Don't Tread On UST

There we go.

Greetings and welcome to Inside Baseball with all the chestnuts. I'm William Allen with my friend Morris Sacks. Say do NB. It's great to see you, buddy. How you doing? Oh, I'm just great. Um just I mean I'm I'm better. I'm not great. I take it back. I've been deathly ill with my children for two weeks. Oh, Tommy's not here, Mrs. Torrance.

Did I have so can I complain about can I just complain about the new Tell me about Okay, the kid comes home from school with a cough. Okay, cough, runny nose, no big deal. I can manage that, okay? It doesn't go away, the cough doesn't stop, hundred and two fever, okay I I can manage one, the old my my oldest daughter, five years old. And then it got me? Dude.

Like I'm when we were sick you had a can of Campbell's chin of of Campbell's chicken noodle soup, you had a ginger ale, you went to sleep and you were okay it within twenty-four hours, all right? I had full like uh like out of control, like I had gotten out of a hospital Imagine sitting in a hot tub at like Jackson Hall one evening after a long day skiing and you're you know just 104 you feel great but then imagine standing up

Naked and standing for about four minutes, the violent the violent shivers that you can't shake, dude. Um bedridden for two days. Uh I could not get out of bed for two days. I'm a hell I I'm a healthy individual. Imagine if you're five hundred pounds. I would have been warm. I don't feel sick, but something happened in my throat. So I apologize if I'm a little raspy. Sure, sure. You know, I feel like

This is a podcast that needed to get done. Like this has been brewing in my head for a while. And uh it all started um when Uncle Mark came to visit. Because Uncle Mark and I grew up in the same house with no safety net. We knew we had to Build a future, prepare for the any outcome. So we talk about these things a lot. And um I thought You know, everyone has come to like a walk because we lift the curtain on the financial services industry, right?

And by the way, that article in the FT talking about how all of the investors profits have gone to compensation of managers, right? Is there validation of our purpose better than that? No. Verbatim. Yeah. So um I feel great about that. But I wanted to talk about something. You know the Beatles had their white album? They might call this the Ibwak Black episode. I've had the bad luck. have a lifetime full of watching people behave badly with money. And it's mostly family members.

or family members or friends. And I'd like to talk about it because clearly I don't know anyone's family, but I've seen a pattern of behavior that I'd like to share because. These patterns have repeated themselves over and over again throughout my life. And you know, you may look at your mom and your dad like they'd never do that. And you know what? I'm sure they never would. So if these stories are gonna offend you.

Turn this off because the nefarious behavior is so pervasive and so much of it has been so preventable. I felt that if we're gonna Unveil the Wall Street guys. This is up there. And uh I'll leave it to you. If you think I'm going too far in the mud, you just give me the cut sign and I'll. Um I'll move along. But before I go any further, two things. One is I'd like to make sure Madeline Sachs gets an assistant producer credit for today.

Wait, wait a minute. Why? I was told that you that I probably shouldn't talk to you today. And then 10 minutes later I get a text from you saying, hey, I'll talk to you in 10 minutes. What am I what am I doing here? Without you for nothing. Nobody, nobody is better. Please. Maddie Maddie, we love you. You get the producer yeah, d we'll see how it goes. We'll see how it goes. I don't I don't know that Anyone other than I appreciates how much

I've gained by doing this podcast. And I've said this all the time. Without you, there's no podcast. You just have a way of incentivizing me to talk about things and keeping me on track and so thank you. You're welcome. Yes. So the good news is There was a huge outpouring of demand for a in inside baseball with all chestnut Christmas box set. So it'll be here in in time for the holidays. Okay, good.

I don't have a price on it yet, but you know, how can you put a price on this? So for all the four hundred people that have called me and texted me over the last two weeks and have again not gotten a reply. You know, I'm sorry, I'm old school. If I don't feel like replying, I'm just not gonna. So I'm okay, but uh I get to you eventually. But anyway, let's proceed. Yeah. As I was talking to Uncle Mark.

You know, one of the things we were both trying to do over the years is, you know, we kind of know what our assets are, we kind of know what the growth rate is, and we kind of have a sense of what our expenditures are. But what struck me? as the vastly away from my estimate was the increase in prescription drug cost. And if you estimate at 3%, you're not even close. It's substantially higher. And as you get older, they keep adding things on and they never take anything off.

So, you know, you're gonna be on blood thinner, hypertension. um cholesterol medication. Muscle relax, muscle relaxer, maybe sleeping pill. And they're going up like 10% a year. Now I know Mark Cuban's got something he's cobbling together, but you know. Uh never been a big believer in the generics because they're made in China. The generics were made in Canada. China, Canada, Canada, China. Well I think they're made up tomato. They're shipped to Canada.

Yeah. Oh. Oh. Anyway, let's talk about our first.

So over the years, I've come to meet three or four elderly gentlemen. who had served in the armed forces and then as years gone by they were kind of living on their own. They didn't have any immediate family they didn't have a wife keeping them in line And things kind of went sideways. And because of this emotional connection I felt to them, I felt compelled to step in. Okay. So the first fellow is this guy that when we bought our first house, he had been kind of the painter maintenance guy.

So he knew the house backwards and forwards. And if anything broke, he could he could fix him. Yeah. Yeah. Price priceless per a priceless individual in many aspects. Yes. So is he kinda grew a little feeble. had all sorts of health issues. He'd just drive to the VA, park the car, and crawl into the emergency. They'd patch him up and kick him out. So like many old people, if you had a job.

And his job was to maintain my house. So he'd drive on the merit. I don't know how I made it. And Uh it got to the point it cost more to fix what he broke. Than to just put them on a stipend. So we said, okay, go home, we'll send you a hundred bucks a week. You know, for me it was trivial, but it was, you know, Mike trying to do the guy solid. Cause you know, if we had a leak in the basement Christmas at two in the morning, he's there, right? Yep. Like a lot of old people.

They get lonely, they have nothing to do. So he did what I've seen a lot of old people do is they start spending more time at the church. Why? Because They go there, all are welcome. But there's a lot of people, including the religious organizations, that find these people as low-hanging prey. So in this fellow's case, he met a young couple at the church who gave him a tale of all about

They got kicked out unfairly by their landlord. Apparently they had a dog that the tenants didn't like. You know? Yeah, yeah. The tail is all the time. Yeah. So um We find out these people are living there. They killed his dog. We know where that where that ends up, right? Anyway. So we call the police to do one of these welfare checks. Yeah. He goes over there and they call us up and it's like

His niece and his nephew are living there with him. Really? Doesn't have a niece and a nephew. Okay. So it turns out. These people won't leave. And under Connecticut law, If you give someone a room in your house, a key to your front door, If there's a kitchen in there. It's theirs. Yeah. And they get mail delivered there. You gotta go to court. And so people go from one person to the next. So the police are like, look.

Law can't help you. Like, okay, so whether it's me or Cheryl, I don't know. Let's give Cheryl the credit. But we figured out we're wiring money from either Bank America. or wherever to his bank. Well now we're talking about these people were going into his account, taking the money. So we called the bank and said, this is some kind of wire fraud. It's a federal offense, right? Well, all of a sudden the FBI's involved, the people are gone.

Problem solve. So be on the lookout for this sort of thing.

The hardest thing you're ever going to do, hopefully you don't have to deal with this because it's a fucking nightmare. You have to take the car keys away. If they're driving and they're over like sixty five. Yeah, I know. I was uh It with my mother, it was a knockdown drag out fight. Dude, let me tell you how bad it's gotten since COVID. Did you talk about like the decay of American society and values, dude?

And dude, driving around in the is a war. Every listener, every listener that lives in America will confirm that the the The overall IQ of the American driver has gone down fifty points. with the amount of dope kids that are able to drive. They put a seventeen year old kid behind a wheel now that never took a driver's ed cat. Dude, don't get me started on the roads. The roads are dangerous fucking places. My five year old daughter like we drive on ninety five and she's like

Pointing out all the various dangers. She's like, Oh, look out for the swift trucks, watch out FedEx, get they're in a rush, stay away from them. Dude, at the red and green lights, okay, when I get off At the Riverside Exit to go to pet pantry warehouse in Greenwich, okay? You know that hellish seven way intersection to get on to ninety five or to get onto the post road. Okay, the light turns yellow.

Okay, red, four cars, four more after the red, okay? You take your fucking life in your hands on the roads are now. So parents driving? No. Kids like I'm it's it's insanity, dude. Um but like seniors I y wherever you live you need to utilize the many services that are offered to the like the the Greenwich Town shuttle, like the Greenwich Senior Citizens. They'll come get you, ma'am, and they'll take you down to

to Whole Foods and bring you home safely. Yeah, okay, go ahead. I'm sorry to hijack this, but this is hijacking and you know, my voice is weak. Godfather. Godfather. But the thing you didn't mention about ninety five is it's fucking rudded as fuck from all the trucks. And then you repainted. It's beautiful. It's gorgeous. It's yeah. It's gor from from Stanford to the state line. Yeah, dude. If you had a nice car in the middle of the night, now's your time to shine on ninety five. Yeah.

Fresh, beautiful. Dude, they did all okay, so you brought that up. Let me say one thing. Dude, they're they they've paved nine ninety-five the whole way. I did ninety five to Hilton Head in the past month. Dude, the the amount of construction and improvement is a s That corridor is booming. Yeah, yeah, it's it's incredible. Uh to me, I was like, wow, the American economy.

Crank it. Yeah. It is really real yeah. Mm yeah. I was really impressed in the in the corridor. I told how we talked about this and how like all the the little town went from a you know, a a gas station and uh and a ki and a dollar general to the little five star dining and uh you know forty thousand population increase. Um but go ahead. Go ahead.

Well, w you know, some of these other nefarious things would so as people get older, they become a little bit more isolated, right? Because they're not going to work. And one of the things I've noticed in multiple instances is And this has mostly been with women. And I'm not being misogynistic. It's just the fact that women live longer than men. So I've seen a few times women receive life insert insurance proceeds when their husband dies.

That money is gone faster than shit through goose. Like you didn't think it was possible for people to spend money so fast. And so I know what happens is many kids try and help their uh parents when they get older. And they said, sure mom, I'll send you 500 bucks a month, 800 bucks a month. Then the mom will call up and go, oh, it's not enough. I need more. What happened? Well, you know, the drugs went up, the groceries were expensive. All of a sudden there's this

fabricated creep. And so all of a sudden you're sending them more money every week. And how do I know it's creep? Because I made the mistake of being executor of people's wills. You know what I'm saying? how'd you end up with 50 grand 100 grand why because i went through the checking account i yeah yeah and if you have any joint accounts

With parents where they have a signature on it. I'm sorry. I hate to tell you, that money's gone. I have seen some of incredible family sagas about p like a w like a grandson What was it? A nephew was named executor of a will by a lunatic old aunt that had a ton of money and like wanted to go to like weird places and pressure off me so much. I was afraid everyone was gonna go There is a being a hater again. No. No, no, no. I well I witnessed I I've witnessed another one was was I saw how um

My m my uh what was it? I guess it was my grandmother in law, how her husband was a meticulous estate planner like you and had it he had it mapped out by the time he was probably fifty five. And he had done the math in case she lived to a hundred and five because she goddamn near did. But he was like having champagne, right? Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly. She lived at the Osborne and Rye, you know. And I and I saw like firsthand like the like older

Other parents like dude, I used to go and eat dinner in in the senior dining room and it was kinda it was cool, you know. We go eat dinner with Yeah, we go eat getting dinner with Graham, you know, but that like meant a big deal. It was a big thing for her to see her granddaughter. Um and it was awesome. But I can remember seeing like a guy next to him, like that would just sit there and he

Scream Spoon because he wanted like a spoon for his ice cream. And like he nobody was dining with him that evening and he was just and Amy and I laugh like if the kids even ask for a spoon to this day, she'll Spoon where like the wait like the server, the a attendant would come over and like physically put her hand over his mouth and be like and be like, Mr Sax, the spoon is coming, okay? But I I I I was put through I was I was in

I was immersed in that. I was immersed in that and I yeah, it it was interesting. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah. Well yeah, it's just I think the some of the good we've done is Try to alert people to stuff and you know understand that bad things can happen to you, and if at least you're on alert for it. So for instance. People will casually say, hey, would you be executor of my estate? Here's your answer. No. No. I'll tell you why. Because the First of all, it's a pain in the ass to get

But here's the real reason. If you fuck up, you're personally liable, unlimited. So if you Here's my guy. Here's my guy. I have a guy that specializes. You want the guy? Here's the guy. That's as easy. That's done. Well do that offline, but yeah. So I've seen checks written from estates to the trustee.

So like if you gave fifty grand to Jimmy for his bar mitzvah, that money's gone. Don't think you transfer you sent it to your second cousin's brother in law, that that money's safe. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No. You know, I I didn't realize till I saw an episode of Miss Mezel. So the kid had a bar mitzvah. And after the bar mitzvah, the father just grabbed all the cash and checks. Yeah.

I thought I was the only one that happened to. I was talking to a buddy of mine, I'm like, no, that happened to him too. Except except I knew about it. What do you mean? Well, I had my bar mitzvah and there was fifty grand and my dad came to me and said, We'd really like to take a family trip to Europe. What do you think? And he's like, sure, I'd love to pay for that. And I said, well, what did you think? He goes, I was 15.

My mother had a companion who was a World War II vet, real nice guy. And he doted on my mom. So he had a lot of took a lot of pressure off my brother and I. But he lost all his money'cause he was a compulsive gambler. And his parent his his kids, because he acted so badly with money, kinda disowned him. And he moved in with my mom and You know, he he was there with her till she passed. And my breath We're out here.

Uh hi, we're in we're podcasting. Yeah. Ladies and gentlemen, Cheryl Sachs. Hello, podcast world. Okay. Um Bye. We owed him a debt of gratitude. The problem was my brother and I own the apartment. You know, we took a mortgage against it because one of the other things parents do is they take out second mortgages without you knowing about it.

And so you think the house is worth half a million? You sell it for 400 grand and the bank gets its fee and anyway. Um I was worried that because my mother and this guy were both nonstop chain smokers and there was all this bottled oxygen. That they blow the building up. And oh seriously. It's like a it was like a like Tesla's before Tesla's in the garage. It was smokers with oxygen tanks, I know. So Um when my mom passed, I said politely, Jerry.

We gotta sell the apartment. It's a state. I don't have a choice. I understand. Let me just give me a month. I'll clear out. So after a month, he says. My kids say, if I need help, I have to live in the basement of their house and they'll give me a hot plate to cook my meals. Like, uh, that's just not. I said, I'll tell you what, when you move out.

I will send your daughter monthly. My brother and I might have done this. I don't remember. But one of us sent the daughter monthly money so he could have like a real apartment. But I think I maintained some dignity. And uh anyway, the kids start making some noise about, you know, you really should pay him to leave, he's got a right to be there. I'm like, this is what This is my offer, but

And so they take it and he goes, we sell the apartment. And uh then we discover he had opened a Christmas card. account with my mom at the bank, and every six months they pull the money and they take a trip somewhere. Except that he just one day took the money and went to the casino and blew it. That's why I have all these experiences of people doing bad things. And uh why I sent the money to the daughter, because I'm like, If I said it to him that

He's just gonna gamble away, right? Anyway, he goes his way, I go mine. I feel good about it. But it's just another one of these stories that if you didn't validate, then people would just think I'm bitching about. I felt good about myself for helping the guy. His cuts his kids cut him loose because they they had their own shtick, but uh you know, as you get older, your resources dwindle and

your behavior decays. And you know, if you're providing support to somebody, this is the thing that may Mark Mark said this is just plain evil.

So I know this older lady, she go to the church, and they had all these programs. People come in and talk. You know, yada yada yada. She loved. Like you need someone to stuff 5,000 envelopes, she'd do it. You need to make 4,000 phone calls. She'll do it. But she had to pay dues to the church. Wasn't a lot, it was de minimis, called fifty bucks. But then as the years went by, They started ramping up the dues. And

You know, listen, if you want to come to hear this speaker, you got to belong to this level. And they got a special called lapel. badge and you go and they'd be like full access kind of bullshit, you know. And so if you weren't at a certain level, you didn't have that badge. So you're a little bit ostracized.

And they just broke this woman emotionally because she wasn't at the high enough tier. And it wasn't just churches. So one of my business colleagues, I won't mention his name, but his grandmother. was poor because her son and my partner's father were near Doyle. And she was in a nursing home that was being bought out by, I think, Fortress, when they were doing that big

um nursing home pack securitization. For her to stay it was gonna be like a hundred grand. It was material amount of money. So she wanted to stay desperately in this nursing home. And my partner had kind of said, don't worry, granny, I got you covered. But like most things, he always dragged his feet. So she'd starting at like 8 30 in the morning, she'd start calling the office and the receptionist would say, you'd be like this beep.

Boop Hey, so and so it's your grandmother. Uh tell her I'll be with her a minute. And he'd pick up. And you could just hear him screaming like a man. They need a deposit. And he'd hang up. She called right back. And this poor receptionist who Lovely Italian girl who grew up in Greenwich. And these older adults get their fangs into the receptionist.

Oh, your your son's such a nice man. Well then how come he won't take my phone calls? I'll get him to call you back. Well you said that yesterday. And so they just, you know, they invade the workplace. And I don't know how it turned out, but it's just

It was gruesome because I I and E. G may have heard this go on. I won't put him under the hot spot, but it was just cruel to watch this thing going. And If you know that's coming, I don't know exactly what to tell you, but don't think you're different. You know, how d you know, it's like that line from the exorcist, Yimmy, why you do this to me, Yimmy? And uh

So anyway, I don't have a list that's a whole lot longer, but key takeaways, get the fucking car keys, right? Get the oxygen tanks out of the house. And any bank account, close it. The fact that there's a trustee. And there are these things. like charitable trusts. So there's a tax gimmick which is available to everybody. You're limited how much of donation you can make to charity every year. So if you give XS, you can carry it forward.

And if you have a big ear and you want to give a huge amount today, you can put it in one of these foundation trusts. And all the vanguards, fidelities, have these things. So you put it in this trust and you basically agree, you're gonna give so much. each year away to a charity. And at the end of the lifetime, it all goes to charity. But you get the tax deduction today. So they're very popular, even for Lower rated kids. Um, but um my advice would with charities.

This is gonna upset people. I'm gonna say it. İzlediğiniz için teşekkür ederim. The bulk of these things, the guy running it's getting paid a million bucks. They got a huge infrastructure. that they're just supporting. Every year they're looking for more money.

Nobody ever digs up and sees how the money is spending. Half the time it's going to fucking UN and Hamas. I mean, if that's what you want, that's fine, but you should know. And by the way, this is what I like, and I and I've not done this, so this is you know, do as I say, not as I do. You can bequeath money. That money goes to charity after your death. So when you're done here and you don't need it. And trust me, they'll take it. They'll be delighted. They may make you a saint.

But you know, we've given a lot of money away to trust, to uh charities, and I'm glad we did. Makes you feel great. I'm not in hindsight sure they were the best choice, but I did it. Now access to the money's gone. I'm lucky. Plan ahead. But if you went to them and said, Hey, things are tough, they're gonna, yeah, you think you know tough. Try getting money out of old people like you. Yeah, yeah. But you know, I wanna come take you to lunch. Come, I'll take you to play bingo.

you know, send your Christmas card. Oh little Johnny over United Way, he really cares about me. Um all right, come on. We're not doing a whole show on elder abuse, okay? Can we do you have anything do you have anything on the treasuries or anything? We have so many good stories. We c we can't do this whole show on this.

Well so there's two things I wondered about. I'll leave this to the listeners. Because it's got math in it. So let's say the national debt is 1.3 trillion. Okay. The banks have this thing called extend and pretend. Yeah. What does that mean? So then when a loan defaults, they just lengthen the maturity. And the guy pays down a little something, a little smiggly amount. And

The loans uh the banks as well it's it's performing. So it's it's good. We're gonna act like it's good law. And that's how they they get away with it. Um That's just a little bit of what goes on in the street. I think we're gonna start to see more of that. You know, people have been calling commercial real estate dead for years, yet you see BlackRock just bought a big tower to house their people. Well that's nice. Ah, they would be buying if they thought it was that.

Apparently New York rentals are still through the roof. Apparently you can't get a hotel in Manhattan for less than three hundred bucks a night or whatever. So that corroborates what you said about the economy being strong. um i haven't looked at real estate market here i did look at the two year note it's still in the twos I guess the payroll numbers are

showed some signs of stiffening, maybe some current concerns about inflation. Now I'm gonna violate Zerval's copyright because I think he was pure genius. So I'm giving him Total chapeau for this. So, you know, just because I'm an old guy and you tend to be a doubter. I've been a little bit a seller of the AI. Now I did subscribe and Maddie's gonna work with me on it. I'm gonna try and learn a bit about it. But as Zervos points out, what's the big

Benny of AI. Increased productivity, right? Okay, what's that mean? Disinflationary. Loseros wants to know why. The people whose job it is, the investors in 30-year bonds, whose sole concern is inflation, have not embraced. The deflationary aspect of the of artificial intelligence. The long-term yields on a real basis have modestly gone up. Why is that if we're fleecing this massive deflation from AI? I think the real answer is nobody's a real believer.

Going back to the debt being 1.3 trillion, if the government is paying interest of 1% on 1.3 trillion, We're gonna be able to service the debt for a long time. And You see what's happened. Uh I saw that Trump pointed out there might be some uh shady business in the Treasury market, so he might have to like

come along and be like, Yeah, sorry, your QCIP is invalid. Uh that doesn't exist anymore. Apparently he went to Japan and like had an epiphany and was like, Hey, I I can get rid of a lot of this debt magically. Watch this. Buy it. Exactly. Yeah, I th I thought that's what the people want to hear your thoughts on. Okay. You y you you make it sound very simple and like you've already thought of this. Yeah.

So this shouldn't be shocking to anyone. This should be applauded potentially. Well, this is what I've said for years, to no avail. Like like many things. Yeah, over a long enough time horizon. Go ahead. Go ahead.

When I was a young trader, back when you were still trying to date high school cheerleaders, Disney came with a hundred-year bond. And I, like most people, said, who the fuck would buy a hundred-year bond? Well, in my ignorance, I sat on and tried to understand why. Because 100-year bond, not a lot different than a 40-year bond. It's all about this.

Duration. So duration is two things. One is It's what happens to your long dated assets when yields go up, and what happens to your long dated liabilities when yields go down. If you're Um a pension fund. where you owe people money a long time from now. you've got a huge liability because let's say the long bond yields four percent. Four percent is not a lot of return. It certainly below a lot of assumptions in these annuities and

Life insurance policies. Yeah, didn't Detroit didn't Detroit sa say sorry? Pension fund busted? We we Yeah. It is at some point. But there's this pension benefit guarantee corporation that people pay insurance for you know that that leads to the great wall street movie line this deal funds itself we go and buy an annuity in Empty out the overfunded pension liability. So in his famous letter to Catherine Graham, you can go find it on your own.

Buffett explains why pensions don't work. I read that like thirty years ago. I read it thirty years too late. I think we have listeners that work at Cowper's though, so let's be careful here. Well, that's why who's gonna buy the treasury debt? There's a lot of people out there, they don't have a lot of choices. And no one's ever that I've seen gone out and calculated what the liability is in terms of duration. So that's why as

Let's say the problem with treasurers is nobody wants them. Well, prices go down, yield goes up. As yields go up, People can find it easier to offset, to fease their liabilities. That's who the buyer's going to be. You know in my zillion dollars in treasure bill, which I'm getting nine percent, I swap it from nine to seven, all of a sudden we cut a fat hawk. Everyone sitting in money market funds is going to go, why pay 2% taxable when I can be by treasuries at 3%?

At least I don't pay state tax on it, I may pay federal. That's where the demand's gonna come from. Plus, if we all remember assets equal liabilities plus net worth. Yeah. The biggest asset, I don't know what any anyone's ever valued it, but you've got a nation of 35 million people. Who have to pay income taxes every year. That's a present value of an annuity that's worth a lot of money.

Ever tried to get away with not paying taxes? Excuse me. I've seen that. Let me tell you how it ends. This is serious. You get a notice taped to your door, which you pull out, you drive over to MB's house, you break down in his living room in tears. MB calls the accountant. Oh yeah. It's all fixed. And you think MB is a magician. Right, right, exactly. MB is not taking out any new clients. So to those 69 emails.

Pay your taxes. Yeah. No kidding. That's I mean, keeping in mind my throat's a little sore, but you've always seemed to have a good instinct about my logic. Does this make sense? Yeah. I'm not saying you sell the Grand Canyon, but You got all that oil in the Permian Basin? You got uh all that oil offshore? Dude, we're gonna have k we're gonna ha we might have Canada by summertime. So can I ask can I ask a serious question? Is that being seriously considered by the sax wing north of the border?

We have guests in town and they're lovely people, but if the name of the president comes in. The discussion just shuts down. They have the derangement syndrome. They got the TDS. I'm not gonna say that, but even Go ahead. Sherlock made a guest opinion here. And you know, we're notoriously apolitical, right? And I'm gonna stay there because there's no money in arguing. But, you know, I'm very pro-Israel.

And so for me very quickly I'm like, you can hate him if he wants, but to do a s and then I even Don't want to mention that because I know there are people who listen to like It's a war crime. I I don't want to get into that argument. I wanna be a guy everybody likes. Let me tell you how fair I can be, dude. Nobody hated him more than me. I loathed him. I was like

You fucking Trump idiots like like when I would drive to Maine, I'd see the I'd see the trailer with the Trump flag. I mean like he wouldn't piss on you if you were a f Dude, four years later, when the facts change, my opinion changes, what do you do, sir? Okay. I couldn't be more of a car cake trouble. You know, cutting off money to Hamas, the United Nations. But even Sharon's like, look, don't get me wrong.

I'm grateful for the stuff he's done for Italy and uh for Israel. But when he attacks the The defenders of wildlife, I'm gonna lose my mind because to her, the endangered endangered species act, that's number one. Her most important thing. So she's gonna turn. Okay. I get it. I'm not gonna argue with her. I get it. I get it. But I'll trade the tree for the military morale that has gone from like we we hate this year to like

It it's just intri it I don't want to get into it. But yeah, dude, I it's been uh like I I don't understand, but people lose their minds over it. Um But whereas like I would think that like Amer I think America I think the American morale has changed. I think like towards the end of the Biden administration things were kinda like America felt like a little bit of a ruddlish ship with him going out there. He didn't command that same

you know, like we're not w we're not gonna be fucked with anymore. Pardon my language. I know my like my kids are gonna hear this, but like that's kind of the attitude now that's gone from like I I I'm just saying I I personally feel that there was a vibe amongst I cast a very wide net, as you know. I have many friends across diverse. backgrounds. I don't like strictly operate in Wall Street circles, as all of you know. Okay. And I think that the the tone

Right. I think like the tone like I like you know, the tone in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maine, Florida. Like I know I'm I'm East Coast centric, but even in the middle and on the west coast, I think there has been a dramatic shift in American confidence. Um Like like international policy, okay, like It's become

It's become a different uh tenor, I think. Okay. He didn't wreck the he hasn't wrecked the stock market yet, you know. He hasn't done one second. I need to put the red line and I need the intern to come and warm my MediPod. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So um what comes up on the the dinner table in around the sax house? The most frequent question is why hasn't someone offered you a job?

a Wall Street firm. You know what? That's a good fucking question. I don't know. Yeah. Oh, I'm very no, please. Not available, you follow book? Absolutely not. No, please. They can't I'm I'm not even kidding they can't afford me. Go ahead. Okay. Don't talk about that at dinner. You have more pressing issues. You have a wedding forthcoming. That's public knowledge on on the Ibwak County. Do the listeners care about like like we want to know about the the guy in Treasury's

selling secrets to China. Okay? Uh did you catch the wind of that this week? Did that did that even see, like look at these these stories don't even blink on your radar. That's what I told you I said to my mentor. I will go down to Washington for free for three months. He's like, Morris, nobody wants a white Jewish guy in Washington. That's changing. You give me give me thirty days and a badge.

Dude, I'll have these guys hanging from a hook. Well they got f they apparently they got a half a dozen little uh eighteen, nineteen year old These um little wizards that are working on it. You've seen what's happened.

It's just been in an an incredible news cycle in the in the first two weeks of uh of our polarizing but less so. What do you make of the Elon Musk? Dude, again, I couldn't be more of a fucking hypocrite, bro. I hated him with the strength of a thousand sons. And dude, and half of me I think still does.

But okay, if you're gonna camp out at the White House and you're gonna clean shit up for free and you're gonna hire a bunch of little okay, uh you're gonna fly rockets to the moon, you're gonna do the electric car And you're gonna spearhead all this shit. I I can look the other way on all the dude, I hate Tesla. I hate everyone that made millions of dollars on

It's it's a complete it's a it's complete double think, okay? That's the only and I I will be the first to admit it. And if you can't admit that all of this has an aspect of double think to it. You're kidding yourself, okay? So I will not be blinded by my hate for Elon or for Trump, okay? I was like

Dude, we're doing bread and circus stuff. Like if these guys are if these guys are the actors, they're doing a great job of it, okay? Um, and I am fully engaged, but uh that's my opinion on that, dude. You know me. I was Hate him, hate him. I call he nobody's a bigger fraud, okay? Probably if you looked at my opinion of him dated I don't know, I'll call it ten years ago, you know? So no, it's fascinating. Sure. Hey, Amy on podcasting. Can I call you back? Thanks.

So one of the things the Bitcoin guy is trying to do is get all these emails and transactions off a public, maybe not emails, but transactions off the public record. So this money's all in the banking system. All you have to do is follow the chains of transfers. Let's start with the people in Washington. And let's let's do an audit of their tax return.

Let's look at their bank account. By the way, nothing Maxine Waters, you're your what are your favorites? Can I bring up Maxine Waters? Dude, I love it. Dude, all they do is put her like salary, Maxine Waters salary, 180 grand, okay? Maxine Waters estimated net wealth. 710 million dollars, dude. Same thing with Elizabeth Warren. It's it's it's because it's it's comic it's comical, dude. The hypocrisy knows no bounds, dude. The the hypocrisy knows no bounds.

So towards the end of his presidency, or even the early in his presidency, many of Congress tried to Like Trump charged you with a lot of crime. So now that Oh stop, stop, stop, stop. Let me go back to Maxine Waters. I have an obligation to you. Who knew who you would always this she's one of your favorite targets. Let me do it.

But apparently she did the same thing he did with like over inflating the value of a parcel of land so she could get a nice loan, dude. Yes Yes, exactly. I guess they got they got the story, the whole thing they're like oh this The same thing that she pressed him on for, you know, and like made a big thing. She actually did it in real life and like whatever it was.

It's like fun. If he shines a light on that fun, dude. Um, I don't think he's wasting his time with it, but it's I don't know, dude. I I can't keep up with it. The news cycles goes so fast right now. I told you I was sick for two weeks. I wa like they're like fever dreams. I wake up in the middle of the night, they're like the Department of Education is dismantled. Okay. So you forbade me from going on Twitter. It's like

I can't I go on my fair friends tonight. No, you can you can read. You just can't participate. You can only read. Okay. No, then suck me in. It's like it's like a dude, I I was I'm too young to remember like a peep show in the city, like where you could go and sit in like a phone booth and watch a girl dance for like fifty cents or something. That's what Twitter. Twitter is the modern form of that.

in your hands. And then you could get a slice of pizza for a dollar. Right. In the good old days in like the good old New York, you know? Somebody wrote an article about trying to talk about inflation based on the price of hot dogs, the dirty water dogs. Oh, graze papaya, bro. That's pathetics. Yeah.

No, I can't keep up though really the news cycle has just been um it's just been i incredible. It's head spinning. But I dude you cannot discuss you cannot discuss any of these topics with anyone publicly or privately. You have to be really careful, especially with your family. Okay. I can have these like conversations with my wife and some like minded friends out loud where we can like but i i if you do it with the wrong person at the wrong time, these things are

People are invested in this dude. No, I'm trying to really create my own addition to society via this concept. Of the cocktail party bullshit. Okay. So here's here's my latest maneuver. Someone called A friend. A little north of a friend, a little south of an acquaintance. MB, how you doing? Yeah, you know, okay, pretty good. Enjoy spending time with the grandkids and my kids.

You know, one day at a time, good. Listen, is there anything I can ever do? I want you to tell me anything. I mean it. So he said, I want you to help me move. Phone goes dead. It's one of those things. Or something. Okay.

So, anyway, we have Glenville coming up. And you're can I ask can I ask some questions? Can I ask some fair questions? You can try. Coming up, what are you doing? You're going to Ledville when? When are you going? Okay. When is the event? It's August something. Okay, so we got time. We got time. February, March, April, I've got to go. But I've got Peter McGuire at even money for running it and getting a buckle. Okay. Alright. I don't want to put a pox on it, but... You know?

Oké. All right. Very good. Yeah, I got nothing here, dude. It's been a grueling It's the dog days of winter and like apparently th the sick n oh. I don't even want to joke about it, but my dad got it. My my dad's sick with it now. Um he had a doctor's appointment today at one thirty. So it's Monday afternoon, one thirty had an appointment. Um

They cancelled the trip to Ireland. They were supposed to go to Ireland tomorrow morning. My mother said, Uh uh, you're not getting on the plane, you're not driving, we're staying home, it'll be there Um which I'm I'm sure annoyed him to know him, but it it maybe it didn't because he d Well he didn't want to be alone on the Emerald Isle. But yeah, you should tell um

But yeah, it's just it's uh apparently it's going around with kids. Like my daughter hasn't been to school, dude. Like what's the today's February tenth? Like I can't remember last time we did the show. It feels like it's been three weeks since we did the show and I've been sick since then. Um Yeah, yeah, like it's it's it's not it's it's kinda dark over here.

Appreciate appreci appre appreciate it. No, I know I know I know I got listeners that are annoyed that haven't gotten uh gotten hats yet and I and I'm gonna I'm gonna do that. Um But yeah, uh the listeners would be happy that we're back. Um but yeah, like I said, they um other than your, you know, take away the the keys from your parents immediately, which is uh y which is sage advice. Um, the uh No, the the the the market has um

has been interesting and there have been some moments like I said where I wanted to get your thoughts on uh on the treasuries and then that that late breaking story about him thinking that uh like going to Japan and saying, Okay, well this is how we can do this. Maybe we're not as I think the c the highlight was like

Maybe we're not maybe we're not as broke as we thought. Maybe we don't owe as much as we thought. Here's the canary in the mine shaft. If people were worried about the US not paying off its debt, the 30-year Treasury would yield 7%. I remember the day the US got downgraded. I was in Chicago visiting my mother. I was walking to the Four Seasons Hotel on Michigan Avenue. In Chicago, which is probably not safe anymore.

And it's like, okay, now we're gonna see, because everyone's like, when they lose their AAA rating, it's gonna be all how. Guess what? The market fucking ripped. The market fuck why? Because chicken legged had come and gone. It's still the reserve currency. You know. Where would you have your money? In Euros back by Bank of Italy? No. Maybe, I don't know. Uh

Did you brought up you brought up Chicago? I just got I had to laugh, dude. Like they had Dr. Phil out in the streets with the homeland security guy rounding up people on night one. Okay? Dr. Phil. They had Dr. Phil. And Tom Homan, who's like whatever the the borders are who's who wants to run a who wants to round them up as fast as they can. Um but yeah, I was I just laughed about like like the like the comedy of it, dude. I was like, We got Dr. Is that Groundhardt Day?

It it was surreal. I was like I was like this can't be real. I was like that is that really Dr. Phil at at like an ice raid at four forty five on the south side? So they're they're picking up the Yeah, it goes. Dude, they're going through the country with a fine tooth comb. Yeah. They said job sites, nobody showed up. Um

I mean you there's it not up here. Obviously up here I haven't seen an ice raid. But yeah, there's in the news they hit Jersey, Chicago, you know, they're making a lot of headlines rounding people up. read Twitter or I haven't seen the New York, most likely. What's public opinion?

Dude, okay, put it this way. He got thunderous applause last night at the Superbowl. No surprise, okay? But yeah, he got thunderous applause. Um Taylor Swift got booed till the till the crow till the cows came home. Um And yeah, I think that's a good thing. the public opinion oh, I'll tell you what it is. The statistics say he's never had better ratings, okay? So he has like over he's doing overwhelming numbers, okay?

And yeah, if that answers your question. So public opinion, I think the numbers um but you know there's this the people with T D S can uh they're having a real tough time. Um yeah, you see you know elizabeth warren is like really number one now they're gonna start the meme he's gonna declare a national emergency and she he should be granted unlimited powers

to keep things on and that's how he's gonna become Adolf Hitler. That's the meme. That's the that's the that's the that's the uh what, the narrative that the other side has has has told me That's what they did with Hitler. Um yeah, no no I agree. Um no I mean we're Well, what's the thing? Well, you you taught me about that all conversations when it goes to when it goes to Hitler, once it goes to the Nazis, it's over. Godwin's long.

Is that what it logged if ends up being compared to Nazis? Right, exactly. That's where we are. So we so now that we've now that we've hit the law, okay. Exactly. Thanks. Thank you very much. Um Thank you for for you know, um, what's the word, humoring me? I really felt like an obligation to make a public appearance because people are concerned. And you know, I don't know whether you heard that information in a good way or a bad way.

But it's just another one of my life's experiences. Like when we were trading options with Deutsche Bank at Greenwich, we had sold. an option to Deutsche Bank in JGB's that ended like 15 points in the money. And they they forgot to exercise. And they called exercising. Yeah, yeah.

Oh, did you know what's speaking of exercise and I saw they were okay, you you got two minutes for gold. I seen they uh I saw listen to me. I've I I have seen stories about them taking massive deliveries of the gold contracts, okay? Sure. What do you would you like to comment? Well, how do you read that? Well, people want the physical metal. And this is gonna be good because you've had this whole For example, people have been saying there's not enough ball to go around. Well, we'll see.

So I think I think it was zero hedge. I think zero hedge headline was something like, Where are all the Brinks trucks in mu in Lower Manhattan? Okay. Yeah. So what I like about real trading, not the cocktail party bullshit is. You can demand delivery. So, my story is we sold options to Deutsche Bank, they didn't exercise them. They were like seven, eight billion dollars in the money, which was gonna accrue to us.

So noon comes and goes. We're all sitting here on the desk holding our breath. Phone rings. Meredith says hi. She says Deutsche Bank wants to exercise. And I hear this and I remember my good friend Cliff from the commodity days, and he would say, They're out of contract. They didn't exercise as the option, it expired. So I said to tell them they're out of contract.

Which meant they were gonna be out seven million dollars. They went fucking apoplectic. You can't do that, but like, yeah, we did it. So remember we're getting paid a flat percentage. So this is millions of dollars in everybody's pocket sitting in an eight-foot radius around me. And we're all kind of chuckling'cause we You know, we spend all this money on backup systems precautionary just so we don't fuck this. Let's not fuck this up, right? And they call the head of the company.

And I give him the wall as me. And he said, eh, I can't do that. I'll look into it. And he comes out to the trading floor and goes, what's this? I hear you won't let somebody exercise an option. I said they're out of contract. He goes, Who's Emmy? And he said, we have a contract. They invalidated it. I'm going to hold them till I

Well, do you worry about the long-term implications? I said, I do, which is why I spend millions of dollars every year so we don't fuck this up. And he goes, Well, I don't like that. Like, oh see this guy, see this guy? XY? One guy's name was XY. Stabbed me in the back, went to Tutor. Anyway. It was gonna be a couple million bucks. I said that's gonna change this guy's life. Yeah.

It wasn't gonna affect the guy I was talking to. So of course he didn't have skim in the game. He was worried about damaging the reputation. I'm like, You're gonna damage right about preparation. I'm gonna be a pussy. The guy that exercised that option you didn't have to. And uh With a little less breath. I know. The listeners are gonna be, what were you selling an option? Fair point. I sold an option because there are synthetic trades you can do where you buy.

An option and you short another trade against it. So short another option again. So your longer call. Shorter put something. Something like it. moves in the direction you want. Your caller gets in the money. And if it goes the way you want, it's a conditional trade. So for instance, you may be in a steepener in a bull market. I'm fucking this up a little bit, but those who need to know, you'll understand. Those who don't, just think about owning a call in a rally and being short of put.

in a rally. Well the put's gonna evaporate to nothing. At which point for a dollar you buy it back. And one day all those calls that aren't worth anything might be worth something. You have a windfall profit. This has happened. numerous times. And um that's why we were short on option. So anyway. Um You got any questions before we we should have I want to thank Brian uh for those dude he the guy that he left a really nice comment on the website about uh

Just going back and forth about that David Einhorn thing and he just wrote a really nice long if you go to Ibwok dot com you can see it on the comments and then he put the link to the Einhorn uh whatchamacallit to the podcast explaining that stuff. Um and then people liked your opinion on uh on Waffle House. There's uh there's some people that were uh that were really excited that you got to make it to a Waffle House. So yeah. Oh, love it was. Yeah.

Um all right, very good. Uh what's life like out in the desert? Dude, what you what what what do you have? What when what kind of temperature? Do you get seventy-five out there? You can heat you might get seventy five real Phil. Okay, that's fucking perfect. What else do you want? You got snakes? You got snakes that are gonna bother you? Yeah, only if you walk in the desert. All right, well let's fuck out of here with that.

You'll have to move. It'll be too hot in a short order. But there's no precipitation. Food tastes good. People are nice. Okay. All right. All right. Well, very good. All right. What's today? I can't believe it's February 10th. Let me just get this straight. When's Valentine's Day? Why? Yeah, I know I know that, but I feel like or like President's Day, I got a weekend coming up where my daughter's off on Friday and Monday for some reason. She's off

on yeah, Valentine's Day through the seventeenth. I don't know what the holiday is on the seventeenth. So I don't know if I'll do the show next week because I'm trying to go to Maine. Um I haven't been to Maine yet and uh whether we're sick or not, we will head to the North Woods for our winter adventure. Um So I might not see you, Valentine's Day till like the twenty second, um, the twenty second, twenty third, something like that. When are you coming back to the East Coast? Are you coming

Yes. Yes. All right. Well you're coming back. All right. So the house that Simmons is still standing as far as you know. Yeah. Okay, very good. All right, very good. Um well we look forward to having you back. I wouldn't rush back. It's like look at the fucking calendar here, dude. If you got 75 real feel, you're there until oh, I don't know, late March. How about that? Then I'll we'll then we'll just do what I told. Okay. Yeah, all right.

Um, it's nice to have Anthony Peters back. It's uh it's been um I really felt obligated to do the show when I read his note. I was like, Okay, winter vacation is over. If Anthony's back from the islands, welcome back. It's nice to have him back, um sending the great times of our time. Yeah, and he mentioned you on the first note back, which is the highest uh form of flattery. I can't uh thank him enough for that. And if there's anybody that's not on Anthony's email list, um

Send me the thing and I'll put you on the thing, okay? Um and the hat people, okay, you foreigners, it's uh excuse me. I that's the Trump speaking, okay. You people in faraway places. My international excuse me i'm dude i'm i'm dripping sweat bro okay Yeah, I'm trying to sweat here. I've drank of uh 40 ounces of Gatorade since the show started. Okay. I'm sweating out of my eyes. Okay, thanks a lot.

And again, Maddie, dude, all joking aside, if it weren't for Maddie, we wouldn't have done the show today. Um, thank you for getting it done. Um Um but yeah, dude. Um well I'll see you when we'll talk in the future, okay? We'll talk. Be well. Okay. Goodbye. Thank you, Anthony, and thank you for doing the show. Goodbye.