My.

Because I'm freakishly large.

Do you see him?

Oh, yeah, There you go.

That's perfect.

That's better.

He's perfect.

I'm perfect.

You are perfect.

Yeah, I. I just said I'm perfect.

No, he's not saying you're perfect.

He said that I'm perfect.

I adjusted the cameras so that I'm.

Not as visible examining what he said.

He said I'm perfect.

So now it's like we're barely visible in each other's shots.

Right?

Yeah.

See, I'm not saying I'm the best cinematographer in the world.

You're just.

You're up there.

I, I'm, I'm up there.

I mean, I'm so.

Yeah.

Do you give yourself an executive producer title too?

Does that go on the resume?

I thought about putting credits on the show and putting my name on everything and just seeing how long it takes you guys to notice.

Are we live?

We going?

Oh, we've been live.

We've been live.

Yeah, yeah, we need an on air button.

No, no, I'm doing the Joe Rogan thing where we just like start arbitrarily and you never really know.

Never know.

So if you say some pretty cavalier.

Out the gate.

At the gate.

Yeah, it's going to be caught.

Got to be careful.

Yeah, Right.

Gotta be caught.

Welcome back to the number one financial literacy podcast in the world.

This is the higher standard.

Sitting in front of me is my partner in crime rockin the Ralph Lauren.

Ralph Lauren.

Christopher Nahibi.

Yeah.

I will point out my semi transparent T shirt was inappropriate for 4K.

Was very Bollywood of you.

Yeah.

Too many people pointed out nipple size and structure from the last episode.

So I decided on this one we would do it.

And structure.

Not just.

But structure.

They're directionally pointing down.

Christopher.

Yeah.

That tirzepatite isn't working that well.

Yeah, those estrogen blockers aren't really blocking.

Yeah, I'm thirsty.

Sitting across from me, my partner in time, the one and only Sayed Omar, everybody.

Thank you, my man.

And we're getting started early this episode.

And sitting behind the desk, none other than the Fijian himself, Rajeel.

What's up, Rajeel?

What's up, guys?

Nice to be back, guys.

We missed all last week.

I get a little something more than what's up, guys?

That's what I get every week.

I need a little.

Yeah, give me a little something.

Give me some.

Give me some pizzazz.

Fingers.

Hey, now we got to take a poll.

Now we got to do spirit fingers or Or Arun's throwback.

Pew, pew, pew.

You know what I learned the other day, which I did not know?

Yeah.

I thought, like, you know, the peace sign.

I didn't realize if you do it this way, it has a different connotation.

I have no idea.

I need.

I need a breakdown.

So if you throw your palm facing the person, two fingers up, that's peace.

That's, you know, the traditional knowledge that makes sense.

But apparently in some countries, two fingers forward, palm back of the hand forward.

It's like the middle finger.

Oh.

And yeah, in our culture back in Afghanistan, I guess the thumbs up is the middle finger.

I didn't know this, but I did the.

I did not know this.

I didn't know that either.

In the.

The comics that we did.

The last page was supposed to be rejill piecing out, but he did it calm forward.

Not got a lot of comments.

You got a lot of, like, DMs or what?

Oh, yeah.

People were like, bro, fuck you.

Yeah, people were mad.

Yeah.

People were legitimately mad.

And I was like, whoa, whoa, calm down.

I know you're talking about.

And they.

I literally got, like, screenshots.

Yeah.

From Google about what that actually means.

And I was like, damn.

I guess I am a bad person.

Not a bad person.

But before we get into today's episode, I had somebody that wanted me to give them a.

A subtle nod.

Oh, Camp Pop time.

Old school.

Saying, how dare you?

Yeah, how dare you?

Exactly.

A little.

A little shout out.

A secret shout out to Tuna Roll.

You know who you are.

Tuna Roll wanted a shout out on today's episode as Tuna Roll and strictly Tuna Roll.

Gotta hit fatty.

Tuna Roll.

Fatty, yeah.

The fattiest.

Right.

You ever had somebody do.

See, this happened to me today, and I sort of got this related to the show.

So somebody's like, hey, I'm gonna bring you lunch.

I was like, all right, cool.

And they were like, I'll get you like a sashimi bowl, right?

And I just said, all right, whatever, you know, just whatever, bro, whatever you're having, I'll have.

So they get here, right?

And I have this big, beautiful bowl of tuna and salmon and, like a little bit of octopus in it.

It's over the top, like, questionable now.

I'm like, wait, there's too much sashimi in this bowl, right.

To make me feel like it came from a reputable place, Right?

Oh, yeah.

And then this is going to go bad anyways, so we might as well.

Yeah.

I look over at the box of the person's Opening.

Yeah, same shape box.

Open it up.

Thai food.

I don't like that.

What is this?

I know you didn't stop at two places.

I'm like, no, they did.

Why, why was this unsatisfactory?

Fe.

Well, that's healthier, they said.

And I'm like, I.

Am I going to be pooping my.

Brains out later tonight?

I feel like, did you set me up?

Need some Tums.

And of course they, they, they stopped and looked at me like, you like it, right?

So now you got to eat it.

Yeah, you got it.

And there's bits of octopus in there.

I'm like, nobody puts that in a sashimi bowl.

No, no, I've tried octopus.

I can't remember if I like it or not.

I like octopus.

I like like the fire, like charred octopus.

Yeah.

My.

I wouldn't say that.

My kids are picky eaters, but their palates haven't developed enough yet to appreciate some things.

But they do like sushi, which I'm like really happy about.

Really?

My son doesn't like sushi.

Yeah, they like the nigiri rolls.

Nagiri.

I pronounce it right?

Yeah.

I've always been a big fan of sushi ever since I was a kid, but.

Since you were a kid?

Yeah, I've always been a big fan.

Wow.

I've never, I never been in the anti.

Also hard bro.

Since you were a kid.

Sushi, huh?

Yeah.

I mean I didn't have until I was like my 20s, but it's kidding me now.

Okay, me too.

I didn't have until I was 21.

Well, we got today's episode.

The Fed has a 2 trillion dollar secret that we think everyone should know and that we're going to expose a little bit.

So I should probably preface a little bit of this.

Some of you may or may not know.

I am a former banker.

And by former I mean really.

July 8th of this year I was in banking and I've now stepped away from banking for the foreseeable future.

How long were you in banking before that gives you the ability and I guess confidence to speak about this?

Well over 20 years.

But more importantly, I was a banker during what I think was the most abusive, invisible part of what we're about to talk about tonight.

Abusive?

Yeah.

I think it is a dirty little secret that nobody talks about and I think it should be something that's obvious to listeners at this particular juncture.

But you ever see like a talking head on CNBC and the traditional media and then you go to like social media to the people who seem like they should.

They're wearing a suit in a tie, or they seem articulate, or they seem really, really just, you know, bold.

You're like, okay, this person's got to know what they're talking about, right?

You wouldn't be saying like this, right?

They wouldn't just put anybody up here.

Well, as somebody who's gotten more and more experience over decades, I can tell you that I've seen things from these respected talking heads like on cnbc, I watched CNBC all day long.

And I can tell you that many of them do not know what they're talking about.

They'll use colloquial words, they'll use things that make it sound like they understand industry jargon.

Give me an example.

Buzzwords.

Give me an example.

So during the contagion period, which some of you may not recall, two years ago in March, there was the run on deposits at Silicon Valley bank, which led to Silicon Valley Bank, First Republic Bank, Signature bank, and several other bank failures along the way.

And during that time it was very stressful.

And a lot of people in the talking headspace on CNBC were talking about regional community banks for the first time in a very long time.

Generally speaking, they talk about the G sibs, globally systematic, important banks, right?

The bigger banks that you're probably more familiar with that you see on the corners of the streets.

But the fear for these community banks was headline risk, right?

And there was a lot of idiosyncratic, you know, nuance to how community and regional banks function.

They don't function like the big banks do because they can't afford to.

They don't have the scales of economy.

So really what they're doing is based on a very different relationship based offering.

Okay?

And yet they were talking about these banks possibly failing based on just pure analytics of balance sheet play.

And what I'll tell you is anybody who can look at a profit and loss statement and a balance sheet and say, I know everything about this company, that's not true.

Okay?

You might know how the company makes money, you might know some of the basics, but you don't know the company's culture.

You don't know the market segment just based on those things.

Unless you've studied it for a long time.

You'll see this a lot on social media, on Twitter, a lot of these, quote, bank analysts will make comments about things and they'll do it in a very just, you know, confident way.

Oh, this person's there, that person's there, that bank's going to happen.

This thing's not going to happen.

It happens all across all sectors.

Tesla, there's lots of who are really into Tesla.

I talked about the show before.

There's a guy who was really into Open Door and he was a medical resident, he was going to be a doctor.

And he went dark about a year, year and a half ago, which coincided with Open Door, who he was co signing hard, their stock downfall.

And they're kind of hanging in there, but they're certainly not what they once were.

You got into this huge argument with me on social media about how Open Door was going to revolutionize the space.

And I said back to him, no, there's lobbyist groups, there's a pretty significant amount of regulatory red tape and there's a lot of political infrastructure in place to prevent them from disrupting the space, like something like Robin Hood does, for example.

And he argued and argued and argued.

He seems so confident and knowledgeable that people were like, oh, this guy's right, you're wrong.

Because he's dropping all these facts that are completely irrelevant to the statement that I made.

And people want to think that they're hip to the new big thing.

Right.

That's going to revolutionize an industry.

So with the banking space, I saw this a lot.

You see people on the news talking about things that are happening.

And one of the things I saw during this time, and I still see to this day is everyone's like, oh, banks are, they're in trouble because there's not enough liquidity in the system and they're borrowing from the Fed window.

So what we're going to do tonight is we're going to talk about some of the unspoken realities of how this monetary system is actually structured in ways that the fomc, Jerome Powell, our president, no one ever talks about, but happen on a daily basis.

And everyone turns a blind eye to it.

Not because they don't want to bring it up, because 99% of the people out there, including bankers, don't understand it.

They don't understand it.

Right.

And I think with the topic that we're going to get into today, these things are in place because we've heard, we've heard this rhetoric before.

Too big to fail.

Yeah, right.

They're too big for us to let them fail.

Right.

I would argue that any bank failing is too big at this point.

Any financial institution.

Right.

Yeah.

Because what you have is you have a narrative headline risk, the news headline risk.

This is traditional media and social media.

They will carry the downfall of a bank and Silicon Valley Bank's a great example of this.

Right.

Peter Thiel makes a comment to get your money out of there, even says something on social media.

And it caused a run on deposits to the bank which forced that bank, which didn't have enough liquidity at the time, to generate liquidity by selling off assets at an economic loss.

And it was a parasitic cycle which led to their ultimate demise.

There's lots of fingers pointing at, you know, different agencies and responsibilities.

We're not going to get into that.

But what I will point out is as a result of all this, something happened in the economic ecosystem that no one talks about that we're going to open up the door on.

Okay, so we've all heard of the Fed raising rates and you've heard of them printing money, right?

Well, they do this in ways that aren't as simple as what we think of as traditional monetary policy.

Right.

There's another level lever that they pull that never seems to make this nightly news cycle.

And when they pull it, huge rivers of cash just literally disappear from the system overnight.

And if you know how balance sheets work, a line item on the balance sheet is typically your first one is cash, second one is cash, cash equivalents.

So cash equivalents can be much larger than cash in a snapshot of the day, but then the next morning could be very different.

But you, the consumer don't see that because all you get is quarter end financial numbers.

There you go.

Okay, so what's really happening day to day is actually surprising to many people.

And essentially on a balance sheet when it's, when something is labeled a cash equivalent, they're just basically referencing how liquid versus illiquid it could be.

Right?

Yeah.

So they're saying basically these items in, in this accounting field is as liquid.

As cash or as close to cash.

Yeah, exactly.

So for those of you listening right now going, oh my God, what are they doing?

Stay with us.

I know it's technical, but this actually opens up a bit of Pandora's box with some hidden I, it's, it's almost a conspiracy theory, but it's, it's real.

I've lived it.

And I think it, if anything, when I was doing research for the show and going through everything that we were going to cover tonight, it made me realize that, okay, the system is designed and set up to back to my original point that these institutions are too big to fail so that you can make better, well informed decisions and to invest your money knowing that you, it's a lot.

I don't want to call it safe, because I don't want to give out financial advice like that, but that it's safer than you think.

Right.

The stock market is ultimately going to continue to grow because the system is designed for companies to not fail.

Yeah.

So therein lies a question.

Is this all happening to protect the stock market?

To protect, protect Main Street?

Is it, Is it happening to protect consumer sentiment?

Nobody really knows.

And I'll let you guys all draw that conclusion at the end of this.

But I'll tell you what is happening and, and what is actually taking place.

So the Federal Reserve has something known as a repo facility, right.

It's the reverse repo facility, or RPR if you want to Google it after the show.

And it's essentially the world's safest overnight parking garage for money.

Big institutions, banks, money market funds, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, which are going to go public here not too long from now, they can pull up, hand over cash and the Fed hands them a ticket in the form of Treasuries.

Treasuries, Short term Treasuries.

The next morning they swap back and get their cash, but they get their cash plus interest back.

So if you're a bank, you've got two choices.

You can hold your cash overnight every single day, or towards the close of business, you send your cash to the Federal Reserve, they send you securities, and the next morning you trade it back and you get your cash plus some interest back every single morning.

Right, Exactly.

And if you think of it like from a real basic level, right.

If you're going through rocky times, right, a little bit of uncertainty with what's going on around you, and you had some money, you could give it to a friend and your friend promises you that he'll pay it back, Right.

And if your friend's Elon Musk.

Yeah.

Pretty sure he's gonna pay you back.

I'm pretty sure he's gonna pay it back.

Or you can hold on to it and just say, I'm just gonna wait.

I'm just, I'm just going to wait.

I'm just going to wait to see what I want to do with this.

Right?

Yeah.

Or I could find something that's going to guarantee me a little bit of interest back on my money and that's the safest route.

So let me just do this and make a little bit of money instead of risking it by lending it out to Billy, who I don't know is going to pay me back.

Billy always gets trashed on the show, by the way.

Billy.

Billy always gets Trashed the show.

Billy always gets trashed.

Can't trust dude named Billy.

Why?

So essentially this is a no risk, no drama and better return than any other ultra safe investment in the market.

So if you're a bank, there is not another ultra, like super safe investment you can make, particularly overnight, that's going to return this to you.

So why wouldn't you take advantage of it?

Yeah, absolutely.

It's better than sitting there not earning anything.

That's right.

So the Fed says it's just a short term tool, right.

To manage interest rates and to keep market stable.

But since 2021, it's turned into a massive cash sinkhole.

At one point holding over $2 trillion every single night.

That's so wild.

Yeah, that's enough to buy every home in New York City twice, by the way.

I thought, and I saw that you put that line in there.

I was like, that, that's good.

Just put things into perspective.

So how did it get so big.

That, like, is there not a cap or a limit to like, how much or how often banks can use this?

Not that I'm aware of.

Right.

As a matter of fact, during one point during the contagion period, banks were told, and I'm not going to say who by who or by where, but they were told, no, no, no, no.

You are borrowing from the window every night.

There you go.

Yeah, yeah.

This is what you're doing.

This is what you're doing.

Yeah, exactly.

Right.

And look, the spin on this, right, is could be this is a tool used by banks and that the Federal Reserve put out there to help big institutional players.

And now really all, all players in this space.

Right?

Play on play, play on play.

You know, I mean, Jill.

So I like when.

HE CHUCKLES so that they can make sure that they don't panic.

Because during volatile times or times of uncertainty, right, they, these institutions, they make their money off net interest margin, right.

At the end of the day.

So if they're sitting on the sidelines, not doing anything with their money, what's going to happen to them ultimately if they're not showing earnings.

Right.

And it's going to slowly make them do worse and worse quarter after quarter, or they can use this tool to still generate a little bit of income.

Yeah.

And then we take it under the context of we didn't have a bank bailout during the contagion period.

Right.

We triggered the systemic risk exception rule.

And I should be clear here on how this plays out.

FDIC insurance covers up to $250,000 per vesting on an account.

So if it's just Saeed and me, that's one vesting.

If it's just me alone, that's another vesting.

So every account that I have up to $250,000 will be covered in my vestings versus our vestings.

So if it's like an LLC that you own 100%, that's got 250,000, that's another vesting.

Right.

Okay.

And so on and so on.

A bit different for businesses and consumers, but essentially speaking sense.

Okay.

So the only way to, to cover more than that with the FDIC insurance fund is if you trigger something known as a systemic risk exception rule.

And even seasoned bankers and regulators that, that I know are not familiar with this rule and to paraphrase it down and distill it down into what I would call just a simple concept, if one bank were to fail, that's not enough to trigger covering the uninsured deposits, any of these deposits above that FDIC minimum coverage.

Right.

But if you have the fear of a systemic risk in the system, you are allowed to trigger this rule and cover all deposits, not just the insured deposits.

Okay.

So if multiple banks fail across multiple sides of the country, you trigger this rule and guess what?

They're all taken care of.

At the same time you have other regulators.

So to be clear, if you're listening to this saying, well, Chris, you know, shouldn't all these regulators all be aligned?

No, matter of fact, banks have different charters.

You can be a state member bank, you can be a state non member bank, you could be an OCC charter, you could be primarily regulated by the fdic, you could be primarily regulated by the frb, you could be primarily regulated by the occ.

So if you're a person that banks at a certain bank, the like, should you care which one it's regulated by or.

I don't think so, but I think you need to understand that the regulation is different based on the institution and the size.

For a great example of this, you get into the FDIC's large bank program when you cross $10 billion threshold or more.

Yeah, there's, there's additional thresholds at different dollar amounts.

I think the next one's up to like 25 billion.

But there's different requirements and additional scrutiny that's required as they get larger.

Right.

So that's something that customers should know of their bank, that if they cross certain thresholds, they just fall under more and more scrutiny.

Right.

And so that they need to make sure once you cross the say that $10 billion threshold, they're basically getting looked at year round.

So as the banks were failing or there was a threat of fear, the Federal Reserve was getting pumped full of cash every single night and paying out that cash plus interest every single night.

And the question then remains, were the banks bailed out but discreetly?

Right.

Was this helping them out significantly or was it just a modest income to their net interest margin?

How they make money, And I don't know that anybody has a clear, definitive answer, but to say that they didn't receive some type of help during this time would be disingenuous.

Yeah.

So the treasury cut back on short term bonds, leaving money market funds scrambling for somewhere to stash cash and money market funds.

There's another person who can take advantage of this vehicle.

The RP became the go to spot, like a free valet for excess money.

Everybody who could was dumping money into this because they got back their money overnight in interest.

Why wouldn't you do it?

Right.

So how banks played it is interesting.

And this is where conspiracy watchers are going to start going, wait a minute.

And now we got aliens visiting in this.

I don't know who to trust.

Oh, that sphere in Mexico, what was that?

Not only is this fear in Mexico, but you've heard about this giant, I guess some Harvard researcher.

I want to say, Rajill, you could probably pull this up.

Yeah, it's on the other side of the sun.

Yeah.

Atlas?

Yeah, no, it's on the other side of the sun.

It's coming across, I think Saturn's rings or Jupiter's rings.

Saturn's rings, I think it is.

And there's like a 0.005% chance that it is a natural orbit process.

So they're already saying, and the way it's approaching the planet is it's going to approach from behind the sun by the time it gets here.

Oh, yeah.

Out of our field of vision.

So you're not even going to be able to see it coming.

So you won't even know if it's right.

You know, when you can, when you can see it clear because it's closer, you won't be able to see because the sun's in the way.

Which if you're an alien race trying.

To go, hey, I mean, it's kind of.

Yeah, you know, pop out.

Yeah, yeah.

Go bing, bop, boom, boom, boom.

Look at you.

And if you look back at the departure date from the galaxy, they believe that it came from.

It came about the same time that we sent out our first radio waves.

Would have landed there.

Oh, wow.

So I didn't know that piece.

Yeah, there's a lot of little pieces that kind of lump together that make you go, huh?

Yeah.

I think it's called something I ATLAS is the name of it.

Regil if you're looking it up.

Three Eye Atlas or something like that.

Yeah.

But is.

Is so the, the trajectory's off.

The way it's moving is off where it's coming from has connections in time.

It's scheduled to be.

I think I want to be in the Earth's orbit around November.

So by that time.

There you go.

3I ATLAS.

There it is.

The NASA funded ATLAS Asteroid Terrestrial Impact Laser Alert System Survey Telescope in Rio, Chile, first reported observations to the minor planet center of Comet 3I Atlas on July 1, 2025.

But it's not a comet.

Doesn't have a tail like a comet, doesn't have the glow like a comet.

So they know that it is not in fact a comet.

Right.

These pre discovery observations date back to June 14, so they've known about it for a while.

But if you look at the trajectory, there it is right there.

Right.

It's going to fall.

See where it comes close to Earth?

Yeah.

It's going to fall right behind the sun when Earth is on the other side as it passes by Mars.

That's how they're able to see it now.

And it could just be rock, but there's a lot of speculation.

It's a little too close for comfort though, bro.

Yeah, it doesn't make me feel too good about it.

You're on NASA's side, so there's gonna be no conspiracy theory there.

Google, Google Harvard researchers or just say like Harvard researcher 3i Atlas or something like that.

It's pretty, it's pretty wild.

Some of the claims that are being made.

There you go.

A recent Harvard study suggests that the interstellar object three Eye Atlas, previously identified as a comet, could potentially be alien technology.

Come on.

Avi.

Avi Loeb, a Harvard astrophysicist.

That's a pretty good pedigree.

I mean, he's smarter than me.

I mean, he's not a podcaster.

Okay.

And his colleagues, so there's more of them.

I love, I love God.

Google's AI overview.

When you research topics like this, it's so good.

The breakdown.

Well, they've raised the possibility that this object, the third interstellar object ever detected, might be an extraterrestrial artifact.

While other scientists maintain it is a comet.

The Harvard's team, the Harvard team's research has sparked debate and calls for further investigations.

Yeah, I think when Harvard's like, yo, dog, that ain't a comment.

That's probably somebody you should listen to, bro.

Like, you know, I mean, he's like, I'm not saying that like you guys shouldn't be worried, but I feel like.

You should Google probability of.

Just put.

Type in the exact same thing.

Just put the word research.

Enter probability of natural or probability of something and see what it comes up as.

Probability cause.

There you go.

That's the one.

Probable cause.

Yeah, whatever.

Just hit enter, bro.

Where is it at?

Yeah, there you go.

So there you go.

Size.

It's estimated to be 12 miles wide.

It's basically Independence Day.

Yeah, that's what's happening here.

That is what's happening.

I was hoping to give the probability.

He said it was like a 0.05% or 0.005.

It's crazy.

That's all I'm saying is it's absolutely nuts.

It's gonna be nuts when like Elon walks out of it.

Hey guys, I just want to let you know that Starlink is.

You're all prompts.

All of you are prompts.

You've been prompting yourselves.

Yeah, there's a whole theory about that.

Right?

Yeah.

That we're living in a.

Basically a giant, I guess, false dream slash sim.

Can you imagine that this whole time you could have been like one of Ferrari and it just appears I could have done it, but you couldn't tap in.

Jesus.

Well, some of the stuff that's been happening to me on a personal level lately, I feel like I am like joking with myself from another dimension.

Yeah, you're all salty.

Do you want to talk about it?

You're very salty.

We can talk about very salty at the tail end of the show.

I can.

I'm like, this is literally salt.

This is.

Is literally like I'm laughing at myself from another dimension.

But anyways, it's.

Bro, it's.

It's.

It's salty in here.

I had to turn the AC back on.

Banks could borrow from this line money cheaply cheaper than anywhere else.

They can.

They could really park it.

So they parked it at this, the.

The banks, the Fed's facility.

And they earned a risk free spread.

A pure arbitrage play every single night.

In other words, the.

The Fed was quietly paying banks to take cash out of the economy of lending instead of lending it to businesses and consumers.

Right.

So.

And that, and that's kind of.

That's the other side of this.

Right?

It's it's.

If you feel like right now, if the banks feel right.

Because I.

We know what the data is showing.

Yeah.

Up until now, up until the, the revision and the, the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics didn't get fired up until that point.

Moment of silence.

Yeah.

Moment of silence.

Yes.

Moment signs for that career.

Yeah.

It's over.

Yeah.

Up until then we, we, we've been fed that the economy is doing great.

We're all swimming in gold.

You guys all got jobs, you guys are doing wonderful.

Right.

But the banks on the other hand were like, I don't think so.

So you know what we're going to do instead?

Instead of giving this money out where I don't know if I'm going to get it back, why don't I just park it over here?

That's right.

So they're not lending as much to other place to go.

Because here's, here's the problem is normally the way banks of money make money is, is they take your deposits in, they give you a 2% interest rate on your deposit, they lend it out for more than that and that's the arbitrage they make.

But there's risk in those loans they're loaning against.

Going bad.

Yeah.

Over greater small.

Right.

Smaller businesses carry greater risk.

Right.

Less security in your loan if it's not secured by your home or it's secured by inventory or something like that carries more risk.

Right.

So banks are saying, well I can make money overnight by just giving it to the Fed and take no risk at all.

I like that.

Yeah.

So it did slow down lending to you, the consumer.

Like why is anybody telling the consumer this?

Right.

You know, why isn't the consumers have.

To find out by applying and not hearing back or applying and getting declined.

Or even then they weren't told.

Like why is the bank being so tight with the money?

Yeah.

Well now you know.

And yet every single person, like every senator, every FOMC person you've seen mentioned, like everywhere you see in the news.

I watch the news more than anybody else that I know of.

All day long I got CNBC playing in the background.

I'm talking to bankers, I'm talking to people in the capital market side.

Even now socially, when I'm just checking in and saying hi to people.

You want to hire me?

Please.

But you know I'm doing all that stuff.

Yeah, you just randomly hit people.

What's up, bro?

Hey, long time dog.

Remember that one time.

When are we going to grab lunch?

We gotta check my schedule.

You don't need to check it.

Let me tell you right now, I'm available every day.

So there's two things I want to say here at this point in time, which I think are important to note about my current endeavor.

Number one, can you imagine being the Bureau of Library Statistics, like, head and trying to get a job?

Weren't you fired from your last job?

Based on what I read, you misrepresented a lot.

Yeah.

I'm pretty sure you're not good with counting.

Or you were really good and you didn't read the room.

How does she.

She doesn't get another job.

Right.

She's done.

Yeah.

It's like, what do you do there?

How do you explain it?

Be like, I reported the real numbers.

Yeah, but you should have read the room.

So this situation came up, and Rajille, this is not you, okay?

I don't want you to think this is you.

It's not you going to read between the lines.

He's like.

He's overanalyzing.

He's already overanalyzing.

So I got.

Somebody asked me to go to lunch.

Hey, we should catch up.

Go to lunch.

Because, you know, you know, no longer working.

You got more time, like, yeah, I.

Would love to do that.

We should go to lunch.

We go to lunch.

And I know that the proper thing to do is we should each pay our own split.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

No, of course.

But I'm also unemployed.

Oh.

At that point.

Yeah.

Like, you know, and especially if it's the person that, like, yo, like, come on.

You know, so read the room.

When the check came, dude looked at me was like, hey, man, no, stop.

Yeah.

And I'm like, I'm unemployed.

He's like, with a black card.

Unemployment.

That's not appropriate.

That's.

That's not appropriate.

I respect it, though.

That's a.

That's a paradigm shift right there.

It's not okay.

Unless you're a really, really, really close friend.

Right.

That.

No, because I would do that to you.

Oh.

Like, in front of the cashier, I would tell them, hey, he's got the black card.

Make him pay.

Why do I got pay?

That doesn't do any good.

Yeah, we just heard me rant.

Like, we went on vacation.

Like, I was not getting the service I expected out of the card.

I was getting all high and mighty.

I'm like, this is not what I pay for.

Right.

Well, look, so there is.

There is an argument.

There is an argument to be made.

Let's.

Let's say.

Let's also paint or Expose the other side of this coin, okay.

Where.

Not the conspiracy side.

If the Fed dual mandate really is to maximize employment and make sure they stabilize prices, Right?

There is an argument to be made that providing this service which ultimately helps these institutions that are too big to fail, not fail, and not cause the ripple effects that would ultimately trickle down all the way to everyday people, right?

Where if.

If financial institutions were to fail and then you got all that headline risk again, and then lending tightens up for not only people trying to buy a home, but car loans.

Think about business loans, right?

Businesses start going under, and then it's just a trickle down effect to where it ultimately impacts everyday people.

Then they're kind of doing their job with this tool too.

Okay, let me.

Allow me to retort.

Fair, right?

Here's the way I look at this, right?

The Federal Reserve serves the American people.

They're supposed to.

Yeah.

No, they.

The economy.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Their job is to protect America's currency and monetary policy.

Right?

Amen, brother.

Are you allowed to make that reference?

What?

I don't know that you can make a Hulk Hogan reference.

Why.

Why can't.

Yeah, yeah.

Why?

You can be Randy Savage.

Why can't I be Hulk Hogan?

So you know Joey Swole?

Yeah, Joey Swole.

Love that guy.

Yeah.

Stud, right?

How do you not love Joey?

He's local, by the way, in Newport Beach, Joey paid homage to the passing of Hulk Hogan by.

By wearing a Hulk Hogan outfit and working out in the gym and posting about it in a very kind, in thoughtful way.

You got torn to shreds or what?

And got torn to shreds because there was.

He was supporting somebody who had, I believe, racial tendencies.

Did he?

Come on.

Oh, yeah.

He was a pretty vocal racist.

Was he?

Yeah.

And Dinesh, who's been on the show.

I did not know this.

Dinesh, who's been on this show.

Why?

Why you got to do this to me?

What you call this?

I didn't know this.

Yeah, neither did Joey.

Right, right.

So Dinesh, who'd been on the show, points out, like, hey, you're supporting a racist.

And then social media, because he's got a whole cohort of followers went after Joey.

Wow.

Then Joey was gonna pull off social media altogether.

This is a guy who got millions of followers.

He's the CEO of Gym Positivity.

Oh, you would think that because he was part of the wwe.

Wwf?

And it's part of that brotherhood only see the negative.

Yeah, they don't want.

They don't want to say, okay, this guy Said some dumb stuff.

Mm.

But maybe he was different.

Or can his legacy be beyond, like, this personality that wasn't public as much?

Uh huh.

Yeah.

I think most people know him from his days.

Like wrestling.

Yeah.

I'm not saying there's a.

There's a right or wrong, but I'm just saying, like, you know, you're basically supporting that guy.

Hey, Joey's back on social media.

Maybe you.

Maybe you won't be canceled.

Okay.

Yeah, just bring it.

Amen, brother.

Yeah, you.

I would have thought Randy Savage would have been the survivor out of this situation that you could quote, oh, yeah.

Snap into his Slim Jim.

Millennials.

Like, what?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

What's going on?

I don't get it.

So I thought this whole conversation about banks and money might sound a little innocuous.

And I. I anticipated that you would have that response where you would say, okay, this might be justified, so allow me to retort.

Okay, I'm retorting.

Please retort.

In the 1930s, right, sterilization of gold inflows was a thing, right?

The Fed and the treasury literally locked away gold to keep it from expanding the money supply during the Great Depression.

Keep in mind, October 29, 1929, Great Depression, October 30, 1929, the day after things have changed, but you're still in the depression for quite some time.

So October, November, December, now, 1930s, are locking away gold to stop people from being able to spend it.

Wild.

Crazy, right?

Locking up your money.

You can't.

You can't touch this.

Don't.

I'm doing all the references.

This is so bad.

All the references.

I'm just trying to have a good podcast man.

I would come in here with some MC Hammer pants on one of these days.

You heard they were releasing the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in 90s version of theaters again?

Yeah.

As they should.

I made my son watch it.

I'm like, you're gonna watch this.

This is really.

This is a classic.

April wearing that, like, neon vest.

I know he got real uncomfortable at one of those scenes, because I think one of the scenes, one of the turtles was looking at the girl, like, with googly eyes.

And he was.

And then Adam, like, put his head, like, under the blanket because he too, got googly eyes.

Is it inappropriate to ask if you've ever seen a turtle's ding ding?

Yes, I've never seen one.

Why did your mind go there?

Because that's the scene you talk about, right?

Like, I don't even know where it would come out of.

Right.

I don't know.

What are the logistics there?

Could probably pop out the shell.

Oh, yeah.

I mean, it's got to come out the shell.

It has to.

But how does that work?

Does it go backwards?

No, they come out of the shell and then they go back in the shell.

No, no, they stay in the shell.

No.

I've seen turtles mate with the shell on.

Yeah, they made with the shell on.

Okay, I need you to look this up.

That's got to be.

Honestly, your profile.

That has to.

That's got to be.

Oh, man.

I'm employed.

Yeah, you're employed.

I'm not employed.

You want to whisper in my ear?

I'll say.

I'm going to leave this one alone.

I've legitimately seen the mate.

Like, where does it come from?

Yeah.

My Google search history.

Where does a turtle's ding, ding come from?

Yeah.

Oh, boy.

This got arrows.

There's an indent on the shell on the males.

Wow, look at that.

Turtle mating involves a variety of species specific corporations, courtship rituals and mating techniques.

Mounting the female, but generally.

Generally involves a male mounting the female, and fertilization is internal.

Sea turtles often mate in the water, where tortoises typically mate on land.

Courtship rituals.

He's got to ask for permission first, though.

Nuzzling, scratching, or even aggressive displays of males.

Yeah.

Between males.

I am so confused.

Nobody.

None of these pictures show a. Yeah.

Oh, wait, hold on.

Hold on a second.

I want a pet turtle.

Can you have a pet turtle?

Yeah.

They live a long time.

No, man.

Are you allowed to have them?

Because, you know you can't, like, you can't have a pet monkey.

I can't tell you guys any intimate stories anymore in my childhood.

This is what you guys do to me.

What do you mean?

What do you guys do?

Because the guy had a pet monkey.

Is he gonna make fun of his whole life?

I just want to know, Oliver, was.

What'd you do with your pet monkey, bro?

Okay, Matito.

Yeah.

All right, so let's go into the sterilization of gold, shall we?

Yeah.

After the US left the gold standard for domestic transactions in 1933, thanks to FDR's executive order banning private gold ownership.

That's right.

Franklin D. Roosevelt banned private gold ownership.

Imagine somebody trying to do that today.

Yeah, I know.

They just go all in on bitcoin.

Yeah.

If someone even scratched the surface of that, I'd be like, I'm buying all the bitcoin I can make.

And NFDR is, like, idolized.

Yeah.

No, there's a lot of presidents who are Idolized for.

Did you know that, by the way?

Just interesting little tidbit that George Washington's teeth were not made of wood, despite popular belief.

Why did they say that then?

They're made out of, like.

Like, some of the teeth of, like, slaves.

There's some teeth of, like, animals.

And like, maybe it's.

Maybe it's a combination of things.

There was no wood in it then.

It was, like, metal.

Then why tell some wood?

But, yeah, I don't know why I got this whole, like, weird.

That's weird.

Yeah.

There's a lot of stories we were told as kids that.

That just.

They're just not true.

Like, somebody was like, I'm going to tell the story and see.

I'm going to catch it one day.

Yeah.

ChatGPT.

Got to catch them all slipping, right?

Like, will chamber scoring 100 points.

That didn't happen.

Really?

Nah.

No way they were letting him score, bro.

He finished the game with 100.

But that's still.

Stop.

That still happened.

They let him score 100 points.

It doesn't matter.

It still happened.

You can't say they let him.

That's not you.

That's not you.

100 points.

Yeah.

And he's all proud.

That doesn't matter.

It's not it.

You're talking about one thing that's completely not true.

Like, they're.

They're.

I don't think it happened.

I don't really.

I'm being honest.

I'm gonna say it.

I love the guy, but, God, you.

Are so in love with LeBron James.

Does he know this?

Did he serve you a cease and assist for the pregnancy photo?

I hope you spit that out.

I'm trying to get on his good side.

Yeah, I bet you are.

You.

You were pregnant, and you're not him.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

No, no, bro.

All right.

The US Government started hoarding gold like crazy.

During this time, by law, every ounce of gold in the Fed's vaults had to be matched by new money in circulation.

That was a gold standard.

And people are.

Some people to this day are still pissed off.

We went off of it.

That meant, in theory, every shipload of gold that came into New York harbor automatically expanded the money supply.

Well, the problem was, by the mid-1930s, gold was pouring into the U.S. europe was sliding toward war, and investors wanted their wealth safe in America.

America's economy was relatively stable, making it a magnet for capital flight.

During this whole crazy war that was happening, people were like, where to put my money?

I put it in the United States of America because If I put it there, no one's gonna take it, right?

Yeah.

Well, that meant all that boats, boatloads of gold coming here meant that we had to print more money.

More money being in the supply chain means that it's devaluing the currency.

If it devalues the currency, guess what?

Now you got a problem for our American consumer.

So if the Fed had let all that gold translate into new dollars, it would have caused a surge in new money supply, stoking inflation.

When the Fed and Treasury were already nervous about overheating certain sectors.

So much, like recently, they took the sterilization trick.

And you know how much I love sterilization.

This is why they say you got to study history, right?

Because it's.

It's going to repeat itself.

Instead of letting gold inflows create more money, the Fed and the treasury did something sneaky.

Sneaky being the operative word.

These are not my words.

Literally, how it's described in Wikipedia.

They locked the gold away in a special account at the treasury where it didn't count toward the money supply.

Imagine that we're on the gold standard.

Everything that's in.

In the vaults, that has to be backed by real cash.

But this block of gold over here.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You don't see it.

It doesn't count.

Right.

What?

The actual shit.

Why?

Yeah.

Who makes that acceptable?

Yeah.

And who gets to decide how much?

Yeah.

Some very shadowy stuff going on there.

Right.

So this continued on for a little bit of time.

Think of it like receiving a check, but immediately sticking it in a drawer instead of depositing it.

It exists, but not in circulation.

This process was called sterilization.

Likely and literally neutralizing the money.

The monetary impact of gold inflows.

So why is this interesting?

You might be asking, Chris, why are we talking about history?

This is a financial literacy podcast.

Hidden monetary control.

Okay.

This affects all of us.

There was no headlines screaming the Fed shrinking money supply.

Just quiet accounting moves that had massive effects on credit and liquidity.

Political drama.

It was controversial inside the Roosevelt administration.

Some wanted to use the inflow to stimulate the economy.

Others feared inflation or asset bubbles.

And guess what?

It backfired.

Okay.

When the US tightened liquidity this way in 1937, combined with other fiscal tightening.

Sound familiar?

The economy fell back into a severe recession.

Industrial production collapsed, unemployment spiked back over 19%, and the stock market tanked.

We are not doing a different thing today.

Right.

Almost all the factors are nearly identical.

It's true.

I think the landscape of everything, though, is different in the sense that I don't think that they can allow.

And we talk about this on other episodes because of the debt crisis that we're under right now.

And with debt to GDP being above 100%, right.

They can't allow it to collapse like that again.

So I. I believe they.

They put a system like this in place so they can have more control.

So my problem with all of that, which is fine, disclosure, you, the government works for us, the people.

Yeah.

Disclosure isn't important.

In an ideal world.

Yeah.

But not an ideal world.

That's not you, but you.

We all know I'm not their child.

Their job is not to protect me from the reality.

You work financial situation, you work for me.

Yeah.

You're on a need to know basis here, Chris.

Yeah, yeah.

You don't need to know about this.

Just trust in the system.

Yeah.

Thanks, dad.

Yeah, but what's the system?

I just want to know the system.

I'll trust it.

Yeah.

Just tell me the system.

Be honest with me.

Right?

Yeah.

You're gonna be honest about the FOMC meetings and you're gonna show me the trans.

In the minutes.

We all know what's going on in the minutes.

Come on, man.

I'm getting those unemployment numbers for everybody else.

Is anyone know, anyone that's ever taken minutes?

Know, like, hey, listen, I've seen Trading Places.

I know you guys know about the commodities market.

You're not taking minutes.

Yeah, you know the person taking minutes.

You're not taking minutes.

You've been told what to put in the minutes.

A. Stevie, don't put that in the minutes.

We know Billy can't be trusted.

Billy.

This little Billy can't be trusted.

Can't take him anywhere.

God damn.

Billy.

Is there any adults you know that go by the name Billy?

Honestly, if you're an adult.

Yeah.

Billy Madison, bro.

Billy Madison.

Yeah.

The greatest.

The greatest Billy of all time, by the way.

That's a by the way.

By the way.

I saw Happy.

Happy Gilmore too.

Such a great movie.

I haven't seen Happy Gilmore.

So good.

Is it really good?

Oh, yeah.

Okay.

No, no, I don't want it to tarnish the.

The original.

No, it's a lot of.

They go back and forth.

Yeah.

So yeah, it's.

It's a feel good movie.

They'll take you back to when you first watched Happy Gilmore and it's cool.

Like his family members are all in it.

So his wife, his daughters, they're in it.

Yeah.

I will refrain from judging until such time as I have seen said movie.

I watched episode one of Wednesday Last night.

What is that?

Honestly, the last show that you put me on.

The last show, you put me on Severance.

Yeah.

Not.

I'm not too thrilled right now.

That's because you work in corporate America.

Jedi mind.

You're like, no, but the way it ended, too.

I'm like, come on, Cliffhanger.

It doesn't make sense to me.

What do you mean?

Like, season one?

No, two.

He's too smart for this.

What are you doing?

Why'd you go back?

Spoiler alert.

Because of love.

No, bro, what do you mean?

He knows that he's got an Audi.

But he loves.

Yeah, but he knows that this is fake.

It ain't real.

It's as real as you want it to be.

Nah, dog, I'm not buying it.

God.

Too good for this.

He just.

He just left his wife there, too.

So you're the fat guy in Severance.

You're the guy who wants to make love to your own wife.

I am that guy.

Yeah.

Yeah, I'm him.

I am.

You don't want to live in that fictional world.

Honestly, when I was watching Cyprus, I'm like, that's me.

Yeah, I know.

I thought that too.

In fact, all I need.

All you need is a pair of, like, you know, aviators on or something.

Just like.

Yeah, okay, so Saeed wants to know why this is interesting.

Rajill, I assume you want to know the same thing.

Yeah, hit me with it.

Why did.

Why.

Why did I get more than a.

Two word response out of you tonight?

Are you trying to piss me off?

Regill, what's going on?

Come on, look, you're so worked up.

Get into the mic, boy.

Yeah, look, he got you.

He got you going.

The mic is right next to me.

He's got you going.

Buzz flowing, bro.

Just the acoustics in here aren't as good as in the podcast.

See what he's doing?

See, he feels left out.

You see what he did there?

You see what he did there?

I saw what you did there.

I can see you.

I'm looking at you.

Yeah, bro, you're in the podcast space.

Yeah, the acoustics over here.

You didn't have to close the door on him, though.

You did close the door.

It's a glass door.

Yeah, but you didn't have to.

It's just.

Hey, Rajille, can you see this?

I can't.

Hidden monetary control.

There was no headline screaming this stuff.

We already talked about that.

The political drama.

Well, it backfired.

You know that.

So why does this matter matter today?

Both sterilization and today's reverse repo facility share the same DNA.

The play remove liquidity from the financial system without the public fully understanding how or even being given full disclosure.

The goal, prevent excess money from fueling inflation and unwanted speculation without telling you yet again.

Right.

The risk pulling too much liquidity can choke off growth and trigger unintended shocks.

The difference is the medium.

Right.

1930s did it with gold in vaults, and today they're doing it with electronically cash hiding cash in treasuries overnight at banks.

So to bring it back to the beginning of the episode, top of the show, when Chris was talking about these talking heads, how they refer to this and how even the Fed refers to it is quantitative easing versus quantitative tightening.

Right?

When you start hearing these QT versus qe, this is what they're talking about.

When they're tightening, they're pulling money out of the system.

Right.

And when they're easing, they're allowing more money to flow into the system.

And if they feel like the billions of dollars that they've injected into the economy because of the pandemic need to slowly start coming out, you tell me how they're going to do it.

How do you.

How do you reverse that?

Well, not only that is.

The other question is I have.

Is how many of these banks are now dependent on this as.

As an income stream for them, right?

How do you tape them off this once you get it, if you're at a high enough leverage to buy all the real estate in New York twice.

They'Re on that Hunter Biden crack, bro.

They needed.

They need.

You guys are killing my political aspirations.

I can't run for office now.

They need another hit, bro.

Stop the base.

Want another hit?

Shout out to Hunter Biden.

Shout out.

Hey, I feel like I'm on the right side of this equation by not shouting them out.

I don't.

I don't.

First of all, we can't make.

We.

It's unacceptable to make crack sound sexy.

It's not sexy.

It's not sexy at all.

But you also can endorse.

I'm not endorsing a racist on one hand, and you did.

Christopher, you said Hulk Hogan was a good guy.

Did not.

I did not.

And I did not endorse it.

Don't say.

Don't put that.

You did ra.

You want, you want.

You want to co sign this?

Please don't co sign this rail.

Come on, we're friends.

So in 2006, right, Hogan had a show.

He played Young Jeezy's song three times in a row.

And started singing it.

Yeah.

How can you be a racist, bro?

Exactly.

Google Hulk Hogan racist comments.

Stop it, Christopher.

Don't do this.

Just saying.

Why are you messing with the man?

Hey, you're contributing to the.

You're contributing to this.

It's hurting his legacy.

I was a fan of him and his legacy, and then.

But then as soon as he.

Wow.

Oh, jeez.

Yeah, look at that.

I think he was just trying to.

Yo, he knows how to go viral, bro.

True story.

Hulk Hogan flipped me off on the freeway once.

True story.

Not a racist at all.

No, true story.

No, he.

He was.

I was.

I was in the fast.

I was in the fast lane, going 68 miles an hour.

He wasn't having.

He's like, get out the way, bro.

He gave me the middle finger, honked at me, too.

And I respected him so much more for it.

I was like, apologies, Mr. Hogan.

Carry on.

I have so many questions that I'm just not gonna.

Why?

What do you mean?

You don't believe it?

No, I believe it.

I just.

Yellow Hummer, too.

Of course.

It was, of course.

Raised.

Yeah.

Also likely.

Yeah.

Was he wearing a hat?

No.

Bandana banana.

Yeah.

And shades.

That was his look.

Does nobody care that he was bald with long hair?

He owned it.

He owned the horseshoe.

It's just weird.

Yeah.

Right?

You could have got a hair transplant.

Yeah.

How he was able to stay relevant for that long.

You know how they found him?

No.

You want to know.

What happened?

He had a heart attack, right?

Yeah, but they didn't really explain the circumstances.

Oh, man.

He was found in a lazy boy chair with a certain porn on repeat with, like, napkins and stuff around him and all that stuff.

Seriously?

Yeah.

That's terrible.

Terrible way to go.

You know what?

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's unfortunate for his kids.

Yeah.

It's not a.

Apparently his daughter and him weren't even on speaking terms.

I saw.

I saw that.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's.

That's unfortunate.

Why are we doing this to.

To Hogan, bro?

I.

Why are we doing this in the show?

I feel like this is the after show commentary.

Like, we just.

I know.

This is what we.

This is usually what we talk about in the green room.

Yeah.

The behind the scenes, actually.

Jill apparently doesn't like.

Who knew?

The acoustics just don't meet with his personality tribe.

No way.

So unsavory in here.

So, you know, we've been talking a lot about me being unemployed.

I thought I would talk about some of the things that I've noticed as of late.

So for those of you asking, yes, I am, I am unemployed still.

And they're asking, what's the plan, bro?

Yeah, you know, I don't.

Because you don't, you're not, you're not going to stay unemployed forever.

I don't know.

Like, I look at it too.

Unemployed is probably the wrong term, but.

Yeah, because it has a certain connotation to it, right?

Yeah.

Like, you know, if I keep thinking about in the context of like the financial world, it would I meet the unemployed, like designation because I'm not actively searching, right?

No, you're not.

You wouldn't actually.

So technically I wouldn't even show up on the unemployed.

Right.

Figures.

Exactly.

The employment figures.

It's weird to go from a world where you had this progressive load over time of more and more inflow of communication and you get to this point where you walk into the office and everybody needs to talk to you.

Almost everything they talk to you about is a problem.

Big company, public, there's audit risk, financial risk, emails coming in at all times.

Everybody from Wall street, secondary markets, analysts, everybody wants to talk to you about something.

And you spend a great deal of your time managing your time, safeguarding your time because it's a finite resource and through the day you can only handle so much communication, respond only so much.

How long did it take you to be able to figure that out and like get the right, you know.

Well, it's progressive overload.

So you, you don't, you don't actually start at 225 pounds on a bar.

You start off with five pounds, you know, on each side and you work your way up from that to a heavy weight.

And by the time you even know like when you go back to normal life with just a bar with no weights on it, it doesn't feel right, it moves too fast.

And this has been kind of like that where you.

I just had so many inputs for so long.

I don't know if you've noticed this.

My throat clearing is significantly better.

Oh, wow, right.

It's not gone, but it's significantly better.

You used to walk in, I could hear you when you park outside, I could hear you clearing your throat from your car all the way up to the studio.

You're right, I did not pay attention to that.

It really resonated with me probably three or four days ago.

I mean, it still goes, comes in and out a little bit.

It's not 100 gone.

I mean, because some of it had to been reflex too, right?

Like just, I don't know, just tendencies yeah.

Okay.

I don't know, man.

I can tell you it.

It's been a long time since I've been able to just go to the gym and work out and not clear my throat like that.

And I've been able to do that recently, and it feels like a blessing.

But the hardest part for me in this whole process was going from all this inflow of information and data and systems and responsibilities and time and management to now being responsible or if I don't contact people.

Mm.

If I don't send an outbound message.

Yes.

I don't hear from anybody.

And it sounds like, oh, Chris is like, oh, he's so fat, he's lonely.

It's a pity party.

No, it's not that.

It's just.

It's a very polar opposite paradigm that I'm.

I'm getting accustomed to.

I don't.

I don't necessarily not like it either.

Right.

It's just really weird to wake up in the morning and not have.

Like, there were days I would go to the office that I had multiple meetings scheduled at the same time.

Back to back meetings every 30 minutes, all.

All day long.

The entire day was booked out.

And I'd look at my calendar, like on a Monday, and I'd look at the calendar for the week, and it would be overwhelming to know that my first 30 minutes free was on a Thursday and that I was gonna.

I knew what I was gonna do that Thursday.

I was gonna take that 30 minutes and go walk around the building a little bit.

Yeah, exactly.

Right.

And now I don't have a meeting some days at all.

That's weird.

That.

Yeah.

That's gotta be hard, right?

Because, I mean, from.

From just feeling like you want to feel.

I think as humans, naturally, we wake up and we want to feel productive.

Right?

We do.

But at the same time, too, I think we've hustle culture has taken over a lot of what we think is normal, and now we all have to subscribe.

I talked about this in the last show a little bit, but I think it's worth bringing up here, and I'm starting to come up with names for this.

I spend a lot of time thinking about just me and what I want to be.

So in the mornings now when I wake up, I don't want to jump into my phone.

And when I.

When you're in business and you're on the data inflow period that I'm in, I didn't have a choice, and now I do have that choice.

So in the mornings, like this morning, Is a great example.

I got up in the morning, I went for a walk for two miles outside.

I like the peloton.

Love the peloton, But I don't have to be responding to text messages.

I go outside and look at the trees.

I love it.

It's simple, very basic.

Yeah.

Got home.

Right.

Clean the house.

Feels like.

This feels like a reset for you.

Yeah.

I did.

Did a bunch of laundry.

Carter and Joanna got up, helped get Carter's lunch and, you know, stuff ready for school.

Joanna's like, why don't you go to the gym?

Like, no, no, I'm gonna take him to school.

You right?

I'm.

I'm making it intentional to take him to school with.

Love that.

Yeah.

You know, with his mom, I get.

Home, it's harder recognizing, too, that you're around more, helping out more.

I don't think he recognizes that much as.

As much because I always try to make an effort to be there.

Yeah.

But I can tell he sees that I'm more engaged now because I'm not.

Whenever I am there and talking to him, I'm in the moment.

So I'm trying to figure he, like, loves Minecraft.

I'm trying to be into it.

Yeah.

I still understand it.

Again, these games are crazy, dude.

I know exactly what you're dealing with because I was there, brother.

It's.

It's.

Whatever happened to Zelda?

You begin, you have an ending, you.

Know, I love the creativity behind it, though.

You need a goddamn, like, degree in, like, alchemy in order to get this game is insane.

It's insane.

Yeah.

The level of, like, just detail you need to know.

So I just let Adam play in the.

In the world where he just gets to building crate.

Yeah, he doesn't.

He doesn't.

He doesn't have to worry about getting, like, attacked or anything.

Right.

So he's just building.

He's building houses, and it's a Carter's own, dude.

Yeah.

And that part of it is really cool.

And I just like how he's able to just, you know, be creative and use his mind and.

But I just don't know where he.

Because we don't let.

He's not on.

We don't allow them to be on YouTube and just search.

If I did, I know he would.

He would look up on how to do certain things, but everything that he's done, he's just learned on his own.

I'm like, how is this so innate?

You know, what kids are doing now, right, Is they have the creators.

They watch on YouTube.

So instead of searching on YouTube, they watch shows that are Minecraft related, where they watch other people in Minecraft build things.

They learn that way.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

It's like Twitch, right?

Like, we're watching these guys.

There's got to be money to be made here.

So I've been thinking a lot about this too, and you guys can tell me, and I'm gonna ask a question.

Well, that's, you know, that's Roblox, right?

Yeah, yeah.

Which is a whole different conversation.

But I have a question for both of you.

I was thinking, I think a lot about the show lately in the podcast in general.

And I'm like, okay, how do I grow this thing in a meaningful way?

And then I thought, okay, let's go look at a podcast that's come up lately.

But then I'm like, okay, well, Travis Kelsey and his brother's podcast, but that's an exception, right?

Like, that's not.

That's it.

First of all, they're celebrities in their own right.

Second of all, they have the whole Taylor Swift connection.

So that's not.

The Taylor Swift bump is real.

Right.

Then there's a Call Her Daddy podcast, I guess.

But at the same time, that's Dave Portnoy's brand.

Dave put her on her and her friend, he liked her because she.

She did.

Yeah.

But they were.

They were.

They were pretty extreme, though.

Yeah.

And they are extreme.

Yeah.

And again, if you don't have a job in corporate America, you can take that extreme risk and see what happens.

But.

Yeah.

How many podcasts do you guys really know that are new, that anyone's recommended to you in the last two years?

New?

Yeah.

Nothing.

Right?

Nothing.

Oh.

You ever gone on the apps and, like, searched for, like, podcasts in general?

No, it's not.

It's got to be a referral or recommendation.

So I did the.

This morning, I was in the walk, I went down, I was scrolling for our episode.

I wanted to listen to the last episode.

Didn't get a whole lot of views on YouTube.

And I thought it was a great episode and I got a lot of positive feedback.

So I'm like, I'm gonna listen to it again from the beginning.

End.

And I did.

But I saw this kid's podcast and he's had a lot of really known, well known people on the show.

He had the guy who wants to live forever, that Brian guy, whatever his name is.

Oh, yeah, the guy who's a science project.

Yeah, got it.

He was on and he had a bunch of other People on.

And his production quality was great.

It was about as good as ours.

4K.

Like, you could tell he's got time invested in it.

He's got really good guests.

And I'm like, wow, like, this is a good.

It's a good podcast.

He's got episodes in the 200 range.

So he's been doing this for a couple of years at least.

He's significantly younger than we are.

And I look up his show and, like, the numbers are way lower than ours.

Really?

Yeah.

Okay.

I think his listen, listen note score was like top 10% or top like 7%.

So that means by podcast downloads, not very high, but on YouTube, it's doing pretty well because they got celebrities, because no YouTube hits.

He has some good episodes.

He has some.

I mean, nothing was like extraordinary, like great views.

This is where I look at the markets and I think to myself, like, how saturated is YouTube now?

It's pretty saturated.

Right?

But it's necessary evil.

And how saturated is podcast now?

When we started, there were probably a million less podcasts are today.

And then I sit here and think to myself, we have pivoted from a social media landscape scape to an attention media landscape.

It's no longer social.

Right, Right.

Like, I don't.

At one point in time, you went on the flight, you know, social media, to see what your other friends were doing.

A lot of what you see now isn't what your friends are doing anymore.

You see that in the stories.

But such a small percentage of people actually go to your stories that follow you.

Right.

Okay.

Those are usually your friends in my mind.

And they care because they look at the stories.

I mean, does that echo kind of your feeling?

Yeah.

So I don't really spend a whole lot of time in the stories I do for, like, just the close people I'm connected to.

Yeah, your friends.

Yeah, but not even all my friends.

The algorithm just puts like, the most interacted with people on your stories.

Right.

Okay.

Right.

So, but then.

So what does that mean?

Right.

So humans are adaptive.

Right.

Progressive overload, emails.

We're adaptive creatures.

We.

We.

We get stress, we adapt to it.

We get more stress.

We adapt to it.

Okay.

And then you either hit an inflection point where you blow up or you get bored and you just move on.

Right.

If we've moved from social media to, I guess, entertainment media or attention media, I think.

I think attention media is probably the best way to put it, then you have to do more and more extreme things to garner that attention.

Otherwise people just don't View.

Right.

It's true.

And the algorithm.

Algorithm won't push it.

That's right.

So you wind up in a situation where who gets, who gets popularity and growth moving forward?

People that are willing to do the extreme things and say the extreme things for that attention.

Like, for a long time I was seeing in my feed people who would.

Going into, like, random grocery stores or like random places and messing with strangers and recording it.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Remember that?

You know what I mean?

Because in the beginning, in the beginning, when it comes across your feed, you get stuck.

You're like, wait, what's going on here?

Shocking.

Yeah.

You know, you're like, wait, what's happening?

What's going on here?

And then the algorithm picks it up.

It's like, oh, caught your attention, right?

Yeah.

So.

And then you get stuck.

And now that's part of your algorithm.

I try to be so careful to curate what gets curated with my algorithm, but it's inevitable.

Some of this stuff is just.

They just hook you right away.

If you, if you like, stay for any period of time, like 2 seconds.

2, 3 seconds, that's it, you're done.

So let's walk this through to its natural and logical conclusion.

If you want to be in this business and do what we do, that means you.

If you don't.

If, unless you sacrifice your morality and the intention of the show, we will never be a large podcast to the scale of some of these other podcasts because we are unwilling to do the shock factor things like a lot of these murder mystery podcasts, and I haven't really figured out the reason as to why, but they have a huge female base.

Yeah.

Females resonate with these murder mystery type podcasts or like these true crime podcasts more than men do for some reason.

I don't know, I don't understand it either.

And, but there's, there's extremism there where they're talking about murders and killing people and Ted Bundy and stuff like that.

And then you say to yourself, well, how do you get that level of extremism to get the attention on a finance podcast?

Podcast.

How, how do we do that?

If you get people on that are willing to expose, like, their biggest failures.

And look at Caleb Hammer.

He's got a extreme.

He.

But he's, he's literally yelling at people over their finances.

Yeah.

And they, and the people come on the show and subject themselves to it.

I gotta be honest, I've never watched the full episode because I find it.

I find it demeaning and despicable.

I just find I just.

Yeah.

I've only come across the shorts.

I've never actually gone into here a whole.

I don't feel like you have to be demeaning the people in order to.

To get attention.

No.

But I do feel like people like hearing about other people's experiences and where they may have gone.

Right.

And where they may have gone wrong.

Right.

I had this.

And not just with their finances.

Right.

We were talking about it a couple weeks ago where I was like, maybe we should, we could start having like a miniseries off to the side that we could do where we talk to people who have licenses or degrees or certificates in certain industries and we ask them, what do you think you did right along the way?

What do you think you did?

What do you think wrong?

What could you have avoided?

What would you tell somebody that wants to get into this to make sure.

But that isn't sensational.

Yeah, it's true.

But it lives on.

But it lives on forever.

It doesn't curry the shock value.

Yeah.

What would you listen to?

What would make you listen to a financial literacy podcast besides two handsome, incredibly talented host man.

I think it's about maybe like talking about real money, real life situations like going to a grocery store and, and like budgeting and things like that.

Okay.

I don't feel like people spend time being thoughtful about budgeting for groceries anymore.

Like if you're not, if you're not budgeting already, I don't know if you're going to watch somebody else teach you how to budget.

Right.

Yeah.

People don't want that.

People, people want people to, want to manage the expenses down.

That's why Caleb Hammer is so like controversial.

Is he?

He'll come on and talk nothing with people's expenses because the income number for most people is pretty stagnant.

Right.

You're making X a month.

Yeah.

So.

But everybody listen, here's the irony of it, right?

Like you can control your expenses.

You can choose what you spend there.

You can't choose how much you make unless you're on a commission only basis.

And most people aren't.

Yeah.

I think, I think something that would work with for people is they would want to come in and people want the short, quick answer.

Just tell me what I need to do.

This is my situation.

Tell me what I need to do.

I don't want to learn.

I don't want to.

I don't want to read all these books that you've told me to read all the time.

Just tell me.

I just.

They want instant gratification well, look.

The pro.

The problem with that is, is.

And this is not gatekeeping.

And I thought about doing this too.

I've never actually day traded in my life.

Right.

I don't believe in it some.

Not who I am, but I run across stocks from time to time and circumstances from time to time where I'm like, dude, this is a buy.

I would buy this right now.

I also know the financial risks in doing so.

I saw somebody the day on social media saying, dave Ramsey, not a financial expert, not even classically trained in finance, just a business guy whose business happens to be visible for knowing business.

Like, oh, Graham Stephan, he's a real estate agent.

Yeah.

He doesn't.

Other than talking to people, he doesn't really have any qualifications for that.

And they go, oh, you know, Caleb Hammer, not a finance expert, never worked in banking, never worked in finance.

You know, they go, oh, well, Cody Sanchez, whatever her name is.

Right.

She worked at, you know, blah, blah.

Her resume's all bullshit.

Did she work some of those places?

Yeah.

As she embellished her.

Her job and her time there.

Yeah, 100%.

Does she know what she's talking about 90% of the time?

Nope.

My opinion, humble as it may be, but I think people want that because they're willing to say those things because they don't know the real financial ramifications in that space.

Yeah.

Not to mention, if you have a Series 6, Series 7, or any of those licenses, you have to hang it under somebody and be active working.

So if you're in the podcast space or you're somewhere on social media and you're not working for somebody else, you don't have those licenses anymore.

There you go.

Right, right.

So it's very rare that somebody comes out of those professions for, you know, decades.

I don't know, like me, and then has a conversation.

It's meaningful.

But what, what makes people want to hear those things?

Right.

Why would they want to come hear those things?

And I guess my question is a little bit broader than that.

It's how do we take this to reach more people in a meaningful way?

And I had a lot of time to think this through, a lot of time.

And I don't know that I haven't found the answer yet.

For a while I was like, oh, I'll pump out more content, more reels, more shorts, and yeah, we get more views.

Yeah.

Does that convert to podcast subscribers?

No.

No.

Yeah, it's really hard to get that.

That crossover.

Jeff Fargo talked about that a lot, about how he gets More views on his.

On his social media, which, you know, I respect, but at the same time, that's not what I want.

I think ultimately it comes down to us connecting with the listeners and getting listeners on that are willing to share experiences and talking through them.

Right.

Like call ins or like.

Yeah, call ins interviews.

But you feel like you lose a little bit of the quality of the show when you do that, though.

No, I don't.

I think people, like, like it raw like that.

Like, we can still produce a high production show when we cover topics like we did tonight, but people will.

Can appreciate.

Yeah.

Like the call ins and people talking about and asking for advice on what they can do.

Like, what are the next steps they could do.

What.

What would we recommend for them?

Right.

I think that would go a long way.

So I want to be clear about some, some programming changes we made before we end the show tonight.

One of the things that said myself and Rajeel have been talking about is kind of the, the programming of the show.

Guess as much as it's fun talking to people, I think not all guest shows are good shows.

And I, I think people want more of our conversations than they do of those conversations.

So for the near term future, we're going to back off guests a little bit and get back to just the three of us in a room or two rooms were.

Deal.

Two rooms, one big room.

And then I think the other part of the equation here that's missing is, is that we got to get back to, I guess, covering some of the current events.

I'd like to see two shows at some point in time a week, but we got to figure out logistics on that and how to make that work with our schedules and complexities of life.

Right about now, by our schedule, I mean yours, Mr.

Employed Guy.

Yeah.

But I think people, unless you get like a super interesting guest on who's willing to talk about something, you blend into all the other podcasts who are bringing guests on.

And I don't want.

I don't want to do that.

Right.

I don't want to do that either, unless it's really valuable for the listeners because.

Super hyper interesting.

Sure.

Yeah.

But I also think getting you on other people's shows can go a long way.

And that's what I think we need to spend some more time doing.

It's weird for them, though.

That's, that's the problem is a lot of other people's shows, they first question they ask you is like, what are you gonna promote?

Yeah.

So why are you coming on My show.

Right.

Like, oh, I want to promote my podcast.

Or, like, why would I would.

I want to send people from my show to your show.

Yeah.

A lot of podcast hosts don't want people to compete with them mind pop.

Obviously not that way, but yeah.

So sexy.

God damn.

They know what they're doing.

Yeah.

If you haven't checked it out, Sal put out a vlog today.

Their first vlog.

A day in the life of like Sal, on an actual, like, YouTube video.

And in that video, he talks about how he went from being effectively agnostic atheist to believing in God and his kind of newfound, like, religious.

Yeah, I've heard.

I think I've heard the story on what really, like, made him want to turn the corner.

And it's definitely worth a listen.

Yeah.

And I can tell you, he lives that life.

Last time I was at their holiday party, he's invited me to his house and him.

Me and my wife to hang out with him and his wife.

And he embraces the whole thing.

Thing.

It's cool.

Yeah.

I mean, studies.

Studies show, man, that the happiest people in the world are those who are most connected spiritually.

So that could play a big role in it.

Why are you smirking at me?

Nice.

It's just weird when you're spiritual deities.

Hulk Hogan.

So we will make an exception for Sal to come on the show and do an interview.

I'd love to talk Sal and Doug.

Adam.

Whatever.

Adam and Justin.

Actually, I got to assume they're in town next.

I gotta.

I gotta.

Come on.

Yeah.

Cool, guys.

Yeah.

Jesus, that was such a.

That was such a.

That is so sick.

My mind.

My mind was blown when we went into that studio.

Yeah.

And to your point, Regiel, Doug does sit at that desk over there on the left, so he is in the studio space.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

We should.

He's not separated by a wall.

We should get you a bigger space.

I can't afford one.

I'm unemployed.

Well, Rajeel, you've been very quiet tonight, and, man, a few words.

You want to talk about it?

No, I'm good.

You got anything you want to air out?

No, I'm good.

Three words.

We're gonna get him there.

That's all right.

Sorry.

We're gonna let him loosen up a little bit.

Got anything else?

No, no, no, I'm good.

If you stuck around this long, please make sure you head over and leave us an honest 5 star review.

Because if it's not 5 stars, it's not.

Not honest.

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Too.

Chris, make sure that you guys get that crispy video and audio on Spotify.

You can leave us a comment there too, or head over to YouTube.

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Hit that like button.

Ring that notification bell.

Do all the moist goody good stuff.

And the sass frass, man, are you.

Allowed to brag about my work?

Sass frass?

Yeah, that's what I do.

That terrible humble brag about somebody else work.

We do a lot of huge things.

Big, big things.

Big numbers coming.

Really big.

Nothing bigger.

Nothing.

Nothing bigger.

Stay tuned.

All right, Love you, man.

It's good to be back.

You gotta loosen up, man.

Me, Dwight, I loosen up.

With what I understand.

Your bathroom's getting torn to shreds right now.

It's.

It's.

Good night, everybody.

Good night.

Bye.