The National Debt Question

Slate Money

Slate Podcasts

Investing, Business

4.3 • 988 Ratings

🗓️ 9 August 2025

⏱️ 65 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This week: Planet Money’s Mary Childs wrote about why we should all care about the growing national debt right now. Felix Salmon, Elizabeth Spiers, and Emily Peck are joined by Mary to help them understand why the arguments we’ve heard before about why we don’t need to worry about the national debt are falling short. Then, they discuss the statistical crisis that was exacerbated by Trump firing the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics after an unfavorable jobs report. And finally, they cover the massive incentive package Telsa just gave Elon Musk to keep him interested. In the Slate Plus episode: The Case for Public Radio Want to hear that discussion and hear more Slate Money? Join Slate Plus to unlock weekly bonus episodes. Plus, you’ll access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. You can subscribe directly from the Slate Money show page on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Or, visit slate.com/moneyplus to get access wherever you listen. Podcast production by Jessamine Molli and Cheyna Roth. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello!
0:12.6	Welcome to Slate Money, your guide to the business and finance news of the week.
0:17.9	I'm Felix Salmon.
0:19.2	I'm here with Elizabeth Spires of New York Times.
0:21.6	Hello. I'm here with Emily Peck of Axios. Hello, hello. And oh my God, do we have a show
0:28.6	for you this week? This is a particularly frabious week because we have the one and only Mary Childs
0:35.5	back on the pod. Mary, welcome. Hi, thank you so much for having me.
0:40.7	Mary, for those poor benighted few who don't know who you are, who are you? I'm your future friend,
0:48.8	co-host of Planet Money, author of a book called The Bond King, person who loves to talk about financial markets
0:55.3	and who loves to come on slate money.
0:57.6	And you don't just love to talk about financial markets.
1:01.4	You like to write about financial markets.
1:03.4	And you have written about the treasury market in a massive piece for Harper's, which is still
1:09.3	a thing.
1:10.0	Harpers is great, actually.
1:11.6	A little drive-by by by Felix.
1:12.7	I'm not just saying that because they published my work.
1:15.5	Go check out Mary's Harper's piece on Treasuries, but we're going to talk about the Treasury
1:20.5	Bond market and whether we should be worried about it.
1:23.3	We're going to talk about American statistics and whether we should be worried about them. We're going to talk about Elon Musk's pay package and whether we're going to talk about American statistics and whether we should be worried about them.
1:27.9	We're going to talk about Elon Musk's pay package and whether we should be worried about it.
1:33.1	We are going to have a whole Slate Plus segment with Mary on NPR and Public Radio and whether we should be worried about it.
	...

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