Kelleher on FinReg, ‘Kangaroo’ Courts

officer of Better Markets. And for those of you who aren't aware, Better Markets is Washington, DC based nonprofit organization whose goals are to make finance and government serve society, fight and justice and any and promote economic security, opportunity,

and prosperity for all Americans. Prior to co founding Better Markets, Dennis worked for eight years and senior staff positions in the United States Senate, including as chief counsel and Senior Leadership Advisor to the Chairman of Senate Democratic Policy Committee. And earlier in his career, mister Keller was a partner with the international law firm as Garden, Armed, Slate, Meager and Flom. So with all that, Dennis, thank you very much and welcome to the Votes in Verdicts podcast.

guests a little bit about their background. So could you tell us a little bit more about your career and Better Markets and why you decided to create it.

so as a leadership staff position. And when President Obama signed the Dodd Frank Financial Reform Law in July of twenty ten, about a year and a half after close to two years after the two thousand and eight crash, it was pretty clear that the financial industry was going to try and win in the regulatory process what they had lost in the legislative process, and it was also clear that there was no effective counterweight to the financial

industry in the regulatory process. So I decided, along with Mike Masters, who was a hedge fund manager in Atlanta, we both thought that the public interest or organization that prioritized and focused on the public interest with some substantive expertise, participated in the rule making process, which is how a law like Dodd Frank becomes a reality in the world.

And we thought it was setting up to be kind of a one sided rule making process, and we thought the public interest deserved its own organization to participate in that, and that's why we founded Better Markets, and we founded it as frankly a different organization than normally see in Washington.

We from the beginning, wanted to hire people who were derivative securities, commodities banking experts with ten, fifteen or decades worth of experience to be able to engage on a substantive expert level, whether it was at the FED or the FDIC or the occ of the SEC, the c FDC, the alphabet souper financial regulatory agencies to provide the public interest perspective to be a substantive counterweight to the financial industry.

I mean, one of the things people talk about a lot, and I'm sure you hear this, Nathan all the time, is well, you know, the financial industries active with lobbyists in Washington, and that's true, and they're entitled to do that, but they are all like all private sector businesses, looking to promote their interest, maximizing profits, maximizing revenue, expanding their business,

maximizing bonuses. You're entitled to do that, but the law dot Franklaw was actually passed to prioritize the public interests, not the maximization of profits of anybody in particular. So we have built a team of experts. As you indicated, we've actually participated in more than four hundred rule makings since October of twenty ten, as well as dozens of

litigations associated with those rules. We testify quite a bit and provide expert advice in Congress, and we're pretty engaged across the entire range of policymaking as it relates to the financial industry frankly, the economy at large, across all of Washington.

lawsuits came swiftly thereafter. There were multiple lawsuits that have now been consolidated in the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals. I just wanted to get your thoughts on that particular litigation. You know, how you see it playing out, you know, courts like the Eighth Circuit, the Fifth Circuit, and the Supreme Court too. Now are you know, very skeptical of

government overreach? And it feels like there's always you know, sort of a thumb on the scale of the challenge, you know, in favor of the challenger challenging these rules. So I just get wanted to get we wanted to get your thoughts on, you know, whether whether it's think this SEC climate disclosure rule will actually survive the litigation.

the bench for ideological reasons. And we have a whole variety of judges now in effect whole courts where facts merits policy actually do not matter very much at all, and these courts are basically rubber stamping lawsuits against the government independent of the facts. Better Market is going to put out a report, We've been working on it for a couple of weeks now to kind of show what some of these decisions. I mean, anybody I was a lawyer,

it's gotten offers. For twenty years, I litigated cases all across the country. I you know, one some I shouldn't have won, lost some I shouldn't have lost. But I never sat around thinking, you know, well that was just a judge. Before I went in the courthouse door, you would know almost with certainty how the case was going to come out. Nowadays, you know, Corporate America in the financial industry know how the case is coming out almost

to a certainty if they're in the Fifth Circuit. And some of the cases in the Fifth Circuit are shockingly completely devoid of precedent, facts and merit, and that should trouble everyone, regardless of what side you're on. There's also a second, really bad outcome of that, which is it incentivizes the financial industry and corporate America to litigate file lawsuits. There likelihood of winning has gone up dramatically, again regardless of the facts of the law. And so as a result,

there's almost a free option. If you're the industry, you'd be a damn fool not to soe nowadays, because your odds of winning, even if you've got a bad case are actually quite high. And that's what we're seeing kind of across the board, So you're seeing lawsuits that you never would have seen five years ago. They wouldn't even have been thought about five years ago. And that's not just bad because of there's more litigation and you've got

adverse decisions. But you know, the way the financial regulatory system has worked is the regulated entities and the regulators have this you know, it's supposed to be a professional relationship, but one that has tension. Right, regulated entities don't want to be regulated. Being regulated costs money. On the other hand, being regulated protects the public interest, protects investors, protect the customers,

protects financial stability. So historically there's been a push and all and a healthy tension there that sometimes spills over to unhealthy tension, but by and large there's been a working relationship between regulated entities and regulators, and that is deteriorating significantly because regulated entities know, we don't actually have to work with the regulators anymore. We can just go

to court and win. So that's the broader context. The specific question as it relates to the SEC case, I think anybody would be a fool to think that the odds are not dramatically in favor of the industry winning the lawsuits here. It's just as I said earlier, it's basically a free option when you look at some of these cases and it's in the Eighth Circuit, not the Fifth Circuit. If it's the Fifth Circuit, I mean, you know, it's almost not worth litigating if you're you know you're

being sued by the financial industry. The Eighth Circuit is the only thing you can say about the Eighth Circuit right now is that it's not as bad as the Fifth Circuit. That's not saying much.

could be legitimately and meritoriously harmed here. It's a disclosure rule, a disclosure rule by an agency that exists to ensure investors have disclosure, and every investor out there from the small single investor somewhere, you know, looking at stocks for themselves to trade or for for one k, all the way up to the big dogs, whether you're Black Rock

or Fidelity or Pimco or CalPERS. If you're an investor, you ought to really start being concerned about some of these decisions, because these courts are basically saying that you're right to have some very basic information, even apart from climate. It's going to apply to climate here a very very weak,

gutted climate rule. And to beyond, anybody honest it looks at the proposed rule and looks at the final rule, has to conclude that this is a pretty skeletal rule, pretty minimal rule focused exclusively on disclosure of material information

to information material to investors. Investors are getting the short end of the stick here, and our entire capital markets in capital formation capital allocation system depends upon investors having trust and confidence in our markets that they can get all material information, that they canvaluate the information, and they can decide intelligently where to put their hard earned money

or the money that they're fiduciaries for. When investors start concluding that they can't get that information or the information they're getting is inadequate, Our capital markets are going to suffer. We are the pre eminent capital markets in the world, but it's not preordained that we're going to stay there. We are the pre eminent capital markets in the world because they are well regulated, they are well policed, and investors have trust and confidence in those markets and in

the regulators. And that's really what's at stake right now, and it's getting completely lost in the litigation onslaught of financial industry. Actors who pursuing their individual profit maximization motives are going to win the battle, but they risk losing the war here.

taken into account when they promulgate these rules? You know just how anti government some of these courts are, or anti administrative action some of these courts are, Or do you think you know that an agency should expect to be sued and so it might as well continue to put out an aggressive rule rather than watering it down since it's going to get sued anyways.

for any industry without taking into account litigation risk. On the other hand, you can't let an our view and there are reasonable people can disagree about how government should approach the current state of the courts, and some people think, well, you should just continue doing whatever you were doing in terms of promulgating rules. Our view is that these agencies exist for really really important public policy purposes. I mean

they exist. We can disagree. Reasonable people can disagree about whether or not they calibrate the way they discharge their rulemaking, their regulation, their supervision, their enforcement. Are they actually doing it optimally? Should they do more, should they do less?

Should they do different? Reasonable people can have those discussions, but nobody can challenge the fact that they exist to protect investors to protect financial customers and to protect financials to ability, and that's their mission, and they have a mandate to actually do that. It's not discretionary. The SEC isn't just making stuff up, just like the banking regulators aren't making stuff up. They have a mandate to protect investors' markets, customers,

and financial stability. And so our view is that they should continue to discharge that duty, and that means rule making, and they should promulgate their rules that are in the best public policy, consistent with that mandate and the strongest form possible in a way that maximizes their likelihood of success before a court that actually cares about the facts and the law, and if they end up in a court that doesn't care about the facts in the law,

like the Fifth Circuit, which frankly, you know, I practice law for a long time, and I don't I'm not usually negative or pejorative about judges or courts. I have a very high respect for lawyers, judges and courts. But I have to tell you that it's hard not to come to the conclusion that the Circuit is actually becoming

a kangaroo court. But you can't let a court like that that such an outlier drive public policy decisions at financial regulatory agencies that are mandated to protect the public interest.

So what our view is, what you should do is promulgate the right rules, the best rules you can take after going through the Administrative Procedures Act, following all the procedures, getting all the input, listening to the industry, listening to the stakeholders, taking it all into account, making your best judgment, and acting a rule. Finalizing a rule that actually is sufficiently robust that you believe that a fair minded court would uphold your rule as consistent with the APA, the facts,

and the law. And if you end up in a kangaroo court where they don't care about it and they throw it out, that's going to happen. But you can't let that drive your policymaking. You can't let that drive your mandate because it will undermine your mandate and you would end up essentially handing the pen over to the industry that's being regulated, and that would be detrimental to everyone.

And that's part of the problem that we have right now is that people kind of think, oh, well, these are government agencies that are for some reason, like engaging in crazy rules. I mean, you said earlier there were courts skeptical of government overreach many of these rules. Nobody, no fair minded person who wasn't on the payroll of a financial industry would think these rules are overreaching anything.

And when it comes to rules that are pure disclosure rules, the SEC was created for that purpose and was populated with experts for that purpose. And it doesn't mean that they can't make a mistake. It doesn't mean that they can't get things wrong. I'm not, you know, I'm not in any way suggesting that the financial regulatory agencies are

always right. And frankly, you know, Nathan earlier said that he has been following us for some time, and I appreciate that, but then he knows because anybody who follows us for sometimes and we are some pretty we are pretty brutal on these agencies sometimes and when we don't

think they're doing the right thing, we let them know it. So, but we all have a vested interest in financial regulatory agencies fulfilling their mission as best as they can, taking into account the many stakeholders that they should and fulfilling that mission. And unfortunately it's all being you know, significantly impaired and not just at the SEC but kind of across the board.

and they put out a propose last year. This is the FED, the FDIC, and the Office of the Comptrol or the Currency, which would increase capital requirements probably around nineteen percent for the globally systemic banks like Bank America, City Group and JP Morgan, and the regional lenders could see around five to six percent.

should the proposal drastically changed? Do you think that there should be a reproposal in the cards or do you think they got it right on the first time.

that's the way the process is supposed to work. The agencies proposed a rule and then they put it out for public comment, which typically means being overwhelmingly industry comment, and the agency is supposed to take the comments into account and then finalize a rule. And as I say, we participated in four hundred rules. I haven't systematically gone back and looked at this, but I can't think of a single rule that was finalized that wasn't different and

to some degree from what was proposed. So the mere fact that there are going to be changes in the capital rule. That's just ordinary course of business, and nonetheless we think it's a very good, strong, and importantly necessary rule. You know, people don't understand what basil is, what the

endgame is, but people understand capital crashes and bailouts. And as you know, in twenty twenty three, just literally twelve months ago, three of the four largest bank failures in the history of the United States happened twelve months ago. And they happened because those banks did not have enough capital. If those banks had enough capital, they would not have failed. If they didn't fail, they wouldn't have been bailed out. And one of the things people really need to understand

is what is a bailout. What a bailout is is the government, after the fact, providing banks with capital that they should have had before they failed. You know, the direct cost of those failures are going to be between

forty billion dollars. That's the amount of money the United States government had to put into those banks capital to prevent them from failing and prevent the depositors ending up with no money or at least depositors under the two hundred and fifty thousand dollars sealing for the guarantee from the FDIC. They failed because they didn't have capital. The government then injected capital to save the bailout those banks.

So what this rule is, in the simplest form, is to make sure banks have enough capital so that if something happens, regardless of why it happens, it could because of deficient boards and executives. It could because it's taking

reckless risks. It could because there's something else going on in the world that changes the dynamic, whether it's you know, war, an epidemic, or just you know, a downturn in the business cycle which causes loan defaults to go up and people to no longer pay on their obligations to banks. Capital is nothing more than a cushion that a bank has to save it from failing, and importantly, people need to understand capital of banks. Capital is the only thing

standing between a failing bank and a taxpayer bailout. It's also important to remember that when banks fail, everybody pays the price. So the three banks that failed in twenty twenty three, the direct costs are between thirty and forty billion dollars. That was the capital the government had to put into those banks to fill the capital hole that the banks didn't have in the first place, right, So.

GDP is two hundred and seventy billion dollars. In addition to that, you have the collateral consequences of contagion that rippled through both community and regional banks as well as the big banks on Wall Street and other systemically significant financial firms like money market funds and other places where money flooded into. So when you add all that up, the cost of the three bank failures last year, it's going to exceed three hundred billion dollars. That's real money.

That's the American people who are paying that money now. Yes, the thirty to forty billion dollar bailouts get assessed on the banks. It's true that they have to replenish the FDIC Deposit Insurance Fund. That's how the system works. So the bank fails, the FDIC shovels capital into the bank, and then the FDIC recoups that capital from the financial industry,

from the banking industry. But as you know, the banking industry did not cut its bonuses last year by thirty or forty billion dollars to make up for that capital payment. They're going to make those make back that capital and those assessments through services and fees over time, and so we're all paying for that from last year. So the capital rule, although it's very long, the basel three end game capital, it's long, it's got a lot of different visions,

it's complicated. At bottom, the bottom line is making sure banks have enough capital so they don't fail. And importantly, one of the most important arguments that the industry makes is saying, well, wait a minute, if you make us have more capital, we're not going to be able to lend as much and it's going to hurt the economy. Well, our view is it's to tell every time the banking industry or the financial industry doesn't like something. They never

say it's going to hurt our revenue or bonuses. They always say it's, oh, it's going to hurt the economy, it's going to hurt small business, it's going to hurt minorities. But those are typically smoke screens, and Better Markets has put out a substantial amount of materials that address each and every one of the banking industry's objections. Here. The lending to small business will go down, that's false. Lending to minorities and communities of color will go down. False.

It's going to cause the economy to tank because they won't be able to lend us much. False. In fact, what they don't talk about is the data, and there's robust data that shows for every one percent increase in capital, there's actually a two percent increase in lending. Now that should actually makes sense because if you have more capital and therefore you're less likely to fail, your actual cost

of capital should go down. I mean, it's economics one oh one, But there's also other collateral benefits to having more capital and funding yourself with equity rather than debt. The only real downside to funding yourself with more equity rather than debt, and that's what we're talking about here. The only real downside is the bonus pool goes down. And I'm sure you both know this because the bonus pool is dictated by roe return on equity, and return

on equity goes up as leverage goes up. Return on equity goes down as equity goes up. And so the reason that we're seeing this ferocious, multi hundred million dollar fight against capital by the biggest banks in this country is because this is all about the bonus pool. The bonus pool is gonna get hit significantly whenever capital goes up, because leverage goes down and return on equity goes down. That's at the core of much of this fight, which

is why we have walked through at better Markets. You can go to our website www. Beetamarkets dot org. Type in capital under the little question mark or Basel three endgame or you know, false claims of the financial indo or the banking industry on Basel three, and you'll come up with fact sheets that we put out that detail

we go through, I don't know what it is. Ten of the fifteen top arguments the banking industry makes against the Basel three capital rules, and it lays out the data, It lays out the arguments with links you don't have to believe us with and you can see that the arguments against the pending rule frankly do not have a

meritorious basis. On the other hand, they are going to be very, very beneficial to the American people, the American economy, and the American financial system, which will be much more stable when the banks have more capital.

maybe LCR changes, maybe the EESLR. Are there any things out there that you would like to see done?

expense when you go anywhere near the bonus pool. That's why we had such ferocious fights over the vocal rule, as you'll remember, and that's why, you know, we always knew that the fight over capital and Basel three was going to be ferocious no matter what it was, for that reason. You know, when you add it all up, my view is that they're going to spend two three hundred million dollars or more trying to defeat this rule

wouldn't surprise me at all. On the other hand, that's a drop in the bucket compared to what they're going to make up on the other end in terms of the bonus pool as well as the payouts dividends, stock buybacks, that they're going to do with the capital that they have. People need to remember this is not an issue as to whether or not the banks have the capital. By the way, they already have more than enough capital to

cover all these increases. If the final rule was exactly the same as the one proposed, they have already today enough capital to comfortably cover that. And keep in mind the four I think it's the four biggest, the six biggest banks in the United States. In the last ten years, one trillion dollars in profits, one trillion dollars in profits. There were about eight hundred and eighty million dollars of that were paid out in stock buybacks and dividends. So

the issue isn't whether the banks have enough capital. They have more than enough capital. They have so much capital they don't know what to do with it. The issue is whether or not they're going to retain just a little bit of that, a little little bit of that to make the banking system safer, to lower the risk

of failure and lower the risk of bailouts. Now, if I was Vice chair for Supervision for a day, and I'm glad I was appointed to the position because I'd never get confirmed by the United States Senate the background check Elliott, I'd fail that across the board. But I'll take Nathan's appointment for a moment, and I would. I would absolutely do. The executive comp rule that was in Dodd Frank was required to be finished by Dodd Frank

I think eighteen months after the law was finalized. But the financial industry got their allies to put in Frank. And I worked in the Senate at the time. I was a senior leadership advisor at the time in the Senate, and I was involved in much of this. But the financial industry's lobbyist embedded a bunch of land mines to blow up once the rules. Once the law got to the regulatory agencies, and this rule was one of them.

And I go back to the point I just made why because it goes to executive comm So the landmine they put in there is it required six financial regulatory agencies to agree, six of them. I mean, most of the time they can't even agree within their own agency, right, So getting six regulatory agency are requiring six regulatory agencies to agree is embedding a landmine that the financial industry knew would prevent paralyze the agencies and likely prevent the

role from ever being finalized. And here we are fourteen years yeah, fourteen years later, and it's still not finalized.

And it was one of the most important rules we everybody knows that one of the core drivers of the two thousand and eight financial crash, and frankly, one of the core drivers that happens over and over and over again is financiers and bankers engaging incredibly high risk activities because they they tend to get the upside of swinging for the fences and they don't get the downside of

swinging for the fences. And so if you look at the bonuses before two thousand and eight, five, six, and seven broke records, the bonuses broke records, the compensation was astronomical in those years, and they did it because of high risk. And same thing happened in the twenty twenty

three bank failures. Those bankers pocketed tons of money in the years before they failed last year because they took on unreasonable high risks and they pocketed that money, and they literally still have their pocket stuff with that money while their banks failed and the American people had to suffer the consequences and pay the bills and they walk off.

Literally the day the FDIC walked into Silicon Valley Bank to take it over, literally that day, the CEO of Silicon Valley Bank was landing in Hawaii to go to his multimillion dollar ocean front home paid for with the high risk activities that he engaged in before the failure.

And so the executive comp rule is targeted at ensuring that banks have in place policies and procedures such that executives in senior leadership or in positions to take high risks that there are policies and procedures to make sure that those high risks are supervised, managed and mitigated so that they do not take risks, outsized risks that threaten the stability of the bank. That's kind of a colloquial

way to put it. It's a very long rule, it's a long provision, it's complicated, but it's a very important rule. So that's one of the first things I do. I'd also start working on the liquidity rules. The liquidity rules need to be strengthened. And one of the great scandals of twenty twenty three that nobody's talking about, and this gets back to another point we talked about earlier that

we've criticized the regulators about. It is absolutely shocking that in twenty twenty three, thirteen years after the passage of Dodd Frank, that the regulators bailed out three relatively small

banks instead of putting them through the resolution process. One of the most important financial reforms of dot Frank was for the regulators were mandated to make sure banks had resolution plans so that they could be resolved without being bailed out, so they could be resolved without collateral consequences,

so they could be resolved without contagion. And the failure of the regulators in twenty twenty three to not have resolution plans in place so that these three relatively small banks could have been put through a resolution process instead of bailed out is absolutely inexplicable, and so the banking regulators have to prioritize planning and making sure that these banks have plans so that the only thing standing between a failing bank and a taxpayer bailout isn't just capital,

but it should be a robust resolution plan that would enable the orderly wind down of the banks in a way that don't result in bailouts.

and ripple and cracking currently. Think youre just swap got a wells noticed yesterday and you know, going back years the SEC was going after I CEOs and things like that. But I think you were also a bit critical of the SEC for approving the spot bitcoin ETF although you know, I think a lot of people thought the SEC's hands were sort of tied by the DC circuit on that. But I just wanted to get your thoughts on sort of how you think the SEC in particular is doing on crypto.

And you two are you know, keen observers of financial markets and financial firms over many years, not that you're not very young guys, don't get me wrong, but you know, ask yourself, when is the last time there was an industry in the United States that took the position no laws applied to it. The banking laws don't apply, the

securities laws, the commodity laws don't apply. Their position is where special we're unique, and we're entitled to special interest legislation that regulates us the way we want to be regulated in no other way. And until we get our special interest legislation that we're going to buy, but through

campaign finance, we're going to just break the law. We're not going to follow any of the securities laws, any of the commodity laws, or any of the banking laws, and we're going to play catch us if you can with the regulators. No other industry and history that legitimate, non mafia industry that I can think of in the United States has ever done that. So and what does that mean. I mean, look at the court losses for the crypto industry are very, very substantial, and they know

what's coming for them. What's coming for them is like every other financial product that has come on the scene since the nineteen thirties have fit comfortably within the definition of securities or commodities. And that's true for crypto as well. And when you read, particularly the recent decisions, two different decisions of the Southern District of New York, but there's also other decisions across the country. This is not complicated.

This is black letter law. When you look at the law and you look at crypto, the securities laws apply somewhere in the neighborhood of ninety percent of the time or more. The commodity laws apply the rest of the time. There is one small gap in the laws relating to the spot regulation of the spot market that could be fixed within a minute if the Congress was not being

flooded with crypto money. So what we have here is a completely lawless industry, and intentionally and knowingly so that is rife with conflicts of interest and a product that has after fourteen years, no legitimate social use. It's only use his speculation and gambling and criminal activities. It is the financial product of choice of global criminals for a reason. And the wrap sheet on the industry could not be more clear. And it's interesting because it's not just illegal conduct,

but it's a predatory business model. You know, we were opponents of FTX and Sam Bankman Freed. Sam Bankment Freed offered better markets a million dollars or more if they would if we would support him at the CFTC for what he wanted to do there, he probably would have given us ten million bucks. He was desperate for our approval because we were so vocal and in the lead

opposing him. He came to my office. He sat, you know, six feet away from me for ninety minutes, him and his team to convince me why his model was such a great thing. Part of the promise, you know, is not a lot of people follow what goes on with the details of financial activities of financial regulation, but his model with the CFTC, he wanted this new fancy model. He wanted to get them to approve for a clearinghouse and basically his model was based on eliminating investor, customer

and financial stability protections. It was fundamentally a predatory model. You know, most financial activities, if you get rid of customer, investor and financial stability protections, your profit margins will go up. To me and I sat there and I said, you know, I could not figure out for the life of me, how so many people thought this guy was a genius. You know, I mean, if that's genius, then we've got a problem in this country. And yet a lot of

people gave him a lot of money. But a lot of crypto is based on the same thing, which is a predatory business model because it has no social use. Which is why we were so disappointed Eliott and the SEC's decision on the ETFs. It did not have to make that decision based on the DC circuit. We put out materials on this. What the DC Circuit said was that the SEC insufficiently explained the basis for its decision.

And under the law, regulatory agency makes a decision of finalize, as a rule, it has to provide an ample, substantial basis as to why it did what it did. And the court said pointed out several areas where the SEC's explanation was deficient. And so what we said they should have done and still believed to this day they should have done it. Have been very critical of them that they didn't do. This is they should have detailed why it was they were rejecting the ETF and instead they caved.

And our view is they shouldn't have because the DC Circuit is not a kangaroo court. It's a circuit with Republican and democratically appointed judges who care a lot about the facts, the law, and the policy. And so I'm not saying they got the court got the decision wrong. What I'm saying is the SEC was told what it had to do. It did not have to cave. It caved for a lot of reasons that you know, different

people can argue about they shouldn't have done it. And the problem with that is is they basically legitimized crypto, and we said that was going to be one of the bad things that happened. And now you've got all these people trying to put crypto into retirement accounts and other places in marketing and selling these, but this product has nothing similar to their other investments. You know, you look at their portfolio. They got bonds, they got stocks,

who knows what else they have. But you know, how do you evaluate crypto. Do you look at the revenue, there's no revenue. Do you try and net present value? You can't do that. Do you look at market share? You can't. I mean like there's nothing there. I like to say Elliott that it's worse than the tulip craze. And the reason it's worse than the tulip craze is because when the tulip bubble burst, at least you had a toolip. With crypto, you don't even have a toolip.

You've got nothing. It's smoke, it's a scam, it's predatory, and it's the financial product of choice of criminals worldwide. When you see ransomware in your town, or your hospital or your local business is being held up by ransomware, thank crypto. Without crypto, ransomware would die. Yes, some ransomware does use cash, but ransomware has taken off because of crypto.

And the people who say cryptos not anonymous or bitcoin isn't anonymous, will tell that to the crypto croops that are currently financing Russia and evading sanctions and tax dodging and narco terrorism. We could go down the list. The rap sheet for Crypto should make everybody understand pretty clearly what Crypto's all about.

in the Air Force. And I think The Rising is really one of the best albums that's ever been put out. And if I was really on a stranded on an island, I'd probably sneak even though only had three choices, and I'm way beyond that, I would sneak in YouTube's Joshua Tree album excellent.