Bitcoin knockoffs, soaring. Literal shell companies, all the rage. Fast-falling apps, valued at billions of dollars. Governments printing up untold trillions in debt, just so they can buy it up themselves. Has Wall Street (and the whole damn financial sector) lost its collective marbles?
Andrew Ross Sorkin, host of CNBC’s Squawk Box, joins Molly Jong-Fast on The New Abnormal, to try to explain this moneyworld gone mad.
“The ‘establishment’ thinks this is zany. It’s nuts. They don’t understand it. They just can’t put their head around it. And they believe genuinely that this is going to end in tears. That is the establishment view. However, there is, maybe, a new establishment that’s emerging and that is retail investors. That’s a younger generation of investor. That’s the Elon Musks of the world.” Sorkin says.
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While the rest of us are still struggling in a pandemic economy, much of the investor class is swimming in cash—and willing to piss away cash on some of the dumbest shit ever. That’s why Sorkin is worried about a “2001-ish, kind of dot-com bubble. Everybody’s spending too much money. And at some point, you know, people wake up from this fever dream and realize that the whole thing was insane. So, you know, when [the joke currency] dogecoin is how people are making money—and they think they’re investing. They think it’s entertainment. I don’t know. I don’t know what they think.”
Meanwhile, in India, people are literally dying in the streets from COVID. And the raging pandemic there could soon be a global nightmare, explains Dr. Peter Hotez, the celebrated vaccine specialist. Not only will millions of new cases there give rise to new variants. But “the whole game plan [for defeating COVID globally] was dependent on India providing vaccines for the world,” he says. “Even before COVID, a lot of the vaccinations that people get in Africa, Latin America, across Asia are actually vaccines produced in India.” If India has to turn its resources inward—and given the massive body count, it sure seems like they might—the entire strategy could break down.
Finally, Rep. Mondaire Jones of New York talks about his powerful journey to become one of the first openly gay Black men in Congress.
“Molly, it is not something that I imagined was even possible,” he says. “I grew up in the Baptist church, where things have gotten better, but it’s still a bit taboo and I never saw on television positive representation of openly LGBTQ African American individuals. So it took a long time for me. I mean, I say a long time, I’m still one of the youngest members of Congress. I’m 33 years old, but it took me longer than it should have, for most of my life anyway, to really accept who I am and to express that to the rest of the world. And I’m so grateful to be in a position now where I can give back positive affirmation to other people, young and old. Because I get messages from people older than I am telling me that I have inspired them to accept who they are and to live authentic lives. And that is a beautiful thing for someone who just a few years ago was definitely afraid that people would find out that I’m gay.”
Listen to The New Abnormal on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Amazon.
