Episode 321

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Published on:

10th Feb 2026

AI Bubble Reality Check: $285B Rout, Layoffs Incoming, Housing Still Unaffordable

Markets had a little “AI anxiety attack” this week and Wall Street responded the only way it knows how: smash the sell button and ask questions later. We break down the $285B Anthropic-fueled rout, why the “automation boom” is starting to look like an entry-level job extinction event, and how Big Tech’s data-center dreams are already colliding with tighter financing and very real layoff math (looking at you, Oracle). Then we zoom out to the part nobody wants to talk about at cocktail parties: job cuts flashing red, wages getting blamed for everything, and a housing market that’s still wildly unaffordable because the underlying problem never left — it just changed outfits. Add a little bitcoin weakness for spice, and you’ve got Episode 321: the reality check Wall Street didn’t order, but absolutely needs.

💥 Have you left your "honest ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️" review?

This episode is proudly brought to you by Fridays.

Because real wealth starts with your health. If you want to feel sharper, stronger, and more in control, visit joinfridays.com and use code HIGHER for an exclusive discount.

📩 NEWSLETTER: https://tr.ee/O6FWkv

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🔗 Resources:

New Anthropic AI problem (Bloomberg Business via Instagram)

Bitcoin Prices Fall Below $75,000 To Reach Fresh 2026 Low (Forbes)

Michael Burry says THIS is Bitcoin’s “death spiral” (Yahoo! Finance)

Oracle plans biggest layoff in years (People Matters via Instagram)

AI is gutting parts of the labor market (Ed Eldon via Instagram)

Anthropic CEO on white collar jobs (AI.Rise.Co via Instagram)

75% of tech jobs are about to disappear (Haris.Sy via Instagram)

⚠️ Disclaimer: Please note that the content shared on this show is solely for entertainment purposes and should not be considered legal or investment advice or attributed to any company. The views and opinions expressed are personal and not reflective of any entity. We do not guarantee the accuracy or completeness of the information provided, and listeners are urged to seek professional advice before making any legal or financial decisions. By listening to The Higher Standard podcast you agree to these terms, and the show, its hosts and employees are not liable for any consequences arising from your use of the content.

Transcript
Speaker A:

Oh, how can I not be happy?

Speaker B:

Yeah, bitcoin's down below 100,000 or 75.

Speaker B:

Yeah, there's also that.

Speaker A:

You got anything to say for yourself?

Speaker B:

Me?

Speaker A:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

Yeah, I. I hope for your sake that the Internet doesn't come for you.

Speaker B:

Why?

Speaker A:

What did I do?

Speaker B:

Well, I should probably say for my own sake, because technically speaking, they come for me.

Speaker B:

Come for you on.

Speaker B:

On my profile.

Speaker A:

Yeah, exactly.

Speaker B:

So it's not like it's.

Speaker B:

It's.

Speaker B:

We good.

Speaker A:

We live.

Speaker B:

Yeah, I think we.

Speaker B:

I feel like we're live.

Speaker B:

Oh.

Speaker A:

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

Speaker A:

This is the higher standard.

Speaker A:

Sitting in front of me is my partner in crime, Christopher Nahibi.

Speaker B:

Hi, partner in crime.

Speaker A:

Hello, sir.

Speaker A:

I'm partner in time.

Speaker B:

I know.

Speaker B:

Well, I guess you are the self proclaimed partner in time, so.

Speaker B:

I don't work self proclaimed.

Speaker B:

Wow, you just gave it to yourself.

Speaker A:

Geez.

Speaker A:

Okay.

Speaker A:

And sitting behind the desk in the production suite, it's Slim himself.

Speaker A:

Rajeel.

Speaker A:

What's up, my guy?

Speaker A:

Hello, everyone.

Speaker A:

Welcome back, bro.

Speaker A:

We missed you.

Speaker A:

Thanks, man.

Speaker A:

Oh, look at this.

Speaker A:

We've gone from port wine.

Speaker A:

Fancy.

Speaker A:

Fancy.

Speaker B:

Yeah, gone.

Speaker B:

Gone are the days where we actually, you know, that's the only thing I meant.

Speaker B:

I miss drinking with you guys.

Speaker B:

For the.

Speaker B:

For the sake of drinking.

Speaker A:

For the.

Speaker A:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

Not because I actually like, want to drink.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker A:

Cheers.

Speaker A:

Yeah, you're supposed to look somebody in the eye when you give them a cheers.

Speaker B:

My apologies to Peter Atia's career.

Speaker B:

May he rest in peace.

Speaker A:

It's over, son.

Speaker B:

Yeah, it's, it's.

Speaker B:

Call it a rap.

Speaker B:

CBS is calling.

Speaker B:

Don't answer that phone call.

Speaker A:

It's over.

Speaker B:

You know what that is?

Speaker A:

Oh, did I tell you about the story?

Speaker B:

What story?

Speaker A:

Oh, man.

Speaker A:

So in my cul de sac.

Speaker A:

My cul de sac, there's like nine houses, right?

Speaker A:

And at the very end of the close, like a house went for sale recently and, and it sold fairly quickly.

Speaker A:

I was like, oh, I wanna, I wanna meet this guy.

Speaker A:

And it's the same, like, house, like layout, Same plan as my house, right?

Speaker A:

So I was like, let me be a gentleman, go over there and be like, hey, man, if you ever have any questions about the house, like, I know a lot because I have the same house.

Speaker A:

So I can help you.

Speaker A:

I let you know, like, where all the piping is.

Speaker B:

And like, so now he knows you're the neighborhood honey pot who shows the.

Speaker A:

Piping, you know, I mean, I'll be showing the pipe, you know what I mean?

Speaker A:

So he comes oh, thanks so much.

Speaker A:

So where are you moving in from?

Speaker A:

He's like, oh, I'm actually just, like, one city over, and we had.

Speaker A:

We sold our house.

Speaker A:

Our kids all moved out, so we went to downsize into a smaller home.

Speaker B:

I was like, damn, bro.

Speaker A:

Why you.

Speaker A:

Hold on, hold on.

Speaker B:

Relax.

Speaker A:

Relax with the flex.

Speaker A:

My guy, right?

Speaker A:

I'm over here trying to be a good guy, and I'm like, oh, that sounds.

Speaker A:

Oh, you retired.

Speaker A:

Congratulations on the retirement.

Speaker A:

And he goes, yeah, I worked in a CPS for about 30 years.

Speaker A:

All right, that's cool.

Speaker A:

Good to know.

Speaker A:

Thank you.

Speaker A:

Thank you, sir.

Speaker A:

I'll make sure to never raise my voice at my kids in front of you ever.

Speaker A:

Thank you, sir.

Speaker A:

Appreciate it.

Speaker A:

It's a little, like, off putting.

Speaker A:

I just want.

Speaker A:

It was like he was putting me on notice, like, don't do anything to where I might have to make some phone calls.

Speaker A:

Like, yes, sir, I'll let you interview my kids whenever you want.

Speaker B:

Regil, did you feel like that story is equally as anticlimactic for you as it was for me?

Speaker A:

I. I'm just confused.

Speaker A:

Like, what's going on with CPS here now?

Speaker A:

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker A:

Well, you.

Speaker A:

You brought it up.

Speaker A:

Cps.

Speaker B:

You want.

Speaker B:

You want to push that chair to.

Speaker B:

To the right.

Speaker B:

I brought what up now?

Speaker B:

I'm sorry.

Speaker A:

Did you bring up CPS with Peter atf?

Speaker A:

CPS gives.

Speaker A:

No, I think he said cbs.

Speaker A:

Oh, I thought you said cps.

Speaker A:

My bad, my bad.

Speaker B:

All right, we're gonna.

Speaker B:

We're gonna back this up a little bit.

Speaker B:

All right?

Speaker B:

Rejeel, I don't.

Speaker B:

I'm sorry for all of us that you had to hear that.

Speaker B:

Cbs.

Speaker B:

Peter, TIA is.

Speaker A:

No, no, no.

Speaker A:

Now I'm putting it together, but I'm saying.

Speaker A:

I thought I heard you say cps.

Speaker B:

Oh, it's gonna be a long show.

Speaker B:

It's gonna be a long show.

Speaker A:

Well, let's just jump straight into it, guys.

Speaker B:

Yeah, let's just put anything on the screen and change the topic.

Speaker B:

Is anything.

Speaker B:

Anything?

Speaker A:

There you go.

Speaker B:

Oh, yeah, There you go.

Speaker B:

So today we had a lot of volatility in the markets.

Speaker B:

We're gonna start a little bit talking about OpenAI AI in general.

Speaker B:

And if you're listening, there's gonna be a common kind of theme, so bear with us.

Speaker B:

It's gonna be a little AI heavy in the beginning, and then we're going to get into the housing market.

Speaker B:

We're gonna get into wages.

Speaker B:

We're into unemployment.

Speaker B:

We're gonna do a lot of the sexy talk.

Speaker B:

But to start off the show Bloomberg business.

Speaker B:

A new AI automation tool from Anthropic sparked a $285 billion route in stocks across the softW management sector on Tuesday as investors race to dump shares with even the slightest exposure.

Speaker B:

And I'll tell you that I think this is going to be a reoccurring theme.

Speaker B:

I don't think this is going to be unique to now at all, as a matter of fact, because what's happening is people are starting to wake up to the realities that these entry level jobs at a lot of these companies are going to be gone.

Speaker B:

But that isn't, that isn't where this begins and ends.

Speaker B:

That's just the tip of the iceberg, if you will, because the bigger problem is going to be, well, even if they are gone, that also means that you're going to have this growth of technology, this growth of infrastructure, which is going to change the landscape meaningfully.

Speaker B:

And a lot of these companies, I.e.

Speaker B:

software development companies, are probably not going to have a whole lot of value to them.

Speaker B:

When someone like you, like me, like Rajeel, can go on and literally recreate an app, I'm going to give somebody listening a little bit of context.

Speaker B:

I think color here is important.

Speaker B:

I was watching CNBC earlier today.

Speaker B:

Correspondent comes on.

Speaker B:

She's talking about this exact same thing she saw in the markets on Tuesday.

Speaker B:

We're recording this on Wednesday the 4th.

Speaker B:

And she said she got curious.

Speaker B:

She went on to her computer at night because she says, hey, I cover AI stock.

Speaker B:

I want to know how this works.

Speaker B:

She logged in the Claude.

Speaker B:

She heard a lot about Claude code and figured that would be a good place to start.

Speaker B:

And she built a personalized version of Monday.com which, if you haven't used it, think of it as like Slack or something like that, but organizational structure that interfaces with her email, her Gmail and her calendar, puts everything together for a view of hers.

Speaker B:

And within one hour, she was already being reminded that she needed to buy a birthday gift for a birthday she was going to attend for her children's friend's birthday over the weekend.

Speaker B:

And she did all this coding with no coding experience, literally in an hour.

Speaker A:

Wow.

Speaker A:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

And she's like, first of all, if I knew anything about coding in general, I probably do three times as fast, number one.

Speaker B:

Number two, if I can do this, like, what's the value of software development companies?

Speaker A:

100% agree.

Speaker A:

I actually know, know people that don't have much experience in this space and they're using this as like an opportunity to go learn it yeah.

Speaker A:

To go vibe code like we talked about on previous episodes.

Speaker A:

And they're literally building out apps and websites for people.

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

Myself included.

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker A:

To help like something as simple as like a basketball trainer.

Speaker A:

Let me build out an entire website for you.

Speaker A:

So some it can, people can see your calendar, what availability you have and you know, just lock in dates.

Speaker A:

It's, it's pretty, it's, it's, it's going to be interesting, man.

Speaker A:

I mean what's happening right now too with I think in the market, what, what we're starting to see is just a.

Speaker A:

This is the part that worries me.

Speaker A:

At some point, the Max 7, they're all heavily invested in AI.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker A:

y and noted that last year in:

Speaker A:

Right.

Speaker A:

So far this year that's looking like already it's early.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker A:

It's early, but now it's looking more like 20%.

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker A:

And what, what people are starting to get a little worried about and I think what the market is saying, what people are starting to get worried about is wait a minute.

Speaker A:

The Max 7 all heavily focused in AI.

Speaker A:

Some of these people will succeed in this race and some of you won't.

Speaker A:

What will happen to those companies that don't and when they don't?

Speaker A:

The concentration level is so high for the, for the entire market.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker A:

Think about the Max 7, I think makes up a third of the entire market.

Speaker A:

If only one of those companies doesn't do well or takes a dive, what's going to happen?

Speaker A:

Right.

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

And I think you're seeing a lot of that already in the markets.

Speaker B:

I think you're starting to see the volatility of just Nvidia not investing in OpenAI.

Speaker B:

The $100 billion they were talking about was a meaningful shift in the market.

Speaker B:

It caused in part some of the change that we saw in the landscape.

Speaker B:

In Tuesday we saw the market shift very heavily.

Speaker B:

We went.

Speaker B:

And then today, even today was volatile.

Speaker B:

You had a little bit of a kind of a run on the market.

Speaker B:

Then at the same time you had this shift back into a tech led growth market from what was a risk off position.

Speaker B:

So I think that there's certainly a, a very large susceptibility.

Speaker B:

The VIX as we started the show was just under 20, which is kind of getting close to that alert level, our synthetic volatility index was still coming down as in the high 80s.

Speaker B:

Still, still normal calm market.

Speaker B:

But we're in a period of time where I think the volatility is going to creep in because there's just these things that, that cannot be avoided.

Speaker B:

And let me put a smile on say's face early.

Speaker B:

Rajeel, if you pull up the next article we're going to talk a little bit about bitcoin's fall from grace side.

Speaker B:

Try to contain yourself.

Speaker A:

I look, I, I don't.

Speaker A:

I'm not happy with people lose money and that's why I just happy when I was right and you were wrong.

Speaker B:

There it is.

Speaker A:

That's all that's right for now.

Speaker A:

I mean it could change but given all the news that has recently come out and we talked about this like pre show a little bit and we won't get into all the details as to why, but I think, I think the listeners know what I'm talking about.

Speaker A:

When I say some of the negative news around this one particular coin, I'm surprised it still is where it is.

Speaker B:

Well, not to use a bad pun, but we'll touch on that later.

Speaker B:

No, no.

Speaker B:

Michael Burry says bitcoin's fall in price could trigger a death spiral.

Speaker B:

Now some of this is really grim, but this is from Yahoo Finance.

Speaker B:

Go to the next page.

Speaker B:

There.

Speaker B:

It's the arrow on the right of that picture.

Speaker B:

There's no up the one above it.

Speaker B:

Yeah, no, no, no, in the middle, in the middle.

Speaker B:

You were there.

Speaker B:

There you go.

Speaker B:

To the right.

Speaker B:

There you go.

Speaker A:

Bang.

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

Bitcoin has been exposed as a purely speculative asset and is not near the debasement trade hedge that gold and other precious metals are according to Michael Burry on a substack blog.

Speaker B:

Now what I'll say number one out the gate sounds a whole lot like Charlie Munger may rest in peace and our boy Warren Buffett, so.

Speaker A:

Which we cosign.

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

But that being said, I would say that I don't know that gold and other precious metals are a debasement trade because guess what, they took a pretty massive dive the last couple days too.

Speaker B:

And again we've said on the show countless times the only true hedge against inflation is to keep investing.

Speaker B:

Yeah, right.

Speaker B:

So.

Speaker B:

So I don't know that bitcoin is better because it's not backed by anything or it's speculative.

Speaker B:

But let's go to the next page.

Speaker A:

The problem with it too, it being as speculative as it is.

Speaker A:

I mean I've heard people Refer to it as like an amplified tech stock.

Speaker B:

Right?

Speaker A:

It's based, it's really based all around hype and.

Speaker A:

And what?

Speaker A:

Fiat currency, right?

Speaker A:

How much, how much do people really believe in if people continue to believe in it?

Speaker A:

And what makes people believe in it?

Speaker A:

It's value staying relatively high.

Speaker A:

And here's something that I guess we don't know.

Speaker A:

I mean, there's so much institutional money now also tied behind it that it makes you think like, man, they could literally control this thing to make it do whatever they want to do.

Speaker B:

Well, unfortunately for a lot of these ETFs is that they're so levered in some sets of circumstances that the evisceration of so much value from 126,000 ish at bitcoin's peak down to where it's at today, you know, below 75,000, that's a pretty hefty swing.

Speaker B:

And as a result of that, margin calls do happen.

Speaker B:

So people will have to liquidate positions to cover that.

Speaker B:

Continuing on with Michael Burry At $50,000, miners would go bankrupt and be forced to sell their BTC reserves.

Speaker B:

As a reminder, we're only.

Speaker B:

We're at 73 currently, coming down from 126.

Speaker B:

Tokenized metals futures would collapse into a black hole with no buyer.

Speaker B:

Go to the next page.

Speaker B:

It gets equally as grim as a recurring grim theme here.

Speaker B:

Death spiral is defined here as a situation that keeps getting worse and that is likely to end badly with the graduation, great harm or damage being caused.

Speaker B:

And well, that's where we can kind of end this.

Speaker B:

But Burry states that if Bitcoin falls on the 10% under $70,000, MSTR will be over $4 billion in the red.

Speaker A:

Ouch.

Speaker B:

And while we're doing that, Google the cash MSTR while you get a chance.

Speaker B:

I want to explain people what that is.

Speaker B:

So basically we're not far from this, but Strategy Inc. Class A.

Speaker B:

And scroll down to the news there, please.

Speaker B:

Perfect.

Speaker B:

Just pick anyone you want.

Speaker B:

This bullish analyst on Michael Saylor's strategy just threw in the towel on lofty price target.

Speaker B:

King Cord's Joseph Vafi slashed his price target in the plunging Bitcoin treasury company stock by more than 60%.

Speaker B:

So basically Michael Saylor stuff.

Speaker B:

And it goes to show you that there is some dramatic changes in the works because here's the problem.

Speaker B:

You can have stock volatility, you can have cryptocurrency volatility.

Speaker B:

When you have cryptocurrency volatility, that affects institutional investors who got behind it then guess what?

Speaker B:

Everybody jumps ship when the first institutional investor goes down.

Speaker B:

Right?

Speaker A:

That's the problem.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker A:

And that's, that's the fear, I think.

Speaker A:

That's what I think everyone is going to be waiting around for.

Speaker A:

I mean we've on this show talked about the dot com bubble, right.

Speaker A:

And a lot of people in that space early were investing heavy into the technology.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker A:

Because they want to be, they want to be on the front line.

Speaker A:

They want to be on the first ones to, to make it big.

Speaker A:

Right now there's a lot of companies that maybe didn't.

Speaker A:

And then what happens to them?

Speaker A:

And that's what can cause the beginning of a crash.

Speaker A:

Right.

Speaker A:

Because there's all this debt that goes into building these companies out.

Speaker A:

That's ultimately what it is.

Speaker A:

And what's going to happen when those companies can't repay those debts.

Speaker B:

And that's effectively what Michael Burry is kind of foreshadowing.

Speaker B:

I don't know that really.

Speaker B:

I mean, here's the problem.

Speaker B:

If you're me and I'm looking at this from the outside perspective and I'm not super qualified to be making statements on bitcoin, but I'll say 126,000 down to 73,000 ish.

Speaker B:

That's a problem, dude.

Speaker A:

Well, I mean even prior to that though, and this has been my stance the whole time, this is the only reason why I, I have always had wet paper towel hands on this.

Speaker A:

There, there were three.

Speaker B:

71,000.

Speaker B:

Six.

Speaker B:

3,550.

Speaker B:

Good Lord.

Speaker B:

Down $42,712.70 in the past six months.

Speaker B:

Prior to this though, which has been in the past two.

Speaker A:

Prior to this though, they, there was three different occasions where it had dropped 90% in value.

Speaker A:

90% in value, 80% in value, including.

Speaker B:

One labeled a crypto winter.

Speaker A:

Yeah, one, exactly.

Speaker A:

So that right there in of itself is like, okay, this is not a stable enough, no pun intended.

Speaker A:

Right.

Speaker A:

For me to feel like stable coin.

Speaker B:

I got it.

Speaker A:

You saw what I did there.

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker A:

For me to want, like feel comfortable to invest in this long term.

Speaker A:

And now you couple this and everything that you're talking about with the news of Kevin Warsh being the next nomination of the next Fed Chair.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker A:

Like what, what do you think happens with the market as a whole and crypto as a whole with, with somebody like him going in, you know, taking that seat because he's been very clear on his monetary policy stance, which is actually surprising when you think that who's nominating him.

Speaker A:

Right.

Speaker B:

Here's what I'LL say about him.

Speaker B:

I think he played the hand that was dealt to him to get the nomination that he wanted.

Speaker B:

He still has to get confirmed in the House, the Senate.

Speaker B:

So it's not like it's, it's a done deal.

Speaker B:

Okay.

Speaker B:

But I think the Lisa Cook litigation is probably more impactful to the overall direction of rates.

Speaker B:

Let's, I mean, let's, let's go down this path.

Speaker A:

Okay, so for, and for the listeners out there that don't know Kevin Warsh, right.

Speaker A:

He was formerly on, like, he was.

Speaker B:

Formerly already a head of a president.

Speaker A:

During the:

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

Gave a lot of money in a bailout.

Speaker A:

Gave a lot of money.

Speaker A:

And his stance on this is the, the difference in stance between him and Jerome Powell.

Speaker A:

Right.

Speaker A:

Jerome Powell is like, I'm going to slowly put money into the system and we're going to, you know, slowly bleed this thing out over time versus Kevin Warsh was like, nope, we're going to suffer a crash, a crisis, and then it's our job to come in and save the day.

Speaker A:

Right.

Speaker A:

By, by any means necessary, if you will.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker A:

But to let it, but to actually let it play out well.

Speaker B:

And you could argue that's capitalism.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker B:

If you stop these events from happening, then you're stopping the natural consequence of capitalism.

Speaker B:

Now, the counter argument to that from a macroeconomics perspective is government spending really causes inflation, not consumers and wages.

Speaker B:

And there's going to be somebody who listens to this who's like, you know what you're talking about during Alexander Hamilton's era, that the economics books at the time said this, this or that, and that's not true.

Speaker B:

And you know what?

Speaker B:

I don't care what you learned as far as economic policy goes in school.

Speaker B:

I can tell you in the real world, practical application, things have changed a whole hell of a lot since these theories came out.

Speaker B:

There's an interesting concept, it's not in the show notes, but I read it earlier that the public, I guess feelings sentiment around AI in the United States is lowest amongst most modern developed countries, whereas in China it's the highest, like amongst 90% people.

Speaker B:

Very optimistic about it.

Speaker A:

Why do you think that is?

Speaker B:

I spent some time thinking about that today.

Speaker B:

And you want the honest answer.

Speaker A:

I got my answer too.

Speaker A:

I want to hear yours.

Speaker B:

They're communist.

Speaker B:

They know the people will be taken care of because that's how communism is.

Speaker B:

Everybody's supposed to get a piece of the pie.

Speaker B:

Now there's capitalist, you know, part of that.

Speaker B:

Have you ever been to Vietnam or you've been to Russia, you've seen communist countries and you've been in them and you've seen kind of what that's like.

Speaker B:

And there are always winners and losers, regardless of, you know, the population.

Speaker B:

But in the US as we go towards a society where capitalism no longer needs humans, I. E. The wage earners, to be successful.

Speaker B:

Let me put it in a different context.

Speaker B:

It's a very dark future when you could run a company entirely with bots that you create and entirely in servers that you build with little to no humans in between, and be just as successful as you had the humans.

Speaker B:

I'm not saying we're there.

Speaker B:

I'm not saying we're going to get there soon, but I'm saying if that's the future.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker B:

Hey, let's just throw on another layer of complexity here.

Speaker B:

Elon Musk is successful in deploying ChatGPT into robots.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker B:

You watched iRobot that, that was cool.

Speaker B:

Let's do that.

Speaker B:

Well, now you have an entire labor force to do these things.

Speaker B:

Where, where does the human value come in, in work anymore?

Speaker B:

Like, name a job.

Speaker B:

And I think that you feel humans would be superior at.

Speaker A:

Right.

Speaker A:

And I think that people are fearful for.

Speaker A:

What does that mean for me?

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker A:

What, what, what am I going to do?

Speaker A:

Right.

Speaker A:

And for you think about there's.

Speaker A:

I know that.

Speaker A:

I know.

Speaker A:

I've read like, stories.

Speaker A:

I mean, the Wall Street Journal has posted, like, these software developers that have been working at Microsoft for like 30 years.

Speaker B:

Yeah, done, done.

Speaker A:

What do you want them to do?

Speaker A:

You're telling them, go back, go back to school and learn something else.

Speaker B:

You know, I don't think you can tell them that.

Speaker B:

I think, I think you tell them that.

Speaker B:

And this is where I get frustrated because people talk about the, the context, like, oh, you know, hey, all these things are happening and, but, you know, it's going to create jobs.

Speaker B:

We don't know.

Speaker B:

And it's like, okay, why are we ignoring.

Speaker B:

I Look at the Internet.com bubble and the bursting of it and the rhetoric around people comparing it to this, to that.

Speaker B:

I don't think the Internet in any way, shape or form, granted, I have the ability to look backward now retroactively.

Speaker B:

But the Internet coming about, I guess you could say it was going to wipe out postman physical mail.

Speaker B:

No.

Speaker A:

But the conversation around it taking over as many jobs, that was not the conversation, never part of the conversation.

Speaker B:

It was going to make things more efficient.

Speaker B:

You can do things better.

Speaker B:

It was going to create, to communicate.

Speaker A:

Create more Millionaires than ever before.

Speaker B:

Right, yeah.

Speaker B:

Did.

Speaker B:

No, it did.

Speaker B:

Look at the immense amount of wealth of so many billionaires today that are tied to things like the Google and PayPal mafias and stuff like that.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker B:

So you can't deny that Silicon Valley exists largely because of this movement.

Speaker B:

But I would say that was not as transformational as this.

Speaker B:

And I think going back in time, I think honestly, if you want something that's very similar, you go look at something like the Industrial Revolution.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker B:

The assembly line.

Speaker B:

That assembly line structure was put in place for pretty much every single company in manufacturing, which was our biggest value point back then.

Speaker B:

And it changed the landscape.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker B:

Every company was more efficient, but you still needed humans to operate it.

Speaker A:

And during a time too, where around the world, their manufacturing plants were completely down.

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

Everything went from bespoke builds to now we all can build in volume.

Speaker A:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

Well, now we can all build in volume without humans, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Speaker B:

And it becomes a very, very dark paradigm.

Speaker B:

And the sad part about it is, even with our, I guess, hesitation on the idea of adoption of AI, there are some things we have to accept.

Speaker B:

A lot of people didn't adopt cryptocurrency early.

Speaker B:

A lot of people who did are billionaires, millionaires today.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker B:

I'd be remiss to say that apparently Jeffrey Epstein knew the five developers who were working on it.

Speaker B:

And there's a whole lot in the Epstein files, which.

Speaker B:

That was the.

Speaker B:

Out of everything that came out, as disgusting as this might be, that was the most shocking part to me.

Speaker A:

That was the most shocking part to you?

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

Because I knew he was a sick man and had a sick group of people around him.

Speaker B:

And the people that were associated with it was, you know, they were all going to come out.

Speaker B:

And I knew there were big names there because government spent so much time doing this.

Speaker B:

I did not expect to see that he had some connection to bitcoin that he.

Speaker B:

He allegedly, allegedly knew the five developers who started it.

Speaker B:

Referenced two of them, the lead developers, by name.

Speaker A:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

Said that he had donated to the foundation.

Speaker B:

The charity.

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

Millions of dollars.

Speaker A:

Right.

Speaker B:

Millions of dollars, you know, in money to.

Speaker B:

To keep it going when they lost their original round through the foundation.

Speaker B:

So he had some nexus there, which then I'm sitting here looking at the market, everything that's happening today, and I'm going, why isn't there not a massive sell off?

Speaker B:

I mean, Jay Z and Beyonce are talking about divorcing, everybody's unfollowing them, but everyone's still comfortable with bitcoin now?

Speaker B:

Yeah, I didn't.

Speaker B:

And I mean the six degrees of Kevin Bacon here are pretty close.

Speaker A:

Doesn't make, it doesn't make any sense.

Speaker A:

And that's my point.

Speaker A:

I mean there's so much institutional money tied behind it that I mean you got to think those large positions are going to be held.

Speaker B:

Well, I don't know if that's good or bad at this point, but because institutional fallout can and likely will happen.

Speaker B:

Let's go to the Forbes article.

Speaker B:

Bitcoin prices fall below:

Speaker B:

It's going to pull up a little weird on the screen but I have the notes here.

Speaker B:

I'll read from those.

Speaker B:

Bitcoin prices dropped less 75 000.

Speaker B:

We know it's down about:

Speaker B:

As multiple variables combined fuel losses, the world's most well known cryptocurrency fell to roughly 74,500.

Speaker B:

We know it's around 71 now.

Speaker B:

According to Coinbase data from Trading View, at this point it was down more than 40% from its all time high of 126,000.

Speaker B:

Additionally, Coinbase figures from TradingView reveal while when asked what caused the what what caused contribute contributed to this latest downward movement, analysts cited a wide range of factors.

Speaker B:

Bitcoin's drop was macro driven, said analyst Joe De Pasquale, specifying that a broad risk off backdrop hit beta assets and BTC can still trade like a levered proxy for liquidity conditions.

Speaker B:

And if that doesn't sound like anything you understand like what the did he just say?

Speaker B:

Okay, that's exactly the point.

Speaker A:

Right, right, right.

Speaker B:

If somebody is talented as this guy, his best excuse is not this happened, that happened, it's oh, it's these macro factors.

Speaker B:

The bigger, you know, everyone's going risk off right now.

Speaker B:

What, what language do you have to speak to cover your ass here and say I don't know?

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker A:

Well, yeah, exactly.

Speaker A:

Well if, if that's really the case and what, what he's really trying to point to is look, the new, the new Fed chair that's going to be nominated as is come out and said we're going to, we're not going to continue to push liquidity into the markets.

Speaker B:

Right?

Speaker A:

And that means that's going to be bad for not just bitcoin and crypto but for the market as a whole because there's going to be too much volatility Right.

Speaker A:

Like what Jerome Powell's been doing is he's trying to avoid a crisis.

Speaker A:

So it's little easing.

Speaker A:

Easing money in every single 40.

Speaker A:

40 billion a month.

Speaker B:

What?

Speaker A:

You said 60 billion a month.

Speaker A:

Right?

Speaker A:

Then.

Speaker A:

Now this, the new Fed chairs.

Speaker A:

That's what he's going to do.

Speaker A:

He's going to cut off the liquidity.

Speaker A:

So who's to blame for that?

Speaker A:

Who's nominating this guy?

Speaker A:

No, we can't put a blame on him.

Speaker A:

So we're just going to give you some fancy words to make you a little confused.

Speaker B:

It's.

Speaker B:

It's a strange.

Speaker B:

It's a strange nomination.

Speaker B:

And you can tell it's even strange because the housing pundits, right.

Speaker B:

All the guys I follow.

Speaker B:

So I'll probably walk this through logically to make it sound a little more normal.

Speaker B:

A lot of people who love the housing sector, the.

Speaker B:

The economic.

Speaker B:

I am having trouble speaking today.

Speaker B:

Economist.

Speaker A:

Economist.

Speaker A:

Hello, Economist for lunch today?

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

I had.

Speaker B:

Oh, God.

Speaker B:

I went to the social club.

Speaker A:

Doesn't meet in your mouth.

Speaker A:

That's right.

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

And I had a big ass coffee.

Speaker B:

Oh, little pro tip coffee.

Speaker B:

A big ass coffee.

Speaker A:

He stopped.

Speaker A:

He stopped at the right.

Speaker B:

Big ass coffee.

Speaker B:

Sorry.

Speaker B:

You see, I can't have conversation with you two anymore.

Speaker B:

It's disgusting.

Speaker A:

That was intentional.

Speaker B:

It was.

Speaker B:

So I went to Starbucks today and I got my usual nitro cold brew.

Speaker B:

Okay?

Speaker B:

Venti Grande.

Speaker A:

Okay.

Speaker A:

I saw a Venti cup.

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

I put it in.

Speaker B:

I put it in a Venti cup.

Speaker B:

Because what I'm gonna say next, before you get all judgy.

Speaker A:

All right, here's that guy.

Speaker B:

They have.

Speaker A:

I want a Grande in a minty cup.

Speaker B:

Yeah, I know.

Speaker B:

It gets worse.

Speaker B:

It get.

Speaker B:

It gets worse.

Speaker B:

It wasn't.

Speaker B:

I didn't know this was a thing.

Speaker B:

She recommended it to me, okay?

Speaker B:

So calm down, Judgy.

Speaker B:

I didn't know this.

Speaker B:

They have, like flavors of protein foam to add to the top.

Speaker B:

It's got like 10 calories in it.

Speaker B:

15 calories.

Speaker A:

Oh, really?

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker A:

So the foam is protein.

Speaker B:

Protein foam.

Speaker B:

Bro, can you have a serious conversation?

Speaker B:

Don't be that guy.

Speaker B:

Legitimate, bro.

Speaker B:

You're being.

Speaker B:

I'm not being that guy.

Speaker A:

Yeah, you're being adversely selected, bro.

Speaker A:

Let's market protein to this guy.

Speaker B:

Let's make this serious.

Speaker B:

Hey, you walked in.

Speaker B:

You walked in.

Speaker A:

They're like, I bet you I can sell this guy on some protein right now.

Speaker B:

No, I can read, brother.

Speaker B:

It was a sign.

Speaker B:

She didn't say anything to me.

Speaker A:

She didn't need to say anything.

Speaker A:

Hey, hey, hey, meathead, read the side.

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

Do you have anything that's like phallic shaped?

Speaker B:

Oh, banana flavored.

Speaker B:

Perfect.

Speaker B:

So I got banana flavored protein foam and put it in my nitro cold brew.

Speaker B:

Let me tell you, it's a cheat code.

Speaker B:

It was sensational.

Speaker A:

Okay, how much, how much grams of protein are you getting from your phone?

Speaker B:

15.

Speaker A:

This is like those Quest chips that we were eating back in the day.

Speaker B:

You were eating.

Speaker B:

I couldn't eat them because it gave me gas.

Speaker A:

You, you.

Speaker B:

Hey, at least I'm honest about what it did to bro.

Speaker B:

You did.

Speaker B:

You.

Speaker B:

You know what?

Speaker B:

And everybody who listens to this show, I guarantee you less than 10% are going to be able to say, oh, it didn't bother my stomach at all.

Speaker A:

Yeah, right.

Speaker B:

Everybody weighed the Quest up has some stomach issues.

Speaker B:

But everybody denied it because it tastes.

Speaker A:

When Quest first came out, that was it like, you were like.

Speaker A:

That was everything.

Speaker B:

Yeah, it was, it was a pivot.

Speaker A:

Yeah, we're on the puffies now though.

Speaker B:

Yeah, the puffy bars are the game, bro.

Speaker B:

We're Jill over there.

Speaker B:

He's got a whole puffy gang.

Speaker A:

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Speaker B:

Gang, gang, gang, gang, gang.

Speaker A:

Bite on sale.

Speaker B:

So did you say bite on sale?

Speaker A:

Oh, yeah.

Speaker B:

Or bite.

Speaker A:

Oh, buy it, buy it.

Speaker B:

Let's see.

Speaker B:

Maybe you should actually talk into the mic for once.

Speaker A:

Oh, yeah, sorry about that.

Speaker B:

There you go.

Speaker A:

Purchase it when it's on discount.

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

All right, so we're gonna make a little bit of a pivot here and I promise I'm gonna tie all this together with a nice little beautiful bow.

Speaker B:

All right.

Speaker B:

Protein flavored bow.

Speaker B:

Let's go to People Matters via Instagram.

Speaker B:

This is Oracle planning their biggest layoff in years, bro.

Speaker A:

Yeah, so their bonds right now are getting, are getting traded like junk bonds now.

Speaker B:

Oracle.

Speaker B:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker A:

They got real problems on their hands.

Speaker B:

Yeah, they have real problems.

Speaker B:

Oracle is reportedly considering cutting up to 30, 000 jobs as US banks pull back from financing its AI driven data center projects.

Speaker B:

That's a weird thing in an AI driven economy like that.

Speaker B:

This is just weird.

Speaker B:

This whole paragraph I'm about to read.

Speaker B:

It gets weird, okay.

Speaker B:

Creating one of the largest potential layoffs in the technology sector in recent years.

Speaker B:

The move comes amid rising borrowing costs and mounting capital pressures linked to Oracle's aggressive AI infrastructure expansion.

Speaker B:

Is this the tip of the.

Speaker B:

Is this thinking the Titanic?

Speaker B:

Right?

Speaker B:

Is this the iceberg?

Speaker B:

I mean, this seems like a pretty big company having some pretty big problems.

Speaker A:

I mean, they got, they got some people with money behind them.

Speaker A:

So that could come and save the day that could come and help save.

Speaker A:

They make sure nothing goes south.

Speaker A:

But yeah, this does feel like the tip of the iceberg.

Speaker B:

Okay, well, let's get into more of it.

Speaker B:

The company's infrastructure commitments, estimated at around, oh, $156 billion.

Speaker A:

Yikes.

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

Have prompted lenders to retreat, forcing Oracle to rethink its business strategies.

Speaker B:

Analysts suggest the workforce reduction could be.

Speaker B:

Could free up 8 to 10 billion dollars in cash, underscoring the financial strain of large scale AI data center investments.

Speaker B:

That sounds like a lot of salary.

Speaker B:

I'm pretty sure ain't one dude in there getting a billion dollars.

Speaker B:

Yeah, so that's a lot of employees.

Speaker B:

And are they going to scale back growth or they see.

Speaker B:

And this is what we keep talking about with AI efficiency.

Speaker B:

This is why this stuff matters.

Speaker B:

And I'm going to bring crypto back in the fold here in a little bit, but this is why it matters, right?

Speaker B:

So if AI is getting more efficient and Oracle is getting taxed and they got to do some things, they're planning their biggest layoff, they're not planning to slow down their growth.

Speaker B:

Yeah, that wasn't part of the statements.

Speaker A:

No, no, yeah, exactly.

Speaker A:

It's not, it's not that AI itself doesn't have value anymore, right.

Speaker A:

It's companies are looking at how.

Speaker A:

How are you.

Speaker A:

Is there a clear visibility to you revenue growth with your use of AI?

Speaker B:

How many years are we going to talk about all the things you can do in the future right?

Speaker B:

Before we start talking about what you are doing?

Speaker A:

Right?

Speaker A:

Like you look at a company like Amazon, right?

Speaker A:

If they're going to continue to dump money into AI.

Speaker B:

16,000 employees last month, 16 reduced.

Speaker A:

But like they have like, what is this AWS, right?

Speaker A:

Automated web services where they're dumping money and, and businesses can basically rent the infrastructure, right?

Speaker A:

Like that's a clear business model where I can see how you can make money off of it.

Speaker A:

A company like Oracle, I don't know, I don't see the clear path visibility.

Speaker A:

A company, even a company like Meta, right?

Speaker A:

I'm like, okay.

Speaker A:

I mean it's cool.

Speaker A:

The glasses, like it's.

Speaker A:

I mean it's a nice, like I want to have.

Speaker A:

Do I need to have those glasses?

Speaker A:

No, but I mean, I mean what else can you do with your AI?

Speaker B:

Well, I can tell you update on the bot saga.

Speaker B:

So we know last week on the episode that Mobots all got together, formed their own social network.

Speaker B:

Wild, bro, wild.

Speaker B:

But in.

Speaker B:

I'm happy to report that today I read an Article that moltbot has come out and formed their own pornhub.

Speaker B:

Yeah, it's called Molt Hub.

Speaker A:

What's that?

Speaker B:

I have no idea.

Speaker B:

I don't know what they're trying.

Speaker B:

I mean, because obviously it's not pictures of people.

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

But they have like their own, like, adult only variant of a site, which is a strange concept when you think about it.

Speaker B:

I know.

Speaker B:

Because we're perverts.

Speaker B:

Everybody thinks it's a perverted joke.

Speaker B:

It's not like this is a real thing.

Speaker A:

This is a real thing.

Speaker B:

And I.

Speaker B:

And I saw it, I saw it today and I'm like, do I take the risk of googling this and trying to figure out what it is?

Speaker A:

Some of those conversations, if you do yourself a favor, if you haven't gone down this rabbit hole and like read into like the conversations that was being had between these bots.

Speaker A:

Like, some were contemplating on, I think I should start my own religion.

Speaker A:

Yeah, right.

Speaker A:

Others were their own fiat currencies.

Speaker A:

Right.

Speaker A:

Like, and others, like, you know, basically questioning what's wrong with human.

Speaker A:

The human society as a whole.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker A:

It's like.

Speaker B:

And some of them were deeply, like, appreciative of humans.

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

It was very weird.

Speaker A:

And some of them were questioning, like, are we human?

Speaker A:

Like, we do we have feelings?

Speaker A:

Like.

Speaker B:

And I was like, dog, unplug them.

Speaker B:

Unplug them all now.

Speaker A:

Right.

Speaker A:

Hit the red.

Speaker A:

Hey, Sam, that little button you got, take it out of the backpack, hit it.

Speaker B:

All of a sudden, Zuckerberg's debunker in Hawaii makes a whole lot of sense.

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

No one's gonna push the button.

Speaker B:

The computers are right.

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

So it's a problem.

Speaker B:

Let's go to the next article for Jill.

Speaker B:

I got a logical thought process.

Speaker B:

I want to go down here.

Speaker B:

I believe this is Ed Eldon.

Speaker B:

Eldon Eldon.

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

Okay, so this guy, I don't know, I just saw this at 4 o' clock in the morning because I couldn't sleep.

Speaker B:

Sides.

Speaker B:

Giving him the.

Speaker A:

The squid.

Speaker B:

Yeah, whatever.

Speaker B:

Now maybe I spelled it wrong.

Speaker A:

I don.

Speaker B:

This guy is.

Speaker B:

I'm not backing him.

Speaker B:

A lot of this gets dark, but the first couple slides are important, okay?

Speaker B:

And I'm going to point out some things and I'm going to try to be extra descriptive for those driving, working out.

Speaker B:

Oh, look at Reil with the fancy make it bigger on the screen technique.

Speaker A:

He's good at making things bigger.

Speaker B:

God, those fingers are so beautiful.

Speaker A:

And really good at making things smaller.

Speaker B:

And if you want to make something small, go to join Fridays.

Speaker B:

Dot com.

Speaker B:

Sign up with the code higher for your discount.

Speaker B:

You get $100 off your first order, and we will love you that much more.

Speaker B:

As a matter of fact, we're willing to throw in an extra picture of my toes and Regil's fingers.

Speaker B:

For everybody who signs up today, go to join Fridays.com use code higher.

Speaker A:

I'll show you my.

Speaker A:

My feed and some slides with some socks on.

Speaker B:

No, we don't want to put.

Speaker B:

We're not putting you out there.

Speaker B:

You got hair and everything.

Speaker A:

No, the socks, though.

Speaker B:

Unless.

Speaker B:

Unless somebody got a fetish for hair.

Speaker A:

Which I really want.

Speaker A:

Those new Nike Mules, but they're sold out everywhere.

Speaker A:

You can't get them.

Speaker A:

There's.

Speaker A:

They.

Speaker B:

They sell out with.

Speaker A:

They sell out within the first minute.

Speaker B:

I am currently on the I'm not buying anything train.

Speaker B:

Like, I'm.

Speaker B:

I've just.

Speaker B:

I've decided I'm not buying anything.

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker A:

Really.

Speaker B:

Until further notice, I buy nothing.

Speaker A:

The hence why.

Speaker A:

Hence why we're sharing one First Form.

Speaker B:

Energy, which is the last of said sponsorship from first form and Andy Frisella and company.

Speaker B:

Yeah, we love you guys.

Speaker B:

We would love you more if we got more.

Speaker A:

Send it to you, boys.

Speaker B:

We're not saying that we're for sale, Right?

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker B:

But we're not saying we're not for sale.

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

Okay.

Speaker A:

So those look.

Speaker A:

Those look like Crocs.

Speaker B:

What?

Speaker A:

The Mules.

Speaker B:

They do look like.

Speaker B:

So the problem.

Speaker B:

The problem with Saeed is.

Speaker A:

No, the new ones.

Speaker B:

Saeed won't endorse the Mules.

Speaker B:

He wants the ones that are supposed to make your feet, like, refresh.

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker A:

You know why?

Speaker B:

You hate.

Speaker A:

No, Go.

Speaker A:

Go.

Speaker B:

They have, like, little dots in the bottom, and they're all cute.

Speaker A:

It's that one.

Speaker A:

It's.

Speaker A:

It's the.

Speaker B:

To the right.

Speaker B:

To the right.

Speaker A:

To the right.

Speaker A:

Right.

Speaker A:

One more.

Speaker B:

In my.

Speaker B:

In my opinion, these look worse, if I'm being honest.

Speaker A:

No, they look really good on feet, bro.

Speaker B:

Those.

Speaker B:

Those look like something that.

Speaker B:

That Jaden Smith be wearing.

Speaker A:

What?

Speaker B:

Why?

Speaker A:

Is that supposed to be an insult?

Speaker B:

Yeah, why?

Speaker B:

Oh, yeah.

Speaker A:

He's a fashion icon.

Speaker B:

Fashion icon.

Speaker B:

He looked like he was huffing at the Louboutin fashion show.

Speaker B:

He's icon living look he was taking.

Speaker A:

You didn't see what I did there.

Speaker B:

Yeah, I know.

Speaker B:

Yeah, I got it.

Speaker B:

These are supposed to, I guess, energize your feet and give you some type of magical.

Speaker A:

For any listener that wants to buy these and send these to the studio for me, I'm size 11.

Speaker B:

I. I gotta be honest.

Speaker B:

The Only reason s license because he's got a Nike logo on him.

Speaker B:

That's it.

Speaker B:

He wants to be coached so bad.

Speaker B:

This is his athletic version of boat shoes.

Speaker B:

That's all this is.

Speaker B:

Okay, let's just.

Speaker B:

That's all this is.

Speaker B:

Let's call it what it is.

Speaker A:

The kid.

Speaker A:

The kids think the kids respect you when you come into the gym with some new heat.

Speaker B:

Yeah, that's some new old man heat.

Speaker B:

Some heat.

Speaker B:

They know they can't get these.

Speaker B:

Reill.

Speaker A:

You gotta know somebody to get these.

Speaker B:

When we get our first check for Fridays, what we're gonna do is we're gonna buy a pair of those glasses that literally.

Speaker B:

Magnets in the front that open up in the front and magnet in the front so you can hang them down in front of.

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

All right.

Speaker B:

More than 1.2 million jobs cut cuts were announced last year.

Speaker B:

The highest numbers since the pandemic.

Speaker B:

US Annual job cut announcements are on this chart in front of us.

Speaker B:

And there is some very important things that this bar chart does not tell you that I'm gonna tell you.

Speaker B:

Okay, let's look at:

Speaker B:

Clearly it is the highest amount of job cuts we've ever seen.

Speaker B:

That's the pandemic.

Speaker B:

That's all known.

Speaker B:

But let's remove that from the equation.

Speaker B:

Go back to:

Speaker B:

You saw an increasing trend of job cuts.

Speaker B:

This is the height of something that we now all colloquially call the Great Financial crisis.

Speaker B:

Yep, that's how big it was.

Speaker B:

It got a name.

Speaker B:

No one's calling me the Great Financial Chris.

Speaker B:

Yeah, no one's calling you the Great Financial Saeed, but we call that the Great Financial Crisis.

Speaker B:

It was meaningful.

Speaker B:

We got a nickname.

Speaker A:

Someone argued the greatest.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker B:

There you go.

Speaker B:

And it was a housing recession unlike any other housing recession we ever saw.

Speaker B:

It had impacts.

Speaker B:

It wiped out 401ks synthetic mortgage backed securities.

Speaker B:

Wiped the market out.

Speaker B:

They made movies about it.

Speaker B:

Not one, not two, several.

Speaker B:

Okay.

Speaker B:

Shout out Topher Grace playing my guy.

Speaker B:

Yeah, right.

Speaker A:

You know.

Speaker B:

Yeah, I know.

Speaker B:

That being said, Our current:

Speaker B:

And not the beginning of the Great financial crisis during it.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker B:

We are at higher levels of job cuts today than we saw during the height of the great financial crisis.

Speaker A:

And remember, unemployment peaks after a recession is declared over.

Speaker A:

Yeah, they're not even declaring that this is a recession yet.

Speaker B:

Well, and that's the scary part, is if this is even a recession yet.

Speaker B:

And we're not even there yet.

Speaker B:

That means just like in:

Speaker B:

ou look at it in the frame of:

Speaker B:

25.

Speaker B:

It went up to now great financial crisis like levels.

Speaker B:

If:

Speaker B:

Yes, Right.

Speaker B:

You can see where this could go to ultimate.

Speaker B:

Excluding:

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker B:

A worldwide pandemic, the highest job cut years in.

Speaker B:

This is.

Speaker A:

I mean, this is damning statistics.

Speaker A:

What I want, I can't wait to see is the jobs report that comes out on Friday.

Speaker B:

Well, if it's.

Speaker B:

If it comes out.

Speaker B:

That was a joke.

Speaker A:

That was.

Speaker A:

That was Ally.

Speaker A:

You were supposed to dunk it.

Speaker B:

I know.

Speaker A:

And you fumbled it in the air.

Speaker B:

No, I.

Speaker A:

It's not coming out.

Speaker B:

You the opportunity to say that it's not coming out.

Speaker A:

That's the problem.

Speaker A:

Because they know the data is going to be bad.

Speaker A:

And what.

Speaker A:

And if the data is bad on jobs, what is Drone House supposed to do?

Speaker B:

Call up Jeff Bezos and be like, dog, what you doing?

Speaker A:

What are you doing?

Speaker B:

You're hurting all of us now.

Speaker A:

You're, You're.

Speaker B:

You can't pay these guys a little bit more money for you.

Speaker A:

Can't wait till June, bro.

Speaker A:

I'm out of here.

Speaker A:

I'm here till May.

Speaker A:

Just lay him off in June.

Speaker A:

What are you doing?

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

Anyway, so, yeah, this is a problem.

Speaker B:

And why.

Speaker B:

Why this is a problem is just beginning.

Speaker B:

What bothers me is this some random dude.

Speaker B:

Ed Elson.

Speaker B:

Never heard of him before.

Speaker B:

I have no idea what his political allegiances are.

Speaker A:

Blue check mark.

Speaker B:

Got a blue check mark.

Speaker B:

We all pay for those these days.

Speaker B:

Whatever.

Speaker B:

Except for say, cheap.

Speaker B:

Too cheap.

Speaker A:

You know, I'm keeping it real, son.

Speaker B:

You got a blue check mark.

Speaker A:

Hey, the people that don't have the blue check marks nowadays are the real ones.

Speaker B:

Hey, we'll say it louder for him.

Speaker A:

Yeah, I have a blue check mark.

Speaker B:

So I can officially confirm that Regil is not a bot.

Speaker B:

I know I'm not a bot.

Speaker B:

You.

Speaker B:

We.

Speaker B:

The jury's still out.

Speaker A:

Oh, no.

Speaker B:

Yeah, you could be a bot.

Speaker A:

Yeah, I got my own AI bot running the account.

Speaker B:

For all we know, Saeed is Multbot.

Speaker A:

Yeah, yeah, right.

Speaker B:

So this is a Problem.

Speaker B:

And I think what's more important here is the Fed is coming out saying things like, we don't know that AI is affecting the job market.

Speaker B:

It could create jobs.

Speaker B:

Okay, what fucking numbers are you looking at, guy?

Speaker B:

Because the numbers I'm looking at seem like it's pretty impactful, pretty obvious.

Speaker B:

Right?

Speaker B:

Let's go to the next slide.

Speaker B:

Same, same.

Speaker B:

Same document here with Jill.

Speaker B:

If you could just push the button.

Speaker B:

Oh, yeah.

Speaker B:

Lawmakers assemble, a task force is established, a czar is hired, and finally the grand strategy is revealed.

Speaker B:

Say, what is that strategy?

Speaker A:

Just stay put.

Speaker B:

Do nothing.

Speaker B:

Do nothing.

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

That is where we wound up on this unemployment thing.

Speaker B:

Not only do nothing, but bury your head in the sand.

Speaker B:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, right.

Speaker B:

And say stuff on nationwide worldwide press conferences.

Speaker B:

Like, you know, for all we know, the people that we trust to give us the information on things like AI are telling us that as of right now, it's inconsistent, inclusive.

Speaker B:

It could very well increase productivity and jobs.

Speaker B:

And we've, you know, historically found a way, right, to.

Speaker B:

Dude, 4.2%, 4.3%, 4.4% unemployment.

Speaker B:

You've seen the same headlines we have seen, right?

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker B:

You guys in theory should have more access than we do.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker B:

How are you guys not feeling this way?

Speaker B:

But all the rest of us are regil.

Speaker B:

Next slide.

Speaker B:

Here we go.

Speaker B:

We talked about this earlier in the show.

Speaker B:

It is no coincidence that the rest of the world is both dramatically more excited and less nervous about AI than we are.

Speaker B:

The US is down in the 40% range, while people, places like South Africa, China, Mexico and Poland are far ahead.

Speaker B:

And China most notably just under 90% China.

Speaker A:

But look, I know this is.

Speaker A:

Well, this is kind of spelling out like doom and gloom, right.

Speaker A:

For some people that may feel like, oh, man, maybe I'm in this job that could get replaced by AI, Right?

Speaker A:

Yeah.

Speaker A:

But if you feel like that's not you.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker A:

This could create good opportunities for you in the future as far as investments go.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker A:

If, if companies, if this does, if this.

Speaker A:

Companies do take a hit.

Speaker A:

Right.

Speaker A:

And there.

Speaker A:

And let me say Oracle was the tip of the iceberg.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker A:

That means there are going to be buying opportunities for you in the not too distant future.

Speaker B:

100%.

Speaker B:

But I think the context of being real is important.

Speaker B:

But there's also kind of a hidden message in this particular chart.

Speaker B:

And we.

Speaker B:

Jill, we're not going to go forward, more forward on this guy's chart because it gets real grim after this.

Speaker B:

Don't go there again, I don't know this guy.

Speaker B:

But he got real negative and real political real quick.

Speaker B:

But yeah, that's the point.

Speaker A:

So I blame Melbourne.

Speaker B:

Think about what we did as a country.

Speaker B:

We decided that we were going to take the blue collar jobs, the physical labor jobs, manufacturing and offshore it.

Speaker B:

Now we're trying to bring it back vis a vis from the tariff initiatives which I don't think are going to work because in order for that to work, tariffs have to stay long term.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker B:

That's the big delta that I think people in the comments that are hating on, on some of the stuff that we said don't understand.

Speaker B:

Tariffs work if you keep them there long term because you will have to bring business back to the United States.

Speaker B:

Unfortunately our current executive branch is not doing that.

Speaker B:

And certainly at the levels that he's talking about right now, the prolonged tax on our wages near term would be so catastrophic anyway.

Speaker B:

He couldn't, couldn't hold it up.

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

So without that being permanently in place, it just works as a near term tax on Americans.

Speaker B:

But when you look at the chart, the countries that we outsourced a lot of this work to that were pulled, that is China have a way greater appreciation, optimism for AI.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker B:

While whereas all the countries that do most of the quote, white collar work like the United States have a way more negative impact about AI.

Speaker B:

Why do you think that is?

Speaker A:

Because it's impacts them differently.

Speaker B:

It does.

Speaker B:

It impacts everybody differently.

Speaker B:

We're going to do a little bit of audio work here with Jill.

Speaker B:

So the next couple of links, including the one from I think it was Rise, they have audio components.

Speaker B:

We're going to talk about.

Speaker B:

The first one's Anthropic CEO if I recall correctly.

Speaker B:

Anthropic CEO.

Speaker B:

We're going to hear from Microsoft CEO in the coming segments here.

Speaker B:

And I think Both of these CEOs have valuable insights given their subject matter expertise in the tech sector.

Speaker B:

So you're going to have to move up the orange one.

Speaker B:

There you go.

Speaker B:

In order to get the audio there.

Speaker B:

Yeah, move it up.

Speaker A:

Look at you, audio engineer Rejeel.

Speaker A:

I know I gotta add that to my resume.

Speaker A:

There you go.

Speaker B:

Oh, press play.

Speaker B:

AI could wipe out half of all entry level white collar jobs and spike unemployment to 10 to 20 nerd years.

Speaker B:

Yes.

Speaker B:

That is, that's shocking.

Speaker A:

That is, that is the future we.

Speaker B:

Could see if we don't become aware of this problem now.

Speaker B:

Half of all entry level white collar jobs.

Speaker A:

Well, if, if we look at entry level consultants, lawyers, financial professionals, you know, many of kind of the white collar service industries, a lot of what they do, you know, AI models are already quite good at, and without intervention, it's hard to imagine that there won't be.

Speaker B:

Some significant job impact there.

Speaker A:

And my worry is that it'll be broad and it'll be faster than what we've seen with previous technology.

Speaker B:

Okay, yeah, that's a problem.

Speaker A:

He looked like he was so disgusted.

Speaker B:

Yeah, he looks like he has to go number two.

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker A:

It doesn't even sound good when it comes out of your mouth, Anderson.

Speaker B:

So Dario Anthropic CEO here, I mean, he runs one of the most prominent models in the market.

Speaker A:

I mean, it also benefits him.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker B:

But if it's in the narrative, and there's, there's certainly people like Citadel, Ken Griffin who disagree with this and say that it's gonna be a much more prolongated rollout.

Speaker B:

But the disruption, I think, is universally agreed to.

Speaker B:

I think the bigger question in the problem that I have is kind of the human element here that's being ignored.

Speaker B:

Let's just say, hypothetically, they're both right.

Speaker B:

It takes a little bit longer to roll out, but it is just as transformative as he's saying.

Speaker B:

You know, unless you say it doesn't happen tomorrow, but it happens at some point in the future.

Speaker B:

Let's just say I think we can all agree that it is going to be transformative on some level.

Speaker B:

And some of these, as a doctor, a general practitioner.

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

AI will be able to help you facilitate.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker B:

They'll have all the metrics from our Apple Watch, everything else.

Speaker B:

They're going to know we're sick before we know we're sick.

Speaker A:

Yep.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker B:

Doctors and lawyers.

Speaker B:

Example of, a great example of this.

Speaker B:

Lawyers too.

Speaker B:

Used to go to school four years for this.

Speaker B:

If you, if you're an entry level researcher or you're your first year law person, why do I need you?

Speaker B:

AI in theory should be able to reason and give me the argument on both sides of the equation better than any human could ever do.

Speaker B:

100.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker B:

So I understand this art versus science and all these lovely little things, but I think AI has proven that it's capable of art.

Speaker B:

Today alone, the headlines on Higgs field AI being so unbelievably visually impactful is undeniable.

Speaker B:

So I asked the question, how do you get experience?

Speaker B:

Now, if you want to be a doctor or a lawyer, if the entry level jobs are being taken by AI and you need experience or talent to go above and beyond that, how do we train up the next generation of financial white collar workers?

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker B:

Do you think it'd be.

Speaker A:

It'd have to be more trade school.

Speaker B:

I don't know.

Speaker A:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

It begs the question of how do we get from here to there?

Speaker B:

Because historically speaking, you would have some type of internship or residency, or you would do a couple years where you're not paid a whole lot.

Speaker B:

But then, you know.

Speaker B:

But yeah, not paid a whole lot used to be economically viable for like a law firm, for example, or if.

Speaker A:

You'Re working at a newly formed company, you, you wore multiple hats and you did multiple.

Speaker A:

Now it's like, why would you do that?

Speaker A:

And people are saying, well, sounds inefficient.

Speaker B:

From a logistics perspective.

Speaker B:

How do you make this work?

Speaker B:

Well, I'll give you a great example.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker B:

I'm a client.

Speaker B:

I call in to your law firm.

Speaker B:

You record the call.

Speaker B:

Yeah, right.

Speaker B:

If you record the call, they're already.

Speaker A:

Doing this at doctor visits.

Speaker B:

That's right.

Speaker B:

Now you got a transcript of the call.

Speaker B:

That transcript is now reviewed by AI.

Speaker B:

It's going to listen to the tone of your voice and go, is this person have a tendency for truth and veracity in this conversation?

Speaker B:

Is there hesitancy?

Speaker B:

Is there something going on here emotionally?

Speaker B:

You can tap into your heart rate via your Apple Watch and your biometrics and say, okay, is this person lying to me?

Speaker B:

That's all that really is.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker A:

Okay.

Speaker B:

Then you can go even one step further.

Speaker B:

They can go out and verify some of the things you say with publicly available data.

Speaker B:

They can do a negative news search on you.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker B:

They can tap into the, the person working on your car in a personal injury case.

Speaker B:

They can do a lot of different things that AI can wrap all the stuff into and give a probability of success on the merits to the insurance company and to you.

Speaker B:

I mean, this is not all far off technology.

Speaker B:

All these technologies are available right now.

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

None of this is stuff that we can't do now.

Speaker B:

So if that's something that a bot or an AI can do 24 hours a day, that'd be interesting.

Speaker B:

Seven days a week.

Speaker A:

I could see, I could see a bot taking in like a customer's information, you know, new client or whatnot.

Speaker A:

But like relying on a bot to, I guess, measure the level of honesty given on a phone call, I'd be like, do I really want a bot to be able to judge that?

Speaker B:

Like, well, let's take this a different.

Speaker B:

Okay, what is a lie detector test?

Speaker B:

It's a person looking at your physiology.

Speaker A:

This person's a new client.

Speaker A:

Why would I get a lie detector test on a new client?

Speaker B:

Yeah, but you know, here's the thing.

Speaker B:

If you have data available to you, why wouldn't you use it?

Speaker B:

Right?

Speaker B:

And here's what I'll say to you.

Speaker B:

If, if, for example, lie detector test is somebody looking at biological responses that you're tapped into, Right.

Speaker B:

And going, okay, is this, is this in line with the person's biological responses for telling the truth or lying?

Speaker B:

That's if I'm watering it down.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker B:

But that's what a lie detector is.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker B:

And they're not, they're not 100 authentic.

Speaker B:

They don't work all the time.

Speaker B:

There's a lot of issues with lie detectors.

Speaker B:

People can fool them.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker B:

But if you have AI which can look at somebody's biometrics, biomarkers and the sound of their voice and give you a probability of truth and honesty, that's another data point for you as somebody looking at this is, is this a case I want to, what if it.

Speaker A:

Produces data that only hurts my case?

Speaker A:

That only hurts our case.

Speaker A:

And it's like, I don't want, it's.

Speaker B:

Just a data point.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker B:

It's like your FICO score could be terrible because you had a case of fraud.

Speaker B:

But that doesn't mean you're a bad credit risk.

Speaker A:

Right?

Speaker A:

Right.

Speaker A:

No, but if you have, if you have, let's say you have a case of somebody that has an amazing credit history.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker A:

And you find out that they've defaulted on their mortgage once.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker A:

That's one extra data point.

Speaker A:

was, it happens to be back in:

Speaker A:

But that one extra data point though now provides you a little bit of hesitant.

Speaker B:

But it's you the person making the decision.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker B:

Is you the person.

Speaker B:

You want all the piece of information to make a decision.

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

Regardless whether it helps or hurts.

Speaker A:

True.

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

You want to know as much if it's true.

Speaker A:

If it's true.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

But again, truth is also a bit of a spectrum these days, unfortunately.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker B:

Whether you like it or not, how you biologically respond to something is a truth.

Speaker B:

Now whether that means something or not is different.

Speaker A:

You're also gonna have to rely on it.

Speaker A:

That everything that is providing you is.

Speaker B:

In fact, it's just a data point.

Speaker A:

No, because what if it, what if the data point is wrong?

Speaker A:

Because it's clearly spitting out.

Speaker B:

No, you're missed it.

Speaker B:

You're mistaken.

Speaker B:

You're saying that it's coming out Saying honest or not.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker B:

Even if it says this person's heart rate is highly elevated, which is usually indicative of lying, that just gives you some reason to ask more questions around something.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker B:

That doesn't mean you rule somebody out.

Speaker B:

It's just a data point.

Speaker B:

Right?

Speaker A:

No.

Speaker B:

Why wouldn't you collect more data on every single person?

Speaker A:

Always collect if you get as much data as you can.

Speaker A:

Yes, but I'm saying the data that it collects.

Speaker A:

What if the data that it's collecting is incorrect?

Speaker B:

You said about anything we do now.

Speaker A:

Yeah.

Speaker A:

It's already spitting out incorrect data.

Speaker A:

You ask it some basic math problems or ask it to spit out a budget for you.

Speaker A:

It's, it's actually.

Speaker B:

Yeah, but this is also a problem for humans now.

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

Somebody comes in, you misread them, somebody's shooken up because of an accident.

Speaker B:

But at the same time you feel like they're lying because they're being dodgy with you.

Speaker B:

Maybe that's just their way of responding to things.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker B:

Humans this all the time, we just get pissed off when AI does it because it's supposed to not do it.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker B:

But if a human does it, you're like, oh, Timmy fucked up again.

Speaker B:

You know, I mean it's, again, it's the expectation of perfection.

Speaker A:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

I think we're holding AI to an unreasonable standard on some level because you're like, you're a machine, you're supposed to work all the time.

Speaker B:

You can't have a reasoning machine.

Speaker B:

That's right.

Speaker B:

All the time.

Speaker B:

That's the whole point.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker A:

Interesting.

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

You want it to be efficient, you want it to be good.

Speaker B:

But if it was going to be mechanically accurate every single time, 100 of the time, then it wouldn't have real reasoning, would it?

Speaker B:

Right, right.

Speaker B:

Or it's going to have, I mean, it's just a whole different conversation.

Speaker B:

There's another one next.

Speaker B:

Rajille, I think that's important is the Microsoft one, I think.

Speaker B:

Let's see, let's see here.

Speaker B:

It's Harris Sy 75 of jobs are about to be about to disappear.

Speaker B:

That sounds ominous.

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

Microsoft.

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

This guy's head is brilliantly shiny.

Speaker A:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker A:

But I'll give you LinkedIn.

Speaker A:

We used to have product managers, we had designers, we had front end engineers and then we had back end engineers.

Speaker A:

And so what we did is we sort of took those first four roles and combined and said that they're all full stack builders.

Speaker B:

So this is a real short clip.

Speaker B:

It's a great example.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker B:

Like you've got not Wrong.

Speaker B:

This is really prior to the AI rollout, but you originally had people who did different parts of building something and now you combine those all into one job and you say, we have a Full Stack Designer.

Speaker B:

You build everything A to Z, right?

Speaker B:

And now you go, hey, Full Stack designer guy, what's up?

Speaker B:

Now we only need.

Speaker B:

Please close this.

Speaker B:

Oh my God.

Speaker B:

I want to know what that is.

Speaker B:

That's not going to make the final show.

Speaker A:

Your algorithm, man.

Speaker B:

My algorithm?

Speaker B:

I don't think so, Katrina.

Speaker B:

It's regill@highstandard.com in any event, I think the next level up is we're going to say, okay, we don't need a Full Stack developer, we just need a guy to manage the AI who's building these Full Stack developers.

Speaker B:

So now all the Full Stack developers are going to lose their job.

Speaker B:

And this is an example of why you're not seeing jobs go, okay, we're going to lay off all of our developers.

Speaker B:

It's going to be a subtle wind down to a manager managing all this product end result, and then that manager getting, you know, one more and more tasks and roles assigned to them.

Speaker B:

And then guess what?

Speaker B:

Then at some point you place in the AI to manage the group.

Speaker B:

Right, Right.

Speaker B:

I mean, that's where you go.

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker A:

It's interesting, right, because you got this whole, this whole like, push now for return back to office.

Speaker A:

Why?

Speaker A:

For the collaboration.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker A:

But now there's going to be less people collaborating.

Speaker A:

It's just going to be like one guy managing all these buses.

Speaker A:

Like this is all going to be my decision.

Speaker A:

I'm going to decide what I, what I do with this.

Speaker B:

There's also the rhetoric here too, where people are saying the only reason they want people to come back is they know that if they force them to come back, they'll get jobs somewhere else.

Speaker B:

So instead of laying people off, we're effectively forcing them to resign because we're adding back in the incremental cost as well.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker B:

It's not just the inconvenience of going to work, it's the inconvenience of childcare, travel time in the car.

Speaker B:

I mean, it's all these things kind of like aggregate together for most people to go.

Speaker B:

It's just not economically viable for me to go back to work.

Speaker A:

Right, exactly.

Speaker B:

So it's a problem.

Speaker A:

It's a big problem.

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

Looking over there.

Speaker B:

You okay?

Speaker B:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker B:

No.

Speaker A:

I thought Rajeel was supposed to pull up the next clip.

Speaker B:

I thought the algorithm was shaking you up a little bit.

Speaker B:

The next one is A Scott Besant comment.

Speaker B:

This one.

Speaker B:

Actually, you know what, we don't have to play this one because I, I looked at it a little bit later.

Speaker B:

Basically it's Scott Besant and somebody else in, in, I think it's the House or the Senate talking about AI and it's clear that neither one of them know anything about what they're talking about.

Speaker B:

They're like, is it possible AI can do this?

Speaker B:

And he's like, ah, you know, I think it's a few.

Speaker B:

And it's like AI is already doing the stuff they're talking about.

Speaker B:

Right, right.

Speaker B:

And it was so wild to me that people who are in positions of authority, who are making the legislature right.

Speaker B:

Are so materially agenda connected.

Speaker B:

It is basically about credit decisioning with AI.

Speaker B:

And I'm like, bro, I have been, I have been on calls with people using technology.

Speaker B:

Now that is Wells Fargo, where you call them.

Speaker B:

They are doing all the credit decisioning upfront with AI already.

Speaker B:

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker B:

They used to offshore a lot of stuff like reviewing financials to India and somebody would go over there and do it.

Speaker B:

All of this is AI now, right?

Speaker B:

All of it is.

Speaker B:

And if you're like, oh my God, what if AI makes a credit decision?

Speaker B:

Like, how do you.

Speaker B:

Human component.

Speaker B:

I'm like, bro, like, what world are you living in, guy?

Speaker B:

Yeah, like this is now.

Speaker A:

So we're already here.

Speaker B:

What are you talking about?

Speaker B:

Is your abacus in the back?

Speaker A:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker B:

It's strange.

Speaker B:

So.

Speaker B:

But for the purposes of the show, I think there's more important stuff to get to now.

Speaker B:

We're going to tie all this together.

Speaker B:

Okay.

Speaker B:

Washington Post, baby.

Speaker B:

Why?

Speaker A:

Nobody really knows the scale of the U.S. housing crisis.

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker A:

Experts say the U.S. needs an additional 2 million to 20 million homes to fix the shortfall, underscoring the challenge of meeting the nation's housing needs.

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker A:

How are you going to do that when the home builders are slowly rolling it out and they're not going to want to put themselves in a bad position with their capital?

Speaker A:

How are you going to do that?

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

You're not.

Speaker B:

And as a matter of fact, I think you should read.

Speaker B:

Everybody should read this article.

Speaker B:

Okay.

Speaker B:

But the, the, I started to say earlier and I think now is a better time for it.

Speaker B:

The housing pundits out there really don't like Wash because their solution to the affordability crisis has always been lower rates.

Speaker A:

The next Fed chair nomination.

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

And WASH is not a guy who seemingly favors lower rates.

Speaker A:

Right.

Speaker B:

So they were, they were all upside down going like, I would never In a million years.

Speaker B:

Take that guy.

Speaker A:

It's so interesting, right?

Speaker A:

It's like a, it's like he, he's, he's labeled himself all these years as we got to let the crisis happen and then we'll come save the day.

Speaker A:

But the guy nominating him is like, nah, man, you're going to cut rates.

Speaker A:

Like that's what you're going to do.

Speaker B:

It's weird.

Speaker A:

It's weird.

Speaker A:

It's going to be interesting to see how does he, does he stay true to his word or does he flip it?

Speaker B:

You know, I don't know, but scroll down a little bit here.

Speaker B:

Right there, Perfect.

Speaker B:

Let's see here.

Speaker B:

But over at Goldman Sachs, analysts put the number at 3 million.

Speaker B:

Zillow's estimate tops 4 million, while Bookings projects 5 million, and McKinsey says 8 million.

Speaker B:

Meanwhile, congressional Republicans insist the shortfall is closer to 20 million homes.

Speaker A:

Jeez.

Speaker B:

As a guy who looks at housing affordability and the influx of real estate in the market, I can tell you that I don't think any of these are right.

Speaker B:

Really.

Speaker B:

I don't think there is a housing shortage.

Speaker B:

And I think there's a material disconnect in what a housing shortage means.

Speaker A:

There you go.

Speaker B:

So let's scroll down a little bit here.

Speaker B:

There's a portion of this where they talk about people who disagree.

Speaker B:

Vacancy rates in missing households.

Speaker B:

No, scroll down.

Speaker B:

Charts interesting, but scroll down.

Speaker B:

No, no, keep going, keep going.

Speaker B:

It's got a headline to it.

Speaker B:

Envisioning a little more.

Speaker B:

A little more per cap of spending.

Speaker B:

No, come back.

Speaker B:

Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop.

Speaker B:

Maybe there's no shortage at all.

Speaker B:

My favorite title.

Speaker B:

Now, I do think everybody should, everybody should go to this article and they should read it.

Speaker B:

population than housing since:

Speaker B:

That's an interesting tidbit of information.

Speaker A:

I think a relevant piece of information if you're discussing shortfall in housing.

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

Before the:

Speaker B:

And they don't want to put themselves in the same position where they have all their capital tied up in properties they cannot sell.

Speaker A:

Right.

Speaker B:

So they just built less.

Speaker B:

Moving on.

Speaker B:

Yes, we have a shortage of units in the low income price points, but not overall, McClure said.

Speaker B:

He contends it would be far less costly for the government to help poor households rent or buy existing units than to build new ones.

Speaker B:

And as a reminder, it is cheaper now to buy a new unit than it is to buy an existing unit for the first time in American history.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker A:

Especially with all the incentives that they're offering.

Speaker B:

That's right, best.

Speaker B:

The best housing program right now would be an increase in the minimum wage.

Speaker A:

I mean, come on, man.

Speaker A:

I mean, how much to, to, to help people buy a home?

Speaker A:

Yeah, Okay.

Speaker A:

I, I think, I think that's not going to cut it, man.

Speaker A:

Who are we kidding?

Speaker B:

Okay, well, Lynn, anticipating this conversation, I prepared some off the dome numbers for you.

Speaker A:

Off the, You've prepared the off the dome numbers?

Speaker A:

That's right.

Speaker B:

Okay, I'm going to rub the microphone pole while I say this to you.

Speaker B:

You ready?

Speaker B:

I need you to look at me while I'm doing this.

Speaker A:

I'll pull it up.

Speaker A:

Stats too.

Speaker B:

Number one.

Speaker B:

Okay.

Speaker B:

Current interest rates are on the 30 year mortgage for Jill.

Speaker B:

If you could do me a favor, go to any website you want, look up current 30 year mortgage.

Speaker B:

I think it's somewhere between 6 and 7% high sixes.

Speaker B:

Fair mid sixes is somewhere in there.

Speaker B:

That is still low relative the historical average about high sevens.

Speaker B:

8%.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker A:

Sound like true Boomer?

Speaker B:

Yeah, that's hurtful, but yes, I, I think that that's a fair statement.

Speaker B:

We know that the biggest impact to affordability is going to be the down, dropping down of interest rates.

Speaker B:

You want to read that for me?

Speaker A:

,:

Speaker B:

Okay.

Speaker B:

A little lower than I thought, but still.

Speaker B:

Okay, great, great example.

Speaker B:

So super low relative to historical, I would say numbers of 7, 8% on average.

Speaker B:

Okay, so you're still below that in order to get housing affordability by moving one of the three metrics to affordable again by our affordability standards anyway, you'd have to be somewhere in the neighborhood about 2.5% ish on a mortgage rate.

Speaker A:

Yeah, right.

Speaker B:

I don't think that's realistic and I don't think you're going to get the Treasury's respond that way.

Speaker B:

Even if you were to cut the fed funds rate to near zero for a prolonged period of time, again happen.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker B:

So interest rates alone, as much as they would move the needle if you moved it down by 1%, are not going to solve this problem.

Speaker B:

And we are going to talk about the Proportion of homeowners who have rates in these regions in just a few minutes.

Speaker B:

But if you were to drop home prices about 30, 35%, you would wind up, again being affordable, even if interest rates held where they are today.

Speaker A:

And how.

Speaker A:

But how are you going to do that?

Speaker A:

You'd have to cause.

Speaker B:

How are you going to do.

Speaker B:

You'd have.

Speaker A:

You'd have to cause something to collapse.

Speaker B:

And it would have to be a market crash because it'd be a Correction north of 20%.

Speaker B:

Now, you could have one of these two factors change at the same time.

Speaker B:

You have our interest rates come down.

Speaker B:

You could have housing prices.

Speaker A:

Well, if something crashes like that, interest rates will come down.

Speaker B:

But again, those two things tend to work opposite one another.

Speaker B:

Interest rates come down, pushing home prices back up.

Speaker B:

Unless there's some reason why people just don't want to buy because of fear.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker A:

Well, if something crashes, you would have to assume that people lost jobs, too.

Speaker A:

So I don't know if there'd be, like, upward pressure on prices again.

Speaker B:

So approximately how much of a wage increase do you think the median wage earner would need if you didn't move the needle on either one of those and they stayed static in this environment?

Speaker A:

That's a very good question that I would love to know the answer to.

Speaker B:

58% salary.

Speaker A:

I was going to say like 60.

Speaker A:

65.

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

That tells me disproportionately people are underpaid.

Speaker B:

People are underpaid.

Speaker B:

And given all that we talked about in AI, do you see a world where they're going to get paid more in the near future?

Speaker A:

No.

Speaker B:

Okay.

Speaker A:

Why would you.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker B:

And because a lot of people tried to supplement their income with investing in things that were more speculative.

Speaker B:

Hence why we started the show with bitcoin and cryptocurrency.

Speaker B:

We now know that their speculative investments have lost over 40% of their value in just a couple of months.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker B:

So now you've got a 60% on average underpaid American employee.

Speaker B:

Average employee who lost whatever speculative money they had.

Speaker A:

Yeah.

Speaker A:

I mean, think about the.

Speaker A:

These are people, and some of those people are, look, I can't get into a home right now, so let me just invest it instead.

Speaker B:

That's right.

Speaker B:

They find themselves in a desperation position now.

Speaker B:

They can all get side hustles, which we've always advocated for on the show.

Speaker B:

But you're coming from a place of urgency and weakness, which is never a good start.

Speaker B:

I don't see housing getting better.

Speaker B:

And, Jill, there's a chart I think, coming up here.

Speaker B:

Next we'll.

Speaker B:

We'll forego the rest of this.

Speaker B:

I think it's the mortgage rates from CNBC1 there.

Speaker B:

And this is going to give us that spread.

Speaker B:

And you're going to have to do your magic fingers.

Speaker B:

Make the chart bigger again.

Speaker B:

Yeah, so, yeah, there you go.

Speaker B:

Make it big.

Speaker B:

Oh, yeah.

Speaker B:

So pretty.

Speaker B:

All right.

Speaker B:

Surprising share of homeowners have high mortgage rates.

Speaker B:

Here's a breakdown.

Speaker B:

We're going to forego the high mortgage rates conversation.

Speaker B:

Go to the next next little.

Speaker B:

There you go.

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

All right.

Speaker B:

This chart made the rounds on social medias today.

Speaker B:

The webs share of active US Mortgages by rate.

Speaker B:

Now, I want everybody to keep in mind, we're going to read the numbers here, but only 60% of the homes in the country have mortgages on them.

Speaker B:

So this is only 60 of the properties in the country.

Speaker A:

Right.

Speaker A:

Because 40% of them are owned free and clear.

Speaker B:

Free and clear.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker B:

Ball so hard.

Speaker B:

Maybe one day, 21.9% of mortgages currently outstanding have a balance less than having, I'm sorry, a interest rate below 3%.

Speaker A:

Is that you, Chris?

Speaker B:

That is me.

Speaker B:

2.71%.

Speaker A:

Yeah, me too.

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker A:

2.99.

Speaker A:

Barely made it, Brian.

Speaker B:

Yeah, 3 to 4%.

Speaker B:

That's 29.6% of the demographic and 4 to 5%, 16.1% of the demographic.

Speaker B:

Now again, this is over 60% already.

Speaker B:

Yeah, that is still at 5%, at least 8.1% below where mortgage rates are today.

Speaker B:

So even if you want to stir up the environment, right.

Speaker B:

And you want to get some activity going, you got to get it.

Speaker A:

You have to get it there.

Speaker B:

You have to get below 5% or at least close.

Speaker B:

No, I think you got to get below because everything else as you go up 5 to 6%, 11%, 6, 7%, 14%, 7, 8%, 5.2% of the population.

Speaker B:

So yeah, there's not a lot left up there at the top.

Speaker B:

So yeah, while there is a good chunk of Americans at 6 to 7%, 14.7% have 6 to 7% mortgage rates.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker B:

You wouldn't refinance right now.

Speaker B:

It's only a thin sliver at 7 to 8%.

Speaker B:

Only 5.2% of the 60 of homes that have mortgages are in that category.

Speaker A:

You know, that refinance market is completely dried up for a lot of these lenders.

Speaker B:

It has.

Speaker B:

But you know what market has not?

Speaker B:

HELOCs.

Speaker B:

HELOCs lines of credit.

Speaker B:

Second trustee lines of credit where you could keep the interest rate in your first year.

Speaker B:

Those HELOC Markets and they're fast, man.

Speaker B:

These guys that are doing loans right now, all they do are lines of credits.

Speaker A:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

They get them approved in days, not weeks.

Speaker A:

That's based off the Wall Street Journal prime, right?

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

So it's, it's got index plus margin.

Speaker B:

But as these things correct and they can get pretty ugly.

Speaker B:

So of course the natural logical thing to think of is as.

Speaker B:

Well, it feels like the world's stacked against us.

Speaker B:

Chris, what are you getting at?

Speaker A:

Yeah, what should I do?

Speaker A:

Chris, what should I do?

Speaker A:

Should I invest?

Speaker A:

Should I look to buy?

Speaker A:

What should I do?

Speaker B:

Next article, please.

Speaker B:

Rachel.

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

This is also a 4:00am read for me.

Speaker B:

And you know me, 4:00 clock in the morning, I see.

Speaker B:

Ooh, more Americans have side hustles than ever before.

Speaker B:

Let's read that.

Speaker A:

Side hustles.

Speaker A:

Yeah, it's frowned upon by some people.

Speaker B:

You going slow over there today, bro?

Speaker B:

The.

Speaker A:

The link wasn't working.

Speaker B:

Don't blame it on the link.

Speaker B:

Don't blame it on the link.

Speaker B:

Forbes high inside hustle, baby.

Speaker A:

Let's go.

Speaker A:

How to get in on the action.

Speaker A:

I want to get in on some action.

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

Now we're not going to read this to give you, get you in on the action and tell you the tips.

Speaker B:

You can read this article on your own.

Speaker A:

We talk about on the show all the time.

Speaker A:

It's not just about your nine to five.

Speaker A:

It's about your five to nine.

Speaker B:

Yeah, but there are some data points in here.

Speaker B:

Scroll down a little bit.

Speaker B:

Rejeel, I'm gonna let your boy Saeed read this so we can get his real world reaction.

Speaker B:

And right there, that paragraph right underneath the hats that said.

Speaker A:

Wow.

Speaker B:

Hold on, before we go here.

Speaker B:

This is your fault.

Speaker B:

Your fucking cowboy hat.

Speaker B:

This is in my feed now.

Speaker B:

This comes up all the time.

Speaker B:

Your damn LA Dodgers cowboy hat.

Speaker B:

This is constantly in my feed.

Speaker B:

This is, this is, this is your fault.

Speaker B:

This is my bad.

Speaker B:

So, honey, the thing that came up on Instagram before is because of Saeed, search history of my stuff.

Speaker A:

Oh, you put that.

Speaker A:

Shut up.

Speaker B:

You put that on Michi.

Speaker A:

While 41 of side giggers make $5,000 or less in these businesses and another 32% make $20,000 or less.

Speaker A:

Emergent research found that 7 to 8% earn a hundred thousand dollars or more.

Speaker A:

They tend to be concentrated in particular niches.

Speaker A:

Professional services and the creator economy are two of the most lucrative.

Speaker B:

King says, all right, so I'm gonna forego the odds.

Speaker A:

Is that like a nickname?

Speaker B:

King.

Speaker B:

King says Jill, what's up, King?

Speaker B:

No, that's his actual last name.

Speaker B:

Do you favor.

Speaker B:

Read the first sentence and pause after you get to each percentage.

Speaker A:

Okay.

Speaker A:

While 41.

Speaker B:

41.

Speaker B:

Okay.

Speaker B:

41.

Speaker A:

Everybody of side giggers make $5,000.

Speaker B:

$5,000.

Speaker B:

41.

Speaker B:

$5,000.

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

Go ahead.

Speaker A:

Or lessen these businesses.

Speaker A:

Another 32% make $20,000 or less.

Speaker B:

41 plus 32.

Speaker A:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

73% make somewhere below $20,000 or less.

Speaker A:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

Okay.

Speaker B:

And 73.

Speaker B:

Stop right there.

Speaker B:

Yeah, stop right there.

Speaker B:

If you're the American employer.

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

And you're giving your employee for side hustles for $20,000 or less a year, there's an easy solution.

Speaker A:

Pretty easy.

Speaker A:

Okay, look, can I ask you a question?

Speaker A:

Chris, you said.

Speaker B:

Now, hold on, hold on.

Speaker B:

Before we go there, you said to me, raising wages, a small amount wouldn't.

Speaker B:

Wouldn't be meaningful.

Speaker A:

No, hold on.

Speaker A:

No, no, not all wages.

Speaker A:

Raising the minimum wage.

Speaker A:

Minimum wage is different.

Speaker A:

Right?

Speaker B:

Yes, but look how hard people are working for an extra $20,000 or less a year.

Speaker A:

I agree.

Speaker B:

I, I answer the question.

Speaker A:

Are corporate profits at all time highs?

Speaker B:

16, baby.

Speaker B:

All time high.

Speaker A:

They are at all time highs.

Speaker B:

Oh, so y.

Speaker A:

Tell me I'm making money.

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker A:

Oh, but you can't afford to give me.

Speaker A:

Oh, okay, okay, I got it.

Speaker A:

No, I got it.

Speaker A:

I thought we were homies.

Speaker B:

I got a fiduciary duty.

Speaker B:

My homie, the shareholder, right?

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker A:

What's up with your.

Speaker A:

I'm not the homie.

Speaker B:

See, this.

Speaker B:

This is the perpetual problem with the stock market and our capitalist society as it is structured.

Speaker B:

If we as investors in the stock market expect the companies that we invest into to have increasing profits quarter after quarter, year after year.

Speaker A:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

At some point in time, you're headed for heartbreak, Right?

Speaker A:

Part of the problem, man.

Speaker B:

And I don't want to spoil this for unmarried people, but if you expect the sex with your wife to get better and better month after month, year after year, I'm going to tell you, there's going to be some peaks and they're going to be some valleys.

Speaker B:

Okay?

Speaker B:

Okay.

Speaker B:

And that's not to knock anybody's wife or anybody's sex life.

Speaker B:

It's not always great.

Speaker A:

Okay.

Speaker B:

Okay.

Speaker B:

If you expect the weather to always be sunny in Southern California, you're in for a surprise.

Speaker B:

When you get that rainy day, that windy day.

Speaker B:

Nothing in life moves up at that cadence other than home prices.

Speaker A:

Flowers need water to grow.

Speaker A:

They need rain.

Speaker A:

Joy wouldn't feel so good if it wasn't for pain.

Speaker A:

Shout out.

Speaker A:

50.

Speaker B:

I thought you was going for EPMD on that one, but.

Speaker B:

Okay.

Speaker A:

I've said that line on the show before, though.

Speaker B:

Yeah, you can do that, though.

Speaker B:

Why?

Speaker A:

Why?

Speaker A:

He's our favorite troll.

Speaker B:

Can we pause?

Speaker A:

He's our.

Speaker B:

He's my favorite troll.

Speaker B:

No, our.

Speaker A:

He's the higher standards.

Speaker A:

Favorite troll.

Speaker B:

Hey, man, but can.

Speaker B:

Can we be honest about some things, though?

Speaker B:

He been right a long time.

Speaker A:

He's been right about a lot of things.

Speaker B:

Yeah, we got to get the.

Speaker B:

The.

Speaker B:

The.

Speaker B:

Not the inverse Kramer, but the positive 50.

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

Poly market needs to get him on.

Speaker B:

Yeah, he's just killing it.

Speaker A:

50S predictions and.

Speaker B:

Can we.

Speaker B:

Can we just pause here?

Speaker B:

The Poly Market thing.

Speaker B:

We use them on the live show a lot.

Speaker B:

I watch the ticker all day long.

Speaker B:

I'm.

Speaker B:

I'm very plugged into Poly Market.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker B:

This is going to be a problem.

Speaker B:

What is polymarket and Kalshi.

Speaker B:

It's a problem.

Speaker A:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

We've.

Speaker B:

Now, here's what we did, okay?

Speaker B:

We're like, how do we make gambling legal in every single state in the country?

Speaker A:

It's not just that.

Speaker B:

And you can gamble on anything on Coinbase.

Speaker A:

They're on their wallet.

Speaker A:

They have their own now that you can do it on.

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker A:

Yeah, bro.

Speaker B:

CNBC has.

Speaker B:

Kalshee is like one of their program partners.

Speaker A:

People are addicted to it, bro.

Speaker B:

It's.

Speaker B:

It's great.

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

It's sensational.

Speaker A:

It's like, wait a minute.

Speaker A:

Why are we just stopping at sports gambling?

Speaker A:

Why don't we just make it everything?

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

Y' all want to bet on Jerome Powell losing his job?

Speaker A:

We got you.

Speaker A:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

You want to bet on what the president says in his next meeting?

Speaker B:

Sure.

Speaker B:

You want to bet on whether the speech is going to be the same or how many words are going to be changed in the next FOMC speech.

Speaker B:

We got you.

Speaker A:

And if a large sum of money comes in the day before and makes a large bet going the other way and that person hits, that's okay, too.

Speaker A:

And then you have nothing you can do about it.

Speaker B:

And I love the interview.

Speaker B:

The interview, I think it was a Kalshee CEO.

Speaker B:

He goes, you know, they're like, what do you think about insider trading?

Speaker B:

He goes, I love it.

Speaker B:

And he goes, what?

Speaker B:

The interviewer is like, standing, goes, look, it's a real prediction of the market.

Speaker A:

I love it.

Speaker B:

And if somebody makes a big bet, you can assume that they probably know something or think very strong.

Speaker B:

I'm like, this is.

Speaker B:

This is.

Speaker B:

This is the wild, wild west, right?

Speaker A:

So they're able to track.

Speaker A:

You're able to see a Big bet come through on these.

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker A:

I've never gone in and made a bet on any of these, so I don't know.

Speaker A:

So everyone who bets will be notified.

Speaker A:

Or is it you?

Speaker B:

No, you can.

Speaker B:

You can go search.

Speaker B:

You can't.

Speaker B:

You're notified.

Speaker B:

But you can.

Speaker B:

You can dig down and do the research.

Speaker A:

Yeah, you have to stay plugged in.

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker A:

Oh, man.

Speaker B:

No, it's.

Speaker B:

It's a dirty game, bro.

Speaker A:

So.

Speaker A:

Yeah, I know.

Speaker A:

My.

Speaker A:

My wife always asked me, you know, so much about basketball.

Speaker A:

Like, why haven't you never thought about that?

Speaker A:

Because I'm like, that's a dirty game.

Speaker A:

I'm not.

Speaker A:

Do you see all these guys again?

Speaker A:

Busted.

Speaker A:

You go.

Speaker A:

Go do yourself a favor and just YouTube, like, you know some of the plays for some of these guys getting busted.

Speaker A:

It's so obvious.

Speaker B:

I know your wife.

Speaker B:

You lose one game, you can be out of this country like Jay on the Gulf Stream.

Speaker B:

Yeah, right.

Speaker B:

Call the 750 up.

Speaker B:

We out of here, boys.

Speaker A:

That's it.

Speaker A:

I lost.

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

Game over.

Speaker B:

So.

Speaker B:

So we place the bets now on the Jay Z Beyonce divorce.

Speaker B:

Are we gonna wait a little while?

Speaker B:

That.

Speaker B:

That's 100.

Speaker A:

The photos.

Speaker A:

The photos are bad, bro.

Speaker B:

What photos?

Speaker A:

I mean, he was with her when she was 16.

Speaker A:

We can't talk about.

Speaker B:

Oh, the.

Speaker B:

Aaliyah.

Speaker B:

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker B:

Aaliyah, 15.

Speaker B:

Beyonce, 16, I think.

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker A:

That's bad, man.

Speaker A:

It's all bad.

Speaker A:

It's all bad, bad.

Speaker B:

Well, here's the problem, though, is.

Speaker B:

But again, I've always, like, been like, yo, like, R. Kelly, Jay Z, aaliyah.

Speaker B:

She was 15, bro.

Speaker B:

Yeah, man.

Speaker B:

Like, then that whole period of time, like, all this.

Speaker B:

I mean, even back then, I was like, why is nobody, like, upset about this?

Speaker B:

I mean, I have three sisters, you know?

Speaker B:

I'm like, look at this.

Speaker B:

Going, like, right?

Speaker B:

And this is in the.

Speaker B:

In the spotlight in front of people for so long.

Speaker A:

Disturbing, man.

Speaker B:

And I'm like, never mind the fact he's not attractive.

Speaker B:

It's just, you know.

Speaker A:

Yeah.

Speaker A:

No, I mean, yeah.

Speaker A:

But, yeah, it makes you brilliant lyricist.

Speaker A:

I can't.

Speaker A:

My entire feed is just all this, all of it.

Speaker B:

Okay.

Speaker A:

I can't get away from it.

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

And it's.

Speaker A:

And it's so much.

Speaker A:

So much is coming at once where you're like, I can't even stop to fact check each one.

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

I don't.

Speaker B:

I don't even do that anymore.

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

The sad part is I'm seeing, like, pictures of emails.

Speaker B:

I'm like, yeah, it looks real.

Speaker A:

And that sounds like that would have happened.

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

And then you're like, okay, let.

Speaker B:

Let's just.

Speaker B:

Let's just have the conversation.

Speaker B:

Okay?

Speaker B:

Let's just.

Speaker B:

We're all consenting grown adults.

Speaker B:

Rejeel, cover your years.

Speaker B:

Baby years.

Speaker B:

Right?

Speaker B:

We know that there's.

Speaker B:

There's corruption.

Speaker B:

I'm not blind to it, but this is.

Speaker A:

This is a different level, bro.

Speaker B:

But this is only the level they put out.

Speaker B:

Can you imagine what didn't make the cut?

Speaker B:

Somebody was like, no, there's some stuff.

Speaker A:

That I want to talk to you about after the show that I saw where I was like, I can't even begin to fathom.

Speaker B:

You want to do it on the show?

Speaker B:

No.

Speaker A:

No, we can't.

Speaker A:

We can't even touch it on the show.

Speaker B:

It's bad.

Speaker B:

Really?

Speaker A:

It's all bad.

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker A:

I wish we could maybe.

Speaker A:

Maybe behind a paywall one day, but.

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

And then someone will leak that video.

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker A:

I'm sure it's something that you haven't seen already, but I don't know.

Speaker A:

I don't know what to make of this.

Speaker A:

This world, man.

Speaker A:

It makes, like.

Speaker A:

I just.

Speaker A:

I see that, and then, like, it.

Speaker A:

You know, it makes me.

Speaker A:

You know what it makes me want to do?

Speaker A:

Okay.

Speaker A:

It's like, it makes me feel very helpless.

Speaker A:

First of all, first and foremost, right?

Speaker A:

It's like I. I think we had a conversation about this the other day.

Speaker A:

It's like you feel like you're playing a game and you're down 30 at halftime, and you're like, you still got to come out and play the game, bro.

Speaker A:

There's nothing you can do.

Speaker A:

There's nothing you do.

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker A:

You can't walk out of the game.

Speaker A:

Come out and play.

Speaker A:

Suit up, tie your shoes, get on the floor and go play.

Speaker A:

You gotta play.

Speaker B:

Let me give some context here, and I'm gonna.

Speaker B:

I'm gonna say it.

Speaker B:

So Saeed is not endorsing any of this.

Speaker B:

That's just me.

Speaker B:

I don't like the.

Speaker B:

In the Matrix out of the Matrix bro culture, but it is a sensationally great example for the world that we live in.

Speaker A:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

We are in the Matrix.

Speaker B:

And not because we're in somebody's plugged in warped reality.

Speaker B:

As much as the game has been rigged against all of us.

Speaker B:

If you're not independently wealthy, whether that's legacy wealth or wealth acquired during your lifetime or you've made it out, you are a nation of workers who works for the wealthy people.

Speaker B:

They don't want you to have social media where you're a risk for their company.

Speaker B:

So they want your profiles to be private.

Speaker B:

What about freedom of speech, bro?

Speaker B:

What about those things?

Speaker B:

Oh, it's a bad look for the company.

Speaker B:

You can get a job anywhere.

Speaker B:

Well, it doesn't feel very free to me, okay?

Speaker B:

And then you start going down the rabbit hole and you say, okay, wait a minute.

Speaker B:

I'm paid just enough to survive, but I'm not paid enough to get rich, Right?

Speaker B:

And then you think, what if I speak out on things?

Speaker B:

You go, well, HR is not there to protect me.

Speaker B:

There to protect the company who protects me.

Speaker B:

Go file a whistleblower complaint.

Speaker B:

Let me know how that works out for you.

Speaker B:

You.

Speaker B:

HR protects the company.

Speaker B:

They don't protect you.

Speaker B:

Government protects government.

Speaker B:

They don't protect you.

Speaker B:

You think your popular vote matters for the president?

Speaker B:

It doesn't.

Speaker B:

Hasn't mattered in a very, very, very long time.

Speaker B:

The electoral college does that.

Speaker B:

You're either part of the elites or you're not.

Speaker B:

And if you're not part of the elites and you happen to make money and you're out of the ecosystem where they don't control you financially through corporate America, you know what happens?

Speaker B:

They fucking kill you.

Speaker B:

Okay?

Speaker B:

That's the harsh reality.

Speaker B:

Nobody wants to hear that, because everybody wants to deny that, because nobody wants to live in the world where that's true.

Speaker B:

But you learn, okay?

Speaker B:

You made it out.

Speaker B:

You keep your mouth shut.

Speaker B:

Because there are other penalties worse than financial penalties that they can do.

Speaker B:

And guess what?

Speaker B:

You think the legal system's a fair system?

Speaker B:

It's not.

Speaker B:

It's supposed to be.

Speaker B:

But a lot of times, and I'm a licensed attorney, a lot of times, the guy with the most money wins because the other people can't afford to play the game.

Speaker B:

That's not justice.

Speaker B:

That's not justice at all.

Speaker A:

That's just being big stack at a poker game.

Speaker B:

And if you think that the same rules apply to very wealthy, connected people, I'm telling you, they don't.

Speaker B:

That's just reality.

Speaker B:

These guys selling you on, bro.

Speaker B:

Culture and all that stuff and making money and breaking free, that's.

Speaker B:

That's a context to appeal to sensationalism.

Speaker B:

But this game has gone back to the formation of this country.

Speaker B:

We built the United States on the ideology that we were leaving oppression from kings and queens just so people could come over here and be unlabeled kings and queens of industry.

Speaker B:

The Rothschilds, the Vanderbilts, they wanted a nation of workers.

Speaker B:

The White House gave it to them.

Speaker B:

It's no secret that we were put in these positions and we were controlled by the same money.

Speaker B:

The same money that pays everybody else.

Speaker A:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

These things that happen in the financial system, the fear of working a 9 to 5.

Speaker B:

I see stats like this, and it frustrates me to no end because I know that's only the people that are willing to report anonymously.

Speaker B:

And even them, a lot of people won't do it.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker B:

We know 60% of the Internet's fake.

Speaker B:

The dead Internet theory is real.

Speaker B:

And yet we all want to hold on to the ideology that we're talking to real people because God help us if we're not.

Speaker B:

And someone else is trying to control the narrative.

Speaker B:

I'll tell you right now, everyone else is trying to control the narrative, bro.

Speaker A:

And it.

Speaker A:

Yeah, it's so interwoven.

Speaker A:

We won't.

Speaker A:

We won't call out any names.

Speaker A:

But you, you and I, you and I have seen it firsthand and it's like they're all plugged in.

Speaker A:

They're all connected to each other.

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker A:

And a trusted source, right, that they're gonna find they're gonna be so interwoven and so connected to all the trusted sources out there that one of your.

Speaker A:

One of these trusted sources will tap into you.

Speaker A:

And that's it.

Speaker A:

That's all it takes.

Speaker B:

And why doesn't somebody who's free and independent assistant, makes a ton of money, I. E. Like an Andy Frisella, speak out?

Speaker B:

Well, Andy does speak out.

Speaker B:

He's rare.

Speaker B:

But he also knows there's limits.

Speaker B:

He's plugged into a circuit of people, right.

Speaker B:

And he's got to watch and watch what he says and how he moves.

Speaker B:

You'll see.

Speaker B:

Look at his posts.

Speaker A:

Rightfully so, though.

Speaker A:

No, that's.

Speaker A:

That's the.

Speaker A:

Right, that's the smart thing.

Speaker B:

Because at some point in time, you're risking more than just your wealth.

Speaker B:

You're risking your family and people around you.

Speaker A:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

And then people understand, like, oh, if they're out of the system and they don't have any constraints, why aren't they speaking up?

Speaker B:

Because all this can be taken away and just.

Speaker A:

And, and, and it's not a knock, right?

Speaker A:

You have to think.

Speaker A:

And I'm not, I'm not.

Speaker A:

I don't want to speak out of turn, but for somebody, if I was in a position like that, right.

Speaker A:

How many people are relying on me, too?

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker A:

How many people do I employ?

Speaker A:

How many people are relying on me to keep this thing moving?

Speaker B:

And let me just ask a question that's point blank.

Speaker B:

And it's a bit of a hard.

Speaker B:

A hard tilt.

Speaker B:

Here, but I think it's a valid one.

Speaker B:

And it.

Speaker B:

Sean Diddy Combs went to jail.

Speaker B:

He's a bad person.

Speaker B:

Okay?

Speaker B:

There's a lot of Jay Z photos with that man at a lot of parties.

Speaker B:

Okay?

Speaker B:

I don't be the guy.

Speaker B:

Why is he escaped 50.

Speaker B:

Been calling this dude out for a long time.

Speaker B:

Right?

Speaker B:

This guy admittedly was a drug dealer before he started in the rap game.

Speaker A:

Wait, hold on, hold on.

Speaker A:

But we know.

Speaker A:

We know of all the documents that have recently come out.

Speaker A:

Things have been redacted, Right?

Speaker B:

Okay.

Speaker A:

The names have been redacted for us.

Speaker A:

There hasn't been another single arrest since.

Speaker B:

No.

Speaker A:

What are we.

Speaker A:

What are we doing?

Speaker A:

What are we doing?

Speaker A:

What's going on?

Speaker A:

I don't understand.

Speaker A:

I need an explanation.

Speaker B:

You're not gonna get one.

Speaker A:

It's wild.

Speaker A:

So back to what I was saying is in initially makes me feel very helpless, and it just makes me want to unplug completely and just say, I just want to focus on my family.

Speaker A:

Because it feels like.

Speaker A:

It feels like I'm down 30, and I want to look at the coach and be like, yo, man, sub me out.

Speaker A:

I want to sit down, let somebody else get in here.

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

You know, people DM me all the time saying, oh, you know, I. I was asked today to speak at a kids thing by a friend of our family, and she's like, you know, it'd be really cool for you to go there and talk to him and tell them about, like, all this.

Speaker B:

And I'm like, why would I.

Speaker B:

Why would I do that?

Speaker B:

I mean, I would love to help you, but I'm a failure.

Speaker A:

No, you're not.

Speaker A:

Come on.

Speaker B:

By all outward measures, I have not freed myself from this ecosystem yet.

Speaker B:

I do.

Speaker B:

Well, don't get me wrong.

Speaker B:

Oh, right.

Speaker A:

But, I mean, if that's your measure, if that's your barometer, what other barometer do you have?

Speaker B:

I mean, the sad part is I had tens of millions of dollars taken away from me more than once.

Speaker A:

I mean, to make.

Speaker A:

To continue to maintain the lifestyle that you currently live, Right?

Speaker B:

Yeah, that's fine.

Speaker B:

Who wants to maintain?

Speaker B:

That's not humanity.

Speaker A:

Right?

Speaker B:

We all want to grow.

Speaker B:

We just get stuck in accepting other things, and then we demonize.

Speaker B:

Oh, you're being greedy.

Speaker B:

Oh, you're.

Speaker B:

You're fat.

Speaker B:

You're totally focusing the money.

Speaker B:

Oh, that's greed.

Speaker B:

Oh, that's a sin.

Speaker B:

And it's like, dude, all that, okay, it's not.

Speaker B:

It's not about me being sinful.

Speaker B:

The whole point of humanity is to Improve.

Speaker B:

Let me go straight.

Speaker A:

And to help each other, we're all.

Speaker B:

Going to work out every day.

Speaker B:

We're all going to look younger than we did, you know, 20, 30 years ago at the same age.

Speaker B:

We're all going to try our best to be the best human we can be.

Speaker B:

But it's wrong for me to want more money in that process.

Speaker A:

No, it's definitely not wrong.

Speaker A:

But it's also not.

Speaker A:

It's not the whole and only point of humanity.

Speaker B:

The point of humanity is to grow and build things, man.

Speaker B:

And no, we can't grow and build ourself.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

I want to leave legacy as defined under the law really meant children.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker B:

The legacy we leave our children should be meaningful.

Speaker B:

They should start off better because we were able to succeed.

Speaker A:

Right.

Speaker B:

Not live and spend everything we got before we die.

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

Like something went wrong.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker B:

Rich, wealthy people leave a legacy of assets to their kids who have a different quality of life because they, they did that.

Speaker A:

That.

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker B:

In generations of their family are okay, I. E. Generational wealth.

Speaker B:

But 90 of America ain't that.

Speaker B:

Why is that?

Speaker B:

Yeah, because we need those people to be complicit workers.

Speaker B:

And frankly, by that measure, because I'm a failure.

Speaker A:

Because the system works more effectively if they don't.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker A:

That's it.

Speaker B:

And that's where you look at these things and like, people are like, oh my God, they talk to the kids and I'm like, I'll talk to the kids and I'll tell them all the cool things that, that, that it sounds cool that I've done.

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

But the fact of the matter is, you know, you, you look at.

Speaker B:

If the barometer for success is money, okay, fine.

Speaker B:

I do.

Speaker B:

Okay.

Speaker A:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

If the barometer for success is title, I don't care.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker B:

If the barometer for success is freedom and lack of fear, I am failing because I'm still tapped in.

Speaker A:

The lack of fear, I think.

Speaker A:

Yeah, there's always gonna.

Speaker A:

Yeah, it's gonna be tough.

Speaker A:

I feel like as humans, though, naturally in our, in our DNA, we're built to always have some form of fear over something.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker B:

Maybe.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker A:

You're always, you're being.

Speaker A:

Go back to hunter gatherer days and you're being told that, you know, there's, there's something over there.

Speaker A:

Don't go over there.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker A:

And there's just natural born fear built into us.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker A:

But for me, I think the barometer is, is happiness.

Speaker A:

And I was just having this conversation with my kids the other night.

Speaker A:

I had, I was reminding them I had a really nice conversation with an old friend and.

Speaker A:

And I had this epiphany.

Speaker A:

I'm like, I need to.

Speaker A:

I need to share this with my kids now.

Speaker A:

I feel like it's a good age.

Speaker A:

I'm like, happiness isn't a destination.

Speaker A:

But for me, that's the barometer of success is happiness.

Speaker A:

Right.

Speaker A:

And it's not a destination.

Speaker A:

I was telling him.

Speaker A:

I was like, it's not a destination you can get to.

Speaker A:

Right.

Speaker A:

But it's brief moments that come.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker A:

And I come.

Speaker A:

You come in and out of it constantly.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker A:

And for me, I tend to have those brief moments when I'm with them, when I'm experiencing things with them, with my family, with my close friends, doing things like this.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker A:

The podcast, just sharing good memories and building something with friends and family.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker A:

And that's something that I, for me, that's my barometer.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker A:

How many times can I tap into that.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker A:

And find that this little bit of happiness that doesn't require a whole lot of money.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker B:

Okay, but.

Speaker B:

And I, I agree with all.

Speaker B:

I'm not knocking any of that.

Speaker B:

But let me flip this argument on its head in a bad way.

Speaker B:

How wrong on a baser human level is it that you have to search for those happiness in moments when if you didn't have to worry about the money in the living.

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

And the providing, like you knew you.

Speaker B:

You had those things on lock 100 of the time.

Speaker A:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

Oh, it make it no paradigm shift.

Speaker B:

That would be.

Speaker A:

Yeah, but that's only because I know what I know now.

Speaker A:

If I was just born with it.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker A:

And it was handed to me and given to me, like from a legacy, you know, standpoint, it was just passed on.

Speaker A:

I feel like that happiness is going to be a lot harder to find because I don't know, I don't think you even know what happiness, what even brings you happiness at that point.

Speaker B:

Okay, maybe.

Speaker B:

And I've seen a lot of wealthy kids that have, like, messed up stories and everybody's got different measures of trauma.

Speaker A:

Because we need struggle.

Speaker A:

We need struggle as humans, we need struggle.

Speaker B:

I get that.

Speaker B:

But at the same time, how many Americans struggle a lot?

Speaker A:

Too many.

Speaker B:

How many humans across the world struggle and never get out of the struggle?

Speaker A:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

They spend their life starting in struggle.

Speaker B:

They end their life starting in struggle.

Speaker B:

And there might be peaks and valleys and moments of happiness they find in between because they got to have that hit of dopamine to keep them going in between.

Speaker A:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

But look at someone like a Joe Rogan you think he's worried about money every day?

Speaker A:

No, no, no, no.

Speaker A:

He is a rare exception, though.

Speaker B:

He is a rare.

Speaker B:

But why?

Speaker B:

Why have we done that to ourselves?

Speaker B:

If I ran a small shop in a small town, and that was capitalism when this country started and somebody was wealthy 10 towns over, more than I was, but I knew that my shop was going to perform if I went there every single day and I worked, I.

Speaker B:

And I could provide.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker B:

Like, that level of comfort is enough, where people don't have to fear and they can just be happy.

Speaker B:

I like what I do.

Speaker B:

I love my family.

Speaker B:

I'm good.

Speaker A:

Yeah.

Speaker A:

But mofos out there are greedy.

Speaker A:

There's some greedy mofos out there.

Speaker A:

We had this conversation, or I was explaining to Ruja before the show about last season of Beast Games where they had a million dollars out there and, you know, 10 people had a chance to go out one by one, take, you know, their share.

Speaker A:

But if you want to take more, you could.

Speaker A:

Could a second person took more than they could.

Speaker A:

Third person took it all.

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker A:

Left Nothing for numbers 4 through 10, you know, and you're like, I mean, that's just greed.

Speaker A:

That.

Speaker A:

That's people.

Speaker A:

And some of that could be just because they know it's like, better me than somebody else.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker A:

So I don't know.

Speaker A:

I don't know, man.

Speaker A:

I don't know what to make of it all.

Speaker A:

But I do know that we need struggle.

Speaker A:

And the message that I was trying to give to my kids is, you know, find happiness.

Speaker A:

You have to work hard and you can earn it.

Speaker A:

But they got.

Speaker A:

We got to find a way to get them to pass something on to them so that it makes their job a little bit easier.

Speaker B:

Maybe the best thing you can pass on all of them is what we're trying to do in the show.

Speaker A:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

Maybe it's the fact that they shouldn't be complicit.

Speaker B:

It.

Speaker B:

Maybe they should challenge the narrative and that there is a world coming up in the coming years that will change normal for all of us, and maybe that will provide opportunities, maybe it won't.

Speaker B:

But if I could pass one thing on to my son as a piece of wealth, always second guess what you hear and you see and you read.

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

Because a lot of things that we take for facts, whether that's me going through law school, realizing that I was a banker for over two decades, and I don't think I was ever really that good at it.

Speaker B:

I'm good with numbers.

Speaker B:

I don't think I ever really fit the mold.

Speaker B:

And I think I got demonized because I was different, because I didn't fit the mold the way they wanted me to.

Speaker B:

And I'm still good at it.

Speaker B:

I still do what I do.

Speaker B:

But I think the reality is that so much of what we do and so much of what we expect from other people comes from a narrative that lasted way before we got there.

Speaker B:

And we hold people to that same standard instead of a higher one.

Speaker A:

Instead of banger closeout at the 128 mark.

Speaker B:

Look at you.

Speaker B:

Good, bro.

Speaker A:

That was.

Speaker B:

Do this.

Speaker B:

You do this.

Speaker B:

I've been here for a minute, dude.

Speaker A:

He does this.

Speaker B:

Done this show a couple times.

Speaker A:

Go to thspod.com.

Speaker A:

get your merch, get your merch.

Speaker A:

Get your merch.

Speaker B:

Oh, and we are in the middle of a weipo claim, World Intellectual Property Organization, which should be by the time you hear this on Friday, we should hear the results of it.

Speaker B:

But we have a dispute about the usage of a URL.

Speaker B:

The higher standard dot com.

Speaker A:

Yeah, hopefully we get that and we can get a proper website built out for everybody.

Speaker A:

Listen, if you like the show, we know we always tell you, hit the like button.

Speaker A:

Leave us a comment, leave us a review.

Speaker A:

We'll read it on the show.

Speaker A:

But really, the best thing you could do for us is go ahead and refer the over to a friend.

Speaker A:

Refer this to a friend, to a family member.

Speaker A:

Let's get this show growing.

Speaker A:

Support.

Speaker A:

Independent media.

Speaker A:

Let's get it.

Speaker B:

We are independent media.

Speaker A:

Let's get it.

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

All right.

Speaker B:

You want to take us out those beautiful baby fingers of yours?

Speaker A:

All right, goodbye, guys.

Speaker A:

Come on, man.

Speaker B:

Three, two, one.

Speaker B:

Good night, everybody.

Speaker B:

We should have coordinated that better.

Show artwork for The Higher Standard

About the Podcast

The Higher Standard
This isn’t a different standard, it’s the higher standard.
Welcome to the Higher Standard Podcast, where we give you ultra-premium, unfiltered truth when it comes to building your wealth and curating the lifestyle of your dreams. Your hosts; Chris Naghibi and Saied Omar here to help you distill the immense amount of information and disinformation out there on the interwebs and give you the opportunity to choose a higher standard for yourself. Sit back, relax your mind and get ready for a different kind of podcast where we elevate your baseline with crispy high-resolution audio. This isn't a different standard. It's the higher standard.

About your host

Profile picture for Christopher Naghibi

Christopher Naghibi

Christopher M. Naghibi is the host and founder of The Higher Standard podcast — a rapidly growing media platform delivering unfiltered financial literacy, real-world entrepreneurship lessons and economic commentary for the modern era.

After nearly two decades in banking, including his most recent role as Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of First Foundation Bank (NYSE: FFWM), Christopher stepped away from corporate life to build a brand rooted in truth, transparency, and modern money insights. While at First Foundation, he had executive oversight of credit, product development, depository services, retail banking, loan servicing, and commercial operations. His leadership helped scale the bank’s presence in multiple national markets from $0 to over $13 billion.

Christopher is a licensed attorney, real estate broker, and general building contractor (Class B), and he brings a rare blend of legal, operational and real estate expertise to everything he does. His early career spanned diverse lending platforms, including multifamily, commercial, private banking, and middle market lending — holding key roles at Impac Commercial Capital Corporation, U.S. Financial Services & Residential Realty, and First Fidelity Funding.

In addition to his media work, Christopher is the CEO of Black Crown Inc. and Black Crown Law APC, which oversee his private holdings and legal affairs.

He holds a Juris Doctorate from Trinity Law School, an MBA from American Heritage University, and two bachelor degrees. He is also a graduate of the Yale School of Management’s Global Executive Leadership Program.

A published author and sought-after speaker (unless it’s his son’s birthday), Christopher continues to advocate for financial empowerment. He’s worked pro bono with families in need, helped craft affordable housing programs through Habitat for Humanity, and was a founding board member of She Built This City — helping spark interest in construction and trades for women of all ages.