Simone Del Rosario: The last time American voters went to the polls, Bitcoin was trading in the teens and three days later, FTX filed for bankruptcy. 

This year’s election couldn’t be more opposite. Bitcoin’s back up in the sixties and presidential hopefuls are honored guests at this year’s Bitcoin conference. 

In 2024, cryptocurrency is a campaign issue, and we’re seeing unprecedented influence from crypto money.

Crypto executive Ryan Selkis delivered this line straight to former President Donald Trump.

Ryan Selkis: There’s 50 million crypto holders in the U.S. That’s a lot of votes.

Simone Del Rosario: It’s only recently that Trump has positioned himself the pro-crypto candidate. He announced his support for crypto back in May of this year. He’s the keynote speaker at this week’s Nashville conference. He’s also simultaneously holding a campaign fundraiser there where CNBC reports the top ticket is commanding $844,600 per person.

Independent candidate RFK Jr. is speaking to the crypto crowd Friday afternoon, while new-in-the-race VP Kamala Harris ultimately decided against speaking, a decision crypto heavyweights warn will come back to haunt her.

I want to welcome in Aly Madhavji, managing partner of the Blockchain Founders Fund. Aly, you’re joining us from Nashville. I’m curious, in your mind, is it a mistake for Kamala Harris to decide against speaking there?

Aly Madhavji: So this is definitely a really big mistake. think what we’ve seen from the Democratic Party over the last few years has been a fairly anti crypto policy set of policies. And over the last maybe four or five, six months, we’ve seen that sort of shift a little bit, right? We obviously had the Bitcoin ETF approval, most recently with the Ethereum ETF approval. So there’s been some small progress, but it’s really an opportunity for Kamala Harris to distance herself, I think, from some of the policies that have happened over the Democratic Party and try to mend the divide and actually try to go out and really bring in and speak to the 50, 60 million Americans that hold crypto. And I think that’s just a missing piece now with her not showing up

Simone Del Rosario: Yeah, crypto billionaire Tyler Winklevoss said that she can’t even take the first step and show up to start mending fences. Our industry won’t forget this. We will show no mercy in November. You think that’s the case?

Aly Madhavji: I do think that that’s going to be a big part of it. Right. So when you look at some of the concerns of not only the American people, but I would say this is almost a global issue. But, you know, you look at some of the policies here and being anti -crypto, it’s going to millions, tens of millions of Americans. But not only that, there’s also concerns on things like a CBDC or a central bank digital currency with government overreach. And These types of topics not being addressed, not taken seriously, you know, I think are going to create concerns for a lot of Americans that hold crypto.

Simone Del Rosario: Do you think that a lot of crypto voters are single issue voters?

Aly Madhavji: I mean, I don’t think most voters are single issue voters, right? But crypto is something that people are passionate about. I think it’s a topic and a space where every single one of us has gotten hammered by inflation and you go to the grocery store and things are more and more expensive and you maybe put some money into a yield or a high yield savings account and maybe you get three, four, or

but it’s still not keeping up with inflation and it’s not keeping up with what you’re seeing every day happen in your life. so crypto has been somewhere where people have turned that has outperformed pretty much every other asset class. so that is a big part of why people are passionate about this space, not only for the technology and what it’s doing, but of course it’s helping their bottom line. It’s helping them make ends meet. It’s helping them feed their families. It’s helping to make a difference.

And I think that’s actually very important to the average person and the average American that that’s going to be holding crypto.

Simone Del Rosario: Well, no matter what, there’s going to be a new administration next year. What do crypto voters want to hear and see most from a potential White House administration? They’re going to hear from two of the three major candidates this week.

Aly Madhavji: Absolutely. So actually yesterday I was at an interview from RFK Jr. And, know, I think he made some really interesting points that I think a lot of the American people want to hear. Right. So he talked about adding, for example, Bitcoin on the balance sheet as a reserve currency or part of that basket. You know, I think we’re expecting to see Trump make a similar announcement on Saturday. You know, we’ll see. That’s that’s the rumor as of now. But

I think you also want to see deregulation on industries and figuring out how to actually make America be a leader in this industry. And I think for far too long we’ve seen in reality a lot of the jobs that could have been in America go elsewhere. And personally, I’m not an American, but of course this is an election that I think impacts the whole world and our whole industry.

there is incredible talent in the United States that I think could be capitalizing more on this technology, you know, if the regulatory environment allowed for

Simone Del Rosario: Yeah, Aly, you’re based in Singapore, correct? How advanced would you say the US is when it comes to crypto compared to the rest of the world?

Aly Madhavji: I would say the US is fairly behind from a regulatory perspective. I would say from a talent perspective, mean, the US has many of the best institutions in the world, many of the best talent when you think about engineers, software engineers, developers, all the way through to great business minds. And this is a gap because we’ve actually started to see brain drain over the last five, seven, eight years where a lot of incredible people have moved

Southeast Asia or across Asia or to the Middle East, you Dubai, Singapore, Switzerland have all, you know, really built themselves as almost the place to go, you know, if you’re going to be building in in the web three year blockchain industry. And I think that’s really at the detriment to places like the United States, even Canada, which has had, you know, not the most friendliest regulatory environments for this industry. think it’s really impacted these countries.

Simone Del Rosario: What does Singapore have that the United States does not?

Aly Madhavji: I think Singapore, while it has a very high regulatory bar, I think they’ve created clarity. They’ve actually put out policies. It’s very clear on what you need to do to get licensed. There is a very clear way to get licensed. You know, you don’t have these types of issues like what Coinbase is facing where they go out, they follow all of the rules, you know, they go on their S1 and then they get listed. And then, you know, the SEC comes back and says, hey, we didn’t actually read all of this stuff in your S1 and we’re going to go back and we’re going to have a legal battle.

Right? Like these things are detrimental to everybody. And, know, Coinbase is a stock that’s going to be in a lot of people’s 401ks or in their investment portfolio. And that’s going to impact them negatively as well. So these types of things in this uncertain regulatory environment is not good for anyone and really any industry, especially in innovative industry. And I’m not talking about just blockchain, but this is going to be the same thing on AI. It’s going to be the same thing on any of these industries that are really pushing the

Simone Del Rosario: Well, like AI, crypto mining draws a lot of power. How concerned would you say people are about climate, alternative energy sources, and where does that fall with political priorities?

Aly Madhavji: It’s a really good question. mean, I’m a very big believer in, you know, to really change the world, we need to basically really test a resource, right? If you think about historically as you had major innovations, basically like basically push the limit on a resource and then innovations basically come out to basically allow us to 10X, 100X, 1000X the potential of that. And so if we’re talking about the advancement of human society as a whole,

We need to be thinking about, you know, how are we gonna 10X, 100X our energy output because we’re gonna need to do that. And how do you do that in a clean way? And I think this is more of the conversation because whether it’s Bitcoin or AI or other things, it’s going to consume a lot of energy as we continue to progress. And I think there’s a lot of solutions from an infrastructure perspective that we can start to implement as a country, you know, from a policy perspective that we can drive.

better energy solutions in the country that are green, right? And I think that’s a really big part of it. But Bitcoin is really about a really stable infrastructure that I think allows us to get away from the traditional banking system. And I think there’s many people that have really brought up risks around currency and currency devaluation. If a lot of people are concerned about the debt and rising debt in the United States.

You know, these are things that really, I think, get hedged from Bitcoin. And this is actually a critical industry to be in the United States and abroad.

Simone Del Rosario: Aly Madhavji, managing partner of the Blockchain Founders Fund. Thank you so much for stepping away from the conference to talk to us. We appreciate your thoughts on this.

Aly Madhavji: My pleasure and thanks for having me. 

Simone Del Rosario: CrowdStrike is blaming a bug in test software for taking out 8.5 million Windows machines. That’s according to a preliminary post-incident review published Wednesday by the company.

No one appeared to have it as bad as the airline industry with nearly 3,000 canceled flights. But of course the outage stretched across healthcare systems too.

Banks experienced a hiccup in comparison. But what does it look like if an IT incident hit banking and credit cards harder?

People like Bloomberg Opinion columnist Paul Davies are warning that the CrowdStrike outage is another sharp warning for banks. 

Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan posted on X: All too often these days, a single glitch results in a system-wide outage, affecting industries from healthcare and airlines to banks and auto-dealers. Millions of people and businesses pay the price. These incidents reveal how concentration can create fragile systems.

How concentrated is the banking industry? And how fragile are the systems that hold your money? What happens if a glitch or a hack means you can’t access funds? 

To help answer these, I’m joined by Tom Vartanian, Executive Director of the Financial Technology and Cybersecurity Center and author of, “The Unhackable Internet: How Rebuilding Cyberspace Can Create Real Security and Prevent Financial Collapse.” 

Tom, thank you so much for joining us. I was wondering if you could give me your perspective. How vulnerable do you think the banking sector is to an IT outage or a hack?

Thomas P. Vartanian: Yeah, thanks for having me, Simone. And let me just say, I think at the end of the day, it is vulnerable. It is not as vulnerable as many of the other critical infrastructures in the country. In fact, after defense, it is probably the least vulnerable of all the critical infrastructures in the country. But that said, you have to remember we’re using a highly insecure, highly vulnerable cyberspace internet infrastructure that is insecure basically at its core.

Simone Del Rosario: What makes it insecure?

Thomas P. Vartanian: Well, you know, in 1969, the internet was started as a network between four universities to share research and information. And since then, the security aspects of it were never added. It was never meant to be secure. Security has never been added. So we’ve tried to add it afterwards as we have loaded on every piece of data and every piece of value in the world onto a structure that was never meant to be secure.

To say that the Internet is secure is a myth in my view, and I think it’s something that we should have fixed 25 years ago. And I think all of these things we’re seeing today suggest we should fix it today. Because at the end of the day, this could have happened in the banking business. It could have stopped people from being able to reach their money. And that is catastrophic, frankly.

Simone Del Rosario: Absolutely. Look, the impact to airlines this latest CrowdStrike issue, it was so visual. mean, you could see the effect of them not being able to access their systems. What would it look like if something goes wrong and banking can’t get online? What would we see?

Thomas P. Vartanian: Yeah, that’s a great question because that’s, that’s, wrote a chapter about that in my book. said, what would happen if you couldn’t reach your money? And I laid out a scenario that actually started with somebody’s somebody getting a virus on their phone that they transmitted throughout the system. And the problem is think about not being able to reach your money. How long would it take you to become alarmed? How long would it take you to become

The second question I raise in the book, and this is a real problem because there’s no governance, there’s no enforcement online, it’s the Wild West. If your money was gone tomorrow morning, who would you call? I’ve been in banking almost 50 years. I don’t know who to call. Right? That’s a problem. So we’re living in an ungoverned world. And here’s the real issue, I think, in terms of cyberspace. We have taken everything from the analog that is secured, we have borders, have fences, we have locks on doors, and put them into cyberspace where we have none of that. Absolutely none of that. So ask yourself the question, do you take all your personal papers and personal effects and put them on your front lawn for anybody walking by to rifle through? Absolutely not. But that’s what we do in cyberspace. And that’s the problem. That’s the problem with all of these incursions. They should be telling us something about the vulnerability of cyberspace and what we ought to be fixing.

Simone Del Rosario: I’ve been putting a bunch of thought into this. I mean, it’s really a trust system that I have with my financial institutions to even say this is the money that is allocated to me. I don’t have a separate sheet that shows what I see my balance to be, so if it got wiped out tomorrow, I’d have no idea what I was owed. I’m wondering, and we’re getting into the age of online -only banks as well, I mean, should people be concerned?

Thomas P. Vartanian: I think when it comes to financial services, the concern I would have would be a lot less than most of the other critical infrastructures in this country, such as power and water and things like that. I think we have come to understand that the enormous amount of work that the financial services business has done has paid off in terms of them having a high level of security. And why? Why is that? Well, that’s because largely they’re highly regulated.

They’ve got people pushing them to make sure they are secure. But second of all, they live and die on the trust of customers. You lose the trust, you lose the customer. And so they have a great incentive and they have done an enormously good job, as I say, to secure an insecure world. That said, I am very careful when I’m online. I have a number of habits I follow. For example, I use one computer for banking and I don’t use it to go online for anything else and there are ways that you can protect yourself, but you have to understand you’re dealing with insecure networks and structures and the banks have done as great a job as anybody can with that. But the fact of the matter is we’re all relying on those networks and structures to work the way that they’re supposed to. And I think there was a press release that went out from the department of Homeland security. guess it’s now maybe a month or two ago from CISA, the cybersecurity agency, And it said that the Chinese through vault typhoon had infected every critical infrastructure in this country. Think about that. They’ve infected every critical infrastructure in this country with theoretically means they can bring them to a halt and bring them down at any time they want. That tells me it’s a system we ought to be fixing. That tells me that’s a system. That has enormous impacts on the systemic stability of the country that we ought to be changing. And we’re not. And I think there’s a lot of reasons why we’re not. And it ranges from consumers not wanting the internet to change to leaders not understanding how to change it. But the fact of the matter is we’ve got a highly insecure network and highly insecure systems. And you really have to run a thousand miles an hour to protect yourself online, whether you’re a business or an individual.

Simone Del Rosario: Would you say the banks are too concentrated in too few of these third party providers? And if that’s the case, what is the alternative?

Thomas P. Vartanian: Yeah, it’s a good question. think that many people don’t understand, Simone, that when you walk into a bank, you’ve walked into a front door that basically opens up to a panoply of outside service providers that the bank uses, whether it’s credit cards or whatever the case may be. And there are a lot of providers out there. But the problem, I think, from a technological point of view, and this applies to every industry, is there too suppliers of these kinds of services that make systemic stability an issue in almost every industry, not just banking. So you look at the number of people that crowd strike with servicing, and you say to yourself, globally, that’s a real problem. Now, why weren’t there checkpoints? Why weren’t there moderators and governors on this system? And maybe they will be in the future. But fact, the matter is it’s not a regulated technology. And the question I think that this all raises is should it be because you can have the banks and financial services companies regulated as much as you want, but when they’re dealing with unregulated entities who are providing the back end services in that financial institution, they’re dealing with people who don’t have the same sensitivity that the banks do to the kinds of things that regulators are going to want to be sensitive

Simone Del Rosario: Okay, so what would you say is the solution to all of this? I mean, it’s hard to solve a problem as big as an insecure internet, but I know that you have some ideas.

Thomas P. Vartanian: Yeah, I do. that’s what I put in my book about a hundred solutions and you can take with them, take them with a grain of salt, because a lot of those are not going to be done. I think number one, we have to secure cyberspace because what are this crowd strike crowd strike? The crowd strike issue was as far as we know, unintentional. Think about whether if what if it was intentional? What if it was intentional and someone could could bring down technology throughout the world. mean, that shouldn’t be the case. So we need to begin to secure cyberspace. We need to build check checkpoints throughout cyberspace. There needs to be greater liability for people who are creating software. I mean, that’s a huge problem. I think the absence of liability throughout systems that there can be a breach and people will just say, well, you know, we had a breach. should look at your credit reports and take care.

you know, we’re off to do something else. And the reason for that, I think, is what I found when I was doing my work in the area and then researching for the book is that we live in a launch first, patch second environment. And the reason for that is first to market is the first to the profits, right? So we need to change that ratio. We need to segment important businesses into more companies. can’t have reliance on just one or two companies for these technologies. We wouldn’t allow that in a financial services business. We shouldn’t allow it in the technology business. And lastly, I think, and one of the things I proposed in my book is that we have to start thinking about regulation differently. I have come to believe as a former regulator that regulation by government only is going to fall think regulation from now on has got to be a cooperative effort between the government and the private sector. We’ll have to deal with whatever conflicts we have to deal with. But I think the government and the people with the expertise in the government need, desperately need the expertise from the private sector. If they don’t get it, they’re always going to be running behind in terms of trying to deal with problems. so I think, and what I’ve said often is I. We continue to try to solve digital problems with an analog mindset. We take the way we solve problems 50 years ago and we try to apply them to a digital world. It’s not going to work. It’s just not going to work. So we need a change in mindset. We need a change in liability. We need a change in governance. And these things should have been done over the last 30 years. And none of them have been done, quite frankly.

Simone Del Rosario: Tom Vartanian, executive director of the Financial Technology and Cybersecurity Center. Thank you so much for putting this in perspective for us.

Thomas P. Vartanian: thank you for having me. Appreciate it.

Simone Del Rosario: The money is pouring in for the Democrats since President Joe Biden announced he was bowing out of the race. 

The democratic political action committee ActBlue fundraised more than $50 million in the first day after Biden endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to take his place on the ticket.

But as new money floods in, questions hang over who gets the existing Biden-Harris war chest worth around $96 million. 

The campaign is quickly moving forward as if those are now Harris’ funds. But there’s little doubt Republicans are planning to challenge this with the Federal Election Commission and in court.

Here’s Trump-appointed FEC chair Sean Cooksey talking to NPR Monday morning. 

Sean Cooksey: I think there’s a number of different avenues that I could expect different parties to challenge this attempted transer, this attempted change to the presidential committee. There’s a process in which private parties can file complaints with the Federal Election Commission, there’s also a process in which they can prospectively ask for advisory opinions. One of those problems with those processes is they can take a lot time and we don’t have a lot of time up until the election. 

Simone Del Rosario: Cooksey said the situation is complicated and unprecedented, but a colleague of his doesn’t see it that way. Biden-appointed FEC commissioner Dara Lindenbaum told the New York Times she doesn’t think it’s an open question because Harris’ name is already on the campaign committee registration form. 

“It’s very clear,” she said. “If Kamala Harris is the Democratic presidential nominee, she gets to use all the money in the account.” 

So two different views from two people with the same job. That’s not clear at all. And what happens to the money if Kamala Harris is not the nominee? 

Hopefully Jerry Goldfeder can help us sort through it, he’s senior counsel at Cozen O’Connor law firm and Director of Fordham Law School voting rights and democracy project.

And let’s start there, sir, if Vice President Harris is indeed the nominee, is this complicated issue or no question at all, where do you stand?

Jerry Goldfeder: It’s relatively simple. She was a principal the Biden Harris Campaign Committee, the authorized committee of the campaign for the presidential and vice presidential candidacies of those people, and she continues to be a principal of the new committee, which is Harris for President. So the funds get transferred quite easily.

Simone Del Rosario: Do you think that that ease that you’re talking about is part of the reason why Democrats are really coalescing behind her is that these funds could easily be transferred to her campaign, whereas someone else might have a more difficult time fundraising.

Jerry Goldfeder: Well, it would be a factor if it couldn’t be transferred, but frankly, the tremendous support for her is based upon her tremendous record as vice president and who she is as a candidate and as a person. People know her. People in the Democratic Party know her. People really respect her. People really like her. She’s done her work among the Democrats throughout the country, and I think there’s a strong feeling that she would make a great president, and people, as I say, really respect her and like her. Well,

Simone Del Rosario: Although it’s not a foregone conclusion, it really does seem like there’s not a lot of significant challenges to Harris being the nominee at this point, but let’s put that aside for a second. If the nominee ends up being someone other than Harris, whose name is on that campaign committee registration form, how does the funding work? From there, what happens to this $96 million?

Jerry Goldfeder: Well, that’s extremely hypothetical question, because I think it’s pretty clear she will be the nominee. But let’s go with your hypothetical for a moment if, in fact, it’s another candidate who is the who’s the nominee. All the money from Biden Harris could be transferred to the party. It could be transferred to an independent expenditure organization. It can be used on behalf of the nominee, indirectly, but legally.

Simone Del Rosario: Is there any chance that these funds would have to be refunded in any kind of way? No, for our viewers, what funds specifically are in question here, there’s a, you know, campaign finance is such a thorny issue for people who aren’t steeped in it every single day, right?

Jerry Goldfeder: Most normal people don’t know, and don’t want to know any of the ins and outs of campaign finance law. Look, there’s a committee. There’s that when somebody runs for election or for reelection, there’s an authorized Campaign Committee, and that committee gathers monies in order to spend for its campaign so people contribute to the Biden Harris campaign, to the campaign committee. That’s what we’re talking about here. And the Biden Harris Campaign Committee, which has millions of dollars, can transfer that to the Harris Campaign Committee. It’s actually not really even a transfer, because it’s basically the same committee. It’s just renamed.

Simone Del Rosario: Although we do expect these challenges to move forward, at least in some point, the FEC is going to have to be facing all sorts of challenges, or they expect to. What does that process look like when there’s only months to go before the election? 

Jerry Goldfeder: the Federal Election Commission is not known for acting swiftly, and in this case, I think that there’ll be some challenges by Republicans, just for the sake of it. Some of them will be heartfelt and they really believe it, and some of them will just be just to try to bollocks up, the works, but the FEC is not going to take any action that’s going to interfere with Kamala Harris and her new running mate from using the funds that’s already that have already been raised. And needless to say, the new funds too.

Simone Del Rosario: what about the courts? Could they tie up this money and prevent her from using these funds?

Jerry Goldfeder: It’s hard to believe that something like that is going to happen in this campaign. I think that that’s just the Republicans trying to raise an issue that is pretty bogus.

Simone Del Rosario: All right. Jerry Goldfeder, Senior Counsel at Cozen O’Connor law firm, Director of Fordham Law School voting rights and democracy project. Thank you so much for your insight today.

Jerry Goldfeder: Thank you. 

Simone Del Rosario: We all learned mitochondria are the powerhouses of cells, but did we learn about credit scores or how to file taxes? California just became the 26th state to require high schoolers to take a personal finance class to graduate. This mandate is wildly popular, but it’s taken the country a long time to come around to it. A Next Gen Personal Finance report said five years ago, only five states had the same requirement. So how much will this curriculum change move the needle as kids prepare to support themselves? I’m joined by Maya Corbic. She’s an author and financial literacy expert. You may know her on Instagram as @Teach.Kids.Money and that’s exactly what we’re trying to do. Maya, first of all, I wanted to get your reaction to this California law and others like

Maya Corbic: Well, first of all, thank you so much for having me here, Simone. Yes, I think that’s fantastic news. We’ve been waiting for this for a long time. And I’m actually excited to see that more states are actually making financial literacy part of their curriculum. I think it’s a long time. We’ve needed this for a long time.

Simone Del Rosario: One class, you know, it’s better than nothing. Is it enough, though?

Maya Corbic: I don’t think it’s enough. I really feel like this is something that should be part of our curriculum from early grades, like including kindergarten all the way until the end of high school. I feel As somebody who has been teaching financial literacy to kids, I do find that sometimes we have to repeat certain lessons because they forget and we also have to make them applicable to real life. Another thing too, you know, these financial literacy curriculums do not cover. There are some lessons such as, you know, talking about investing and how to invest so that we can become financially free. And, you know, They don’t really go into details of debt and credit scores and some other lessons, but something is better than nothing.

Simone Del Rosario: What do you know about what is going into these courses and can you expand more on what’s missing from them?

Maya Corbic: I do know for sure that financial literacy that’s currently be introduced in schools is not covering the basics of investing and all different aspects that we should be teaching our children when it comes to investing. And investing is really important because we cannot only save our way to wealth. Saving is a first step to investing because we need to save some money in order to invest it. But if we’re only saving our money, there is a huge difference in terms of return, especially if we’re looking at long time, So as somebody who’s the same amount of for 10 years versus investing the same amount of money for 10 years, the results are drastically different.

Simone Del Rosario: Yeah, I find myself to be a pretty financially savvy person, right? This is obviously part of what I do for a living. But I always catch myself wishing that I knew things just a little bit earlier. mean, even five years earlier could make such a big difference. That said though, research from NextGen Personal Finance and Titan Partners found that in this California case, that the California students who take a one semester course experience a $127,000 lifetime positive benefit. It sounds to me like the way that you do things, there could be so much of a bigger lifetime benefit, but would you say that this is a good start?

Maya Corbic: I definitely think it’s a great start. It’s much better than what we had before.

Simone Del Rosario: And you said that we should be teaching kids as soon as kindergarten. What do you teach kindergartners about money?

Maya Corbic: So what I have been teaching kindergartens about money is just the basics. Kindergartens are smart enough and they can understand the difference between needs and wants. They understand that needs are things we need for survival. are nice to have, but we don’t need them for survival and that we should spend our money on needs first and wants. They’re too young to understand that some things that we buy can be a mixture of needs and wants. So that’s something that I teach much later on. But they can also understand, you know, different currencies and different monetary denominations that we have. So they’re really smart to also pick up on habits too. If, for example, parents are giving them allowance and the habits, what I mean by habits is for them to learn that, you know, as soon as they get some money that comes in, they need to take a portion and save it. And this is a habit that they can practice into later years so that when they become adults, this is just something that they do

Simone Del Rosario: I know you’re in Canada. Is the public education system there more advanced when it comes to teaching kids about finance?

Maya Corbic: I wish I could say this, but it’s not. We as well had some changes, recent changes, and some of the financial literacy curriculum was introduced to our schools at a high school level. Again, I don’t know all the details, but again, it seems like it’s a good start. It’s just not covering enough. I feel that the parents will have to, you know, pick up wherever the school stops and teach the additional lessons that the schools do not teach.

Simone Del Rosario: And at least here in the United States, nearly half of these states have yet to take up this type of curriculum change. Now, what would be your message to those states that aren’t taking this step.

Maya Corbic: I think my message would be that they really seriously need to consider this because this is something that is going to benefit their citizens, the next generation, and it can make the next generation that much better off, their lives can be better off, and then the generations that will come after them. So it is definitely in their interest to do this for the benefit of these young people.

Simone Del Rosario: And for people who are wanting to learn more about how to get started, taking things into their own hands to teach kids about money, let them know where they can find you.

Maya Corbic: So I am available on Instagram. post daily. I post a lot of tips for parents on how to educate kids about money of different ages. And my Instagram handle is teach .kids .money. I also have a book that actually teaches kids investing. It’s called From Piggy Banks to Stocks, The Ultimate Guide for a Young Investor. And that book is available on Amazon.

Simone Del Rosario: Maya Corbic, thank you so much for your thoughts today on this.

Maya Corbic: Thank you so much, Simone.

Simone Del Rosario:

What’s the cost of the NFL Sunday Ticket in 2024? Well, for the league it’s nearly $4.8 billion.

That’s how much a federal jury in California awarded plaintiffs in a class-action antitrust lawsuit over how the league handled out-of-market broadcasts as part of the package.

The verdict stems from a 2015 complaint from the Mucky Duck, a California sports bar that claimed the league violated antitrust laws by bundling all out-of-market games together, making it impossible to buy a package that featured just one team.

For instance, say you’re a lonely Los Angeles Chargers fan in the heart of Ohio. You might get the Cincinnati Bengals or Cleveland Browns games on your local Fox or CBS affiliate … But you would have to buy Sunday Ticket to get access to the whole slate of NFL just to watch your beloved Bolts.

Getting down to the nuts and bolts of the damages: Of the $4.8 billion, $4.7 billion goes to residential subscribers, while nearly $100 million goes to commercial users like the Mucky Duck. Under federal antitrust laws, those sums could be tripled to more than $14 billion if the judgment is upheld. That works out to around $450 million per team.

The league has promised to appeal the decision, and this case could end up before the Supreme Court. Even the federal judge in question didn’t like the way this case went.

Joining me now to discuss is Nelly, Drew director of the University of Buffalo Center for the Advancement of sport, and Professor of Practice in sports law. Nelly, we are about to enter a lengthy appeals process, so let’s figure this out. What does this mean for fans out there who might think that this ruling could give them better access to their favorite teams games right away?

Nellie Drew: Oh, that’s not going to happen this season. The NFL is already committed to an appeal. It will no doubt be a lengthy one. There is a possibility for certain post-trial motions, so we’ll have to see those go. But the challenge always with antitrust cases is that they are so complex, and as we know, litigation doesn’t exactly move at lightning speed, anyhow, so this is going to take a while to be parsed out.

Simone Del Rosario: This was a jury trial, but the federal judge in this case did not love where the plaintiffs were going during their arguments. I have a quote that I use specifically because of one word in it, so I think you probably already know which one I’m going for here. He said the case has turned into 25 hours of depositions and gobbledygook. This case has gone in a direction it shouldn’t have gone. Could the federal judge throw out the verdict and side with the NFL?

Nellie Drew: Oh, I suppose it’s possible. There’ll probably be a motion to overturn the verdict for sure. What does that mean as a practical matter? Well, took the jury. What was it less than three hours to come to this conclusion. That’s a pretty significant statement. It’s not like they were on the on the edge of not going the other way. I am actually amazed that we went as far as we did. My colleague, Christine Bartholomew, who’s an antitrust expert has mentioned the fact that it’s rare for antitrust cases to go all the way to trial and for this one to have completed, it’s just mind boggling to me, absolutely mind boggling.

Simone Del Rosario: What does this mean for the nfl’s antitrust exemption? They argue that this falls under it that allows the league to package games and sell them to networks. The plaintiffs were arguing that it only applies to over the air broadcast. Pay TV, like satellite. I’m so curious. It’s a new world we’re living in. So what does that mean?

Nellie Drew: So, this is not new law. So the sports broadcasting exemption goes back to Richard Dixon wine to watch the, then Washington Redskins on TV, quite honestly. I mean, that’s how old this is and and the sports broadcasting exemption Act specifically was drawn for over the air broadcasts, and that was emphasized very heavily. And you also have to remember that as a matter of practice, the courts construe any exemptions to the antitrust laws extraordinarily narrowly. The idea is that the antitrust framework is supposed to be inclusive, as much as possible, and any exemptions are supposed to be very, very narrow and very, very specific, which is what the sports broadcasting act is. And if you review the legislative history of the sports broadcasting act, that is very, very clear. So I was quite honestly, very surprised to see the NFL take that position, although I guess there’s not much else I could possibly say well,

Simone Del Rosario: And it’s assuming that that’s just going to continue in a different form. What do we do now with that, given how the like television streaming, what this all looks like. It’s so different than it was in the 60s?

Nellie Drew: it’s a very different context, since Richard Nixon’s days, right? But, but having said that, the underlying point is access and so I’m not much of an NFL fan you are, but the complaint I heard for a number of people over the course of the past year is, it’s gotten to a point where you have to own multiple platforms be able to follow your team. And so it’s almost going the other way. And and part of me also wonders, just as a practical matter, when is the NFL going to realize that the lifeblood of the league, and the source of all its revenue is the fans. So if the fans aren’t able to consume the product they want to consume, eventually they’re going to go like, ‘maybe soccer is better’, right?

Simone Del Rosario: Is this going to have an effect on cable companies that rely on bundled packages?

Nellie Drew: Yes, although how that’s going to play out remains to be seen. It depends upon what the ultimate outcome of this is, right? And was interesting, too. As you may have read that, you know, the NFL tried to posit this as a premium subscription, right? This is only for a very small portion of our fan base, when in reality given the society we live in now… I’ve got seven kids, half of them are out of the area and adore the Buffalo Bills, but they can’t watch them on a regular basis under the current construct, right?

Simone Del Rosario: Let me ask you this. Then, did the NFL mess up in its arguments? You know, on the stand? Goodell called it a supplemental package for the biggest fans, just like you said. But the NFL Sunday Ticket they they pitched it basically as this place to watch your favorite teams. Did they mess up and how it was all communicated for the past couple of decades? Really

Nellie Drew: well. I think the challenge for the NFL council was that the advertising messaging, was one thing, and then they had to try to spin it a different way when they got into court. And antitrust counsel, which is always there in league meetings because almost everything the league does, has potentially some antitrust implications. We know now, in the wake of the Supreme Court case some years ago, that for sure, when each of the teams in the league discusses anything with any other team. You have the potential for Section One Sherman Act violation, because you have two potential competitors collaborating. Now, some of this collaboration is necessary for the league to function that’s been recognized by the courts, right? You know, somebody has to set the schedule, somebody has to agree upon what the rules are going to be, what the new kickoff rule is going to be, for example, right? That type of collaboration is generally speaking allowed under the antitrust laws. It’s when you’d use that position, and combine that with sort of monopoly, if you will, that the NFL has over its product to extract unreasonable profits. That’s when you start running into trouble. And the key here was that consumer choice was definitely being constrained by this artificial construct.

Simone Del Rosario: Let’s talk about consumer choice. I know this isn’t really a legal question. It’s definitely more of a business question. But do you think if the NFL were to pitch this product by individual teams, I get to pay for just the Chargers. I get to watch every chargers game from wherever in the country I am. Don’t you think that would be a very, very popular product.

Nellie Drew: It is. But the challenge then is, what does that do to the broadcast partners? And that’s their bread and butter they’re trying to protect there, right? I mean they have this… It’s greed, right? They wanted to use the Sunday Ticket to extract an extra little bit, but in the process, they know that they have to protect their broadcast partners. Because, you know, my kids in Boston aren’t watching the Patriots. They’re watching the bills, if they can get them right? And so that’s the challenge.

Simone Del Rosario: All right. Thank you so much. Nelly Drew, professor of practice and sports law, really appreciate your insight on this. I know a lot of football fans are watching this one.

Nellie Drew: We are. Thank you so much.

Simone Del Rosario:

The Supreme Court has just overturned 40 years of legal precedent, nullifying the most cited Supreme Court administrative law decision of all time. 

I’m talking about the Chevron doctrine, which has been in place since 1984. This week’s ruling confirms critics’ view that Chevron gave government agencies too much power in interpreting laws passed by Congress. 

The Chevron doctrine said that when a law is open to interpretation; when the intent of Congress in passing that law is unclear; when the statute is ambiguous; courts should defer to the agency’s interpretation of that law, as long as it’s sensible. 

In overruling Chevron, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote: “Chevron’s presumption is misguided because agencies have no special competence in resolving statutory ambiguities. Courts do.”

The case that led SCOTUS to overturn Chevron is Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, as in Gina Raimondo, the Commerce Department Secretary. Loper Bright Enterprises is a commercial fishing company. 

There’s a law that says the National Marine Fisheries Service can require fishing companies to allow federal agents on board as observers. But the agency also interpreted that statute to mean it could require the fishing companies to pay for the salaries of those federal observers. Loper fought that assumption all the way to the Supreme Court. 

In a concurring opinion, Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote, “Today, the Court places a tombstone on Chevron no one can miss.”

In her dissent, Justice Elena Kagan wrote, “Given Chevron’s pervasiveness, the decision to do so is likely to produce large-scale disruption. All that backs today’s decision is the majority’s belief that Chevron was wrong—that it gave agencies too much power and courts not enough.”

I want to bring in Caroline Cecot, Associate Professor of Law at Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University. Caroline, thank you for joining us right after this decision came down. I wanted to just first get your initial reaction to the impact of this decision.

Caroline Cecot: Great to be here. And my first reaction was, wow, they actually did this. I mean, this could turn out to be a big deal, especially in its practical implementation. And I guess another small reaction I had is, you know, how little the majority opinion authored by Chief Justice Roberts really thought about that practical, the practical implications of this or seem to downplay them.

Simone Del Rosario: All right, let’s expand on that a little bit more. What do you mean by that?

Caroline Cecot: Well, you know, one thing that I do a lot of research in is in the environmental space and in the energy space. And a lot of those statutes are very complex. They deal with a lot of issues of expertise, issues of trade-offs between competing interests. And when we look in those cases, you look at these statutory interpretation questions, they’re really fraught with intersecting expertise and political policy preferences that can change in different administrations, et cetera. The Chevron case is a perfect example of this, actually. In the Chevron case, this was the EPA under President Reagan adopting a more flexible interpretation of when a source would trigger more stringent standards. And the court had to sort out whether this interpretation was authorized by the statute. But the statute just wasn’t clear about how to answer that question. It talked broadly, obviously, about the importance of environmental protection, pollution reduction, but then it also talked about economic growth and how it’s important to think about those issues. So how should the court figure this out? Its options basically were make some decision on the question despite not having any expertise on the subject matter, the statute, or the appropriate balancing of these competing interests or any political accountability for its decision or allow the agency to make this choice as long as it’s within these reasonable bounds. And the court went with option two, and that’s essentially the Chevron decision on what to do in these kinds of cases. And meanwhile, in this case, I mean, in Loper -Brite, Chief Justice Roberts talked about statutory interpretation much more abstractly or simplistically and didn’t really grapple with these kinds of issues. The dissent, which was authored by Justice Kagan, offers numerous examples about how statutes implicate these kinds of expertise and policy choices.

Simone Del Rosario: The majority explicitly stated that any interpretations made to this point under Chevron’s stance. So we’re not going to see this huge 40 -year unraveling of case law, basically. But what do you envision happens next when agencies and businesses are navigating through largely vague statutes that they operate under?

Caroline Cecot: Right. So the majority’s answer essentially is that without Chevron, we go back to a time where the background rule on how a court deals with this is something referred to as Skidmore, Skidmore deference or Skidmore respect. And Skidmore, I’ll call it Skidmore deference, basically says that you kind of give the agency’s interpretation the respect it deserves based on how thoroughly reasoned it was. this is a very difficult concept to wrap one’s mind around. I teach administrative law and this is something we talk a lot about our students and I, you know, what are the difference? How would this be decided under Skidmore? You know, and not to just a few years ago when the court was deciding a case. Kaiser v. Wilkie, which was about a related concept about whether to defer to an agency’s interpretation of its own regulation, so different, not a statute, at oral argument, the chief justice had this funny remark that I actually play for students, which is, counsel, to get back to the stare decisis questions, I think the issue depends, at least in part, on how much of a change you’re asking. And one of the things I have trouble getting my arms around is if you start with our and recognizing the limitations on our that have accumulated over the years and you’re changing that to skidmore, which I find hard to get my hands around too. I think I know more about what a moiety is than I know what skidmore deference is. And so if the chief justice, you know, made this joke during oral arguments about how difficult it would be to apply skidmore, I, you know, I’m glad we’re not looking back, but looking at the future, I think this is going to lead to a lot of inconsistency and a lot of litigation. And probably, and I hate to say this, but this is based on some research by Ken Barnett, Christopher Walker, and Christina Boyd. We’re going to see more decisions that are influenced by the makeup of the panel, whether it’s a more liberal panel or more conservative panel.

Simone Del Rosario: How much of this is on Congress for writing these ambiguous laws to begin with? Do you think that Chevron has allowed them to put too much legislative authority on agencies?

Caroline Cecot: So some research has shown that Congress is aware of Chevron. So it is possible that in some ways they leave some ambiguities purposely because they want agencies to fill in these gaps using their expertise, which I would find perfectly appropriate within the bounds of constitutionally correct delegations. That said, now that there is no Chevron and Congress has to write statutes, I guess I’m in the camp where, and I don’t say this to degrade Congress in any way, I think it’s just impossible to write a perfect statute that includes everything at the outset. I think there’s something that happens with experience under a statute where agencies realize that something’s not working or the facts on the ground change. That’s something I care a lot about. And the agency has to respond to these changing facts on the ground. The whole scheme of administrative implementation of statutes is partly because we get some efficiency benefits from this. If we revert back to Congress has to do everything at the outset, we’re gonna see a lot of increases in inefficient regulatory actions, I think across the board.

Simone Del Rosario: But in the same vein, critics of Chevron have said that this precedent to this point has allowed these agencies far too much authority and deference to just say, this is how they interpret it, so that must be the way that it is, and kind of takes the issue away from courts, takes the issue away from Congress when the majority clearly believes that that subject does belong in the courts.

Caroline Cecot: It doesn’t take the issue away from the people though, because at least as compared to courts, agencies are more politically responsible and we see changing for presidential administrations all the time. I mean, and I say, I don’t mean this, I say this because, you know, Chevron, the doctrine of Chevron itself to give deference to agency interpretations, it’s neutral. And then the Chevron case itself, as you know, as I recounted, this was an agency that wanted to take a deregulatory action. But of course, Chevron could also allow an agency to take more aggressive agency action. Over time, the doctrine became associated with judicial acquiescence to these ever increasing grabs of power by the agency, or that’s how it’s sort of thought about, which started this anti -Chevron movement that even led to this question of whether to overrule it. But I think at its core, Chevron is just saying, look, here we have a statute that the agency has to that Congress wants the agency to implement given what’s happening on the ground. And here’s the way that the agency has decided to do this. Is it reasonable? If it’s not, then no. And obviously, I almost forgot the first step. If it goes against Congress’s language, that’s out. Congress is supreme. The agency has to do what Congress allows it to. But at the point that there’s not a clear answer and it’s a reasonable interpretation. I mean, I think it should go to the agency. And if the people disagree with this, you get a new, you have an election, you have a new presidency, you have a new administration, and then you have new ways of interpreting the statute. I mean, I don’t mean to also defend this process too much because I’m someone who I think it’s important to have predictability. So I say this as someone who knows that there’s another backstop, which is this other doctrine, State Farm, which ensures that agency decision-making is fact-based, that there’s logical connections. So, you know, even though there might be some policy reversals in the presidencies, it always requires some explanation. To me, this felt, to this point, this felt like a nice balance, making sure that courts aren’t making decisions that are actually politically motivated, but unaccountable, that leave Congress in sort of an impossible position and leave us in an inefficiency spiral, but also, you know, cabined because of this reasonableness inquiry.

Simone Del Rosario: Do you think that the National Marine Fisheries Service overstepped their bounds by saying that fishing companies had to pay for these federal observers?

Caroline Cecot: You know, that’s a tough one for me to answer because I think most people, most folks that I’ve talked to seem to think that even if there were not a world of Chevron, that the answer is that the marine fisheries overstepped in some way. When I looked at the history behind the statute itself, this is the Magnuson Stevens Act, that amendment that created this kind of situation where these councils are allowed to require observers on domestic vessels, but then also there’s a separate provision for one of the Pacific fisheries to be able to spread some of these costs in specific ways with some limits. I mean, that amendment happened because that fishery was the first, that council was the first pre that amendment to want to impose these costs. And, you know, during the deliberations on this, the industry protested in some ways of bearing the costs and wanted taxpayers to bear the costs. And the council had said, go to Congress with that, go to Congress with that, beg them for it, but we’re going to impose this on you because we need to save the fishery. And so to me, the more clear answer here is that The default is that the industry pays and if they don’t want to pay, they can lobby Congress and get their own provision, which is I think what happened with the Pacific fisheries where they got a provision that talked a little bit more about capping these fees.

Simone Del Rosario: As Gorsuch said, the court today placed a tombstone on Chevron. So regardless of how helpful you found it to be as far as keeping things more stable in this system between agencies and courts and businesses, it’s effectively gone. Who’s the big winner today?

Caroline Cecot: The big winner, well, definitely lawyers. Because what I said about, you know, skid more deference, being hard to wrap yourself around. I mean, I think this is going to trigger more litigation over agency action now on, you know, robust litigation on both the fact -based front with State Farm and the legal interpretation front with now skid more deference. Other than that, I mean, because I have a different view of Chevron, I didn’t see it as anti -regulatory or pro -regulatory. I think a loser in this in some ways is each presidential term, they’re going to have to grapple with a lot less flexibility in their statutes and a lot less ability to respond to emerging issues on the ground. without having to go to Congress. And then Congress is gonna be, they’re gonna have to change some things because as pessimistic as I was in my first recount, I mean, they do have to step up at this point in some ways, and at least responding to big emergencies that come up, they will need to, and that’s already been true in some ways with the major questions doctrine, but they will need to do a lot more, schedule a lot more time for legislation.

Simone Del Rosario: Yeah, Congress, do your job. Caroline Cecot, Associate Professor of Law at Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University. Thank you so much for your thoughts today as we just got this ruling down.

Caroline Cecot: Thank you, Simone.