Hello the Internet, and welcome to this episode of The Weekly Zeitgeist. These are some of our favorite segments from this week, all edited together into one NonStop infotainment laugh stravaganza. Yeah, So, without further ado, here is the Weekly Zeitgeist. Miles. This is a very special episode. Our guest today is an expert author of a book that I will just say explained a lot, explained everything about how modern America operates in a lot of aspects.
And you'll even hear me admit the beginning. I'm like I was going around a lot of my adult life vaguely understanding what we're talking about, and then but hearing it properly and like reading it, have it be properly articulated by someone who's like looking at it from a legal standpoint. Oh yeah, Yo, that's fucking terrible. I mean, like I knew that broadly, but this is it gives it so much texture in a way though.
Yeah, but it might seem at first like a little depressing because it's like it's giving you really good texture on like why things are bad in certain ways. But I think ultimately it's kind of hopeful because it at least gives you an understanding of how things are actually operating. So we're going to talk to our expert guest, Brendan Blue, for a couple acts here for like the next forty minutes. We'll come back and close things out after that. So we will talk to you guys in a bit.
Just a caveat I normally, I just I don't speak to the FEDS normally, So please don't. I don't want you guys writing in.
About how I made miles doing I said, it's a it's always been fine for me. Come along, friend, let's talk to the FED. What is something from your search history that's for Tom? Yeah, he doesn't need to be arrange it.
It's fine, And I'm just surprised.
We have the rearranged search history has probably been first for one thousand, five hundred episodes. Is that how we've done?
No?
No, Yeah, well it's funny because it's it's last on the list of things that you send out that you're going to talk about.
Yeah, we like to keep you off guard so that maybe you give us your real search history, pretty search history you want people to believe.
So anyway, I just know that I'm angry right off top. The last thing that I that I googled was where does band it work? M And you don't if you have a kid who's maybe just a little younger than mine or too old. What's your youngest lie?
Mine is five years old.
Okay, so he is in it? It's yeah.
But what's funny about Blue is that they have jobs, and they have like dog jobs.
Oh and wait, which one's blue?
Wait?
Who's bandit?
Yeah he's the dad's I've seen the bluey.
I've seen I definitely seen a couple of Oh so oh, Bandit is like the okay, got it? Yeah.
So if you don't know, Blue is like one of the only shows that you can watch as an adult, like a kids show. I think it's like SpongeBob, you know, where it's like the jokes are good enough, you know, and it feels good enough that adults watch it anyway.
Right, it feels good. It's also it can be like heartbreakings. It's it's very it can be heartbreaking.
It's kind of like, uh, I look at it like a blueprint for how to interact with your kids. It's like your parents just yes and everything and explain everything, and they're just so nice.
And so patient, so patient, like the they have like zen boot levels of patience with their children and that that is one of the first questions that occurs to you watching it, is like, so the dad is just like unemployed or something. What's going on? Why why is he spending an entire day?
Because the show's not about their jobs, it's about you. How so, but the both the parents have dog jobs, which I think is really funny. Like he's an archaeologist, meaning that he digs up bones, okay, and the mom Chili on the sidewalk, is a sidewalk shitter.
She's a bomb sniffing dog at the airport.
No, yeah, wait, there's which implies the present domestic and international terrorism.
But there Australia, there's not as much of a worry.
Yeah, Ozzie's gang. Who are Who's who's bringing bombs into your country?
No one, not with Chili on the losing Wait.
Do they ever do they reference? It's like, do you ever go to work with the dad and be like, oh, he's doing this, and like oh this mom is, you know, sniffing up bombs and shit?
I don't know if they know she's a mom at work, you know.
Yeah, exactly, you know, not it's not her only identity.
Because women at work often face extra challenges being mothers, This is true. And some of them have really mean bosses. And now my wife actually has a very mean, mean, mean boss at her office, and it sounds horrible for her. Oh it's me, that's right. I am pretty bad.
What you see not what you get with this podcast. This whole personality.
Classic, hiding it in front of almost everybody every time you ever open up your mouth.
Yeah, it's good, I'm coming for him, But because I just I think I can squeeze a little more productivity out of them with the force of my personality nick for sure, for sure, and and my hunger for conflict. Those are the two things that drive me.
And you started that seven day work week, for.
Which she loves.
That's right.
Yeah, that's how the only way we'll have it.
The we don't.
I don't think we're fully up on Blue, or at least I don't think I've watched every episode of Blue with my kids.
They do.
We don't like go to work with them ever, right, is this just lower?
No, you don't go to work with them. They just talk about it like sometimes, but like not enough to even like know, like, oh, I don't know their names because they don't mention it enough. It's only like if another adult they see out calls them by their first name.
Yeah, bandit and Chili Yeah yeah, you know some great Australian accents, like the really really makes you fond of I guess it just makes you fond of everything that it touches.
You know.
I was reading recently they had to change an episode that hadn't aired here just in Australia that included fat shaming because they're very worried about everything, all right.
But it's when you're ascribing some kind of value to it that yeah. It's like it's like the same thing too. I've talked about like in like Asian culture, because you'd be like, hey, you're bald, or like wow, look at your pimples. Like you know, it's like a lot of cultures don't have like a there's no like you just go straight to it. There's it's very direct, and especially when you talk about someone's looks. And I was talking about that with like my wife and I was ti like, oh, yeah,
we do that japanel time. It's like yeah, but that's like toxic and I'm like right, oh yeah, whoa, whoa.
That's true. Haha, I didn't think of I feel.
Like bald shaming is still pretty common, like in the US at the very least like that. Oh yeah, yeah, No, nobody's trying to speak up for the bald. Well.
I think it's because it's, like, you know, because you live in such a patriarchal society. They're like, no, fuck you guys were talking about men.
The only show that really talks about being bald is Curb Your Enthusiasm, right yeah, and they understand that people hate bald.
People hate you, bald. Larry. You know, I just got on monoxidil.
Uh huh oh you started taking hair loss pills or the or growth or whatever.
Because I just got I got to the I'm not bald, but I've got enough.
I'd of hair.
I've got enough of a.
You're starting measure trying to measure it.
You're like, I can notice it.
You got the calibers out and went from your eyebrow bone to your hairline, and we're like, it's past.
Yeah, where I need that's the one where that's like a pencil holder slash knife that you compass. That's a that's a compass.
Calibers are like.
That thing is how I used it in school?
Yeah, that was the first you can bring to school.
Yeah, was allowed allowable.
And isn't the compass the ruler.
That's a protractor.
Pro tract that's a pro tractor wrangles and stuff.
The way you said ship like like a lot, like you just fucked up majorly with them.
He's just, hey, Nick, you just fucked up big time.
Man.
Yeah, I don't know what to tell you.
My kids school supplies and I really got him the wrong.
Thing they get. You got him a compass.
Yeah, they generally don't give those too.
I got him a whole orienteering set.
Yeah. I don't know that phrase.
But oh that's like that's where you would have a compass.
That's for like looking, you know, like tricking the woods.
Nick, what's something you think is oprated? What it's something, Caitlin you think is overrated?
I think that, and this might be controversial, but I think that nachos are overrated, especially the kind you get as like at a restaurant when they like load on a bunch of you know, ground beef and cheese and cream sour cream and all that stuff. I think the flavors are good, but the execution is bad because they
all get the chips get soggy almost immediately. It is very hard to get a good like distribution of all the toppings onto one chip because you got one that's like nothing but beef, which is gonna be my new catchphrase.
Get out of my swamp. And if you come in my swamp, there's nothing but beef here for you exactly.
And the other ones it's like, you know, only sour cream. It's just I think again, poorly executed.
How how would you optimize? Because my biggest you know, gripe with bad nachos at a restaurant is it's all top heavy, like yeah yeah, and then and so you have it all on top and then underneath it's just a bunch of dry chips and then you got to kind of use those to like scrape by the top. I like when people layer them. I'm not I'm not as upset about the crunchiness because for me, I just want to have just shit on every chip. Basically, it's
how I look at it. But how would you optimize If we're going to get around this, I think.
We just need to do and this is a this will become a surface area problem because you're going to need a big ass tray. Yeah, just like one single layer of chips and then the topics evenly distributed, so you're talking like a tray.
It's going to need to be like fourteen feet.
Long, three by three feet kind of thing.
The best strategy I've ever wait, and as my friend Blake in high school shut up. Blake went through and would put cheese on each chip and then a dollop of salsa like on top of the cheese, and that would keep it from getting and then you put it in the microwave. It is very time intensive, but it is truly the best way to do nachos is think of each chip as its own moment, its own nacho. You are as opposed to just dumping chips out and then like kind of had them scattering toppings across.
They're not just numbers on a spreadsheet, man, Yeah, they're individual chips. Yeah, I get it.
Each chip is a moment. That's beautiful.
Restaurant nachos are real mess, but I still love just the orchestra.
I feel like I have to. There always needs to be one person's really into nachos to order nachos.
Should we do the nachos, guys?
Yeah, yeah, exactly that.
I'm like, well, you know, I wasn't like because they look really good, and I'm like, fine, you get the nachos, like they always look good. Yeah, anyway, all right, but you go after nachos pretty consistently, Kaitlin.
No, I avoid them for the reason that I think they're overall.
So if someone said, hey, should we get them, You're like, let me just actually tell you why everyone open. Actually yeah, I promised myself I wouldn't do this today.
But yeah, so I'm like, let's get whatever. I don't know, the simpler platter. Clearly, I'm only going to Applebee's like restaurants. I'm like, let's get the Manza realistics, but no nachos for me.
I love to get some nachos.
I like to.
I have ordered nachos as a main course before. Wow, just eat eat them by sending people off with my arms.
Anyway, what's the meaning it's underrated? Brandy?
If you're having like I've had like a rough couple of weeks with some stuff and I decided, you know what, fuck it, I'm gonna get my car detailed because I just wanted my I just was like, if my car is nice, I'm gonna it's like a reset. And I think, like that's something that like I have not done a lot in my life. And I was like, oh shit, this actually does make me feel really really good to have like a car that just like it's clean, it's got no.
Trash, there's no dust, there's no dirt. Yeah, it just feels new. It just feels nice.
Yeah, I'm not I'm not the best at taking care of my vehicle. Yeah on the outside, Like you know, I have a like my passenger seat is I go in the car pool lane because I have so many receipts in my passenger seat it looks like a human beings riding with me. That's rod of the state of my car at times. But now, like with a child, I've become much better at it. But the way I love going to like the fucking car wash now, yeah,
like I feel the same way. I'm like I sit there, like I bring a fucking newspaper, like I'm fucking you should be like check that out, leave it for the next person. Boom.
I also listen, I love I love I love a car wash.
I love like going to the car washing and having them clean it and see and having to wipe it and walk around and expect it is like, hey, brother.
Spot like I love that shit.
I love it, but I also still love I just did this recently because I didn't have enough time to like get a real car wash, so I just went through like one of the drive through joints.
Yeah, just still lovely. It's still a lovely time.
How often how often do you how often do you see somebody in the self like to do it, or like the drive through ones and they're about to crash into everybody else, like like because I know someone like you have to put in neutral. Other times, people like you don't know what to do. Their shit is moving inside and like you see them shut it down and someone's got to pull somebody. I be like, you're about to fucking rear end this other car.
Yeah, I don't know.
I feel like I see that every time I go through one of those.
I the ones.
The only one I've been going to recently is the like little gas station ones that show so like you just stay in place and the thing moves around you. I haven't found too many ones that like you move through a whole thing.
Oh yeah, they have a few of those, Like in the valley that I used to go to, there's one. Yeah, like it would sometimes I've saw people with some near misses and people were getting pretty turned up. But yeah, the thing about like, you know, having a rough time too. I was just saying this on like Monday Show and
having like you know, stressful shake going on whatever. But like, the thing that I always have to remind myself is when I'm feeling shitty is to not get in the pattern of telling myself don't feel shitty, like like, why you feel shitty? This is stupid, You shouldn't.
Feel bad, you should feel good.
Why are you doing this? And like I have to kind of be like not, okay, I'm a human, so that's normal, and then like let me just operate from that space of being like it's all good now, let's try and move totally bit by bit, because yeah, I'm such a like ruminator. Shit, the way I can get lost in my own fucking mind. Let me tell you, I look like like I'm warging from fucking Game of Thrones or some shit. The way my eyes go back thoughts.
Yeah, it's just good to do something good for yourself every once in a while, and like that, that's one that like I had never really thought about that. I was like, you know what, I'm in my car so much, it should it could be nice. This is a space that could also just be nice. Yeah, yeah, I wouldn't thought about it.
All Right, let's take a quick break. We'll come back and we'll talk about some the Supreme Court. You know, they go back and forth. Sometimes they're fucking doing the right thing, sometimes they're just caping for white supremacy all over again. Anyway, we'll be right back.
And we're back. So that that story about how their insight into staffing was to trick people into using doctors outside of their network is just one of the stories in your book that is incredibly infuriating. There's also the worst hacking disaster in US history.
Do you want to talk.
About how that came about in partnership with private equity.
Yeah, So two private equity firms brought up the tech company Solar Winds, which provides a lot of sort of like boring it and security services to companies. Looking through the documents in Solar Wind's public filings, it appears that after it was bought by a private equity firm. Staffing f company was cut, and, at least according to their public disclosures, a lot of their engineering work was moved overseas, including to, among other countries, Belarus, which is great. Yeah
in the news recently. Yeah, Oh Lucashenko, great guy.
Yeah yeah yeah.
Whether that's causal or not, Ultimately, Solar Winds suffered what one government official called the greatest hack in United States history. I believe the Department of Defense, Treasury, State Justice, and others were all compromised, and at least it appears on sort of initial reporting that the leaders of the private equity firms may have dumped stock in advance of the public disclosure of that. Now there's an investigation going on
to that at the SEC. I don't know what the outcome of it was, but it was another example of you know, you have this industry, you know sort of it security that really needs to be thinking in terms of years and really decades for how to make sure that you've got to secure product when you're working with the government and they're being bought or controlled by private
equity firms that are trying to make a profit. You know, in a matter of months or a manner of years, and it's just a very different perspective for how to run these businesses.
Yeah, yeah, it's right. The I mean similar to the you know, getting involved in er staffing. They also took over the operation of nine to one one calls at one point, like just all these things that Yeah, it just when you read stories of businesses that become successful over the over a long period of time, like it's really about fixating on like how to do the one thing that they do for customers, like better than anyone else.
And time and time again, it seems like when these private equity firms come in, like it's just like that is the third or fourth thing that they're interested in, and the most interesting thing is delivering value for themselves and get yeah, yeah, financial success.
It's interesting. You know, you look at the biographies of folks that run private equity firms and it's you know, it's not a critique of them, it's not a surprise, but you know, it's generally folks that do not have experience in sales or it or engineering or marketing or logistics.
It's folks with a financial background, and so when they approach these companies typically you know, not always, but typically, you know, what they're trying to make are essentially sort of financial changes to these businesses that's going to you know, get a fairly quick return.
You know.
You look at the diversity of what some of these private equity firms buy into. You know, it's a plastic logistics company, it's a municipal water service, and it's that dating app bumble, you know, and it's like one person doesn't really have the expertise run all those different kinds of companies.
Yeah, they just know how to make line go up right, and it's sort of like, oh, what what does that mean. It's like, well, we're not gonna have enough nurses. I don't know, man. But then when I look at these projections, I like what I'm seeing, let's do that and figuring out afterwards. What's really difficult is like we hear about
all this. It is so apparent to everyone, you know, Like I think at this point even everyone listening is like, right, okay, okay, pirate equity bad or like not not necessarily out here
for everyone's best interest. But then you think about like a lot of the examples that you give in your book, like it's also very very hard to hold these fucking people to account because of the nature of like all of the advantages that these companies have, whether it's through lobbying, whether it's through like a revolving door of entities that have been in government that end up there and then end up lobbying people they already know on the hill
and things like that, or just the amount of complex like hight like whack a mole of who owns this thing that all come together because I think a lot of the times, especially when we talk about these issues, like on our show, we're like, well, what's the problem?
Why can't why can't it stop? Right? Like it's we get it. We're seeing it.
Like the cost is people losing their lives, the cost is people going bankrupt, the cost is untold suffering. And then you know, to be real, it's like, hey man, we're looking at you the FEDS. What's going on? And I know you've said this too, like it's the federal Like the DOJ is not the only entity that can go after this, but like, how how do you explain Like when people talk about the frustration of like well then what like something's out of give where where will it give it.
Will be Yeah.
Yeah, it's a huge issue because you know, as you started off, you know, private equity, I think has been uniquely successful in lobbying. You know, if you look at who private equity firms have hired, it's former secretaries of State, Treasury defends for two former Speakers of the House, to a vice president, former chair people of the FCC, and SEC. I mean, it's a really deep bench, and that means that they have just been extraordinarily successful at sort of
advancing their legislative and regulatory agenda. I think the other challenge that we've got, and I think you hit on this exactly right, is it's really hard for ordinary people to hold private equity firms accountable. We have this doctrine called corporate veil piercing, which means that it's very hard to hold an investor responsible for the actions of the
company that they invest in. That makes sense for you and me, where we've got our little Vanguard account and have like one share of stock and a company, you know, we don't really have much to say over them. That doctrine doesn't necessarily make sense for a private equity firm that has a controlling stake in these businesses and can essentially tell them what to do. And then lastly, I mean I think you hit the point exactly right, which is a lot of times it's just hard to even
figure out who owns what and who to sue. I talked with folks that sue nursing homes on behalf of families whose you know, parents don't or we're injured or whatever it happens to be, and they're telling me, you know, look, these guys have these really broke organizational structures where there are shifting assets across multiple shell companies and you know, sort of across different shells, and it's really hard to figure out who is responsible and who has the assets
to recover. So it's a really tough problem.
Yeah, and it's something that's becoming normal too, like other industries are, like you know, what kind of works is if you kind of spread it all around and no one knows how to get like seek damages.
Right. Yeah.
You tell us one really memorable story about Ashford, which is, you know, a Franciscan University of the Prairies is what it's called, but it's like a really small college run by nuns. And then it gets taken over and turned into Ashford University, which becomes this you know, Phoenix University like adjacent thing, and it's really this like outraging thing. And then you also mentioned that like the private acqua firm that now runs it is Warburg Pinkus, which is
run by Obama's former Treasury Secrety Secretary Tim Geitner. And it's just like you just see that over and over again, like the amount of people from positions of power who like know how things work better than anybody, you know, most people listening to this and like know how things really work behind the scenes, are are going into private equity, and it just really feels like a eluding, a plundering that's happening.
I yeah, I heard this third hand, so I don't know how true it is. But there was a senior government official who ended up doing some work for a private equity firm, and somebody was chiding them and they said, look, you know, it's not who's working for private equity, it's who isn't working for private equity right now. So it's it's pretty extraordinary the breadth of their success.
Right And just like the greed, how it compounds itself. You know, because now it seems like you're almost incentivized to get into private equity because of how little repercussions people face. And I'm curious, like when you have a case like like the ones we've talked about, when it's like, yeah, man, like they own this company and they basically started throttling back their level of care which led to someone losing
their life. Okay, well, then tell me who owns this and that person's responsible, Like when these cases get like dismissed the things is that the cynical part of like I think the cynical shorthand version of someone who believes in how like cronyism works and things like that believe that like, oh, the judges are in on it too.
Everybody's in on this, that's why it's happening. But I think you've also raised the point that it's not necessarily like like there's there's a huge barrier to get over, which is informing people of how this even works too, and like having enough public pressure like around this idea or this industry of private equity that gets people to sort of be on the same page to understand the issues.
Yeah, you know, I think one of the challenges that we've got is exactly what you're saying is education. And that's not just educating you know, sort of your listeners or you know people, and you know, you know, people that are just generally interested in this topic. It's also informing judges, people in government, you know, what private equity
is and what the practical consequences are. One of the challenges that I think people who are critical of the private equity business model have is, you know, private equity firms have an enormous amount of money to lobby and to litigate their issues, and the other side, you know, just has a fraction to do the same thing. You know, one of the cases was over this obscure sort of retirement law issue, and at stake was like four point five million dollars for the private equity firm. It was
essentially a rounding error. They spent ten years litigating the case in order not to have to pay out because they have the resources to do it and they wanted to set the precedent that they could. And so, you know, we've got to inform people, and we've also got to figure out how to sort of power activists and folks that want to work on this stuff so that they can do this work for the long term, right, can.
We can we just list some of the industries where people might have seen their work, because it's just going back to that initial statement about like we have an anecdotally everyone seems to have a feeling that things are getting worse. But you know, it's kind of hard to
we don't have much to compare it to. But there, you know, there's presence in the dental industry, veterinary I think you mentioned grocery stores at one point that you know, there's one of the reasons they're like two grocery stores in the in the country that didn't used to be the case.
Yeah.
Yeah, So private equity is you know, I don't want to overstate the case, but they they're active in you know, most most every industry that you can think of, whether you're talking about sort of retail things we were talking about toys, r us and stuff earlier, or grocery stores. As you say, when we're talking about healthcare, it's not
just emergency rooms and ambulances. It's ordinary sort of opgyn and urgent care clinics buying up literal insurance companies, you know, life insurance claims worker compensation companies to things like manufacturing infrastructure. In some places, private equity firms literally bought up the municipal water services that you might use to drink, you know, water from your tap.
How'd that work out for them?
Unfortunately, it didn't work out terribly well. So the private equity firm operated with as a joint venture ultimately dramatically raised the price for users to such an extent that local reporters were saying that people quote unquote became water nazis, would time their family members in the shower and would only buy flowers that didn't require a lot of water. So, unfortunately, that's a contract that those two cities are now going to have to sit with for the next thirty years
or so because of how it is negotiated. But to the extent you're interested in these things and you're concerned about a business, you know, private equity firms rarely advertise their ownership. So what you should do is google the company name and just add private equity and see what comes up.
Yeah, chances are it's almost like what industries aren't they involved in? It might be an easier question. Yeah, it's like, oh, yeah, they're not behind the push for medicare for all. I'll tell you that they don't have they don't have a dog in that fight unless it's on the other side of it.
Yeah, I don't think they're active on that one.
Yeah.
Interesting, how do you talk about it? Like, I've there's been in a couple of social settings since reading your book and just been like, yeah, it's crazy, but like unable to like really fully you know, put into words, because it's the problems like so big and so cute. But like, how do you usually introduce the idea of your book to people, Like when you're just like talking to them at a cocktail party or something.
I always explain the basic business model, and I say that private equity is going to transform the country in this decade the way that big tech did in the last decade and subprime lenders did in the decade before that. And I say, what, the three basic problems are short termism, a lot of dead and fees, and insulation from liability. And if we can fix those three things, we can basically solve the problem.
Yeah.
And that's kind of another thing I want to time solving the problem because again, a lot of the times it's easy to fall into the nihilism of being like, well this is it, Like I don't know, like I don't even know, we don't even know who to sue. You've talked about how like again, activists have helped to like you know, offset or alleviate the cost of like phone calls from prisons, you know, like actually have made
headway there, and like that's a victory. What are some other like is what are some other specific areas where we are seeing some bit of the climing back of the fuckery as it were.
So I think the prison area is really encouraging. So, you know, private equity firms bought up prison phone companies, started charging extremely high rates for these short, fifteen minute calls. This was a many year effort to sort of make progress here. Ultimately, you know, they were able. Activists were able to get legislation passed in cities New York and San Francisco capping rates for phone calls, then passed state
legislation in Connecticut, and ultimately pass federal legislation. So they were really really effective working on this specific issue. Beyond that, there's been really good work on for instance, you know, we were talking about nursing homes. There's rulemaking going on right now at the Department of Health and Human Services to try to establish national standards from minimum staffing criteria
for nursing homes, which will be absolutely transformative. So I think when activists have chosen really specific issues where the effect on people is clear, I actually think that they've been really successful. You know, private equity firms have the money, but activists have the people on their side, and I think they've shown that they've been actually able to get.
A lot done.
Right. So rather than being like when you're going to pass the down with private equity bill, it's like about kind of getting a little more specific in a way that connects to people. Because again, like like we're saying at the top, just saying the word it becomes nebulous and abstract and I'm like, I don't even know I had to name, yeah, versus shouldn't there be a number, like a minimum number of staff in a nursing home so someone doesn't like like needlessly lose.
Their life and be like yeah, yeah, yeah, yah, yeah yeah.
That part. But then again is there is there is there a similar thing that gets at the accountability part, because I think that's the part that really like frustrates me is how easily they can walk and hide behind being like I don't know, I don't own it. I just tell these funds what to do in the mathain that that's that's where it ends. So I don't know
where the buck stops. What are is there? Like where can people put their energy in terms of like finding that part out or at least making that augmenting that movement a bit.
Yeah, No, I think that's a really good question. And you know, you're talking about private equity being a boring term, like they're we're going to make it even more boring. A lot of the leading firms now I don't even call themselves private equity firms anymore. There are alternative asset managers, so be on the lookout for those.
Cool.
Yeah, so interesting.
So what is it where like it wears flannel and has a nosering and like has dock Martins, Like yeah, like the alternative rock movement, but all.
Asset management actually sort of inheriting a grunge style on fund just kind of like being an all band in the nineties exactly. So they you know, in terms of sort of the deeper sort of accountability issues Obviously, Congress is one sort of avenue, and there's important legislation, you know, sort of being proposed there. But I actually think that there are a lot of levers of power here, whether you're talking about federal regulators like the SEC, Treasury, Fed,
and so forth, but also states and localities. You know, we're talking about some of these tactics that I think can be harmful for companies in the long term, you know, sale lease backs, dividend recapitalizations. States could just simply say, you know, we're going to legislate to say, if the company's headquartered in our district, you know, in our jurisdiction, you can't do some of these tactics, or if you do them and the company goes bankrupt, the workers are
going to get paid first. And I actually think that there really is interest at the state level on this. But we've got to you know, folks need to draft up the legislation and there needs to be the push for it. I think that's where the real change is going to happen in the next few years.
Towards the end of your book, you talk about different scenarios that the country could take, and some people financially think it's like Japan and the eighties and nineties, like heading for a financial fall, and some people think it's like whymar Germany, and but you kind of say, there's also this hopeful possibility that it's like America at the turn of the twenty, like nineteen oh three, and you know, emphasize that we generally today don't recognize how bad it
was at that time and how like incremental the changes were. We just see, oh, in the early twentieth century, the New Deal happened, so must have been must have been good. There were Gatsby parties, and then the New Deal came through in response to how lavish the Gatsby parties were. But it was generations of people working on very specific changes, right, that got us out out of that very similar situation where it was just unregulated capital running roughshot over the country.
Yeah, the Gilded Age worked wonderfully for a select few people, but was a miserrating for you know, so many. Whether it was the movement to stop the labor movement to use the antitrust laws to actually break up labor unions but protect monopolies, the movement actually to rescind suffrage for working class people in New York and the institution of Jim Crow in the South that.
Was endorsed by the New York Times.
I think you said, right, yeah, yeah, the New York Times endorsed, yeah, rescinding suffrage for I think working class white men and so but you know, in some ways it was it was a politics or an economy that's very similar to ours. The trusts of the early twentieth century legally are very similar to how private equity firms work. And a century ago we managed to constrain the trust you know, we created the first you know, you know, the most robust anti trust laws. We created the Federal
Trade Commission. We passed labor laws, environmental laws, passed women's suffrage and so forth. It was a time that was really really transformative for the country and ultimately, you know, sort of set the stage for sort of the greatest moment in American middle class history, you know, the nineteen forties and fifties. And so if we've done it once, we can do it again. We just need to have the patience and the will to do.
So, yeah, yeah, and a way to offset all the lobbying efforts, which I'm sure if the state starts saying things like, yeah, we're thinking about enacting some laws that would really constrain private equity. You're just going to start seeing as like, don't vote for this because we're going to leave your state and you're going to be broke, so don't even think about it, and then off we go.
Then I think part of that is for people to really understand the threat that this sort of untethered greed operates and how it affects us in ways that are just so tangible, but yet we think are like again, like for me, I was like, there's just so nebulous. I'm like, it's just part of this vast thing of all the money moving in one direction versus also very specific groups of people looking at it in this way, and we're just sort of experiencing the lack of investment
on the other side. I wonder how many triangle shirtwaist fires it'll take for us to wake up out of this one, because I feel like we're averaging like one a day.
Yeah, it's it's really interesting. I mean you sort of look at the number of legal tragedies that are happening in private equity portfolio companies, and yet the private equity firms you know, are rarely held accountable. I will say just you know, as a as a workaday, you know, bureaucrat, I will say that, don't underestimate your power and influence
as a person outside of government. People inside a government listen to complaints and you know, if you're saying this is a broken system, this is not working, it really empowers people in a bureaucracy to try it, you know, who want to do the right thing, to feel like they've got people on their side. So I felt that personally. I know others people do do too, So I know that can be a somewhat frustrating thing to hear, but it really does make a difference for folks.
And yeah, just not having it happen quietly and visibly like that when you just tell this story, it is the sort of story that people respond to. It is an all out war being waged on the lives of people who aren't extremely wealthy by people who are extremely, extremely wealthy. Like it's just it is that simple. It's they they are taking away comforts and you know, things that people rely on and getting rich.
Off of it.
It's pretty pretty straightforward, and I'm glad you told this story in your book. I'm hoping more more and more people kind of continue to tell it. So and thanks for coming on and talking less about it.
And yeah, I got to say, normally I don't talk to the Feds, but this has been fantastic.
Well, thank you guys so much for the time. I really appreciate it.
Yeah, where can people well, ca you remind us the name of the book and where people can read it and that good stuff.
It's plunder private equities, plans to pillage America and you can buy it anywhere you might buy a.
Book, perfect or Barnes and Noble also private equity, I think they might have been.
Yeah, yeah, Brendan Blue, thanks for coming on.
Appreciate it, Thank you so much.
All Right, that was.
Our interview with Brendan Man. I learned a lot from this book. I feel like, you know how, when I read a New Yorker article, I'll like reference it at least five times over the course of the next week, like this is it's own for fore you hos, Like this is all I'm going to be referencing from now on.
Wait, so is this going to push out cold gas study Havana syndrome?
So those are just the those are the keepers, those are the ones that.
Those are like that try you and God of your mind. Yeah exactly, Yeah, those will not be usurped. But yeah, again, I think it's it's so helpful to like be able to be like that's why these certain things got shitty, yeah.
You know, or like again like toy store. The toy store really fucking did it for me. Man. That was the one where I was like, oh, yeah, there's no reason there shouldn't be Like kids still, yeah, I can speak kids really still fucking like toys, I can tell you that much. Now we just have the toy section
of Target and there are no toy stores. And I remember at the end of the Toys r us run like going to Toys r Us to like for a kid's birthday party, get get a toy, and it was just wildly understaffed and it looked and like it looked like Sears did when it was going out of business, you know, like they're the floors are kind of torn up, like think they're just like boxes of like palettes laying around because they just are totally understaffed. And it makes total sense that they just you know.
Privact that these workers are lazy, right exactly, which is what I was yelling. But you know what, but that is the kind of shit older people was saying. Of course, they were like, I don't know what the hell happened here? These people are so lazy. And then you're like, no, it's being like sucked the life sucked out of it from the inside financially, and what you're seeing is like the husk of a once operating business.
Yeah, and this is the fact that this is like like a an epidemic that is across the entire economy, like more people are being asked to do more work or fewer people are being asked to do more work, like just everywhere, and so yeah, everybody's going to be like immiserated, as you know, like I think he used that word. And really, you know, both on the customer side and on the employee side, these companies absolutely spread
misery as part of their business model. Yeah, and become the billionaires.
That's the wild part too, is like you get you know, we talk about all the time how like human life gets reduced to like a number figure on a spreadsheet. Yeah, that's truly how these people are looking at it. When you have only guys who have finance brain being like, yeah, yeah, I can help operate a healthcare provider. Watch this, snip snip snip, and then you know, we just continue to talk about the the ongoing movement of privatization and how that's.
Only going to lead to fucking disaster.
Yeah.
It also made me realize too, like when I was lobbying for for profit colleges, like how like.
A for profit college section is really wild.
I mean, that was the thing that helped loosen my brain to be like I don't I can't be doing this, Like I can't be consulting like this at all. But then really, even then, the private equity part was a little bit abstract to me, like I was only.
Just the company levels the company.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, anyway, I'm stupid and that's easy to say now.
But we yeah, we're we're all part of this system that has just been attacked invisibly. And this is the first time I've just seen somebody say it out let, you know, in print, just be like, this is the company, this is what they're doing. It is like the most deeply anti I don't know, it's just it's it's so clear cut. It just seems wild that nobody said it out loud up to this point. Yeah, people probably have been.
It's wild that I haven't read it to this point, and it's probably because the phrase private equity made my brain go to sleep.
I also blame the New Yorker from not making a cartoon about it.
Thank you.
Understand, all right, we're gonna take one more break.
We're going to come back and hear from a reader who has some job experience that is somewhat related to this. It seems like it's operating the same principles.
With one the industries we're just talking about.
Yeah, we'll be right back, and we're back. And the uns annual World Drug Report, which I hadn't been paying attention to but now will anticipate every year when it comes out, was released. The biggest mover this year. You guessed it, folks, It's cocaine the charts.
Yeah, yeah, I mean, I guess. Traditionally the main markets were North America, Western Central Europe. Now in this report, they're like it's fucking everywhere now, like it's people are starting to use it more in Africa, Southeast Asia, Southeastern Europe. Use is at an all time high, like sometimes they would see like it EBB and flow. Now they're just like it's all upward arrows, consumption's up, productions up, and
it's it's the eighties. Baby, there's cocaine everywhere, And I guess traditionally no, I'm sorry, Like, even though production has at an all time high, they're also saying seizures are actually outpacing production. So you know, mark one up for the drug war. But yeah, apparently this has only led the like to like the drug traffickers to go next
level with the chemistry. Now. In my mind, the last time I was like watching drug documentaries, it was like probably about like like eighties or nineties, where people just like smuggling them in little chotchkeis and stuff, or like on a janky submarine. But they've stepped the game up. Traffickers are now quote increasingly smuggling cocaine based by dissolving it into plastic and charcoal objects because it's much harder
to detect. Then they set up super labs in Europe where they extract the cocaine base out of those materials and turn it into powder.
I feel like this is going to be huge for pusha T's next album, like he has so much material to work with. Oh yeah, like we are into charlastic and charcoal objects.
Right, Scanners, X rays and canines usually can't detect cocaine that's been muggled in this manner. And they said that there are clandestine chemists can use certain chemicals to quote lock the cocaine into the carrier products, making it impossible to retrieve the drug without knowing which chemical to use.
Wow, I was whoa, Yeah, I mean this is this is like my Cheach and Chong made their whole van out of the weed.
Right, can't arrest us if the.
Nice try ass sole this whole van's weed, let us go. But yeah, I mean it's again, this is just like some next level trafficking thing I didn't realize, But yeah, I feel like it the the use of cocaine is I feel like like where was I recently? I was traveling somewhere and like people were talking about cocaine in
a way that I was like, what the fuck? Like in my mind, cocaine users were like city folk, right, just getting off a break from you know, the trading floor at Wall Street, and now it's in all the corners of the earth.
Yeah, the guy when you're like checking out at the gas station is like, you're do you want some cocaine or do you have any cocaine that I could I noticed you seem to be from the city.
Right right, right, So they put all like they got scientists working on you know, it's breaking bad, and they got like, you know, they're they're spending weeks, you know, putting all the formulas together. And then they have a secret formula you know that turns it into a plastic bottle. And then you've got to have a secret formula that turns it back into And then as soon as it get gets into some dealer's hand, he's like, why didn't I shake a little baby potter in here?
Right right?
It's a little fentanyl, and like it seems.
Like just like some laxative, it all works.
Yeah, I get some pencil shavings.
The real question is where do these chemists get all the energy to come up with this stuff?
Yeah, like what what's the arc of that chemist?
Too?
Like is like a chemist who is super promising. And then it's like, I also got a bad coke problem, man, So I think I'm gonna switch gears. A start works for them.
Yet work and uh yeah, yeah by joining my drug dealer. Yeah, I don't know, it's it makes sense overall, given like what we're dealing with, you know, giving what we in our special Interview Expert episode yesterday, like what private equity is doing, where they're just like taking over every business in the country and cutting staffing so that everybody just
has to work like twice as hard. It makes sense that the drug of the moment would be something that gives people the energy to keep up with this.
Shit as we all just become like husks of a human existence and it's like, ohout this for a little animation.
Yeah, but yeah, it's back.
In a big way, folks, big way.
So you know that ventanyl is the leading cause of death for men between eighteen and forty nine.
Leading lead big That's incredible.
That's horrible. Yeah, I mean that's the other thing that fucking like this story, Like a lot of people I've known people who died from trying to do cocaine and they're being fentanyl in it. Like that's happening a lot now.
Yeah, and again I think also like to your point about we've talked about like just deaths of despair, that's like a whole category of death that like we're not actually reckoning with. And yeah, just again like adding to this feeling of oh, societies creeping into like this weird
like stop in a weird way. But you know when you look at the like again, I hate to keep talking about private equity, but like when you think about how much job loss and access to wealth or things that are cut off from these kinds of like business moves and the effects it has on people, especially people who like you know, like need to work to survive. All adding to like this this background hum of.
Like, but what about the teenagers? Guys? How do the young teenagers keep up in this world if they don't have access to co ok? How are they to keep up in this world where private equity is?
Are you?
I am? Uh? Well, there's that, but what if you can't get access There is a shortage of that. And that's where my good friend Logan Paul comes in. I
want to tell you guys about Prime Oh God. Prime Hydration is a beverage that Logan Paul launched last year with Ksi and other YouTuber and it became like the tickle me Elmo of last year, like it was just there weren't enough of it, and people were there were there are reports of people having a bottle, keeping the empty bottle and then like charging people one hundred dollars to take a picture with the empty bottle for social media purposes because you just like couldn't get access to
the drink. The so dystopian for sure, it's the drink has the legally, I have to think this is the maximum legal amount of caffeine that you can put in something two hundred milligrams of caffeine. That seems to be where every like highly caffeinated drink or product max is out at at two hundred milligrams. But that is what they're giving children in like kind of small doses.
I know you're the like the caffeine fact God, what how does that rank? Because I like every time we talk about caffeinated drinks, I was like, how many milligrams? Because you have an idea, what like what's a celsius?
Is the other one that is maxed out at two hundred hundred? Nothing has more than two hundred as far as I know, And even like caffeine pills have two hundred milligrams?
What's a coca cola.
Got uh, Coca cola is like in the thirties usually I think called forties. I think diet coke is in the sixties and and even and like Mountain Dew. I don't think it even cracks a hundred. But yeah, these.
Are twice as much as Red Bull.
Yeah yeah, yeah, Okay, it's cool.
Have you seen the videos though, where people like to your point about how like it's become the most sought after thing, Like people are stunting on TikTok with how much fucking like Prime they have in their fridge. No, yes, like this kind of shit. Peop were like, well, what's in my fridge? All Prime bro Like it.
Looks like for my grab and goes for my kids if they don't have time to make a protein drink or an electrolyte drink before they leave for their practices for their sports they play. I like these Prime drinks because if you look at they don't have any artificial colors. They're naturally flavored. They have bcaa's, they also have electrolytes that come from coconut water, and they only have two grams of sugar.
But two hundred milligrams of fucking caffeine anyway. So like there's I've seen so many videos like this where there's like families being like we got the icy pop, we got cherry, and it's like you think people are doing like a money phone type thing with the amount of prime.
Body, Yeah, this is the new money phone. It is just having a fucking prime.
So this is like, uh, you know, you throw some vodka in there, some whiskey in there and heart failure, right, that's yeah.
But that's like with.
People, they don't they don't fuck with alcoholic beverages.
They just they got all the good pills. You're right, Yeah, they're just slamming borgs. Dude. God, young people laugh at us with how we try to get high.
Yeah, young, oh yeah, because they're like these motherfuckers are dead, like they're trying to die. Like look at how they partied in the fucking I.
Get hide through this weird music I listened.
To right, Like, I don't get high if my headphones run out of batteries. That's when I'm in a bad way. You've got the fucking shakes.
I get high from getting my friend's pronouns.
Right, thank you boom, thank you, sir, you honor You're welcome.
I nailed you both.
So I mean you you are count on teenagers to consume like one of these a day, which I just can't imagine that's going to happen. And there's all sorts of laws in place, or like that, people have tried to put laws in place, like in twenty seventeen in South Carolina, a teenager died due to caffeine induced cardiac event, causing a probable arrhythmia. Countries like Lithuania and Latvia already have active bands on energy drinks that have this much
caffeine in him. But here in the US, back in nineteen eighty, the FDA attempted to crack down on caffeine and soda, but the soda companies, who you might recognize as having a little bit more money than the FDA, argued caffeine wasn't actually a psychoactive drug and therefore subject to regulation. Rather, caffeine is a flavor enhancer. I'm a tell me what exactly does caffeine taste?
Like? Yeah?
Like, is there some like a soda semelia who was like hm, oh wow, finishes very strongly with caffeine like they did, they were they even able to say like it enhances this flavor. They're just saying, No, it's it's in the category of flavor. Answer.
Yeah, they're just lying. I think.
Yeah, Surge had sixty eight by the way.
Yeah, sixty eight not even shit, that's more than this one says more than Mountain Dew. Yeah, I think Mountain Dew has crept up into the seventies. But I could be wrong.
Yeah, this is fifty four, but I don't know. I just got two different numbers for Surge also, so I don't know.
It's hard to know.
Is a Caffeine Informer that's the that's my go to?
No, I'm using that's my website.
Google Google, Okay, yeah, csp i net. But anyway, you have to get an annual subscription to Caffeine Informer to really know that for sure.
No, I had my dad's log in. Okay.
But so stimulant medication with caffeine has to include warnings. But energy drinks, which have far more caffeine, are somehow free to market themselves with no warnings at all, or were for a long time. I think that might be changing. A Senate investigation began looking into these drinks and specifically how they market their products to teenagers like Monster and rock Star, and decided that their products were actually foods, not dietary supplements after all. Oh okay, so Prime didn't
originate the problem. But it's like really at the outer limits of how much caffeine you can put it in a product and how much you can market yourself to teenagers.
They're doing that too, So like when kids drink it, they're like, oh, this sheep is fucking hit, you know what I mean, Because like, as you have access to like Red Bull or fucking Monster and shit, but then you come through with something with twice that the thing. It feels like the intention is to also to get the consumers to talk about how this new fucking bag is just hidden Oh of course, yeah.
Yeah, and you're not getting it and just drinking one right like you're probably gonna like try to, you know, to get somewhere.
To get somewhere.
Man, I want full personality change. I want to have a different personality after I'm done.
Drink that I'm on fentanyl. It's wild.
It's like it's just yesterday. KSI and Logan Paul were in like Copenhagen promoting the drink and a lot of people suspect it may have been like set up kind of marketing because a bunch of like their fans just started throwing Prime at them. Oh wow, like like they were getting doused with it, and like even on TMZ they're like like who knows about historyonics like and it could just be a very clever way to get us
talking about this because here we are. It was kind of the literal like what was written in the article. So I don't know, but yeah, they it's fucking everywhere like Europe, it's really popular. They KSI is like a huge Arsenal fan and somehow Arsenal got them, Like there's like Prime branding around the football club and.
I'm like, this is fucking bad, dude.
It truly seems like just taking a like no dose caffeine pill and water but with branding added on to it.
Right, tell me if you think this is real. This is them at their Prime tour and they're getting somehow suddenly the crowd turns on them. They're getting doused, but everyone's like laughing, like the security is even like all right, that was a good bit. I know, nothing bad is actually happening.
Yeah, you can't bring European Security and on your bits.
Come on, it's hard to connect with your like idols, and sometimes the only thing you can do because the distance is just hit them with something and then be like me and Loug and Paul hung out today.
Yeah we had a laugh. Yeah, been a nice little Yeah.
Wow. People keep throwing it at them. There's like multiple things I wouldn't prime. Just turns people into fucking animals. And they're like, do you.
Know anything like you give the fans on like whatever day at the ballpark is gonna end up on the field, on the field, Yeah, yeah, this is a bobblehead, right yeah, right right, because that that'll end up on eBay.
Yeah.
It's it's weird how like you can go to Dodger gaming like if it's if it's a bad night, these are going on the field. Other things You're like, they're never throwing bobbleheads.
The snowstorm of inflatable bets.
Yeah.
Oh, speaking of dropping your baby, I didn't at Dodger Stadium, but I regret it because I had this moment. I had a Sports Center moment and I failed.
Oh to like catch a fly ball.
I had my baby in my arms. Yeah.
The fly ball came directly towards me. Yeah, I put out my right hand. It hit me in the palm and I dropped it. If i'd had two hands catch.
And you told your you told your son that, right.
I will.
I'm waiting until can understand me, but I'm gonna fucking ream him out. So the ball dropped and I went for it, but some lady scooped it up beforehand. Again, I still have the kid in my arms. So then the lady heard my story. Kids first baseball get yeah, gave us, gave us the ball as good of a story as it could be.
That doesn't you know that doesn't that doesn't make you a man, right because you should have You would have caught that ship.
I don't care, buddy, I mean I know. That's why I can't tell the story without like it being sad.
I'm just gonna you just lie to your son. What about this baseball? Oh you should have seen it?
He caught it?
Yeah?
Well yeah, that I was gonna say. It would be like a hyper like extreme prime version of the like choose the ball or choose death scene from You know, you got to catch those ball, kid.
Because it's public too. It didn't get on TV, but I had a friend in the stadium who saw it.
Why that was in front of me that I just found out about two days ago.
There must have been a collective like holding of breath when people saw a foul ball speeding at you while you were holding a baby, right, Like, was there a.
D to gauge?
Yeah?
Yeah, yeah, like yeah, they were all relieved when I just dropped it.
Yeah good, Well that's you would have been the wrong kind of on Sports Center if you had chosen otherwise. Yeah, I would have made it to the real I commend you. Yeah, all right, that's gonna do it for this week's weekly Zeitgeist. Please like and review the show.
If you like.
The show means the world to Miles. He he needs your validation.
Folks.
I hope you're having a great weekend and I will talk to youm Monday.
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