(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Neglected Issues Surrounding the Banking Turmoil

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banking system, banks, Elizabeth Warren, executive compensation, Federal Reserve, finance, financial reform, inflation, interest rates, Michael S. Barr, monetary policy, regulation, risk management, Silicon Valley Bank, stress tests, SVB, {What's Left of) Our Economy

So much analysis and commentary has been prompted by the recent outbreak of turmoil in the U.S. banking system (including Congressional hearings with testimony from system supervisors themselves) that it’s hard to believe that any major points have been badly neglected. Except they have been – at least according to my own efforts to follow the situation. Here are three of the biggest:

First, there’s been a flood of claims from progressive American legislators – led by Massachusetts Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren – that the banking woes have stemmed largely from a Trump-era rollback of the regulatory reforms that were put in place after the 2007-08 global financial crisis to prevent the crackpot schemes that were the immediate cause of that near-meltdown.

In particular, Warren argued, the 2018 law that eased some of those early regulations exempted all but the nation’s biggest “systemically important” banks from mandatory, independent stress tests that aim to gauge their vulnerability to sudden economic shocks.

But what these critics either don’t know, or don’t want you to know, is that the stress tests that were designed for those biggest banks never included the kind of steep – indeed historic – rise in interest rates pushed through by the Federal Reserve to fight multi-decade high inflation. So even had the mandated stress tests been conducted for banks like the now-collapsed Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), they would have missed the very danger that touched off the current banking jitters.

Second, even though the above criticisms of the rollback are offbase in the above key respect, regulatory failures clearly occurred. And based on what’s known, the most puzzling has to do with the Federal Reserve. Here’s a description of the Fed’s performance in regulating SVB provided to Congress this week by the central bank’s Vice Chair for Supervision Michael S. Barr – who is heading the Fed’s deeper investigation of its procedures and practices. It’s worth quoting in full (footnotes have been removed):

“Near the end of 2021, supervisors found deficiencies in the bank’s liquidity risk management, resulting in six supervisory findings related to the bank’s liquidity stress testing, contingency funding, and liquidity risk management.In May, 2022, supervisors issued three findings related ineffective board oversight, risk management weaknesses, and the bank’s internal audit function. In the summer of 2022, supervisors lowered the bank’s management rating to ‘fair’ and rated the bank’s enterprise-wide governance and controls as ‘deficient.’ These ratings mean that the bank was not ‘well managed’ and was subject to growth restrictions under section 4(m) of the Bank Holding Company Act. In October 2022, supervisors met with the bank’s senior management to express concerns with the bank’s interest rate risk profile and in November 2022, supervisors delivered a supervisory finding on interest rate risk management to the bank.

“In mid-February 2023, staff presented to the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors on the impact of rising interest rates on some banks’ financial condition and staff’s approach to address issues at banks. Staff discussed the issues broadly, and highlighted SVB’s interest rate and liquidity risk in particular. Staff relayed that they were actively engaged with SVB but, as it turned out, the full extent of the bank’s vulnerability was not apparent until the unexpected bank run on March 9.”

What’s astonishing about this testimony – and what’s been largely overlooked in banking crisis commentary so far – is that it states that between “the end of 2021” and last November, supervisors from the Fed and from its San Francisco branch told Silicon Valley Bank repeatedly of major actual and potential problems in its management practices no fewer than five times, The bank did…apparently nothing. And Fed officials at more than one level responded by…wringing their hands?

The big question: If banks are so free to ignore these warnings and ratings downgrades for so long, why bother with them in the first place? And a question almost as big: Once it’s clear that a bank is acting so negligently and arguably illegally, why doesn’t the Fed start making this information public in some way? Don’t depositors have the right to know that they’re likely doing business with a scofflaw?

(This report by the non-profit financial reform advocacy group Better Markets blames the Trump-era rollback for this seemingly gaping hole in supervisory and regulatory policy, in particular by in most cases preventing supervisers from communicating their findings to bank boards of directors, meaning that the senior managers who presumably had something to do with a bank’s problems could keep this information to themselves. The subject definitely needs further investigation – and correction if this account is accurate.)

Third, the torrents of easy money with which the Fed has flooded the economy for so long played a role in SVB’s failure that’s only been fleetingly mentioned. For not only, as widely noted, did this ocean of resources encourage overly risky lending (by greatly reducing the cost of guessing wrong). Not only did it give investors and businesses enormous, skyrocketing amounts of cash to deposit in banks like SVB. Not only did the rock-bottom interest rates generated by super-easy money lead the flush banks to park more and more of it in longer-term instruments – which offered higher yields and therefore more revenue.

But these revenues, and the higher stock prices they usually produced, were central to the compensation paid to senior executives – the more so since new lending opportunities weren’t remotely great enough to keep up with the hugely increased supply of assets. So bank management had at best modest incentives to manage better the risks of such extensive long borrowing – because salaries and bonuses would suffer. And because even (or especially?) the cleverest among us too often get addicted to hopium, it’s easy to understand how reckless risk management persisted even after it became obvious that interest rates were going up and depressing the face value of these long-dated assets. 

This dynamic (described more completely in these Financial Times and Wall Street Journal pieces) seems to have been particularly prominent at SVB and the few other institutions that have either failed or are on the ropes. But it’s likely unnervingly widespread at lots of other less-than-systemically important banks that have been operating in the same abnormally low interest rate environment.

Of course, these three issues don’t exhaust the list of banking turmoil subjects that need much more examining. But deeper dives into them seem like a more than good enough place to start.  

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Those Stubborn Facts: Some Banking Crisis Basics

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banking crisis, banks, deposits, FDIC, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Federal Reserve, finance, interest rates, rate hikes, Signature Bank, Silicon Valley Bank, SVB, Those Stubborn Facts

U.S. banks’ unrealized losses as of year-end 2022: $1.7 trillion

U.S. banks’ total equity as of year-end 2022: $2.1 trillion

Share of U.S. banks’ $17 trillion worth of deposits not insured by the federal government: c. 40 percent

 

(Source: “U.S. Banks are sitting on $1.7 trillion in unrealized losses, research says. That’s not a problem—until it is,” by Will Daniel, Fortune, March 23, 2023, U.S. Banks have $1.7 trillion in unrealized losses | Fortune)

Making News: Podcast On-Line of New National Radio Interview on Banking Turmoil, the Fed, & U.S.-China Ties

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banking system, Federal Reserve, finance, inflation, interest rates, Making News, Market Wrap with Moe Ansari, regulation, Silicon Valley Bank

I neglected to mention it here yesterday, but at least I can post the podcast of my latest interview on the nationally syndicated “Market Wrap with Moe Ansari.” Click here for a timely conversation about the new, continuing turmoil in the U.S. banking system, about the Federal Reserve’s anti-inflation fight, and about how U.S.-China relations and the global economy are evolving. The segment begins at about the twenty-minute mark. (And yes, I was – and am – excited about the Princeton game!)

Moreover, keep on checking in with RealityChek for news of upcoming media appearances and other developments.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Banking Crisis or Not, More U.S. Inflation’s Ahead

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American Rescue Plan, banking system, banks, baseline effect, Biden administration, CCP Virus, consumer price index, core inflation, coronavirus, cost of living, COVID 19, CPI, election 2024, Federal Reserve, finance, gasoline prices, inflation, interest rates, monetary policy, oil prices, stimulus, {What's Left of) Our Economy

Soon Jews the world over will celebrate the Passover holiday by asking at the ceremonial dinner (seder) “Why is this night different from all other nights?” (The answer is easily Google-able.)

Today, those the world over who follow the economy should ask “Why is this morning’s U.S. consumer inflation report different from all other recent U.S. inflation reports?”

The answer? Because this morning’s report (which takes the story through February) won’t be the biggest development looked at by the Federal Reserve in its upcoming meeting when it decides where it will set the interest rates it controls.

Instead, the biggest development it considers will be the turmoil that’s been breaking out these last few days in the U.S. banking system, whose proximate cause has been the blazing pace with which the Fed has been raising the federal funds rate over the past year.

Not that the new figures for the Consumer Price Index (CPI) will be ignored. In fact, they were probably unspectacular enough (either in a good or bad way), to convince the central bank to either slow down the pace of rate hikes or to pause them altogether, for fear of igniting a devastating financial chaos. But were they really so so-so? Not the way I see it.

Indeed, the data made clear that U.S. prices remain way too high, and are rising way too fast, to please any reasonable person. And that’s true either when it comes to the headline inflation results, or to their “core” counterparts – which strip out food and energy prices supposedly because they’re volatile for reasons having almost nothing to do with the economy’s underlying vulnerability to inflation.

The monthly February headline figure came in at 0.37 percent – below the 0.52 percent recorded in February (and the worst sequential result since last June’s 1.19 percent), but still bad enough to push prices up by nearly 4.50 percent at an annual rate if it continues for a year. And price increases that strong would be more than twice the Fed’s yearly target of two percent – creating a situation that no consumers will enjoy.

Speaking of annual headline CPI, its actual rate as of February was 5.98 percent – a good deal lower January’s 6.35 percent and the best such figure since September, 2021’s 5.38 percent.

But as known by RealityChek regulars, here’s where some baseline analysis is needed. That is, it’s crucial to see whether these annual figures are following those for the previous year that were unusually low or unusually high. If the former, then a yearly inflation rate that may look lofty at first glance might just represent one-time catch up – a reversion to a long-term average from a weak anomalous read.

In fact, in my view (and that of the Fed and the Biden administration), it was catch up that generated the rapid price hikes of the early part of this current high inflation period. The main reason was a rebound from price stagnation attributable mainly to the arrival of the CCP Virus and all the havoc it wreaked on the economy generally and especially on the service sector that makes up most of it by far. So I agreed with then conventional wisdom that at that point, worrisome inflation was “transitory.” (See, e.g., here.)

After early 2021, however, circumstances changed dramatically. Of course the Russian invasion of Ukraine last February drove up gasoline prices – though they’d been rising strongly since the recovery from the devastating first coronavirus-induced economic slump and took another big leg up in late 2020. (See this chart.)

More important was the Biden administration’s continuation of emergency-type stimulus spending well after the pandemic emergency had peaked and a strong economic recovery was underway. The American Rescue Plan Act and other boosts in government spending ensured that consumers at all income levels would long be abnormally cash- and income-rich, and that their resulting spending would give businesses generally a new jolt of pricing power.

And for many months, the changes in the baselines for annual headline and core inflation have strongly supported that case that inflation has become more entrenched.

In this vein, the allegedly encouraging annual 5.98 percent inflation rate for February shouldn’t be seen in isolation. What also matters is that it followed a 2021-22 baseline figure of a scorching 7.95 percent. That’s a clear sign of business’ continued confidence in its pricing power. The baseline figure for that September, 2021 5.38 percent inflation rate was just 1.63 percent – well below the Fed target and a number that points to an economy that was still being held back largely because of a seasonal CCP Virus rebound.

Core CPI paints a bleaker picture even without examining the baseline effect. On a monthly basis, it rose for the third straight time, and the new figure of 0.45 percent was the highest since last September’s 0.57 percent.

As for the annual increase, that registered 5.53 percent. That was a tad lower than January’s 5.55 percent and the best such result since December, 2021’s 5.52 percent. But the baseline for the new February figure is 6.43 percent – considerably higher than the 6.43 percent for Januay. So that’s a powerful argument for a worsening, not improving, core CPI performance. And the case seems to be clinched that the baseline figure for that December, 2021 core inflation rate was a feeble 1.63 percent – well below the Fed headline CPI target.

Even before the February CPI report, I believed that inflation would keep heating up because most consumers still have plenty of cash (and therefore, don’t forget, credit), and because a combination of slowing growth (which, to be fair, we haven’t seen yet), and an approaching election cycle would keep politicians tempted to keep spending levels high in order to prop up the economy and keep voters happy. Moreover, I’ve never bought the argument that the Fed would keep fighting inflation vigorously enough to tighten monetary policy enough to cut growth rates dramatically – much less risk a recession – going into the high political season.

Now with banking system troubles added to the mix, the idea that continued strong interest rate hikes seems completely fanciful – along with any realistic hopes that inflation will soon fall back to acceptable levels.

Those Stubborn Facts: Funny Definitions of Environmentally and Socially Responsible Investing

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China, Enviromental Social and Governance risks, ESG, Europe, European Union, finance, investing, sustainability, Those Stubborn Facts

Amount of China assets held by Europe-based investment funds

legally required “to avoid environmental, social and governance

[ESG]risks”: c.$130 billion

Amount of China assets held by Europe-based investment funds

“that have screened for ESG-related hazards”: $160 billion

 

(Source: “China Stirs Unease for ESG Managers Blindsided by Russia’s War,” by Natasha White and Saijel Kishan,” Bloomberg.com, March 27, 2022, China Stirs Unease for ESG Managers Blindsided by Russia’s War – Bloomberg)

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Russia Sanctions May Be Sending a Crucial Message About U.S. China Policy

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Adam Posen, Antony J. Blinken, Biden, Biden administration, Bloomberg.com, Chad Bown, China, dollar, Donald Trump, finance, Foreign Affairs, foreign policy establishment, Mainstream Media, multilateralism, Qin Gang, reserve currency, Russia, sanctions, tariffs, Trade, trade war, Ukraine, Ukraine-Russia war, unilateralism, Wang Yi, {What's Left of) Our Economy

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has produced a genuinely strange – and potentially crucial – turn in the way American leaders and the political class of pundits and think tankers and the rest of the countrys influential chattering class are viewing and even conducting China policy. Because China could in theory significantly help Vladimir Putin’s never-impressive economy evade the full impact of global sanctions, they’re not only talking of only punishing the People’s Republic if it follows this course. They’re exuding confidence that Beijing could be cowed into backing down.

In other words, the conventional wisdom throughout the U.S. foreign policy,  economic policy, and media establishments now holds that Washington can bend China to its will because the Chinese ultimately need the United States much more economically than vice versa. Because this position looks like such a total reversal of what these folks insisted during the trade war supposedly started by Donald Trump with China, it raises these questions: If America’s leverage is great enough to change Chinese behavior that would mainly threaten another country’s security, isn’t it also great enough to change Chinese behavior that for decades has increasingly damaged America’s own economy, and also to pursue decoupling from the Chinese economy more energetically?

The Biden administration certainly is acting like it holds all the cards over China on anti-Russia sanctions. As a “senior administration official” told reporters in an – official – White House briefing last Friday, the President in his virtual meeting with Chinese dictator Xi Jinping that morning “made clear the implication and consequences of China providing material support — if China were to provide material support — to Russia as it prosecutes its brutal war in Ukraine, not just for China’s relationship with the United States but for the wider world.”

The day before, previewing the Biden-Xi call, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said  “President Biden will be speaking to President Xi tomorrow and will make clear that China will bear responsibility for any actions it takes to support Russia’s aggression, and we will not hesitate to impose costs.”

And the national policy establishments are giving these statements their Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval. According to Chad Bown of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, who emerged as the Mainstream Media’s go-to critic of the Trump trade wars, “On the pure economic question, if China were to have to make the choice – Russia versus everyone else – I mean, it’s a no-brainer for China because it’s so integrated with all of these Western economies,”

His views, moreover, came in a Reuters article whose main thrust was “China’s economic interests remain heavily skewed to Western democracies….”

A Bloomberg.com analysis posted a week ago similarly asserted that China “needs good relations with the U.S. and its partners to meet its economic goals, particularly as growth slows to the slowest pace in in more than three decades.”

And although that point was keyed to the current state of China’s economic health – as opposed to the situation during the Trump years, the article also noted that Beijing has “resisted taking retaliatory measures that would hurt its own economy even when the U.S. has directly targeted Beijing. During the height of the trade war, China threatened but never implemented an ‘unreliable entities’ list, and even state-run banks have complied with U.S. sanctions on Hong Kong. It also delayed imposing an anti-sanctions law on the financial hub after businesses expressed concern.”

In all, it’s a stark contrast with the days during that Trump period when the Mainstream Media – relying heavily on analysts like Bown, who work for think tanks heavily funded by Offshoring Lobby interests – routinely ran stories headlined “Why the US would never win a trade war with China.”

Now sharp-eyed readers will notice one big difference between then and now: The Trump China and other tariffs were unilateral. It’s assumed – quite reasonably – that any Biden China sanctions would be undertaken jointly, along with many and possibly most other major national economies.

At the same time, no less than Peterson Institute President Adam Posen has just written in (no less than) Foreign Affairs that it’s the strength of the West’s financial services industries that “are what has truly advantaged the West over Russia in implementing effective sanctions, and what has deterred Chinese businesses from bailing Russia out.”

But these advantages are overwhelmingly the product of the dollar’s reserve currency status and the dominance of U.S. finance in that dominant Western finance sector. So even he’s indirectly admitted that U.S. power specifically has been the key. As a result, wielding the finance cudgel could have pushed the Europeans and Japanese to join in with the Trump China tariffs.

Some other consequential conclusions could flow from this new confidence about China. Maybe even without putting other big economies in the finance cross-hairs, Trump should have threatened – and if need be, imposed – the same kinds of financial sanctions on China instead of tariffs to try to force Beijing to end its predatory trade practices, and/or to press China to accept more U.S. imports. Or maybe a combination of the two would have been best. Maybe President Biden should add the finance sanctions to his decision to maintain most of the Trump tariffs. And if the United States enjoys this kind of leverage over China, wouldn’t the same hold for other troublesome trade partners, even big economies?

But perhaps the most convincing signs of the U.S.’ paramount leverage are coming from China itself. Last Tuesday, Foreign Minister Wang Yi asserted that Beijing would “safeguard its legitimate rights and interests” if hit by punitive U.S. and broader measures. But this language was pretty vague – and he also expressed China’s hope that it would avoid these sanctions to begin with. Moreover, yesterday, Beijing’s ambassador to Washington Qin Gang made clear that Beijing had rejected the option of sending Russia military aid – though he added that China would maintain its “normal trade, economic, financial, energy cooperation with Russia.”

Moreover, there’s no need to go all-in on the tariff, or other China specific sanctions (e.g., on tech entities) fronts yet.  Especially since China is facing mounting economic troubles at home (notably in its gigantic and thoroughly bubble-ized real estate sector) a string of increasingly aggressive “poke the dragon” measures could yield lots of useful information about how Beijing perceives its vulnerabilities without risking noteworthy countermeasures – and about the real extent of America’s capacity to deal with the China challenge.      

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Can Crypto Narrow the U.S. Racial Wealth Gap?

Tags

African Americans, bitcoin, blacks, cryptocurrencies, digital currencies, finance, Hispanics, inequality, investing, investment, Latinos, personal finance, racial wealth gap, wealth, wealth gap, whites, {What's Left of) Our Economy

Shares of Americans who say they’re “familiar” with

cryptocurrencies:

 

Whites: 37 percent

Hispanics: 49 percent

Blacks: 50 percent

 

Shares of Americans reporting owning cryptos:

Whites: 11 percent

Hispanics: 17 percent

Blacks: 23 percent

 

(Source: “Black, Latino, LGBTQ investors see crypto investments like bitcoin as ‘a new path’ to wealth and equity,” by Charisse Jones and Jessica Menton, USA TODAY, August 13, 2021, https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2021/08/13/crypto-seen-path-equity-black-latino-and-lgbtq-investors/5431122001/?gnt-cfr=1)

Im-Politic: Fake News About a Fake Wall Street China Hawk

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2022 election, Bloomberg.com, Bridgewater Associates, China, David McCormick, finance, George W. Bush, human rights, Im-Politic, investment, Katherine Burton, Pennsylvania, Ray Dalio, Republicans, Sridhar Natarajan, U.S. Senate, Wall Street

It’s been a long time since I’ve seen an article contain more sheer garbage per word than today’s Bloomberg.com account of a supposed dispute on dealing with China between two kingpins at the same big American hedge fund.

As the article explains, this ostensible disagreement began this past Tuesday when Ray Dalio, founder and Co-Chairman of Bridgewater Associates told a CNBC interviewer that China’s longtime practice of “disappearing” critics of its thug regime amounted to behaving “like a strict parent….That’s their approach.”

Dalio’s comments unleashed a torrent of outrage that was often as cynical as it’s become predictable these days. For with the exception of making isolated protests about especially egregious Chinese human rights violations (e.g., against the Muslim Uyghur minority), or backing piecemeal controls over cooperation with entities directly tied to the Chinese military, many of those who claim to be appalled by Dalio’s excuse-making for Beijing’s brutality wouldn’t dream of urging Bridgewater – or any American finance firm or other kind of business – to even slow its plans to expand its operations in China. 

In other words, they wouldn’t dream of systematically clamping down on practices that for decades have inevitably helped channel massive amounts of resources and knowhow from around the world into the People’s Republic to use as Beijing’s dictators see fit. And in the case of U.S. investment companies, which look to be just getting started in luring capital to China, these operations will just as inevitably improve the efficiency of China’s own financial system, which will just as surely help enrich it economically and strengthen it militarily.

The Dalio rebuke reported by Bloomberg was genuinely unpredictable, but no doubt even more cynical – for it came from Bridgewater’s own CEO, David McCormick. According to reporters Sridhar Natarajan and Katherine Burton, “on a company call,” McCormick “told staff he’s had lots of arguments about China over the years with Dalio and that he disagrees with the billionaire’s views….”

But of course, the “people with knowledge of the matter” who made certain that this alleged dissent would be made public passed along nothing about what McCormick’s problems with his colleagues’ views entailed. And apparently neither Natarajan nor Burton pressed for elaboration.

The authors did make clear that there was no indication that McCormick favored putting the kibosh on Bridgewater’s recent decision to launch a $1.3 billion investment fund in the People’s Republic, which they wrote would bring the Chinese assets under its management to more than $1.6 billion.

But there was no excuse for Natarajan, Burton, or their editors simply to parrot claims from McCormick’s friends and associates that the Bridgewater CEO is a China “hawk” who views the People’s Republic as “an existential threat to our country” – especially since these same persons are encouraging McCormick’s interest in running in Pennsylvania’s upcoming race to replace retiring Republic U.S. Senator Pat Toomey.

And how on earth could the Bloomberg team allow McCormick buddy Jim Schultz (bizarrely, “a former lawyer in the Trump administration”), to get away with pointing to McCormick’s service in former President George W. Bush’s Treasury Department as evidence that the Bridgewater CEO “has dealt with China in the past…knows how to talk to them, and…will be tough on China as a U.S. senator.”

Even loonier: “’The president of China complained about the decisions he was making about technology at the time,’ Schultz said.”

For anyone who knows anything about U.S.-China relations in the last few decades knows that no administration enabled China’s dangerous rise to dangerous superpower status with lenient trade and technology transfer policies more enthusiatically than W’s.

Natarajan and Burton correctly note that “A hawkish stance on China is all but essential in GOP politics if McCormick makes a run” and that since “Bridgewater has been expanding in China…McCormick would undoubtedly have to navigate China-bashing in the Rust Belt state….”

What they left out is that if the press coverage of this possible campaign is as brain-dead as theirs, McCormick’s challenge won’t be terribly difficult.

Following Up: National Radio China Interview Podcast Now On-Line

Tags

CBS Eye on the World with John Batchelor, China, decoupling, finance, Following Up, Gordon G. Chang, investment, John Batchelor, logistics, supply chain, tariffs, Trade, tradewar, transport, Wall Street

True to my word, I’m pleased to announce that the podcast is now on-line of my appearance last night on John Batchelor’s nationally syndicated radio show. Click here for a terrific discussion among John, co-host Gordon G. Chang, and me on how successfully Washington has – or hasn’t – been decoupling its economy from that of an increasingly hostile and powerful rival.

And keep checking in with RealityChek for news of upcoming media appearances and other developments.

Making News: Back on National Radio on China Trade, Beijing’s Wall Street Funders…& More!

Tags

CBS Eye on the World with John Batchelor, China, finance, Gordon G. Chang, investment, logistics, Making News, supply chain, tariffs, Trade, tradewar, transport, Wall Street

I’m pleased to announce that I’m scheduled to return to John Batchelor’s nationally syndicated radio show tonight. In fact, I’m especially pleased to announce this because for a change I have enough notice to give RealityChek readers a heads up!

The conversation – which will include co-host Gordon G. Chang – will cover headline subjects like whether U.S. tariffs on China are still working, why Wall Street has been channeling ever more enormous amounts of capital from abroad in China’s state-controlled economy, and where the global supply chain crisis stands.

As usual, I don’t know when exactly the segment will air, but John’s show is on nightly from 9 AM to I PM, and you can listen live at this link. P.S. John’s other interviews are likely to be must-listening, too. Further, if you can’t tune in, I’ll be posting a link to the podcast as soon as one’s available.

And keep checking in with RealityChek for news of upcoming media appearances and other developments.