NPR. We have seen a blurring of boundaries between government and business under President Trump.

His administration has been brokering a TikTok deal involving Oracle and

Andreessen Horowitz. Both firms include people with ties to Trump. Writer Walter Isaacson,

hedge fund manager Ken Griffin, and political commentator Fareed Zakaria are ringing the alarm bells.

That type of state capitalism, it often evolves into crony capitalism.

Sliply slope towards crony-chronism capital.

From the leading free market in the world to the leading example of crony capitalism.

Crony capitalism is when businesses rise or fall based on their proximity to politicians.

The US has prided itself on being the opposite,

a place where entrepreneurial pluck and talent and risk-taking gets the rewards.

But a number of political commentators are warning that the US is turning into a place where it's not about what you know, but about who you know.

This is the indicator from Planet Money. I'm Darian Woods.

And I'm Adrian Ma. Today on the show is the U.S. turning into a crony capitalist economy.

We crunch the numbers to find out.

I want it that way. Was a Backstreet Boys banger, but was it also a secret economics lesson?

If you watch the music video, you can really see an illustration of the concept of comparative

advantage. All right. In our most recent bonus episode, we compete to see who can pick the most

Planet Money song, movie, and more from 1999. It's our first ever planet money

pop culture draft, and you can hear it and support our work by signing up for NPR Plus at

npr.org. The term crony capitalism was first coined by Time magazine in 1981. Times article

described the Filipino government under Ferdinand

Marcos as a case of crony capitalism. Essentially, Marcos used the levers of the state to

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