The World and Everything in It: October 31, 2022

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning!

Should highly compensated employees get overtime pay? That’s the question before the US Supreme Court.

NICK EICHER, HOST: That’s ahead on Legal Docket. Also today the Monday Moneybeat, economist David Bahnsen on GDP growth and answers to your questions.

Plus the WORLD History Book. Today, the anniversary of a financial scandal.

REICHARD: It’s Monday, October 31st. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

EICHER: And I’m Nick Eicher. Good morning!

REICHARD: Now the news. Here’s Kent Covington.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: S. Korea crowd surge » Worried relatives raced to hospitals in Seoul, South Korea in search of their loved ones Sunday after more than 150 people were killed in a crowd crush at a Halloween party.

AUDIO: [Sound from Seoul]

Cameras flashed as mourners laid flowers at the scene of the tragedy.

AUDIO: [Sound from Seoul]

The victims were mostly young adults who got trapped after a huge crowd surged into a narrow alley in a nightlife district.

Some described it as horrifying chaos as people fell on each other “like dominoes.”

Tourist Janelle Story was there and escaped unharmed.

STORY: There was a panic coming towards us, some shouts of fear, but also confusion.

She said the Itaewon district is famous for dense crowds …

STORY: But this was next-level; shoulder to shoulder, just shimmying along [with] no control about where you’re going to move at times based on where the crowd pushes you.

An estimated 100,000 people had gathered in Itaewon for the country’s biggest outdoor Halloween festivities since the pandemic began.

India bridge collapse » Meantime in western India …

AUDIO: [Siren]

At least 60 people died after a century-old cable suspension bridge collapsed into a river last night, sending hundreds plunging into the water.

Videos on social media showed people clinging onto the metal cables of the partly submerged bridge as rescuers raced to reach them.

Authorities said the colonial-era structure had closed for renovation and reopened just last week.

Hindu festival season drew hundreds of people to the bridge, and officials say it couldn’t handle the weight of the large crowd.

NY gubernatorial race » Election Day is one week from tomorrow, and candidates are making their final push.

HOCHUL: I came here to make a difference in your lives! I’m here to fight for you!

Democratic governor of New York, Kathy Hochul. She holds a 7-point lead in the polls over Republican rival Lee Zeldin, who said he believes …

ZELDIN: That all of our students should have access to a quality of education that they’re not getting in too many places across this state.

Other governors’ races to watch include one in Wisconsin, where the race between incumbent Democrat Tony Evers and Republican Tim Michaels is a virtual dead heat.

In Oregon, Republican Christine Drazan holds a one-and-a-half-point lead. And in Nevada and Minnesota, two-and-a-half points separate the top candidates in the polls.

Klobuchar to help keep officials and families safe » Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar is among the lawmakers who say Congress must weigh new protections for members and their families. That follows an attack last week on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi.

On NBC’s Meet the Press, she pointed to a bill passed this year to provide security for the families of Supreme Court justices.

KLOBUCHAR: After the threat on Judge Kavanaugh, the actual perpetrator going into his neighborhood, we actually did pass legislation that I strongly supported.

She said lawmakers should consider similar protection for the families of top Congressional leaders.

But she said all lawmakers need some form of increased protection. In 2017, a man opened fire at the annual congressional baseball game, shooting Republican House Minority Whip Steve Scalise and four others.

Supreme Court today poised to hear affirmative action » The U.S. Supreme Court is set to hear arguments today about whether race should be considered in college admissions. The court will look at affirmative action cases involving Harvard and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

U.C. Berkeley law professor John Woo noted that college admissions are the only instance in which the Supreme Court has allowed race as a consideration.

WOO: It doesn’t allow its use in national security, in policing, in hiring, giving out money, giving out contracts. Why should schools be able to consider us by our skin color, rather than, as Martin Luther King said, on the content of our characters?

The colleges say they need to take an applicants’ race into account to ensure diversity on their campuses.

Brazil election » Election authorities in Brazil announced last night that Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of the leftist Worker’s Party has ousted incumbent President Jair Bolsonaro.

Da Silva previously served as the country’s president from 2003-2010.

It is a stunning return to power for the 77-year-old, who went to prison in 2018 in a corruption scandal.

He’ll be sworn in on Jan. 1st.

I’m Kent Covington. Coming up: should highly compensated employees get overtime pay? The high court’s set to tackle that question.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Monday, October 31st and this is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. So glad you’ve joined us today! Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

The Supreme Court is back today after a two week break from oral arguments. We’ll use today to catch up on some arguments from earlier this month.

First, overtime pay and who should get it.

The Fair Labor Standards Act requires employers to pay certain employees time and a half. That is, for the hours they work beyond a 40-hour workweek. Certain jobs such as ones that are mostly supervisory or administrative are exempt from the overtime-pay requirement.

REICHARD: Our case today involves a man named Michael Hewitt. He worked on an offshore oil and gas rig managing other employees. He worked 12 hour days, 28 days in a row, then got 28 days off. For that, he was paid a daily rate.

After Hewitt was fired for a performance issue, he sued for retroactive overtime pay.

But employer Helix Energy Solutions Group says it doesn’t owe him a thing. It points to the law’s language to back it up: “highly compensated employees” are exempt from overtime pay.

At the Supreme Court, Helix lawyer Paul Clement emphasized Hewitt’s substantial salary of more than $200,000 a year.

CLEMENT: Respondent nonetheless insists that he's entitled to hundreds of thousands of dollars in overtime because his substantial pay was calculated based on a day rate and, in many weeks, his total compensation was much larger than his guaranteed pay…

But Hewitt counters what’s relevant is the manner in which he was paid. Not how much.

Hewitt’s lawyer at the Supreme Court was Ed Sullivan and he emphasizes provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act, which you’ll hear him refer to by the initialism FLSA.

SULLIVAN: For over 80 years, the FLSA has made two things clear: One, a bona fide executive must be paid on a salary basis, and, two, a pure daily rate employee is not paid on a salary basis. The highly compensated employee regulation requires payment on a salary basis.

So that’s what the justices must decide: whether a supervisor who makes over $200,000 a year, calculated on a daily basis, is entitled to overtime pay, despite an exception in the law for highly paid executives?

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson seemed to side with the employee:

JACKSON: What he has to know is how much is coming in at a regular clip so that he can get a babysitter, so that he can hire a nanny, so that he can pay his mortgage. It's about, I think, the predictability and the regularity of payment.

Justice Clarence Thomas observed what most people probably believe about pay:

THOMAS: For the average person looking at it, when someone makes over $200,000 a year, they normally think of that as an indication that it’s a salary. And not -- then you certainly don't normally think of someone making $200,000 a year as a day laborer. And so that's -- you – you've got this ill fit. If you were talking about $20,000 a year, you would be -- people would say that makes sense.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh pointed out a conflict between the Labor Department’s regulations and the statute it’s supposed to carry out.

Surely, someone’s already litigated this?

KAVANAUGH: I’m just saying, if it’s not here, if the statutory argument is not here, I'm sure someone is going to raise it because it's strong.

CLEMENT: Well, you just asked about it, so somebody definitely will raise it now – (Laughter.) -- if they weren't -- if they weren't already.

Employer Helix warns that if former employee Hewitt wins, the courts can expect a flood of lawsuits so that people who already earn a lot of money will get a whole lot more.

Alright, on to our second argument today, Reed v Goertz.

Rodney Reed was sentenced to die for raping and murdering Stacey Stites in Texas in 1996.

He claims he is innocent. For years, he’s sought to have DNA testing on an item from the crime scene that could prove his innocence.

Supreme Court precedent says it’s fine for a state to give inmates the right to prove innocence through new DNA evidence. But if they do, the procedures for that testing must be fair.

Texas does permit DNA testing post-conviction. But Reed doesn’t get to because he missed the state’s two-year filing deadline.

So he now challenges that deadline as unfair.

At the Supreme Court, his lawyer underscored the inconsistent way that Texas handles time limitations.

When is the clock supposed to start? When the state trial court denies DNA testing? Or not until the inmate exhausts his appeals?

Reed argues the clock doesn’t start running until all state appeals are over. That would give him more time.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor brought that up with lawyer for Texas, Solicitor General Judd Stone:

SOTOMAYOR: You're – you're claiming he -- he was dilatory, but putting all of that aside, your -- you still maintain that there's some practical importance to not letting him -- not exhaust, but go through a pending appellate process?

STONE: He may, Your Honor, if he wishes. But if he's already suffered a constitutional violation --

SOTOMAYOR: -- now the federal court should wait or not wait?

STONE: It need not, Your Honor. It need --

SOTOMAYOR: But it can?

STONE: If parties request that it wait, that would be --

SOTOMAYOR: That --seems like an awful waste of time.

Stone later argued this is about inmates dragging things out to delay execution. But the justices did not seem sympathetic to that argument.

Part of the reason is that a prior execution date for Reed was called off because of evidence pointing to someone else as the killer of Stacey Stites. Namely, the victim’s fiance, police officer Jimmy Fennell.

Reed’s lawyer, Parker Rider-Longmaid, explained.

LONGMAID: Mr. Reed has a stay of execution from the Texas courts on his ninth subsequent habeas petition before the courts where he raised evidence that Fennell admitted to killing Stites because he discovered she was sleeping with a black man, that Fennell threatened to kill Stites if he caught her cheating, that Fennell made inculpatory statements at Stites' funeral and that Fennell and Stites' relationship was fraught.

Given all that, Longmaid argued, delay can’t be the only point; it’s that it’s possible his client is innocent. So why not just test for the DNA and remove the doubt?

Okay, the last argument involves another dispute over filing deadlines.

Here, the facts center around a Navy aircraft carrier that crashed into a merchant vessel four decades ago. Sailor Adolfo Arellano witnessed death and injury to other people as he was nearly crushed and swept overboard. He developed severe mental health problems and was honorably discharged after four years of service.

Arellano eventually filed for disability benefits, but not until thirty years had gone by. He says his disability kept him from understanding what he needed to do.

The general rule is a veteran may file for disability benefits at any time. But if he does so more than a year after discharge, he can only get money from the date he filed.

So Arellano challenges that rule as unfair.

At the Supreme Court, Arellano’s lawyer, James Barney:

BARNEY: We expect this to be something that's applied sparingly, but in the cases where it's truly deserving, and for veterans who truly do deserve consideration of an equitable tolling claim, it ought to be available.

Barney pointed out that extenuating circumstances lead to pausing other sorts of deadlines. So why not here? That’s what “equitable tolling” is for.

On the other side for the government, Assistant to the Solicitor General Sopan Joshi argued that year-long window isn’t really a statute of limitations. It’s just a guideline so veterans can get compensated more quickly.

JOSHI: If Congress doesn't speak in that language, then there's no basis for that inference.

… here’s what he means to say: that the law Congress wrote speaks of exceptions, and this particular one isn’t called an exception.

Chief Justice Roberts just wasn’t following:

ROBERTS: I'm not sure which way your emphasis on the 16 exceptions really cuts. I mean, if there's 16 exceptions to the rule, that kind of suggests to me that the insistence upon strict enforcement is really not that important.

Arellano stands to get more than $600,000 should he win. Before that happens, though, his case has to be returned to the VA for more fact finding.

However this one comes down, it’ll affect at least one case on hold right now waiting for the outcome: the Edgewood Veterans. These are service members who signed secrecy agreements before getting injured in secret operations. The army used them to test chemical and biological agents. They, too, seek disability benefits through the concept of equitable tolling.

And that’s this week’s Legal Docket.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Next up on The World and Everything in It: the Monday Moneybeat.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Time now for our weekly conversation on business, markets, and the economy.  Financial analyst and adviser David Bahnsen is here. He’s head of the wealth management firm The Bahnsen Group. David, good morning!

DAVID BAHNSEN, GUEST: Well, good morning, Nick, good to be with you.

EICHER: David, before we tackle listener questions, let’s talk briefly about the report on 3rd quarter Gross Domestic Product and the good news that GDP picked up in July, August, and September, the growth rate at an annualized rate of 2.6 percent. That follows contraction in the GDP number in Q1 and Q2 and you doubted then we were really in recession. Do you think the economy is in significantly better shape now than it was the first half of the year?

BAHNSEN: No, I actually think it's in worse shape. And this speaks to what I wrote about in a Dividend Cafe you and I talked about in the show that the same thing that was causing GDP mathematically to come down, when it wasn't in the sustainable down categories around production, consumption, things like that, is now having the reverse effect. You basically had a really big boost in net exports - and that is a byproduct of us exporting a lot more energy than we normally do - and a lot less imports from China as a byproduct of their COVID policy. And so the way net exports flow into the GDP formula, it just simply provided a much higher number. What you didn't see negatively in the first or second quarter was what they call ‘non-residential fixed investment’ - and it's a fancy term for business investment. You didn't see that pulling the economy down, and now you don't see that pulling the economy up. So I prefer to look at what I call ‘core GDP,’ which is far heavier weighted into business investment, and yes, into what consumer activity is, which is just generally positive - Americans love to consume, as I talked about all the time - and a little less wading into inventories and in net exports. And when you look at the core side, you don't have a recession right now., but you do have a very muted, virtually no growth economy. That's where I think we are right now.

EICHER: All right, listener question time.

JOHNSON: Hello David, Rod Johnson, Youngsville, North Carolina.

I’m a fan of the Fair Tax and believe it could be the single greatest opportunity for the US economy … just seems to me that taxing spending is a much better idea than taxing income. Curious of your thoughts about that belief but more importantly, curious if you see any opportunity for any real tax policy changes that positively impact our economy over the next 5-10 years?

Thanks for all you do, David!

BAHNSEN: Yeah, the subject of the Fair Tax has a certain kind of ideological attraction in that it is meant to tax consumption. And I believe that wealth creation and economic growth comes from production. And so our current tax code focuses on taxing the things that we say we want more of. So, our three forms of taxation at a federal level are on corporate profits (I want more business activity), on personal income (I want more personal productivity), and on investment gains (I want more capital formation). So we tax three things we want more of.

However, the solution to it being a fair tax, there are two problems, I believe will keep it from ever happening. One is that it just, indisputably, is an incredibly regressive tax. But it isn't politically doable. We're not going to pass a tax that results in a much lower tax burden for high earners and a theoretically higher tax burden for lower earners. But even apart from the politics, Nick, here's the thing. Why would an advocate of a fair tax believe that in the future, they wouldn't bring back the income tax and the business tax and the investment tax on top of the fair tax, which is exactly what I believe would end up happening? If you try to solve for tax code before you've solved for spending and the size of government, they will eventually end up with both/and, not either/or. That's my biggest critique of the Fair Tax.

As far as optimism about some changes in tax code coming, no, I don't think that anything happened with divided government if after the 2024 election there's a tax reform minded president and a majority in House and Senate that are looking to move the ball a bit. But I don't believe that we have either party in this country really focused right now on lowering the size of government and you inevitably need to lower spending before you can really effectively and sustainably deal with changes in tax policy. Along the way, the best we can hope for is what we got in 2017, which are kind of improvements around the edges.

EICHER: Next question, David, an email from Sue Peck.

She says she’s always believed in free-market capitalism. But, she says: the brand of capitalism we have in this country seems more like greed.

Companies earn billions of dollars each year, they give away millions to causes I usually don’t support and executives have salaries in the millions.

I’m wondering why people or companies need that much money, when their customers are struggling to make it one day to the next on their paychecks.

Why don’t these companies lower their prices a bit, and let their customers decide what cause they want to support?

Bottom line, she wants to know: Has capitalism become untenable?

BAHNSEN: In a way, there's an implicit answer to the question in one of the premises when she says “why not let customers decide?” But of course, customers do decide when they pay the prices. And so to the extent that companies are overcharging the customers who would make that decision, the question comes down to, “who is most qualified to set prices: two people in the transaction, the person selling and the person buying, or a third party not in the transaction?” And what Friedrich Hayek taught us is that when the central planners tried to set prices, you greedy companies, you're charging too much, we're going to tell you what the right price level is. They first of all, make everything worse, because they discourage the needed production that will bring prices down. Why would someone come in and provide competitive productive capacity that would help bring prices down if the government is putting a ceiling on what prices can be? But second of all, neither myself or you or the person asking the question, let alone anyone in Washington DC, has the knowledge or has the incentives to know what the right price level is. So I think when we talk about greed, we have to understand that there's more than one side to this. Companies lose money for different years when their cost of production is greater than what they're able to sell for marginally. And then other years, they can have bigger profits. And these factors have to be weighed into the total decision making. So as long as there are movie stars that get $40 million for a picture, and companies that have record profits, some people are going to accuse folks of excess profits. But I do believe fundamentally that fear, that concern, that problem really comes down to the 10th commandment. I don't think that there's a solution to one of us subjectively thinking so and so makes too much money or charges too much money. I don't think there's a solution that isn't far worse than the problem itself. And when a remedy, a cure becomes worse than the problem, that's when you can do really bad economics.

EICHER: Next question from Bill Mech. He’s been taking your free economics course at Bahnsen.com.

Bill has finished up the last few lessons dealing with Minimum Wage Laws, Price Subsidies (or Controls), Mandated Health Care and the like.

He writes this: David makes the point that government interventions such as these interfere with the efficient operation of markets to properly balance supply with demand and efficiently allocate capital and other resources. At the same time he makes a point about efficient markets being positively correlated with public morality, and that markets will function sub-optimally and eventually self-destruct without the underpinnings of a moral society.

So here’s his question: if governments can intervene in markets to help alleviate poverty and all the social ills that go with [poverty], shouldn’t they [intervene], even if it interferes with efficient markets? [In other words]: … Is that not a small price to pay in order to do what’s right?

BAHNSEN: I would inverse the question and say, “How can we possibly trust government to alleviate poverty when they've now spent mega trillions of dollars on it over a 50 year period, and we have the exact same poverty rate that we did when they started?” So I don't trust any sinful institution to fully handle, but I do think we have an obligation to find the best possible solution and the best possible solution is indisputably in the private sector.

But even if I accept his premise that we're just going to pretend the efficiency could be equal, or it could be even better, I then have to answer it this way. That's not charity. If you solve for poverty with compulsion, then what you've done is say we're not going to do charity, we're not going to do virtue, we're not going to do compassion. When one is compelled, Person A forces and confiscates money from Person B to help Person C, neither person A nor Person B did any charity. And so that act of theft and confiscation is not what the Bible refers to as charity. Charity starts in the heart; all virtuous activity starts in the heart and compulsion can never be confused with real charitable philanthropy.

Fundamentally, even if the government does confiscate to help poverty, they don't have anything to confiscate apart from the productive activity of a private sector. Only wealth creation provides the fruit that can be then distributed towards meeting the needs of humanity. So, on a level of historical accuracy, on basic vocabulary, and then on the economic nature of the topic, all three scream for the government getting out of the world of poverty alleviation and beg for a virtuous populace to take seriously the needs of their neighbors.

EICHER: All right, keep your questions coming. We will address them all. And we’d be most grateful if you could record your question, in your voice, on your phone, and send us a file to feedback@worldandeverything.com.

David Bahnsen is founder, managing partner, and chief investment officer of The Bahnsen Group. His personal website is Bahnsen.com.

David, talk to you next time. Thanks again!

BAHNSEN: Thanks so much, Nick.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Monday, October 31st. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Coming up next, the WORLD History Book. Today, the 20th anniversary of a financial scandal, plus we’ll meet the father of the frozen food industry. But first, more than 500 years ago, the first public viewing of a painted masterpiece. Here’s Paul Butler.

PAUL BUTLER, REPORTER: We begin with All Saints Day, November 1st, 1512. The Vatican unveils Michelangelo’s painted masterpiece—the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

Nine scenes from the book of Genesis sprawl across the 58-hundred square foot ceiling…more than 60 feet above the chapel floor. On one end: God’s outstretched arms seem to almost strain as He separates light from darkness. On the other end—an intoxicated Noah gives in to sleep as his sons look on.

Surrounding these scenes—24 additional panels with Biblical prophets, and ancestors from the genealogy of Jesus.

Beginning in 1508, Michelangelo single-handedly painted the entire ceiling—though over the four year project he had more than a dozen assistants mixing paints, plaster, and delivering supplies up and down the tall scaffolding. For hours on end the great artist stood with his arms above his head working the pigment into wet plaster.

Michelangelo was first and foremost a sculptor—a great expert of the human form. He brought that sensibility to his painted art. Michelangelo’s masterpiece features very little supporting backgrounds or nature scenes—he relies instead on striking human forms in dynamic poses. More than 300 figures grace the ceiling.

Michelangelo returned to the Sistine chapel 25 years later to begin painting the scene of the Last Judgment on the chapel’s west wall. Both works had their critics from the very start due to Michelangelo’s use of nudes. Over the years many were covered up or adapted—though more restoration projects over the years have returned many to how Michelangelo originally painted them.

Millions of people visit the chapel each year. American art historian and tour guide Elizabeth Lev from a 2016 TED Talk:

LEVY: Think how amazing it is, that some painted plaster from 500 years ago can still draw all those people standing side by side, gazing upwards with their jaws dropped. It’s a great statement of how beauty, can truly speak to us all through time, and through geographic space.

Next, a food preservation innovation becomes a household product.

COMMERCIAL: Birdeye Peas, sweet as the moment when the pod went pop…

On November 3rd, 1952, Clarence Birdseye begins marketing frozen peas to the general public.

40 years earlier Birdseye had been on an fur-trapping expedition in Labrador, Canada. While there he noticed how Inuits quickly froze food to preserve it. He returned home and began tinkering in his workshop—figuring out how to flash freeze food for himself.

In 1929 Birdseye Foods began selling frozen fish and a few other items. The problem was most people didn’t own freezers at the time, but all that changed after World War II. As ice boxes gave way to refrigerators with personal freezers, frozen food took off in popularity.

COMMERCIAL: In your FrigidAir cold air pantry, there’s room for all your food, fresh or frozen…

Clarence Birdseye was not the first to freeze food, but his inventions made the mass process and distribution possible. He is considered the father of the frozen food industry. The National Inventors Hall of Fame inducted Birdseye into the pantheon of great inventors in 2005.

COMMERCIAL: Pop, pop, pop to your Birdseye shop, for Birdseye fresh green peas, fresh as the moment when the pod went pop. Birdseye fresh green peas. [POP!]

And finally, Oct 31st, 20 years ago today. A federal grand jury indicts former Enron Corp. chief financial officer Andrew Fastow.

NEWSCAST: Andrew Fastow faces 78 counts of fraud, money laundering, and other felonies, for his involvement in the Enron scandal…

A humiliating end for a Fortune Top 10 company executive.

ENRON COMMERCIAL: You can choose your neighbors and soon, you can choose your energy provider…

Enron began as a Houston based gas-pipeline company in the 1990s but rapidly became one the nation's biggest energy traders. In 2000, shares of Enron topped out north of $90, but by the end of 2001, they fell to less than 50 cents a share after the company filed for bankruptcy. Thousands lost their jobs. And many lost their company retirement savings in the process.

Andrew Fastow was at the center of the scandal. He had been using legal loopholes and off-balance-sheet special purpose entities to hide the company’s true debt from shareholders and regulators.

A few months after Enron’s filing for bankruptcy, the US House Financial Services Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee subpoenaed Fastow. He appeared before the committee on February 7th, 2002.

HEARING: How do you answer sir? FASTOW: Mr. Chairman. I would like to answer the committee’s questions but on the advice of my counsel, I respectfully decline to answer the question…

Fastow not only hid the truth from shareholders, he personally benefited from the practice. He entered into a plea bargain and was sentenced to 10 years in prison. He also had to forfeit nearly $24 million in assets. But due to his cooperation in cases against other executives and auditors, a US District Judge eventually reduced Fastow’s sentence and he ended up serving five years.

Since then, Fastow has become a sought after speaker on business ethics and the problem of “legal fraud.”

FASTOW: When I was CFO of Enron…I was never invited to speak anywhere—not one time. Now I’m invited to speak somewhere around the world every week if I wanted to do it. But only because I went to prison…

Enron’s dramatic fall led to a few accounting reforms, but there’s much more to be done. 20 years on, Fastow is quick to admit the pain he caused Enron employees, investors, and his role in the larger society's distrust of financial markets and institutions. In a 2021 interview, he spoke with Quinton Mathews for Real Vision…

FASTOW: I believe that what I did was wrong. I believe that what I did was unethical. I believe what I did was illegal. I take full responsibility for my actions. And probably, if there’s one person who is most responsible for Enron’s failure, it’s me…

That’s this week’s WORLD History Book, I’m Paul Butler.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: Covid policy and public education. Standardized tests told us what many expected they would tell us that students suffered academically during remote learning. We’ll hear how.

Plus, the Pennsylvania Senate race.

And, our Classic Book of the Month—The City of God by St. Augustine.

That and more tomorrow.

I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

The World and Everything in It comes to you from WORLD Radio.

WORLD’s mission is biblically objective journalism that informs, educates, and inspires.

The Bible says: The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in him.” (Lamentations 3:22-24 ESV)

Go now in grace and peace.

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