Hello and welcome. You are listening to Patrick Boyle on Finance, a podcast exploring ideas from quantitative finance, examining events occurring in markets right now and financial history to see what lessons can be taken away, including interviews with some of the most interesting people in the world of finance. To learn more about the podcast, visit onfinance.org.

This channel is a finance channel and I mostly aim to avoid politics, but back in April I made

a bit of a slip by controversially endorsing Count Binface in his run for

a mayor of London. At the time I was pretty sure that Binface was guaranteed to win,

and it seemed to me that if I could be seen to endorse him, that I might have some political

influence going forward. It was quite a surprise to me when some other guy went on to win the election,

and I was then forced to flee London in fear of political retribution.

You might have seen in the news yesterday that Toyota have found themselves in a similar position.

Toyota decided to halt political donations to certain Republicans who voted against a certification

of President Biden's election win.

Toyota's political giving arm had donated a total of $56,000 to 38 of the Republican

members of Congress who voted to throw out the election results in January

of this year. That averages to just under $1,500 per congressperson. In their statement,

Toyota pointed out that they equally supported Democrats and Republicans, adding that the majority

of their contributions went to Democrats and Republicans, adding that the majority of their contributions went to Democrats

and Republicans who supported the certification of the 2020 election. Corporate political donations

are a fascinating subject. They reek of corruption, where individuals or interest groups appear to be

buying access to political figures and possibly

requesting favourable legislation or government contracts in return. The whole question of companies

or wealthy individuals funding political campaigns look suspicious. There's an assumption that some

sort of quid pro quo must exist,

and that assumption lies at the heart of most political finance legislation. In the United

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