It's Tuesday, October 25th, 2022, and welcome back to Goodfellows, a Hoover Institution

broadcast examining social, economic, political, and geopolitical concerns.

I'm Bill Whalen, I'm a Hoover Distinguished Policy Fellow and I'll be your moderator today.

Watching a conversation featuring three of my colleagues we call Hoover's Good Fellows.

That would be the historian Neil Ferguson, the economist John Cochran, the geo-stratologist,

Lieutenant General, HR McMaster, they are Hoover Institution's senior fellows.

All HR, I'm starting with you because our producer, Scott Immigrates, sent around a rather

distressing retweet the other day, linking the Philadelphia Phillies of all things to economic

misery, pointing out that years that the Phillies go to the World Series, America ends up in either

a depression or a recession. So HR is a native Philadelphia and the many insults thrown that city's

way. Is it really fair to blame Philadelphia for the nation's economy?

Of course not, but hey, look at the bright side.

If we're going to go to a recession anyway, you might as well have the Phillies win the World Series, right?

So, I mean, I think we have to, I've been cast a roll of the optimist on the show.

That's the optimistic side of this. Okay, Neil John, as we get closer to the election, are there any kind of goofy

indexes do you guys look at? Here in America, we go overboard with these things. We look at sports.

We look at bake sales. We look at all kinds of crazy ways of rent-to-glections. Is there anything

you guys seriously take note of? Hit your finger on the replication crisis in empirical economics

and how to key-h hack results that are eminently

publishable if you keep trying in appropriate journals. No, I don't believe in astrology. In fact,

these days actual surveys and polling is more and more suspicious.

Okay, so the fault lies not in our stars, but in our candidates.

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