

Daron Acemoglu:

Well, first of all, I applaud Rand Paul because-

Preet Bharara:

Rand Paul has never been mentioned so often on this podcast, I will say.

Daron Acemoglu:

Oh, yeah. Well, we have to give credit where its credit is due. Today, I’ll take Rand Paul over Bernie Sanders. It’s Bernie Sanders-

Preet Bharara:

Is Rand Paul good on the Centers for Disease Control? I haven’t seen what he’s been saying-

Daron Acemoglu:

No, no, no.

Preet Bharara:

All right. So the encomium only goes so far.

Daron Acemoglu:

Exactly.

Preet Bharara:

Okay.

Daron Acemoglu:

Well, you have to call them on the things that they’re doing right. But the situation is that for reasons that are a little too difficult for me to completely understand, Republican lawmakers are all scared of Trump. They have fallen in line. Nobody is raising their voice, and that’s why it’s remarkable that Rand Paul is. The outcry should come from the rest of civil society, from media, from us. I don’t know whether this was a tactic or a strategy or just whatever, but we’ve been numbed.

The first three, four months, there were so many other things to have an outcry about that our stock of outcry is near depleted and we should also have an outcry about the president threatening to send troops to Chicago.

Preet Bharara:

It’s hard to be outraged about so many things at once.

Daron Acemoglu:

Exactly.

Preet Bharara:

Is there an economic theory behind that?

Daron Acemoglu:

I mean, there is a theory of economic attention, focus.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah. What’s the basic principle there?

Daron Acemoglu:

Well, all of our mental faculties are limited, so is our attention. So there’s only so much of it we can devote to many things. If there are 200 attacks against democracy, we can’t all focus on each one of them.

Preet Bharara:

There’s a consumer theory that I love to talk about when I understood it not too long ago that the difference between Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s is that Whole Foods has so many varieties and so many choices that when you go in to try to pick a soup or a salad dressing or something, you are often not likely to buy anything because overwhelmed by the choice where Trader Joe’s has fewer square feet per store and so has to choose four or five or six curated items, and they have a higher rate of actual successful sales per square foot for that reason.

Daron Acemoglu:

Interesting. Yeah, n.

Preet Bharara:

I hope that earned a Nobel Prize too, because I thought that was a good insight.

Daron Acemoglu:

I’m not sure know how true it is. I mean, I think-

Preet Bharara:

Oh, you’re not.

Daron Acemoglu:

Yeah, because first of all, Trader Joe’s has more attractive prices.

Preet Bharara:

That’s true.

Daron Acemoglu:

The issue of choice, the classic economic theory is that choice is always good. And we know that, that’s not always true. The way that people react to a lot of choices, they may get confused and not do anything, or they may get envious of some of the choices and purchase more.

Preet Bharara:

More than they need.

Daron Acemoglu:

More than they need, so I think there is complexity there.

Preet Bharara:

Can we talk about the reputation of your profession then we’ll go back to some current events? In 2022, and this is an issue relating to just general turning away of experts and the demise of respect for expertise, which I think is a very dangerous thing. Critical thinking is not dangerous, skepticism is not dangerous, but a widespread turning away from expertise and denigration of expertise I think is very dangerous.

And I think in 2022, I might have my year off. I didn’t talk to you, and so maybe you’re the outlier and you can defend yourself if so. But everyone said that the likelihood of a recession in the following year was basically 100%. The Economist said it, the Financial Times said it, Bloomberg said it, everyone said it, and the recession never came. That’s data 0.1.

Data 0.2 is now the shoe is on the other foot, doom and gloom about these tariffs. It hasn’t been that long yet. Maybe severe economic consequences like a recession may follow, but it hasn’t happened yet. And the stock market last I checked is through the roof. Defend your profession and its ability to predict financial catastrophe to the listening public.

Daron Acemoglu:

Well, I don’t think economic forecasting has ever been the economics profession’s strong suit, nor should it be. Economic forecasting is extremely difficult because there are so many social as well as economic factors, the fickleness of the markets. There are many factors there. You can identify fault lines and I think that’s what we should be in the business of. So I am not in the business of economic forecasting.

Preet Bharara:

Should everyone get out of it? Because people look a little silly.

Daron Acemoglu:

There’s the demand for it from the private sector. And most of the economists who actually forecast whether there will be a recession or not, most of them, not all of them are actually in the private sector, not in academia. But I think we should also be using economic knowledge which is substantial accumulated over more than 100 years, although it’s very imperfect because we’re dealing with very complex situations. But you should use economic knowledge to identify fault lines and tendencies.

And I would say that tariffs plus the attacks on institutions that Trump has initiated and has carried out so vigorously will have medium-term consequences. When I wrote on this in January in Financial Times, I said, “Don’t expect these costs to be realized in one or two years, because they are going against the fabric of US institutions whose effects are medium-term. They’re on innovation, they are on the credibility of US assets. They are on the competitiveness of the economy. And those things will have a slow effect on the economy.” I would think that we will be in a position to understand the costs of Trump’s flagrant actions in 10 years, not next year in 10 years.

Preet Bharara:

So if that takes such a long time, what’s the economic or rhetorical or political strategy to oppose it now?

Daron Acemoglu:

Absolutely. That’s the problem. So you’re not going to get, most of the costs will be after Trump’s term is over hopefully if he doesn’t seek-

Preet Bharara:

Which will then be blamed on the Democratic president who succeeds him.

Daron Acemoglu:

Whoever it comes to power. Absolutely. So that’s why we need expertise and more nuanced discussion to be part of the public conversation. And this is why it is so costly that expertise has been so denigrated. But by the way, I would blame part of that on the experts themselves. I think Democrats are as guilty as Republicans in denigrating expertise, because they cloak themselves behind the false appearance of expertise to do things that they shouldn’t have done.

Preet Bharara:

I’ll be right back with Daron Acemoglu after this.

There’s lots of bad things, so I want you to put them in perspective and how proportional they are to the problem. On a scale of one to 10, and you can reject the scale and I bet you will because you’re signaling that you don’t like doing those kinds of things.

But the firing of the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics and then the dangling of the idea of not putting out numbers every month and the resulting skepticism that will arise from the accuracy and fairness of those numbers, which heretofore had been, I think, respected and deemed to be neutral. To me, that sounds like a DEFCON 1, one being the highest. Do you agree with that, or am I overstating it?

Daron Acemoglu:

Well, one or two, yes. I don’t know the scale, so I don’t know what’s different.

Preet Bharara:

And why such a big deal, that little statistic that most Americans don’t know anything about?

Daron Acemoglu:

So let’s go back to basics a little. What is US’s special sauce? Why has the US economy been, by and large, quite successful over the last 30 years? We’re not doing great in infrastructure. We’ve had some [inaudible 00:30:10].

Preet Bharara:

Our training is very slow.

Daron Acemoglu:

Yeah, we’re not building things. There are a lot of problem, but look at us and compare us to other industrialized economies and we’re doing okay. I mean, inequality is through the roof, so there are certain aspects of it that are awful. But in terms of GDP, gross domestic product growth, we’re doing great. And I think we have two special sauces here. One is that the US is an innovative economy. You can see some of it in Silicon Valley and tech. There are costs of that sort of organization, which we can come to, but it’s very innovative, it’s very risk-taking, and that’s great in this day and age.

Second is that people around the world love US assets. The world becomes turbulent, even if caused by the United States such as the 2008, 2009 financial crisis. People from all four corners of the world turn to US assets. They buy US treasuries, they buy US corporate debt. They put their money in the US stock market rather than European, Japanese or whatever corporate. Why do they do that? Because they think the US economy is safe. If there is a problem, US courts are going to be fair and they can understand the US economy because its data and its transparency and all of that.

And why is the US so innovative? Because people take risks believing that they’re going to be successful. Why? Because they think they understand the economy and they think that if they come up with a better product, they’re not going to be crushed, they’re not going to be killed, they’re not going to be made subservient to some other company with government connections. Again, it’s about institutions, it’s about trust. Both of these are now being threatened.

If you stop putting out data and if you fire government agencies, even if they’re not taking a political position just because their numbers are against you, that is a big blow both to the trust that people outside of the United States should have in US assets. And it’s also a big blow to the kind of institutional fabric that was bolstering that innovativeness.

Preet Bharara:

What’s the metric? Is there a metric either that exists in economic data or in polling that can tell us the degree to which we’re losing that trust?

Daron Acemoglu:

No, there isn’t a unique metric, because institutions are not quantitative, they’re multifaceted. There are still some dimensions of US institutions that may be better than French institutions, but many organizations around the world collect process, evaluate data and come up with indices of different dimensions of institutions, legal quality, freedom of speech, democratic rights, et cetera. And if you look at all of them, all of them, with no exception, US is among the worst performers since 2016, but it starts before 2016, by the way. Again, you cannot just blame it on Trump.

Preet Bharara:

What’s an example of Obama? You mentioned this a few minutes ago.

Daron Acemoglu:

Yeah. I mean, all of the executive actions. So the fact that in many places where the constitution, at least so far as I understand it, but you should correct me this. Now, we’re entering into your area. It’s not executive action, but it’s a congressional decision. And if the president says, “No, I don’t like what the Congress is doing.” And I can understand, Congress is deadlocked and so on, but I’m going to take executive actions where I shouldn’t. That is I think a weakening of democracy and pushing the boundaries of executive power. And since I am very worried about executive power right now, it will be completely, completely hypocritical of me to say that was okay when Obama did it, and it’s not okay when Trump does it.

Preet Bharara:

But we also made reference to the economic emergency of the financial crisis in 2008.

Daron Acemoglu:

That’s right. That’s right.

Preet Bharara:

And there was a significant use of executive power then. And we already talked about the ownership.

Daron Acemoglu:

During some crisis period, some of this can be justified, but during Biden, which even increased the number of executive actions relative to Obama, there wasn’t an economic crisis.

Preet Bharara:

Like in a lot of things Trump says, “I see your nine executive actions and I raise you 300.”

Daron Acemoglu:

Exactly, 100%. Yeah, 100%. But I think there’s one important thing here, which I think you’ll appreciate as a legal expert, but when civil society, the media and people who are from the left criticize Trump, they should do it not because of the content of his policies, but because of the way that he is taking extra legal action. If Obama was doing these things in order to do policies that we like, we should be as critical of him, and I think that principle is very important and we’ve lost that. And having lost that, I think our complaints and alarms are falling more on deaf ears than they would’ve done otherwise.

Preet Bharara:

I completely agree with you. I think that the problem is there are too many people on the left and the right who are outcome oriented. They don’t care about process. There are people who suggest that there are 25% to 30% of people in any Western democratic society who were perfectly happy to have an autocratic and despotic leader, so long as the policies that they espouse and institute are ones they agree with. So that there are most certainly liberals who would be perfectly happy with a President of the United States who would impose price limits, wage increases without going through the Congress. I think that is probably true. So that’s a big problem to prophesy the outcome.

Daron Acemoglu:

That’s a big problem. Let me tell you another statistic, which I think again worries me a lot, that before Trump already, the number of people, especially among the young who no longer support democracy or who think that autocratic solutions are better, has increased a lot, especially in the United States. It has increased in other industrialized countries as well, but especially in the United States.

Preet Bharara:

I don’t have the quote in front of me, but Trump in the last few days said something like … And it oddly parallels what he said on that Access Hollywood tape. If you’re famous, they let you do it. And it’s an interesting construction, but in a different vein, he basically says, “If you can cut crime, let you do anything you want.” And so he’s banking on a psychic political principle that if you can do something by fiat that may cross the line or violate a norm or maybe even violate the law and over-deal on your emergency authority in that loophole, that enough people will go along that it’ll be fine, as long as you show results, but that I think part of your work addresses this. That is not what democracy is about.

Daron Acemoglu:

That’s not what democracy is about, but he’s not-

Preet Bharara:

That’s not what economy is.

Daron Acemoglu:

… he’s not just bluffing.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah.

Daron Acemoglu:

We have the example from Duterte in the Philippines who came to power with a promise of reducing crime, especially drug-related crime, and did so in unimaginably worse ways than what we are experiencing in the United States. Completely extra-legal based on murder, kidnappings, complete abrogation of due process, and he was still popular.

Preet Bharara:

Right, but the popular and magnanimous dictator never stays such. And then when that person leaves, what do they leave in their wake?

Daron Acemoglu:

100%.

Preet Bharara:

So the Bureau of Labor Statistics is something that’s sort of obscure, less obscure, but also I think a black box to a lot of people is the Federal Reserve. People don’t know what it’s for, why it needs to be independent, whether or not you’re someone who espouses the unitary executive theory. There’s been a lot of talk about this particular Fed governor, Lisa Cook, and Trump’s efforts or interest in firing her. Why does all that matter, and how do you compare that to the Bureau of Labor Statistics issue?

Daron Acemoglu:

Well, I think they’re both quite troubling. What makes Lisa Cook’s firing more troubling is that it comes after several attempts by Trump to influence monetary policy and even threatening to fire Jerome Powell. So it is part of a pattern of clear interference by the executive on an independent agency.

Now, I understand legally there are debates about the situation of agencies that, again, Supreme Court seems to have a particular stance on. But in the case of the Fed, this was a very important step. It’s not a perfect solution. The Fed makes mistakes. Independence of the Fed from the executive doesn’t mean that the Fed is independent of ideology. It doesn’t mean it’s independent of other pressures, but time and again, what we saw in the United States, in Europe and in many developing countries in the ’50s and ’60s was that when executives have power over monetary policy, they want to use that in order to stimulate the economy before elections or whenever their popularity was at stake. And that created a terrible economic dynamic where the economy would overexpand, inflation would increase, and then it would have to have a costly process of retrenchment where expectations would have to be lowered about inflation. It was just absolute mess.

So the solution that many people simultaneously, independently came up to that was to reduce the power of politicians over monetary policy by delegating policy to an independent central bank. And the Fed over time emerged as one of the most respected ones. For example, with Volcker showing amazing strength in pursuing his independent monetary policy despite pressures from several presidents. And that reputation is now what is being destroyed.

Preet Bharara:

If the President of the United States does all these things that trouble you, and this is in your lane, not the outcome oriented worry that I have about criminal justice system or other legal matters, but the economy doesn’t tank and the tariff policy does bring money to the coffers and the stock market does continue to rise. And notwithstanding the firing of people at the Bureau of Labor statistics, people feel that there’s closer to full employment, if all that happens, I’m asking this in good faith, what’s the harm?

Daron Acemoglu:

First of all, in social science, nothing is certain if we’re dealing with such complex problems. There’s so many other factors going on, but I am as certain of the fact that Trump’s policies will have medium term grave consequences as I am certain of it.

Preet Bharara:

What’s medium term?

Daron Acemoglu:

10 years. 5 to 10 years.

Preet Bharara:

I mean the problem, our economic cycle-

Daron Acemoglu:

I know.

Preet Bharara:

… and the medium term is very off in-

Daron Acemoglu:

Absolutely, absolutely.

Preet Bharara:

… from a political cycle.

Daron Acemoglu:

So the question may be, what is the harm if nothing happens next year? Well, the harm will be in five years’ time, six years’ time. Now, the question is why are we not seeing those harms now? And I think some of it is because of the AI boom. A tremendous amount of investment is pouring into AI and there is tremendous optimism. Some of it is because many companies are buoyant because of the tax cuts and what that implies for them.

There is also some incorrect perception that we have created a “Teflon economy” that’s impervious to such distortions, which I think is just a complete fantasy, but beliefs can take you so far. So at some point, I think the bill will have to be paid, but I wouldn’t say that, that’s going to come necessarily next year.

Preet Bharara:

Do people really care about the debt?

Daron Acemoglu:

Same thing. It’s exactly the same thing.

Preet Bharara:

It is not what people talk about in the bars.

Daron Acemoglu:

I know. And here again, Democrats and democratic-leaning economists are also to blame. Because when Biden was in power and when Obama was in power, they kept saying, “Oh, debts don’t matter, we can have more debt.” Well, there was a slight justification for that because interest rates were so low that the servicing burden of that debt wasn’t very high. That’s no longer true, and the interest rates would increase even more as US assets are no longer viewed as safe, but debt in the short run again can be managed and won’t cause a recession.

So if anybody says, “Because our debt has reached this level, next year there will be a recession.” That’s just a guess and it’s as likely to be wrong as it is to be right, but a very high debt burden is going to create a variety of economic costs and is going to increase the fragility of the economy. So in other words, one, my concern is that even leaving aside the immediate threat that Trump is posing, we have now entered an age of a very fragile economy and a very fragile democracy.

Preet Bharara:

Can we talk about a couple of things with respect to our relationship to other countries? What on earth is Trump doing with India?

Daron Acemoglu:

I have no idea.

Preet Bharara:

Can you explain why I asked that question?

Daron Acemoglu:

Sure, go ahead.

Preet Bharara:

No, can you explain? So we saw the picture the other day of Modi and Xi holding hands.

Daron Acemoglu:

Yes.

Preet Bharara:

I had always understood, again, more from a geopolitical standpoint than an economic standpoint that … My family is from India, so we talk about that in the house when I was growing up more than some other things, that it was always going to be a counterweight to China. It’s a booming economy, now has a larger population than, and that counterweight strategy seems to have come apart in part based on … And I joked about this at the outset of the interview that it seems to be Trump is annoyed that Modi sort of laughed off the idea promoting him to be the Nobel Prize winner in the Peace Prize category from an economic standpoint, from a standpoint of prosperity for America, not the global economy, but for America. What is the right strategy with respect to India given the primacy of China in that region?

Daron Acemoglu:

Well, look, I think India has traditionally been not a very close US ally.

Preet Bharara:

True.

Daron Acemoglu:

In the past India, even when it was at its most democratic stage, has always flirted with other countries and tried to counterbalance US influence with others. That’s why US policy at some point faithfully became so close to Pakistan.

Preet Bharara:

Right, right.

Daron Acemoglu:

So we have to take that at face value. I think India is going to become a regional power, and it’s not going to be a US pawn. Probably, it’s actually better that it’s not a US pawn. And by the way-

Preet Bharara:

It’s better for the US.

Daron Acemoglu:

It’s better for the world and it’s probably better for the US in the long run. And by the way, our current attitudes towards China are deeply worrying. As you can surmise from what I said at the very beginning of the show, I am no fan of China or no friend of the Chinese Communist Party probably. I mean, they’re watch out for this guy list. But I think it would be a terrible tragedy if there is no possibility of any collaboration between US and China in the global stage.

And the only point of agreement between Democrats and Republicans right now seems to be China bashing with good measure coming from the AI companies who are fueling this conspiracy that we’re about to get to AGI and we have to kill everything China does, because otherwise they will go there first. So it’s a really bad equilibrium, so we have to work with China. Many of the most urgent challenges from climate change to pandemics to AI’s governance to the influence of multinational corporations, nuclear nonproliferation, all of these are global challenges, so we need to work with China.

Preet Bharara:

Your work, if I understand correctly, that won you the Nobel Prize, among other things focuses on the importance of institutions, not just economic institutions, but democratic institutions. So there’s a merger and a through line and a bridge between things that I know. Something about and things you know a lot about. When one wants to fix the path of the United States, does one begin with the economy, or does one begin with democratic institutions, or is that not the right question?

Daron Acemoglu:

I think my work, exactly like you summarized, is about the primacy of institutions. Institutions are key. My father was a law professor and a lawyer. So I guess I share your outlook that law-

Preet Bharara:

You have the DNA.

Daron Acemoglu:

DNA is in there, but you cannot have institutions that function unless you have trust in them. And what we have lost is that trust in the United States and in many other industrialized nations, and part of that is because of economics. And that’s the reason why the pure message democracy is under threat did not resonate with the voters. Because for the voters, I think democracy is often more instrumental. It’s about putting bread and cheese on their table. It’s about protecting them, giving them public services, giving them voice, giving them dignity. And democracies failed in doing that.

Not that any of the alternatives to democracy did any better. So there is no evidence, and that’s part of my work as well, that autocratic regimes are doing any better than democracy on any metric that you can come up with. But democracy itself underperformed relative to its promises, relative to what it used to do, relative to what people had aspirations for, and that is something we have to tackle. So, yes, I think we have to start with inflation. We have to start with the stagnant living conditions, prosperity of vast swathes of the country, and at the same time try to bolster democratic institutions. It’s not one or the other, but both.

Preet Bharara:

So what’s a concrete step? If you were what you don’t want to be and we don’t think we should have benevolent dictator to restore us to some measure of the right path, what would it be?

Daron Acemoglu:

Yes, I don’t want. Give me that job and I’ll resign.

Preet Bharara:

I know, I know.

Daron Acemoglu:

But I actually will say something that perhaps will surprise you. But I think first what we have to do is actually set our aspirations right. We also have an aspiration crisis. We have lost our belief in democratic institutions, so we have to recreate that belief that democratic institutions are consistent with shared prosperity, meaning that real wages, real earnings of people of all backgrounds, not just people who are computer programmers in Silicon Valley and managers of companies, but everybody can increase.

Then in a democratic society, we can provide voice to people. We don’t need to silence those who we disagree with, whatever their views on immigration, whatever their views on vaccines, et cetera. And that we can actually provide high quality public services to them, the things they need in terms of education, health, in terms of infrastructure. I think we need to have that aspiration, share that aspiration and hopefully attract people with those aspirations to public office.

Preet Bharara:

Is that necessarily liberal or conservative?

Daron Acemoglu:

I think it’s not necessarily center left or center right, but there are some parts of it that I would say the liberal tent broadly construed has to be central to this because freedom of expression, respect for different opinions and a belief in progress I think are much more in line with the liberal agenda.

Preet Bharara:

Have you been following the race for a New York City mayor?

Daron Acemoglu:

I have only from afar. I’m not a New York politics.

Preet Bharara:

But I’ve even following it enough to make an assessment of whether or not the punitive democratic nominee is Zohran Mamdani, is following a little bit of that recipe you’re talking about. Affordability.

Daron Acemoglu:

I think there are so many things that are inspiring about him. He’s talking about bread and butter issues. He’s eloquent. He clearly believes in the power of institutions and the mayor’s role. I think the issue, if I had a chance to talk to him, I would say, “Hold back from the standard progressive lines because those are not going to resonate with the United States public in general, and they haven’t served us well. I think talking about bread and butter issues, public services, et cetera, but creating a different path than the standard progressive wing of the Democratic Party is going to be the more winning strategy, at least nationally.”

Preet Bharara:

Let me ask you a question about something that people say a lot. There’s a lot of vilifying of billionaires and some people on the democratic side, billionaires shouldn’t exist to the range that they said that they should pay a lot more money, they should pay taxes on their assets, all sorts of proposals, but there’s a lot of rhetorical vilification. Is that fair? Is that folly politically, economically or otherwise?

Daron Acemoglu:

Let me say a few things. First of all, if I lived in Sweden, I would be much less worried about billionaires than when I live in the United States. The reason is that Swedish billionaires do not have, by law and by norm, the same power to shape their country’s politics as US billionaires do. So the biggest problem with billionaires I have is their excessive social and economic power, and that’s an institutional problem.

That being said, the extent of wealth inequality that has emerged is really unprecedented. Americans were rightly exercised about Standard Oil, which led to its breakup and a very important set of progressive reforms and legal reforms that were quite foundational to this country’s history.

Today, Google, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook are about a thousand times the size of Standard Oil. It’s really remarkable how large these corporations are, how much power they have. So we need countervailing powers, and that’s both against these corporations and against their owners who have become rich beyond imagination.

Now, do I think that there should be a wealth tax? That’s a very difficult question. On the one hand, once you have this level of inequality, how do you reverse it without a wealth tax? On the other hand, a wealth tax seems to be a little bit like changing laws and applying them retrospectively. It’s just like saying, “I allowed you to do that. What you did was legal, and now I changed the law, and I think what you did then should no longer be legal. So I’m taxing you now on the wealth you accumulated in the past when I didn’t tax it in the past.”

Well, I shouldn’t have taxed in the past. I should not have let these companies acquire their rivals, and I shouldn’t have let people who make such huge amounts of money not pay taxes on their income. So how do you redress that? I think we have two imperfect solutions, and I think everybody will have to make their own choice between these two solutions.

Preet Bharara:

You’ve been very generous with your time. You have a new book coming out. Do you want to preview it in any way or not?

Daron Acemoglu:

Yeah, it’s about many of the things that we’ve talked about. It’s about what happened to liberal democracy and how we can remake liberal ideals in a way that’s right for the algorithmic age.

Preet Bharara:

All right, is that coming out tomorrow hopefully?

Daron Acemoglu:

No, next August, unfortunately,

Preet Bharara:

I hope we’re still around.

Daron Acemoglu:

I hope US liberal democracy is still around.

Preet Bharara:

And in savable shape.

Daron Acemoglu:

Yeah.

Preet Bharara:

Professor Daron Acemoglu, thank you so much. Really appreciate your time.

Daron Acemoglu:

This was a really pleasure. Thank you for having me on the program.

Preet Bharara:

My conversation with Daron Acemoglu continues for members of the CAFE Insider Community. To try out the membership head to cafe.com/insider. Again, that’s cafe.com/insider. Stay tuned. After the break, I’ll answer a question about the latest developments in the Kilmar Ábrego Garcia deportation case and discuss Governor Gavin Newsom’s use of satire on social media.

Now, let’s get to your questions. So folks, you may remember at the end of the last Stay Tuned episode, I asked you all what you thought about Gavin Newsom’s new social media style. His satirical posts mimicking Donald Trump. I expected a few responses, but wow, the volume we received may have broken a Stay Tuned record. You guys have a lot of opinions.

Now, the overwhelming majority of you, about 82% were solidly in favor of what Newsom’s team has been doing on X. Many of you offered similar reasons for your support, like Linda who wrote, “It’s a breath of fresh air to see how they have put the opposition on defense, so that they don’t control the narrative as they usually do when Dems try to play nice by the old rules. I say keep it up.”

And here’s Steve who said, “If the Trump trolling memes were the only thing he was doing, I’d say it’s too much, but it’s not.” He, meaning Gavin Newsom, is also standing up to Texas, giving coherent press conferences, addressing important issues that need to be discussed. The memes are a sensation and they have made people notice the other things Newsom is doing.

Now, on the opposing side, only one listener wrote in to say they didn’t like Newsom’s social media posts. That was Jeremy who wrote, “Gavin’s tweets are another example of democratic leaders doing something I’m desperate for them to stop, which is reacting to Trump. People opposed to Trump like I am, seem baffled that Trump controls the narrative every day. But when we do nothing but react to Trump, even when we’re lampooning him, we’re still letting him control the narrative.” Interesting perspective.

And then there’s a smaller group of you who said that, for now, you liked Newsom’s approach, but with some caveats. Some worried he might overuse the tactic or that his motivations weren’t entirely pure. For example, Chuck wrote, “It’s both brilliant and shallow simultaneously. Yes, it’s genius satire, but it’s not in the service of America. Gavin Newsom isn’t on a crusade to beat Trump. He’s on a crusade to advance Gavin Newsom.” One could wonder whether those two things maybe can be in harmony with each other.

Gregory commented on Substack. “I think Newsom should do it sparingly. If he does it too frequently, it will become background noise. An occasional jab may maximize impact, but what impact? Are Gavin’s posts changing anyone’s mind? Or are they just entertaining people who are already anti-Trump?” That’s a particularly good question. Ultimately, time will tell if Gavin Newsom’s tweeting style moves the needle at all. We’ll have to wait and see. Stay tuned.

This question, which I think is a particularly important one, comes in an email from Mara who writes, “My eldest child is about to start seventh grade and has chosen to home school this year. For me, seventh grade social studies was all civics, and this year seems like the perfect time to go in deep with my kiddo about how this government is supposed to work in all of the ways to be educated and engaged as a citizen. So I’m writing for your help. Can you, since you have children older than mine, recommend books, PBS series and other stuff that I can use for my civics lessons for this year?”

So Mara, thanks so much for the question. It’s a large responsibility to figure out a curriculum for someone in seventh grade. It’s a pretty formative year for young minds, and it certainly was for me. And I will just tell you that in my own experience, there is something that I read that I think is somewhat on point when I was in seventh grade, and I pointed to it over the years as the reason why I first began thinking about becoming a lawyer.

I read the play, Inherit the Wind, which is based on the so-called Scopes Monkey Trial in the Deep South from 1925. It fictionalizes the epic courtroom battle between legal giants, Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan. And it’s about a teacher in a school who deliberately disobeyed a law that said you can’t teach evolution in the public schools in that region. It was a test case and the courtroom seems to me, as a seventh grader, already mesmerizing. And I thought, “This is the kind of thing that it might be interesting to do when I grow up.” But whether or not your child wants to become a lawyer or someone involved in the justice system, I do think Inherit the Wind offers singular lessons in the rule of law, due process, freedom of speech, dignified debate and disagreement. It’s all around I think, pretty great, so I would recommend that very highly.

But beyond that, a book that had a huge impact on me, there are lots of excellent resources for teaching civics. For example, one of my favorite resources comes from the late Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who actually founded a nonprofit called iCivics. The whole mission of iCivics is to ensure that all Americans have the knowledge and skills to participate in our democracy. Icivics.org, where you can go has dozens of lesson plans, games and interactive tools that are perfect, I think, for engaging a curious seventh grader.

There’s another terrific resource called the Civics Renewal Network, an alliance of more than 30 non-profit, non-partisan organizations that provide free classroom materials on civics education. You may especially like their offerings on media literacy, which helps students think critically about information in the media and recognize truly fake news. We have added links to both of those organizations in this episode’s show notes. So Mara, those are just a few ideas to help you and your child dive into civics. And who knows, you just might be inspiring a future lawyer, judge, or public servant along the way.

This question comes in an email from Cindy who writes, “Recently, the US government moved to deport Kilmar Abrego Garcia, accusing him of ties to MS-13 terrorism and even human trafficking, but a judge just blocked his removal. Can you explain the judge’s recent decision in this case and what might happen to Garcia?”

So, Cindy, thanks for your question. This has been an ongoing saga of deportation, bringing him back to the United States, discussion of sending him yet to another country, and lots of things are on the table and lots of proceedings have been taking place, so it’s a bit confusing.

Just to remind folks about everything that has led up to this point. Abrego Garcia is a Salvadoran national who came to the US as a teenager fleeing gang violence. He received a lot of attention after being wrongfully deported to El Salvador in March, even though there was a 2019 court order saying he couldn’t be removed due to credible threats to his safety.

In April, the Supreme Court of the United States essentially ordered his return, and after some delay, the Trump administration did bring him back to the US after saying that it never would. So once back, Abrego Garcia was, guess what, charged with criminal offenses. He was charged with human trafficking based in part on a 2022 traffic stop. He was detained again by ICE in late August who signaled plans to deport him. Not to El Salvador or Costa Rica, but of all places, Uganda, a country to which he has no connections.

So bringing this up to the present, just last week, US District Court Judge Paula Xinis temporarily blocked the Trump administration from sending Abrego Garcia to Uganda. That ruling means he cannot be removed from the United States at least until early October when there will be an evidentiary hearing, and then there will be a more definitive ruling presumably.

Judge Xinis explained her reasoning saying that keeping him in the country was necessary to preserve his access to his lawyers and to ensure he had a fair chance to challenge his deportation order. That I might add is not unusual in high-profile or contested immigration cases, especially when asylum claims have been raised.

Now, as it’s probably occurred to you, the Uganda angle is kind of unusual. Abrego Garcia has no ties to Uganda. And the plan to deport him there has been met with skepticism from legal experts and incredulity from Ugandans themselves. Uganda’s foreign ministry has acknowledged a temporary agreement with the US to accept some deportees, but even that arrangement suggests limits.

It appears to say no individuals with criminal records and a preference for people originally from other African countries. That would seem to rule out Abrego Garcia. Also, deporting someone to a country with which they have no connection is legally possible under US immigration law, but only as a last resort if no other country will accept the person. It’s rare and, as it is in this case, often controversial.

Meanwhile, Abrego Garcia’s legal team has filed a new asylum application. His first attempt was dismissed because he missed the one-year filing deadline, but since he re-entered the country less than a year ago, his lawyers are arguing that the clock was reset, giving him a fresh chance to reapply. If successful, this claim could eventually open a path to a green card and even citizenship.

So what happens next? In October, Judge Xinis will hear arguments on whether the government can lawfully send Abrego Garcia to Uganda, and she’s promised a decision within 30 days of that. At the same time, his asylum application will move forward in immigration court, and of course, his criminal case will presumably proceed also, all of which means among other things that Ábrego Garcia’s lawyers have their hands full.

Well, that’s it for this episode of Stay Tuned. Thanks again to my guest, Daron Acemoglu. If you like what we do, rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. Every positive review helps new listeners find the show. Send me your questions about news, politics, and justice. Tweet them to me, @PreetBharara with the hashtag #AskPreet.

You can also now reach me on Bluesky, or you can call and leave me a message at 833-997-7338. That’s 833-99-PREET. Or you can send an email to letters@cafe.com. Stay Tuned is presented by CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network. The executive producer is Tamara Sepper. The technical director is David Tatasciore. The deputy editor is Celine Rohr. The editorial producers are Noa Azulai and Jake Kaplan. The associate producer is Claudia Hernández. And the CAFE team is Matthew Billy, Nat Weiner and Liana Greenway. Our music is by Andrew Dost. I’m your host, Preet Bharara. As always, Stay Tuned.