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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good Friday morning, everyone. This has been a pretty high drama week in economic news and a week with many moving parts. Just this morning, if you haven't heard yet, the November jobs numbers came out and break out the smiley face emojis. They showed a robust 263,000 new jobs added in the United States last month, more than many economists expected. Break out the frowny face emojis. The jobs report immediately made Wall Street futures drop this morning because so many new jobs means all those interest rate hikes from the Federal Reserve Board may not be enough to slow inflation.

Wait. Didn't the inflation report that came out this week for October show some signs of slowing and Fed Chair Jerome Powell said something about slowing the interest rate hikes that sent Wall Street on a big rally the other day? Yes, that happened too. Then there's the crypto meltdown. Breakout the wide-eyed OMG I am totally f'ed emoji if you're heavily invested in the super currencies of the future, but you can click on the huh, that's a relief emoji if your money is in regular banks. Here's Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.

Janet Yellen: The good piece of an explosion like we saw is that it hasn't spilled over to the banking sector. Banking regulators have been very careful about crypto.

Andrew Ross Sorkin: There's no Lehman moment here for you.

Janet Yellen: It's a Lehman moment within crypto and crypto was big enough that you've had substantial harm of investors, and particularly people who aren't very well informed about the risks that they're undertaking and that's a very bad thing.

Brian Lehrer: A real Lehman moment, that reference was to 2008, the beginning of the financial crisis, when the company Lehman Brothers melted down, and that started the whole American economy into a freefall or it continued it really, and was seen as a trigger point, so Treasury Secretary Yellen there in the New York Times interview this week. Finally, really big too, took us a couple of minutes to even get to this.

There's the railroad strike that President Biden and Congress stopped in its tracks, or with a railroad strike do you say stopped on its tracks, yesterday, with all the implications it could have had for Christmas season supply chain shocks and other side effects. Though our pro-labor president admitted he couldn't get the paid sick leave provision he wanted in the bill.

President Biden: We're going to avoid the rail strike, keep the rails running, keep things moving and I'm going to go back and we're going to get paid leave not just for rail workers, but for all workers.

Brian Lehrer: Wait, workers in real unionized jobs like with the railroads don't get sick days. Let's try to make sense of all this with Emily Stewart who covers business and economics for Vox. Among her recent articles are ones called FTX Is Over. Is Crypto, Too? What Aren't We Doing To Fix Inflation, and her latest A Holiday Reminder To Not Be A Rude Doofus. Emily, thanks for coming on. Welcome to WNYC.

Emily Stewart: Thank you for having me.

Brian Lehrer: I got to start with your latest article because that's the really important thing, A Holiday Reminder Not To Be A Rude Doofus. Do people become rude doofuses, I guess that's the way we can say it on the radio, a lot this time of year?

Emily Stewart: It is the way we can say it on the radio and the answer is, yes, obviously. The holidays are stressful time always. I think what you were getting at a little bit in this intro is that the economy has been really stressful for the past several years and you combine those together. It's a time of year when people have the propensity to get a little bit over upset over things that maybe in the grand scheme of things are not that big of a deal in order to yell at a customer service agent who isn't really in control of the situation.

Ultimately, if your flights delayed and you're yelling at the gate agent, you know that person can't control the delays or the weather. I talked to a lot of retail workers and customer service workers, and this one comes up more than you think, to be honest.

Brian Lehrer: You're charging me 3.89 for this. It said on the shelf 3.79. Are there rude doofus data showing this has gotten worse among shoppers since the pandemic started? We know rude doofus driving has gotten worse.

Emily Stewart: We definitely hear it anecdotally. I think over the past few years you have seen incidences of, for example, flight attendants saying that they face more abusive customers or buyers, I guess in this case. It does start to show up a little bit in the data. Even, like I said, anecdotally, talking to people, I'm always really surprised how often workers say, "Hey, would you just please remind people to be nice because I'm doing my best here." That matters.

Brian Lehrer: I'm glad we said that out loud. We're having fun with it, but seriously, folks, remember, when you're stressed shopping or really anywhere else, be nice to that person who's doing their job or be nice to that person who's just the next shopper in line. All right. Next rude doofus topic and honestly, this was not the framing I thought we would have for the railroad workers' labor dispute, but Emily, what kind of rude doofus employer doesn't offer sick days in 2022?

Emily Stewart: This is a tough one. This is one where railroad workers did come on the losing end here. This is really a story of how railroads over the past several years have been on this precision cycle where everything is super tight. The freight is super tight, so every [unintelligible 00:06:11] as few workers as possible, everything is super, super optimized, so what does that mean? That means that it's a really, really big problem if somebody calls up sick. This is really the result of corporations trying to squeeze as much out of workers as possible, out of their operations as possible to ultimately make more money.

It is, I think, shocking, to think about the idea that even seven paid sick days is not happening. It's something that I think is much more reflective of our broader economic system that you would think in jobs like these, as you said, good union jobs that are well paid, but that you can't be sick for a day and be paid for it because you'd be fired for that. That's really baffling.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, anyone can call on this economy news segment that we're doing with Emily Stewart from Vox, but we're especially interested in two groups of you. First, anyone who doesn't get sick days at your full-time job. Maybe if you're a gig worker, it's in another category, maybe it's a more complicated conversation, but anyone who doesn't get sick days at your full-time job, what does that lead you to do?

What kind of risks does that lead you to take for yourself or for others or deprivations? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Way on the other side of that, anyone who has lost money in the crypto collapse, FTX or the hedge fund Alameda, or any other crypto losses, and do you think this should be the end of cryptocurrency? 212-433-WNYC, for people who don't get sick days at your full-time job or anyone who lost money in the crypto collapse so far 212-433-9692 or tweet @BrianLehrer.

Tell us a story or ask a question of Emily Stewart from Vox. You can call on the other economy stories that we're talking about as well, inflation, the jobs numbers, all of that, but definitely, I think it would be great for other listeners to hear your stories of how you compensate if you don't get sick days at your full-time job. Also, crypto losers, you probably need a little therapy right now, so we can ask you how you feel, 212-433-9692. The politics, Emily, of the railroad strike in Washington, they had the votes in Congress, meaning a House majority plus 60 in the Senate to block a strike, but not to impose a sick day provision in the contract. Was it all Republicans who voted for one, but not the other?

Emily Stewart: There were six Republicans who ultimately did vote on the sick day side, but also Joe Manchin did not vote to approve the paid sick leave, the Democrat from West Virginia. I think, once again, we are seeing Joe Manchin doing Joe Manchin and doing what he wants to do and breaking with the Democrats.

Brian Lehrer: In this case, even if he voted with the Democrats, that wouldn't have passed the bill because the sick days' provision because they needed the 60. We played that clip of Biden saying he hopes this restarts the national paid leave debate, that in fairness to him he was trying to have last year with his Build Back Better bill that included a national paid family leave requirement, but the Republicans and Joe Manchin killed it in the Senate.

I've actually asked many times on the show, Emily, and I'm curious to get your take, why don't they break out a standalone paid sick and family leave bill? There was so much other stuff in build back better that people could try to shoot holes in for one reason or another but I think a standalone paid leave bill would be wildly popular across party lines. I guess there are reasons. Do you follow the politics of that at all?

Emily Stewart: It was very clear, I'm not a congressional reporter so this is not quite my arena. It does, in my general sense and I've actually been working on a separate story on unemployment insurance. This is a little bit different but I think that there's just a sense of a lot of the momentum that came out of the pandemic that we saw that, "Oh, these social programs are really important." Look, what we can do." "Look how great it would be if people had more sense," or, "Hey, it's a really good idea if people go to work sick," for example.

A lot of that momentum has really died and it's not super clear why sometimes in a certain sense we see the big problem. After a while, we just tend to move on and forget and I sometimes wonder if that's just part of it. That it's just no longer on the top of the list of priorities at this point, especially with inflation sucking the air out of the room in terms of the economic conversation right now.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. Business leaders say, "Hey, wait, we're going to lose businesses. Business profits are going to slow down. Economic growth is going to slow down if we have these requirements from government for paid leave," but they're bending over backwards at the Fed to make the economy slow down in ways that are causing much more pain.

Maybe paid leave would be better than higher interest rates but what do I know? Biden is getting a lot of credit, we should say, for being the grown-up in the room and acting against his union base, in this case, accepting the no-sick leave compromise because there was a national imperative not to have a strike. I wonder if you could explain that part to us. Why is that seen as so dire, a railroad strike? All union strike at different times, and the country doesn't grind to a halt?

Emily Stewart: Right. I think sometimes people don't think about the importance of the railroad, what a big part it plays in our economy. That this would really have affected even your drinking water. Being able to transport chemicals from parts of the country to different parts of the country to purify drinking water. This would have been a huge catastrophe economically, I think one estimate was that it would be $2 billion a day. I remember reporting on this a little bit in the fall and asking someone, well, what, if trucks could just replace the trains, and he said, basically, 400 trucks would be needed to replace a single train.

He said, "Do you think anybody has 400 trucks sitting around?" This would have been really bad. Again, a situation where we are already facing some economic complications, it would have made inflation worse. Nobody wants to deal with this heading into the holidays. I think to a certain extent, the President and Congress didn't have a huge amount of choice here. Of course, I guess on the labor side, they tell you the reason that they were threatening to strike is that this is the moment that they had a lot of leverage.

Ultimately, Congress stepped in, President Biden stepped in because what they don't want to happen, which is what started to happen in September is that companies start to plan for a strike anyway. Even if they got into what was it December 9, and there wasn't a strike or whatever it happened, things start to slow down on December 6, December 7, because if you're sending a train from New Hampshire to California you don't want it stuck in the middle of Kansas on a Wednesday.

Brian Lehrer: You don't want it stuck in Ames, Iowa, which is what our first caller is calling from. Mike in Ames, Iowa, Iowa, the state where the presidential primaries used to start. That's another story from the last day, folks. I don't know if you've heard President Biden and the Democrats want to make South Carolina the first primary state now rather than Iowa. We'll do that on Monday show. Mike in Ames, you're on WNYC. Hi, there.

Mike: Oh, hi, Brian, that longtime listener, first-time caller. Hey, my question is related to general time off for the rail workers. I've been a registered nurse for 38 years now. I technically don't get paid sick leave. I get what we just call PTO, paid time off, which is a one bank you use it for sick time, you use it for vacation time, or whenever you need time off.

Brian Lehrer: Was that okay? Like if there's enough PTO and you can distribute it for vacation or for sick or whatever, then maybe that's okay if there are enough days in that bank, is that your experience?

Mike: Yes. What they do offer my employer also does offer is long and short-term disability. Technically, if you're going to be off for greater than five days sick, you can tap into the either short or long-term disability option which does pay up, I believe it's about 66% of your pay and then you would just subsidize the rest of that with any of your remaining paid time off. I'm just wondering if it's just a little bit misleading saying that they just don't get me sick leave.

Brian Lehrer: Well, that's a really fair question, Mike. Thank you for raising it and please call us again. Emily, what about that? Are we missing an important point here in the railroad contract conversation? If there are enough PTO days, personal time off days, like the color is describing that can be applied to sickness, be applied to vacation, whatever?

Emily Stewart: They do have access to paid leave for long-term illnesses. I think that the big question here and what the unions will tell you here is that you don't always plan to be sick ahead of time. You don't always plan for this and maybe you don't want to take a vacation day or in this situation, you can't because it's heard stories of people not getting checked out and becoming very ill.

Yes, okay. Maybe yes, you get paid a lot, or you do have a vacation, but you don't plan to get sick. You don't plan for your child to get sick a lot of the time and I think that's where, at least on the union side they would say, "Hey, you sometimes wake up in the morning, and you have strep throat or COVID or whatever and you didn't know yesterday you were going to have it."

Brian Lehrer: Yes but I guess that what he's raising here is if there are enough total days in the bank, and I don't know what the number is in the railroad union's contract that was, I guess, imposed by Congress and the President yesterday. I don't know if you know, but let's say, for a lot of people, maybe you get two weeks of vacation so that's 10 paid vacation days, and you get one week of sick leave five paid sick days.

Instead, a company gives you 15 PTO days that you can distribute any way you want. Maybe you don't get sick at all that year but you want to take an extra week of vacation and you can use it that way. Again, I don't know what's in the railroad contract in terms of PTO, but maybe that's a piece of it. Do you know?

Emily Stewart: To be honest, I'm not exactly sure where they landed on all of the PTO on this and I don't want to make things up. I think just at least my understanding, especially from December or September talking to workers was that even people calling in sick one day again, and it was just whatever reason, maybe you wanted a personal day you could really get fired. You could lose your job. It's not allowed. Again, they're just things that come up sometimes where a vacation day is not going to cut it for these people. At least on the union side, that's what they'll tell you.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, interesting. I guess if you have to give notice before using your PTO days, then, obviously, like you say, you wake up and you're sick. Your kid is sick. Maybe I have COVID. Maybe I don't, I guess I have to go to work. Haha, hello, everybody else at work. That's part of it. Brian in DC, you're on WNYC. Hi, Brian.

Brian: Hi, Brian. Thanks for taking my call. I'm actually getting a master's degree in a program called Health in the public interest at Georgetown University and I own a restaurant in New York City. I recently wrote a paper on the effects of paid sick leave, specifically on the restaurant industry, but overall, and the studies from New York City after it passed paid sick leave and San Francisco and Washington State show overwhelming that it has really beneficial effects on employees and workers, and almost no negative effects on businesses or the economy.

There's not a real economic argument for why businesses should not be offering paid sick leave. It leaves their employees healthier and it takes a burden off of the healthcare system, people going to doctor instead of going to the emergency room, things like that. The study of the New York paid sick leave program is called no big deal. The impact of paid sick leave it really is beneficial for everyone and doesn't put much of a cost on businesses.

Brian Lehrer: That's really interesting and coming from you as a restaurant owner. That's an interesting combination of things you're doing, Brian. Studying policy at Georgetown while you own a restaurant in New York. What's the career path? What do you see yourself doing when you get out of school?

Brian: Well, I'm in the process of selling the restaurant. [unintelligible 00:20:00] making a complete 180° pivot that started, obviously, during COVID and getting on [unintelligible 00:20:08] It's time to get out of the restaurant business, stop being awake until two in the morning. I'm looking for work in healthcare policy. I have a small goal of fixing the American healthcare system.

Brian Lehrer: [chuckles] Good for you. Really, seriously.

Brian: I know you have a public health master's, don't you?

Brian Lehrer: I do actually, yes. keep us posted on your progress, Brian, okay?

Brian: Okay. I will.

Brian Lehrer: We're depending on your now to fix the healthcare system after this call. Brian, thank you very much. Pretty interesting, Emily, right?

Emily Stewart: Yes, I was going to say, I wrote down the name of that paper. I will take a look at it. I think it's a reminder to think that employers, a lot of the time, are going to kick and scream about a lot of things and say it's bad for the economy and maybe those are sorts of statements that we should take with a grain of salt sometimes.

Brian Lehrer: All right. We're going to take a short break that we have to take, and then we'll continue in a minute and we'll go onto this morning's jobs report. This week's Intriguing Inflation report and we'll play a few clips of FTX's Sam Bankman-Fried, who gave him some courage points if nothing else, I guess, he did sit for a couple of interviews about having broken crypto. Stay with us.

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Brian Lehrer on WNYC as we continue to talk about a lot of economy news this week with Emily Stewart who covers business and economics for Vox. We're going to go on to some other topics than the ones we were talking about in the A. Charlie in Komack is calling in, he thinks the number of PTO days that they get in the railway workers' contract, which we didn't know a few minutes ago. Charlie, what are you seeing?

Charlie: Well, according to the American Association of Railways, the organization that represents the railroad aar.org. Paid time off the railway workers varies between 25 and 39 days, depending upon seniority.

Brian Lehrer: That would be really interesting if you've got it right. We can't take a caller's number as if it came from Emily in her Vox article, but if true, 25 to 39 days, depending on seniority, 25 days of PTO. If they can apply them reasonably, like in the scenario you were describing before if you wake up sick one day, can you apply it at the moment? That's actually not bad. I don't know, maybe there is a piece of this story that we're missing.

Emily Stewart: Yes, I'm open definitely to hear. I think that is exactly what the railroad companies would tell you. They do have plenty of time. I think just again, like I said before from the unions, what they say is that the problem is facing discipline in the event that it's really unexpected.

Brian Lehrer: All right. This morning's jobs report for November, "Lots of new jobs in America last month, plus 263,000." I forget, Emily, is that good or bad right now?

Emily Stewart: That's like the million-dollar question. A normal person looks at this, thinks this is great. 263,000 jobs, unemployment rate, 3.7%, we're seeing wage growth on his face is good. The problem is that we have a federal reserve right now that is trying to slow down the economy by raising interest rates and specifically trying to slow down jobs and employment and slow down wage growth. If you are at the Fed Chair Jay Powell making up this morning looking at that number, you're not feeling great about it. He said a couple of days ago, "Listen, we are aware that we could over-tighten on interest rates that the Fed had said in previous statements."

"Hey, we're aware that some of our actions might lag in terms of taking effect on the labor market" We're not seeing that effect super heavily yet. You saw the markets this morning react, and I haven't looked at what the markets are doing in about an hour. The markets weren't happy about this because they take this as a sign that the Fed is going to continue to be aggressive in raising interest rates and trying to cool the economy down. That leads to worry that the Fed will push the country into a recession. It's not the best for the economy to "get better." That means people losing their jobs.

Brian Lehrer: The Dow is down around 220 as of a minute ago. I just looked it up so that's on the basis of this news. There's an interest-- Oh, by the way, callers, we're done with the paid time off part of the call-in. Now we're looking for that other group of you that I mentioned at the beginning. If you're calling to talk about paid time off or sick days, we're done with that. Now we're looking for people who have lost money by investing in crypto. We want to hear some of your story. Do you feel like you were deceived? Do you feel like you deceived yourself?

Or any question you want to ask Emily Stewart, who covers economics for Vox about that as we'll get to that piece of it in a couple of minutes. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. If you have lost money as an investor in FTX or anything else in the crypto world, 212-433-9692, help us report that story. On the interest rate hikes, Emily, there's an interesting coalition of dissent that ranges from Bernie Sanders to Elon Musk, let's say. Saying that the Fed's interest rates hikes are making things worse, not better. Can you explain that argument and why the Fed thinks it's wrong?

Emily Stewart: I think there's a general dissonance, just even for regular people to say, "Wait a minute." Besides making the economy worse somehow fixes it. If you're a business, this means it's more expensive to borrow it. It means you're not going to hire as much. It means you're not going to invest as much in your business. If you are a Bernie Sanders, if you're a worker, you sit around and think, "Wait." It's a good thing that I keep my job right and that my wages go up. I think this is a tough. It's tricky and I never know where I fall in, and that's not really my job to know where I fall on it.

It is really tough to swallow, I think. You do have a lot of people looking at this now and saying, "Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait." The way that we fix inflation is by kicking people out of jobs and making the economy worse. I think I talked to one economist recently who said, "As much as wages going off as [unintelligible 00:27:10], or there are a bunch of job openings." He said you can't eat a job opening. If prices are getting to the point that you can't afford your day-to-day life, that's obviously something that we want to get a handle on.

Brian Lehrer: I mentioned in the intro, your recent article, which I really like, which had the headline something like, What Aren't We Doing To Fix Inflation? I liked how you brought together various people from left and right politically to talk about things other than, or even in addition to raising interest rates that could be done, I guess, especially as an alternative because of the harm that raising interest rates does. What are some of the things, were there any consensus items that came out of that?

Emily Stewart: There was not a lot of consensus. To a certain extent, a lot of people said, "We do have to be a little bit patient here." We've heard a lot of chatter from progressives about taking a look at corporate profits and seeing what can be done there. It's not clear how much corporate profits are contributing to inflation, but it's worth taking a look at for sure. Companies are making a lot of money. On the right I had a couple of people mention tariffs and trades saying, "Hey, what if we cut some tariffs?" I did ask one progressive economist about it, and he said, "Listen, is taking a look at tariffs my first choice? No, but maybe it would help around the margins, fine."

I think, overall, the consensus that I got from the group is that there isn't one weird trick to fix inflation. If there were Joe Biden would've done it, Congress would've done it. Jay Powell would've done it. There are things that we can do along the margins. The question is how effective they will be, whether or not there is really appetite to do them. It's definitely, it should be if anything, I think the consensus was a problem that doesn't just fall to the Fed, and going forward if we think this will be a problem again, it's a good moment to talk about what other solutions could look like.

Brian Lehrer: I haven't seen a story yet, and I wonder if it's real or it's not real about older Americans. Usually much older who are retired and don't want to be in the stock market anymore, because if there's a big downturn. They may not be around to wait until the market rebounds and are in old-fashioned FDIC-insured bank accounts that for so many years now have been paying zero interest.

Now you can get accounts there to 3%, even 4% interest, on a regular FDIC-insured bank account. I guess if there's a demographic who that really benefits, it's people over 80, but they were really getting hit by all these zero interest rate years, which were meant to goose the economy. I don't know, is there a story there that we're missing?

Emily Stewart: There might be a story there. I think the issue is that if inflation is at 6%, 7%, 8%, what is that 3% getting you, right?

Brian Lehrer: Right.

Emily Stewart: That's the tough one there. It's a hard situation. I think nobody's super happy about this. At the same time, social security is obviously going up with inflation as well. That might be a story that I should look into.

Brian Lehrer: That's another whole segment that we did actually, and I'm not going to go down that spur again too much right here but Social Security does have that consumer price index provision that pushes it up with inflation. When we talk about the labor market, well, what about all these other jobs where your raises, if you even get raises don't match inflation? It's an opportunity for some companies to pocket additional profits if they raise prices a little bit more than the actual inflation rate, because maybe nobody will notice, but they don't pass it on. That's another show.

Listeners, I know there are people out there who've invested in cryptocurrencies and lost money. Where are you? Nobody is calling to admit it. Are you too embarrassed? Come on. Sam Bankman-Fried sat for an interview with the New York Times this week. Call up and tell us your crypto story. I know you're there and what would you like to see done? How about regulation or do you go, "Oh, not regulation that's going to make it worse"? 212-433-WNYC.

Maybe I'm asking the wrong question. Maybe it's, most of you who are invested in crypto are still making money, so call up and tell us your story. I don't think that's right, but 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692 with Emily Stewart who covers business and economics for Vox, 212-433-9692. If you've invested anything in crypto, call up and tell us your story at this weird and kind of emergency moment for that fledgling industry.

Let's talk about it. I think meltdown is the right word and the centerpiece of it right now, the company FTX, led by 30-year-old billionaire or now maybe former billionaire, I'm not sure, Sam Bankman-Fried, and here is Fried in that New York Times interview this week not meaning to be funny, but getting a laugh.

Sam Bankman-Fried: Look, I've had a bad month. This has not been funny for me but that's not what matters here. What matters here is the millions of customers. What matters here is all the stakeholders in FTX who got hurt and trying to do everything I can to help them out.

Brian Lehrer: Emily, assume most of our listeners are very intelligent but are still relatively uninformed about cryptocurrencies. What happened here and who, besides Sam Bankman-Fried, lost a lot of money?

Emily Stewart: I think we're still figuring out what happened, but the long and short of it is FTX is a crypto exchange that you may not know anybody who's used because they weren't super active in US, but you've probably seen ads for, so the Larry David ad and the Super Bowl and the CEO of the exchange, Sam Bankman-Fries, has positioned himself as the golden boy of crypto.

At the beginning of the month, they basically went under it. It's not entirely clear why yet, though it certainly looks like what happened was that some of the customer funds that were being given to FTX by people wanting to trade on their platform were actually being funneled to a separate fund that Bankman-Fried owns, says he did not run, called Alameda and they lost the money. Money is gone. Nobody knows where it is.

Who's hurt by this? Obviously, Sam Bankman-Fried, who to be clearly said he's no longer a billionaire. That is probably very much the case. He says he has $100,000 left. Obviously, the people who are heard here are the venture capitalists who invested in him, which include, a lot of VCs, but also pension funds. What he gets at here is right to the extent that this is his fault, but that a lot of customers have lost a lot of money here.

Basically, when you have money on a crypto exchange crypto, it's not actually your coins that you have. When you leave them on the exchange, the price can go up and down, but also if the exchange goes under or something happens, your coins can go. They can disappear. A lot of people had money on these exchanges in the United States, but more importantly around the world on FTX, and they can't get the money out. I know you've been asking for crypto stories, I will, full disclosure here-

Brian Lehrer: You're getting them now by the way, but go ahead.

Emily Stewart: -say that years ago I had money on a crypto exchange, $100, and the exchange that I had $100 on was shut down by the Department of Justice and I will never see my own points. This happens more often than you think in crypto.

Brian Lehrer: Your recent article on this is called FTX Is Over. Is Crypto, Too? Is crypto over?

Emily Stewart: Crypto, at this point, I think anybody who says this is the death now has not experienced a multiple boom and bus cycles of lots of the arena.

Brian Lehrer: Lot's of things.

Emily Stewart: Yes, lots of things have happened. Crypto has survived through plenty of scandals and drama. People in the industry will tell you, "This is the moment to build. This is the moment that we're going to come back and do the thing that actually makes sense." We'll see.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take a phone call. See, all people need is a little encouragement. Alan in Long Island City, you're on WNYC. Hi, Alan.

Alan: Hi, Brian. I don't know if I should give the analogy that I just gave to the screener, but I would say this, there was a long time ago where people learned about the invention of the zero in India, and it spread west and it replaced the old numerical systems. It was a good idea. Nobody though, went out of their way to make a whole scheme of, "Now be bold in the future and buy zeros." It's like, it was just a technique. Bitcoin is a technique. It's a protocol. It was a good idea, but it's too small to run the whole world economy itself so you need some outside infrastructure.

Ethereum was designed for that and that's all well and good, but the sewer of perverts that came out to grab money is beyond insanity and the first rule of this game, which I learned, I didn't take it up until 2017, was not your keys, not your Bitcoin. If you take delivery of merchandise and put it in your pocket securely, then nobody can go back to the store and steal what was yours. It's in your pocket. How did these people who were supposed to know better buy all this stuff that they didn't even understand and not even put it in their own wallets?

Brian Lehrer: You mean they didn't take their profits out when it went way up, you're saying, right?

Alan: No. I still have my Bitcoin, but it's in my wallet. I have a website.

Brian Lehrer: Oh, I see. Digital wallet. You can sequester it there. Alan, thank you very much. Any thought about that call Emily?

Emily Stewart: Yes. That is the thing. The best practices with crypto, Bitcoin, whatever it is, is to put it in a cold wallet, meaning it's not attached to the internet. That is correct. I think that the issue here is A, people did not realize. People just don't realize that this is the case with exchanges and with crypto in general, that the money, unless it is as your caller said, your keys, your coin, it can disappear. I think people don't realize it.

I think I will also say, in defense of a lot of the people who did lose money in this, Sam Bankman-Fried did, and FTX did say that they were super safe and it's also a little bit complicated to manage your own crypto. We've also heard tons of stories of people who had Bitcoin or whatever on some hard drive. Whoops, the hard drive is gone, or they lost the keys and they lost some money. It's complicated and it's a risky investment. Full stop.

Brian Lehrer: I guess that's why I've seen a nickname springing up for Bitcoin, S-coin rhymes with Bit. Ramona in Brooklyn is going to be our last caller. One more crypto investor. Hi, Ramona, thanks for calling in. You're on WNYC.

Ramona: Hi. Good morning, Brian. Thank you for taking my call. I'm a crypto investor and I have both gained and lost money, but I haven't lost faith in investing. I think that there is need, however, for regulation, because the lack of regulation will expose everyone so any form of let's say greed or any problems that we are seeing happening now with this current crypto crisis with this what do you call it? FT, what do you call it?

Brian Lehrer: FTX.

Ramona: I can't remember. FTX, yes. I think lack of regulation will lead to this happening over and over again. You can help the other cryptocurrencies by having some form of regulation. I think that's the crooks of it. You need some checks and balances moving forward.

Brian Lehrer: Ramona, thank you very much. Emily, make this your last thought. What are a major proposal or two on the table for how to regulate the crypto market that would protect it, not from gains and losses because these are investments but from some unconscionable meltdown especially if there's any fraud or other shenanigans involved?

Emily Stewart: I will say that up until a month ago, a lot of regulators and lawmakers were listening to Sam Bankman-Fried about this. We should be a little bit careful. I really do think that regulators at this point, there's always this like we should do something. To be honest here, regulators don't have the strongest handle on this. We don't know if the SECs in charge of this, the CFTC is in charge of it.

At the same time, I've talked to some experts in this who say, "Hey, if we regulate crypto as it's something special, that would also allow it to get further into the financial system." Again, this is someone else's, this is an expert's opinion, not mine. I guess, silver linings of this whole meltdown is that as Secretary Yellen said at the top of this is that it didn't impact the broader financial ecosystem. You can see a world where if it really does get more entrenched and there has been FTX 2.0, it does hurt people who are not investing in crypto at all.

Brian Lehrer: Wow. Remember Lehman Brothers and the whole conversation about whether they should bail out Wall Street in order to save Main Street because there were so many trickle-down effects of the financial crisis in the banking sector? It was reassuring to hear Janet Yellen say in that clip in her New York Times interview this week that this does not seem to be infecting the financial system as a whole. At least there's that. Emily Stewart who covers business and economics for Vox. Great job. Thanks for coming on and talking through so many things. We really, really appreciate it.

Emily Stewart: Well thanks for having me. Have a great day.

 

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