Speaker 1: Bertie Sanders got asked a question about why Europe, with
all of its history and all of its cool stuff,
why can't it grow like the United States. Zach Abraham
and I are going to discuss this now with the
help of God Almighty.
Speaker 2: But Todd Herman show is one hundred percent disapproved by
big pharma technocrats and Tyrn's everywhere from the high mountains
of Free America. Here's the Emerald City exile, Todd Hermon.
Speaker 1: Today is the day the Lord has made, and these
are the times to which God has decided we shall live.
Joining me now, Chief Investment Officer, Bulwark Capital Manager, my
friend and brother, Zach Abraham. Good to see you, my friend,
welcome back.
Speaker 3: Good to be seen, Good to be seen. How are
things good? Good?
Speaker 1: I was wondering if you do this thing at your
staff meeting where you get everybody together and you say,
stand up if you think the best trade we did
this week is this, and then just observe people the
absolute best trade, and then everybody don't do it every week.
Then you call out the people who don't stand Yeah.
Speaker 4: Well, and they all know, and you know, we've got
three different analysts too, but everybody knows which ones were
my picks?
Speaker 1: Oh okay, because they're the.
Speaker 4: Ones that did the best naturally, right, right, Yeah, they
puts part.
Speaker 3: Of the deal man. They gotta you know, you gotta,
you gotta applaud the chief, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you win at one hundred percent rate.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I learned this thing when I worked at Microsoft. I
was in one and only one Bill meeting ever, And
I probably told you personally about this that you are
to sit to Bill's uh, let's say, I gotta remember
it left because when Bill has a nice question, he
turns to the left and says something like, don't you
think that's great? No risk, because the people presenting are
your colleagues and maybe you're yet Bill, they're great. And
when he has a rude question, he turns to his right,
and you could have a senior vice president of your
division having made a statement up there saying something and
Bill Gates turns to you and looks you in the
eye and says, isn't that the dumbest thing you've ever heard?
So there's this race. There was this race to sit
to his left, and you saw the state of the union.
Obviously that's what I'm referencing. Any quick takeaways from that
from you, your political observer, in addition to being an
American and a father and a finance dude.
Speaker 3: You know, the only none of it was surprising.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I will continue to say this that is frustrating
and his mind numbing as the left has gotten, you know,
for instance too, they don't do much that surprises me anymore.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but there were two last.
Speaker 4: Night where I just I'm looking at them, going like,
not only is that despicable, but it's just really bad politics.
And then it made me and I'll get to what
those two are, but then it made me think to myself,
you know, God blessed the liberals because the saving graces
they're stupid, you know.
Speaker 2: What I mean?
Speaker 4: And I mean that if they were better politicians and
they had more control over their emotions, they'd be much
more formidable. That's true, but I mean staying seated when
the gold winning hockey teams come through again, I'm glad
you did it because the optics are so bad.
Speaker 3: It makes the election easier. But like what.
Speaker 4: It's the politics are so obviously bad. Doing that, I
think it tells you a lot about how just off
the rails they are, right, how incapable they are of
thinking rationally. And I don't want to just hate saying
this over and over and over. It's just hard to
really sum it up in any other way. Donald Trump
has taken their ability to reason completely away. Oh, like
they're just yes, their brains are locked in. It's like
it's like the fingercuffs, man, they're just tied up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the Drange cinema is real. And when you can't
stand for the American government should value it's citizens over
legal immigrants, and it's.
Speaker 4: Or the woman they stayed seated for, the woman's daughter
that got murdered on the train, and you're just going, yeah,
thank god, Like I said, thank god, they're stupid because
if they were more clever, there's no way they'd lose
a life.
Speaker 1: And they know this, and yet you know this order
went out.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you saw this, but President Trump
made a statement obviously a dig get Nancy Pelosi, but
insider trading, and we don't need to talk about Trump
coins and Trump Crypto, where his famili's made gargantuan amounts
of money. The rumors that they're going to build a
resort on Gaza Zach. If they do that, if they've
killed eighty thousand or we've paid to kill eighty thousand
people in Gaza, twenty thousand kids and a Trump resort
goes there. I don't know how you come back from
that on judgment day, but in any case, they were
he was taking a dig at Pelosi. And I don't
know if you saw this, but Lizzie Warren, see Warren
was actually clapping on that line. You know, she's going
to take some heat on that. Then I saw this. Now,
Howard Lutnick is a big advisor to the president. Lutnick
is He's about as mobbed up cat as you can get.
Newsweek wrote about this. This is a report off of
Wired magazine. Canterfrice jail. They're affirm with us some they've
got some some handles into power, don't they counter Fitzgeril couple.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, right, they're a big player. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So apparently Lutnik works. He's the Commerce secretary and his
sons Brandon and Kyle Lutnick senior executives at canterfriz Geril.
Speaker 3: Oh.
Speaker 1: Look at that. They apparently worked out a deal, according
to Wired, where it seems that his family Lutnx family
went and bought options or or it wouldn't be options.
They purchased the rights to other people's tariff refunds. So
if the tariffs that Lutnick helped push were ruled illegal
and companies got refunds, Lutnick steps in and says, in
case you don't get the refunds, I'll buy the rights
from you for five, ten, fifteen cents on the dollar.
And now it looks like these companies don't have to
get this, and he's gonna get He's going to come
in and get eighty five percent on this. I mean
a raake that from me. Just just forget the morality
of it for a second, rate that for me as
a financial figure.
Speaker 3: Man, It's okay.
Speaker 4: There's two parts to this, okay, right, So first of all,
on the moral side of it. Look, if you have
any questions about Howard Lutnik, pull up the interview that
he did with sixty Minutes when he talks about how
he and his wife went over to visit Jeff Epstein
and they immediately went he's a bad guy. And sit
there with the knowledge after the release of the Epstein
files that he is lying through his teeth the entire
freaking time. Look at his face what you see is
a dude that has zero problem creating things out of
thin air. He is a bad actor. I wouldn't associate
with him his kid. Oh yeahs kids got jobs at
Canter Fitzgerald. Did they decide.
Speaker 3: That when they were hanging out with Epstein on the island?
Speaker 2: Is that?
Speaker 3: Is that what they you know? Disgusting?
Speaker 4: But to be fair to them, on the moral side
of it, nobody in this business that cared about their
honor their integrity would engage in a practice like that
if they were in.
Speaker 3: His situation, nobody would. And com and to the point
where I'm just telling you, I'm in the industry.
Speaker 4: If I was doing something like that my son's let's
say they were running bulwork at the time I was
a commerce secretary, there would be a standing rule that
anything that I am working on or associated with, we
cannot trade on.
Speaker 3: That's it. That would just be a flat rule across
the top. Yeah, and it's.
Speaker 4: That's not that doesn't make me a good guy. That's
a baseline expectation, right He he content, he flouts that
he doesn't even hold to that flip side of.
Speaker 3: This, They're going to try to make it a much
bigger deal.
Speaker 4: Any time you have anything like that, you are going
to find a secondary market, and that secondary market provides liquidity.
Speaker 3: It's not a bad thing, it's a good thing. Right.
Speaker 4: And if I'm going to pay you upfront for that
tariff potential tariff refund, I'm taking a risk. Of course,
I'm going to buy that for a discount of face value, right,
So that in and of itself, there's always secondary markets
for stuff like that.
Speaker 1: So let they could turn on and sell that one
hundred percent.
Speaker 4: Yeah, because it's got a face value. He owns the
tariff refund if and when it gets distributed, right, same
thing like this stuff happens all the time. So, same
thing happened in the USSR when it collapsed because their
currency was valueless. Essentially they issued like basically coupons to
everybody they're citizens.
Speaker 3: That effectively gave them.
Speaker 4: The purchasing power of their percentage ownership in the government.
That that's kind of like a loose way to kind
of think of it, right, Yes, well, what did those
people want? They desperately wanted dollars. The USSR collapsed, they
needed dollars, so US investor and US hedge funds rushed
in there. And we're paying cash at a very discounted
level for those certificates. Turned around and a lot of
people traded those things in certificates for things that they
had no use for that the hedge fund could turn
into a profit, and they took those dollars and went
and fed themselves. So it's it's whenever you see situations
like this, they're always a bit sketchy because the reason
the liquidity is being provided is because you can get
such a good discount, right, And it kind of that's
where the morality kicks in because you go, you know,
and I've been in situations like this where you sit
there and you go, just because I can doesn't mean
I should, right right, Having said that, that's me injecting
morality into the discussion.
Speaker 3: Should people do that? Should people be liquidity providers? Yes
they should.
Speaker 4: It's it's a valuable thing, you know, Like let's say
you're a business that hit like an unexpected bump or whatever,
and that liquidity is the only thing that's going to
keep your.
Speaker 3: Doors open for the next sixty days.
Speaker 4: Right, you probably think it's a big, a big help
to be able to sell that.
Speaker 3: So it's a good thing that it's done. It is
unbelievable to me.
Speaker 4: And this is the part about Trump that I'm so
disappointed in and so blown away by, Like how rich
do you need to be? Your your your family's making
hundreds of millions off of coins. Howard Latnix in there
trading on his own account, behind the behind the behind
the net.
Speaker 3: It's just disgusting. Yeah, and and we have to.
Speaker 1: Call this out. I'm sorry as Christian man. Yeah, or
we're no better than they are, right, We're no better
than the exactly I've I've realized late in life that
I should just follow When I make jokes about finance,
I should do it. The things I think of as
jokes are bigger money makers than things like i've Maybe
I told this story. We were we had a famous
startup and we won this demo God Award, and we
were the darling of the press and everybody loved us.
And if if we had been if we had followed
social media in, we would have sold the company for
a lot more money. But one day we were kind
of bemoaning this and I said to CTO, I said,
you know what, I should just ask you to build
an app that makes a farting noise, and my CTO laughed.
He goes, yeah, you know, like the one that exists,
and go what He goes, Oh, you didn't know, And
he showed me an app that made it a farting noise.
It was a two dollars app and at that point
it had like three million downloads. And then I was thinking,
I don't know if I ever told you this. I
went to a buddy who has capital, and I wanted
to buy the rights to the airspace two feet above
people's houses. I wanted to go to neighborhoods outside of
Seattle purchase the rights. And I did some research. You
own some of the space above your house because you
can put antennas, you can extend the height of your house.
You have implied ownership. I wanted to go to some
of the rich neighborhoods, go in and purchase some of
the middle class neighborhoods, to see what that would be like,
what would and if you go to someone's house. We
just want to purchase the air rights, like you could
still build. Our contract says you could build whatever you want.
You want to put on an ten up, no problem,
anything you build, fine, anything that lands no, and to
come back and own. Oh Amazon, you want drones to
come and deliver stuff that people's houses, you'll need to
pay us. Does that seem like like, I'm sorry, that
was fifteen years ago, twenty years ago was thinking about No,
that was it was.
Speaker 2: It was.
Speaker 1: It was like not not fifteen, it was like ten
years ago. I was making this pitch that that was
actually a good idea.
Speaker 3: Well it was, But wouldn't the drones land on the
front porch.
Speaker 1: They'd have to go through my airspace.
Speaker 3: Oh they've got to go through the Oh got it, got.
Speaker 1: It, I own the airspace. Yeah, what do you do it?
Speaker 3: I know it is a good idea.
Speaker 4: The problem is you'd just never be able to securitize
it and you couldn't liquid I mean, it'd be a mess.
Speaker 3: You would be a mess.
Speaker 1: I mean if you no, the guy I was talking
happened to be one of the most successful patent rolls
in history.
Speaker 3: So yeah, yeah, no, I'd be cool. I mean it
it'd be fascinating.
Speaker 4: I mean, talk about talking about no liability.
Speaker 3: I just yeah, right, yeah, I know, I know.
Speaker 4: Yeah, No, it would just be it would just be
a pot like because then what do you do when
people sell the house right like, and then does the
other perchser have the right to turn with.
Speaker 1: All your due diligence, you have tried to protective reduciary
interest with your clients.
Speaker 4: No, that's Look, it's one of the tortures of investing.
I you know, I was the guy that was running
around in two thousand and seven, two thousand and eight
talking to portfolio managers trying to figure out a way
to short housing. Yea, you know, like it's it's it's
one of those things. And I remember at the time
when it all came apart and we did good during
that period of time, market dropped like sixty three percent.
Speaker 3: We were up like twenty two twenty three.
Speaker 4: But you know, obviously if we've been able to short housing,
it would have been a lot better. And I remember
at that time just bemoaning the fact where I'm like,
that's it, man, that was going to be the one
you know, I have that made you the biggest investment
of the last twenty years.
Speaker 3: Had it nailed, I'm never going to get it right again,
you know.
Speaker 4: And then what you realize is other opportunities come, you
know what I mean, Yeah, and then.
Speaker 1: You might be Commerce secretary.
Speaker 3: I don't. I think my odds of that are probably
similar to yours.
Speaker 1: Yeah you know, well no, no, I assure you the
odds of you being that are a lot better than
the odds of me being But.
Speaker 3: I did.
Speaker 4: Neither of us have the constitution for elected office, Let's
be honest.
Speaker 1: No, I agree, because we wouldn't go out and sell
ourselves that way. I wanted to make one thing real quick.
I don't know if you. In fact and I were
talking about this when I watched the footage of what
was going on in Mexico, and I was seeing areas
that you and I have been to, like places we've
been two together. Yeah, And I was seeing the cars burning,
et cetera. This is phenomenal. I was talking to my
friends at renew Healthcare because people are saying to me, now, Zach, oh,
you're never going back to Mexico, right, I'm like, wait,
ever go into Seattle because a terrorist group took it over.
I'm never going to go to San Francisco again or
New York like we have our problems up here. Yeah,
that was scary. As you and I are sitting here
talking about this. This is Wednesday, the twenty fifth port
of our art. According to my friends who lived, there's
back to normal. Restaurants are open. They had a thousand
people standing in line or not at the market on Tuesday,
hanging out at the market. The ubers are back, the
cabs are back. And I just wanted to say this
to everybody, thank you for your prayers for the team
at Renew. I sent texts you know, these people, to Caesar,
to Hector, to doctor Chavez, to Steve and and the
folks I know down there. So I just wanted to
thank people of that guys. I am going to be
back to Renew. I'm going to tell you about the
anti aging program again. But just this week, I just
wanted to say thank you for the prayers. And am
I a bad man's act that when I saw when
buildings I recognize, the neighborhoods I recognize, I felt extra bad.
Does that make me a bad man?
Speaker 2: Well?
Speaker 4: No, but I'm biased because I'll tell you what I
thought as a guy. They as of yesterday had reservations
and plane tickets for eight days from now. Yeah, this
is how this is sick. I'm a little embarrassed to
admit it. My first thought was I'm gonna call him
and get half off. Oh yeah, yes, but you're also
talking to the guy that took a vacation with his
wife to Mexico during the swine flu. Okay, and the
reason I did, Oh we were the only ones on
the plane.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was the only one in the resort.
Speaker 4: It was phenomenal. It was phenomenal. We were in a
different economic status back then, so you know, half off
for the room was more than enough to justify the risk.
Speaker 3: Of swine flu.
Speaker 1: I was looking at this and I felt horrible. I thought,
I know, I'm going back for treatments. I obviously didn't
go this week, and I was not suggesting anyone go
this week. That I started to think about what would
happen if I purchased tickets let's say a month from now.
So I'm going to be monitoring that because I bet you,
I bet you, I'm going to be sitting in some
first class Beni's for for not very much money.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, pull it.
Speaker 4: They were trying to move, I mean, they didn't want
us to cancel, but when they shut down the air
you know, they shut down the air flights going in,
and so I'm like, look, man, I'm not gonna sit here,
you know, twiddling my fingers right up into the day
we leave, trying to figure this out. We'll we'll redo it.
But yeah, they were. Let's put it this way. If
you want to book a trip to Mexico, do it
now because they are scrambling to get people on there.
Speaker 3: And hey, what do we do in the investment world? Man?
You buy panic, buy panic.
Speaker 1: Right, by low by the panic right. Bertie Sanders was
talking about nations, not ours.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: He talked about Europe and he got this question and
I wanted to run this by you real quick. Bertie
Sanders is asked why Europe, with all sorts of advantages
and government spending and social welfare, how come this hasn't
manifested into great wealth for them.
Speaker 5: Quite similar levels of education and development, Europe has produced
almost none of the world's largest frontier tech firms, while
the United States dominates global tech innovation. I want to
ask what institutional or economic features do you think explain
this difference. Earlier, Congressman Kanna said that government dollars led
to AI. Why haven't European government dollars led to such innovation?
Are our congressmen like y'all so much smarter investors than them,
Or is it that our entrepreneurs face a better set.
Speaker 1: Of incentives at the margin than them.
Speaker 5: In short, I'm asking you to explain not why we
have inequality, but why we've had so much growth over
the last two decades.
Speaker 6: Well, because we are very smart people who've been incentivized,
who have worked very hard. But you know what, in
most European countries, all people of healthcare is a human right.
In most European countries, it doesn't cost eighty thousand dollars
a year to go to college. In most European countries,
they have strong childcare systems. Why So the point is,
I understand the argument. If we don't have any regulation
and you give tax breaks to these large companies, they
will create these technologies. But what we've been the point
of this evening, this afternoon is to say that while
these technologies can be very useful, they will not be
useful unless we have a degree of control over what
these guys are doing.
Speaker 1: So I just stop. Stop Bernie. So he's asked why
they don't have growth like we do, he says, because
we're smart and not working, and then he pivots into this.
Can we all recognize something here? Maybe this is me Zach.
Can we just recognize that the United States has been uniquely
blessed in some ways by gods? And I know Bertie
can't say that, but I want to get to that discussion.
But let's start with just the financial discussion, and then
let's work into the faith in this. In Christian it
is an additive components to business. What do you how
director this even financially?
Speaker 3: Well, you know, one of the sat i anger is
not a very useful emotion. So it's.
Speaker 4: No, no, And so I'm gonna try to transfer this
into like a big part of this is just and
I don't mean this in a in a pernicious way,
but a big part of this is just ignorance and stupidity.
Speaker 3: Okay, So it's it's.
Speaker 4: Very, very very simple if you have even the basic
rudimentary understanding of business, of finance, of economics to understand
what this young man was talking about. And it's called
regulation and taxes. If I have a great yes, if
I have a great idea, and the United States will
allow me, via tax policy, to keep eighty percent of
the proceeds from that idea, and in Europe, I keep fifty.
Speaker 3: Where do I go? It's that easy, that simple, that simple.
Speaker 4: So if I've got a great idea, and I'm in
Denmark and I'm a twenty one year old wonder kid,
I'm hopping on the first flight to Silicon Valley as
quick as I can because i want to.
Speaker 3: Keep the utility of my labor.
Speaker 4: Put it in verticular that the communists will understand, right,
So one place, lets me keep fifty, the other place,
lets me keep eighty. Where am I going to go?
Oh shocker, all the innovation happens here. So the other
thing that Bernie talks about, oh, they all gone health
killed and they all gone free college. Yeah, because they
don't pay for defense. Bernie, they don't pay for their
own defense. Okay, so why don't we factor that in?
Speaker 3: And you don't want to talk.
Speaker 4: About that, because if we bring that up, your whole
illusion and your example of using northern European countries and
the Netherlands and things like that, and Sweden is your
socialist example, that whole fiscal product, that whole fiscal framework falls.
Speaker 3: Apart the minute they've got to pay for their own defense.
Speaker 4: Okay, So why do they have socialist policies. Why do
they pay for everybody's college and why do they pay
for the healthcare? They do it because of us. We
gave them that ability to do it. It's not because
they're more moral. It's not because they're kinder. It's not
because they're more aligned with Bernie Sanders and his idiocy.
It's because after World War Two and after the Marshall Plan, right,
that was the deal. You guys, rebuild your countries, we
handle your security. What does that security cost us? About
one point one trillion a year? If Trump gets his way,
it's going to one point five trillion a year. That's
why they can do their idiotic socialist experiments.
Speaker 3: That's it.
Speaker 4: So if and your answer is you want to increase
taxes and regulation here, okay, great, great, good idea, it's
just it's just like and here's the thing that it's
just it's so frustrating because you sit there and go, look, guys,
here's the deal. You've got a choice. Do you want
an economy that looks and grows and functions like Europe?
If that's what you want, listen to what Bernie is saying,
like he you know, it's it's and you could hear
him stumbling over that, Right, I think that's the issue
that he's wrestling with or not. I don't think he's
wrestling with a lot. But right, that's the issue, is like, Hey,
you can have this. It just you're not gonna get
economic growth. You're not gonna have dynamism, don't.
Speaker 1: I honestly don't think Bernie knows. Truly, I don't think
he knows that regulation and taxes have that effect. I
truly think he doesn't know that because he's never been
incentivized in that regard. He's never experienced. Instead, if his
wife ruins a college, destroys a college by overleveraging it,
and she doesn't pay any penalty for that, you know,
they're still fine. He's got his three houses. He's never
faced risk for that. So I truly don't think it
calculates to him. But I also don't think Bernie is
not a guy who knows the Lord. Can we agree
on that?
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, obviously, Okay, So I don't.
Speaker 1: Think he can relate to what I think we are
putting at risk. And Zach, you know, you make a
very big point of never using Jesus as a marketing line.
I try it to do that here, I just try
to describe the show. We want God at the center
of what we do. But I think that we're putting
at risk some of the blessings that God has given us,
because God has given us an enormous blessing in first
of all, our structure to recognize that we have rights
inalienable because God gave them to us. That was a
structure that I think created the environment you were talking about,
the rewarding risk environment, because we recognize we've got life
and liberty, the right to pursue happiness that involves then
private property, the ability to own this, and then to
grow wealth based upon this that is generational and handed
down right, so that your kids do better than you do.
We're told to do this to provide for our families,
so we'll not provide for their families are worse than
non believers. So our country was set up with this.
We were set up with a geographic location. That's that's
great to our advantage in terms of we're hard to attack.
We're a massive land base. We've got two big countries
on our flanks. You got to come through Mexico or
Canada get to us, unless you just want to come
on our coasts. Right, So there's a lot of things
that we've been given, But is there a culture that
we've been handed that that was Christian based, that contributed
to a nation uniquely designed to be the world's financial leader.
Do you see a Christian component to that?
Speaker 3: Well? Yeah, one percent.
Speaker 4: And from my perspective or in my opinion, the two
are the two are interlinked, right, meaning capitalism and Christianity
actually go very well together. And one of the ways
that you can this will be kind of a weird
way to attack it, but one of the issues that
we have currently in society is that I think you
have ultra capitalism in a lot of ways, and you've
extracted the Christianity. And the reason why that's important is
because one of the tenets of capitalism is you know,
you gotta you gotta sleep where you eat effectively, right,
meaning meaning yeah, you live in there and you're you're operating,
you're making all this money, but you also live in
that environment. And so the idea is you're not gonna
you're not gonna sully your own environment.
Speaker 3: Right, right.
Speaker 4: Well, that that dynamic really breaks down when you're talking
about multinational corporations and I think that I think that
we have done a very bad job of enforcing antitrust
laws and all that kind of stuff, because so much
of the work that government's doing and invinment. We all
know that that that you know that five on ones,
good ones, five and one c three organizations, churches, there's
so much more effective at that.
Speaker 3: There's so much more effective.
Speaker 4: When I say effect, yeah, And when I say effective,
I'm not making like a knock on government.
Speaker 3: I'm just saying it's factual.
Speaker 4: If you put a dollar into those organizations, two to
three times more of that dollar actually gets to the
end user.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: It just it's the way it is.
Speaker 4: But to be fair to flip route, is a lot
of that stuff not happening, Yeah, because you've taken right,
this policy that they have followed, which goes right along
with greater taxes and greater regulation.
Speaker 3: Remember, higher the tax rate goes and the higher.
Speaker 4: The regulation goes, the more advantage it is to the
biggest guy on the block.
Speaker 3: Right, just the way it is. And so as you've
seen have regulations increased or decreased over the last thirty years,
they've increased massively.
Speaker 4: Right, What have you also seen gap between the richer
and the poor get wider and wider and wider. And
that happens not just because the poor guys are getting
you know, dumped on. It happens because you're sitting there
running your business. And I face this, You're going.
Speaker 3: How much are you gonna pay me for my business?
You mean you'll pay me that much? And I don't
have to deal with the government, and I don't have.
Speaker 4: To get wrongfully sued by government regulators for no reason
and all that kind of stuf.
Speaker 3: You know, what do you I'll take the check, get
me out of here, right.
Speaker 4: And so what you've got, the consolidation is destroying the
middle class as well, right, even the people are getting checks,
those businesses are going away.
Speaker 3: Once those businesses go away.
Speaker 4: For instance, if a big firm bought Bulwark right now,
do you think our employees would get paid more or
less less?
Speaker 1: And if they were allowed to stay, because right, they're
gonna roll everything into the existing machine. So you tie
that to the Christian faith. And here's what I'm hearing
you describe. I'm hearing you describe using anti trust regulation
to pressure us to get back to some of a
Christian village, like you're not going to like mess with
someone who's ready the customer. For instance. For instance, I
met my favorite pizza place over here that you've been
to with me a couple of times, and I brought
we brought like eight eight couples, and they quote screwed
up some pizza. So all of a sudden, oh, this
is on us, and this is on us, and I realized,
oh no, this has nothing to do screwing up pizza. Right,
They're coming here to please people, right right, They're giving
us free pizza. They just don't want to say it.
And then the owner sits down, Hey did you try
this one and that one? You guys are having bad
luck in the kitchen today, because yeah, funny how that
happened tonight. Yeah, but he's close to this. I see
him at church, right, and if there was a problem
and something really got screwed up, I could see him
at church. I could go drive to his house, you know,
because I know where let's say, Rob, Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: There's a similar dynamic set up with food these days, right,
Like we all know you look like the best quality,
the healthiest meat for you is now being grown on
these small farms where you've got free ranging cows and
all that kind of stuff that used to happen inside
the you know, the community, right or at least on
the periphery.
Speaker 3: And so you see this playing out over and over.
Speaker 4: And I'm not saying that putting cows on feed lots
is anti Christian, Okay.
Speaker 3: What I'm saying is God's system works really really well.
Speaker 4: And when you start pulling away this part or pulling
away this part, and you do that, and you look
one of the one of the worst addictions and I'll
put it up there with sugar in the United States
right now. One of the worst intellectual addictions that we've got,
and I don't know when it came in here, but
it's insidious and it's taken over is this idea that
there are cost free solutions to things. Right, nothing has
cost free. It's all cost benefit analysis, period. So when
you say we want to help out poor people, at
what cost? That's the question. And that's where that's where
the proletariat always gets duped.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: They sit there and they go, yes, we want the benefit,
but the government never tells them what the cost is.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: And and I because I was a trained conservative, I
am I've been taught that all anti trust stuff is bad.
And then I'm thinking about God's design. I just read
this week speaking of you know, Christians and business and
being Christian people, that Walmarts has a back end deal
with suppliers where they get the lowest price period. And
I've heard small grocery stores, like family owned grocery store
are saying, no matter what we do, we can't seem
to get ahead. We think we get the best possible deal.
We don't even know how these companies are making money
on these food items. We're doing it as loss leaders,
just to get people in the door. Then we see
online Walmart the day we announced this, they've got the
same thing for fifty cents per pound less and that's
a am I saying that's anti Christian. I guess I
should ask you. You're the finance guy, but I look
at that, I say, yeah, you know what, you're lording
your power over others. That's what you're doing, and government
has helped you do this. I'm still torn on the
anti trust stuff, but are we at a point where
it's more Christian to go to a small store now,
where it's more Christian to seek out family owned businesses
to stay away from big business. Is that where we're at.
Speaker 4: I think that it's I think that it's more Christian
in the sense that I think it's the right thing
to do, and I think it's wise for us to do,
especially in our own backyards.
Speaker 3: Just meaning, Look, I think one of the one of the.
Speaker 4: Tragedies of today is that it shouldn't be a political
debate whether multinational corporations have gotten too much power.
Speaker 3: Right, of course they have. Right, Here's another thing.
Speaker 4: Here's another thing I've come around on that I'm actually
surprised I've come around on, and I'm kind of I'm
kind of afraid to admit it out loud, but I'm
against the Citizens United decision.
Speaker 3: And the reason I am in.
Speaker 1: Which corporations is people with rights.
Speaker 4: Right, And the reason it did was based on precedent,
because if you look at the legal setup of corporations,
they're afforded those rights of being a human being, and
I understand in a lot of ways why they are. Okay,
But at the same the other thing that we've got
to keep in mind is that we live in a
in a completely imperfect world. And when we're going into
these debates or when we're going into these issues, and
we're trying to approach them from an ideologically pure perspective.
Speaker 3: Right, we're going to fail.
Speaker 4: And the reason we're going to fail is because there
isn't one absolute answer for any problem that exists outside
of Jesus Christ being the answer for.
Speaker 3: All of things.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: Outside of that, there is no guaranteed answer. Everything's a
cost benefit analysis. So why am I Why do I
push back against the pure capitalists and say that anti
trust laws are useful because capitalism only works when competition
is present. Monopolies are anti competition. So to protect capitalism,
you've got to control the size of the participants.
Speaker 3: You just do.
Speaker 4: I wish you could just say, hey, it's a demolition derby,
go for it, and at certain times that's the appropriate take.
Speaker 3: But over the long run, you've got.
Speaker 4: To make sure and you can just see it in
the corporate history Todd. If you go look today versus
forty years ago, in any given industry, the ratio is
about eleven to three. Meaning if we looked at a
certain market and there were eleven competitors in that market
thirty years ago, today there's three. What's happened to wage
growth in those areas? It's stalled out.
Speaker 1: And there's also this my pizza analogy. My friend owns
a pizza place. It's a corporation, but it's also people.
Walmart stopped being people a long time.
Speaker 3: Ago, for sure.
Speaker 1: Rights that's a huge, huge difference. Speaking of people in
big tech and big big corporations, I want to share
with you something that we learned this week about the
the IRS and AI and this should give you all
sorts of warm fuzzies being that you're in the financial business.
So I'll share this with in just a second. This
is the last month that you get a big opportunity
for big financial deal. For my friend Tim Krukshank, founder
and CEO bone Frog Coffee, wearing some of the merch today,
You'll notice that I'm wearing a collared shirt that is
a big deal on this show. I don't normally wear
collared shirts, but this is the bone Frog golf shirt.
It's the Great Coffee Crush giveaway your chance to win
either a three hundred and fifty dollars gift card one
hundred or fifty bucks for free coffee at bone Frog.
All you need to do is go to their social
sites and take the pinpost to post at the top,
repost it, retweet it, share it on Facebook, and then
follow them so you can get notified if you win.
When you do that, you're entered to win one of
those three gift cards. All you need to do is
be a US resident. There's no purchase necessary. Winners will
be notified through DM. Winners are selected randomly, by the way.
Once the winners acknowledge the prize and that they've gotten that,
then Tim will announce the prizes and who won them publicly.
So make sure you follow him so he can get
in touch with you in case you win one of
these great gift cards for free coffee Bonefog Coffee dot
Com slash Todd promo code Todd if you have a
hard time finding their social sites, Zach. This is something
we learned about the IRS and AI this week, two
entities we should never fear. Never fear AI and never
fear the IRIS, particularly when they work together.
Speaker 7: What we have learned is that the IRS, in fact
has been using it to access bank accounts of American
citizens without any kind of a search warrant or even
without any specific claim that they have committed a crime.
So this was something that was discovered by an undercover journalist,
and what they found is that the IRS has claimed
that they have access to every single person's bank account.
This person also indicated that they've been working with the
Department of Justice and that they have absolutely no problems, however,
going after the little guy to make sure that they
are paying their taxes. This is such a blatant violation
of the Fourth Amendment that we have Jim Jordan and
I sent a letter to the IRS demanding that they
provide additional information about what they are doing with AI
and what they are doing to protect the civil rights
of American citizens.
Speaker 1: Can you even imagine if this was announced under a
a Democrat president what the right would be saying. Can
you even imagine how people's heads to be blowing up
if this had been done under the people who are
and Joe Biden and sen under President Trump? This made
Fox Business News. I can't find the story in else
anywhere else.
Speaker 6: Can you?
Speaker 1: Mad?
Speaker 4: I mean, we were yeah, and look rightfully, so, I'm
not saying I was okay with this, but we were
losing our minds when we found out the IRS was
hiring ten thousand new agents, right like.
Speaker 1: Remember that that's a great point.
Speaker 4: Okay, and no one's saying a word about this, And
this to me is the toxicity of politics.
Speaker 3: We either stand for what we stand for or we don't.
Speaker 4: And if that means that people are gonna get mad
at me and say I'm not carrying Donald Trump's water,
You're darn right I'm not.
Speaker 3: You're darn right I'm not.
Speaker 4: Because I firm believer as a citizen, especially for the
guy I voted for, my job as an informed citizen
is to hold his feet to the fire. Yeah, so
when I see something that I don't like, I'm gonna
say it right, and I'm gonna and that doesn't mean
I'm not on the home team. It actually means that
I am right right. We're cleaning out our own closets. Look,
I'm horrified by this. The one thing I'm here hearing
stuff about the IRS coming up constantly, and I will
be shocked if the left doesn't try to figure out
some way to weaponize this IRS talk against Donald Trump.
Speaker 3: One thing that we have to keep in mind.
Speaker 4: I heard somebody on the left going off about how
the IRS is only targeting middle income people, and dah
da da da dah Okay, I know, on the face
of that that sounds really bad. Okay, where do you think?
What do you think most of tax fraud looks like?
Speaker 3: What? What? I? What? What?
Speaker 4: What I would guess most tax fraud looks like is
a two and a half to three million dollar house,
three hundred and fifty thousand dollars worth of cars in
the driveway, and yet eighty thousand dollars income reported?
Speaker 3: Okay?
Speaker 4: So meaning meaning guys, just because they're going after middle
class income people, doesn't mean they're going after middle class
income people. Right understated income is going to be the
number one place where fraud and you're gonna find it.
That's great, So let let's all take it now. That
has nothing to do with lett an AI jump into
our accounts without a warrant or without our permission. You
get totally different issue. And that is alarming to me.
Speaker 3: I'm looking at the Trump administration going where are you
on this one?
Speaker 6: What?
Speaker 1: Or are you reminded me of something that happened to
me in Utah back in the day. There were some
people we got to know who wanted to invest in
our business. And you go to their house and it's
a two bedroom house, there's six people living there and
they've got chickens to eat eggs, you know, and subsistence living.
And they were talking about doing this investment and we're
thinking why we're here, and you know, my friends and something.
Just trust us, just trust us. And they take us
out to the barn and there's how they want to invest.
They pull up on a gun safe and it's packed
with cash money, and there you go. And I'm talking about, Zach,
I've never seen so much cash in my life. And
it's in a good sealed off room, lots of like locks,
and there's this unsafe, super high and gun safe, and
you know, I mean, what would fifty to two hundred
thousand dollars in the business get us? And my friends
are trying to talk me into this. I'm leaving, going, guys,
we can't do this. I guarantee because we're going to
go to venture capitalists and the venture capitals are going
to say where that money come from? Oh, these guys,
what are they?
Speaker 3: Where are they? Are they quality the money? When did
they wire you the money? Right?
Speaker 1: They didn't know they give cash?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 4: What?
Speaker 1: And are they are they qualified investors?
Speaker 2: Not?
Speaker 1: If you look at their balance sheet?
Speaker 3: Not of people get their tax returns are there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the taxi turns more to the points. But are
they qualified? Maybe more than you are?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, and that's Look, that's a great point.
Speaker 4: And that's another thing I'll say, Man, nobody, nobody dislikes
paying the taxman more than I do.
Speaker 3: I really don't.
Speaker 4: But you know, if we're going to be God was
pretty clear about that. It didn't offer a lot of
wiggle room there. Peyt rendered a Caesar. What is Caesar's Yeah,
and if you don't like the tax policy move but
don't cheat it, don't cheat it.
Speaker 3: And you just can't do it. Man, got to play
by the rules. I know.
Speaker 1: I like this idea of sitting in front of Jesus
and the tax on judgment day and Jesus said, hey,
look we need to talk about you're not paying your taxes.
My government was corrupt.
Speaker 4: And Jesus goes tell me about it.
Speaker 1: I seem to remember something about that. Always good to
get wise canceled from you, my brother, Thank you very much,
appreciate you.
Speaker 3: Pleasures all mine. Man, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: This is a Todd Herman show. Please go be well,
be strong, be kind, and please make every effort to
walk in the light of Christ,