FaceTime or Ask Patrick any questions on https://minnect.com/
Patrick Bet-David Podcast Episode 41. Download the podcasts on all your favorite platforms https://bit.ly/3sFAW4N
Text: PODCAST to 310.340.1132 to get added to the distribution list
The Bet-David Podcast discusses current events, trending topics, and politics as they relate to life and business. Stay tuned for new episodes and guest appearances.
Connect with Patrick on social media:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/patrickbetdavid/
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/patrickbetdavid
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PatrickBetDavid.Valuetainment
To reach the Valuetainment team you can email: info@valuetainment.com
About the host:
Patrick is a successful startup entrepreneur, CEO of PHP Agency, Inc., emerging author, and Creator of Valuetainment on Youtube. As a natural critical thinker, Patrick takes complex leadership, management, and entrepreneurial ideas and converts them into simple life lessons for today's and tomorrow’s entrepreneurs.
Patrick is passionate about shaping the next generation of leaders by teaching thought-provoking perspectives on entrepreneurship and disrupting the traditional approach to a career.
Follow the guests in this episode:
Adam Sosnick: https://bit.ly/2PqllTj
Kai Lode: https://bit.ly/31LKsGB
Tom Zenner: https://bit.ly/3jJ93CN
To reach the Valuetainment team you can email: info@valuetainment.com
Want Patrick on your podcast? - http://bit.ly/329MMGB
I don't know if you like one of those, but I like those.
It'd be nice being queued up once in a while.
We're live.
And we're live.
Wow, we are live on the Bet David podcast.
I am not Patrick Bet David, although I'm going to attempt to be him today.
Pat is traveling.
He's out of town.
He said, what, Tom?
The show must go on.
Next man up, and look at us now.
We got Tom in his standard seat.
We got Kai.
He got pulled out of the bullpen.
He's in my seat.
I'm in Pat's seat.
Kai, how does it feel to you?
You're talent now, bro.
How does it feel?
I've always been talented.
Always been talented.
Damn, look at that.
Look at his eyes.
22 with that.
Okay, this is podcast number 41.
Podcast number 40.
I've been in this chair almost every single one.
I've never knitted this.
So you've probably an eye in this one, give it a roll today.
But this guy over here, I think he's been waiting for this opportunity.
I know you were in last week.
I know you were.
I know.
I know.
He stepped up last week.
Yeah, but dad's not in town now.
You can say whatever you want.
Dad's not in town.
It's party time.
No, but respect to Pat.
He said, listen, we got a good thing going on here.
I'm traveling.
When I travel, you know, we can't just stop the podcast.
So shout out to all the valutainers watching.
Pat will be back.
Don't worry for the community out there that maybe is not digging this vibe.
We know who you are.
It's all good.
The show will go back to normal, but we respect you.
We want to keep the party going and we want to keep you informed.
And Tom, thoughts?
Well, just in general, before we dive in?
You know, I think the bottom line and the great thing about this podcast is there's always great topics.
And there's so many good things going on now that the audience loves that there's no reason not to do this.
We could clearly do it every day if we wanted to.
So eventually, hopefully, we'll be doing that.
Easy, easy.
Every day.
Relax, relax.
You wouldn't want to do that?
Okay.
Podcast every day down the road.
I think that would be a blast.
But great stuff today, too.
And, you know, our friends in Texas, you know, still freezing.
And I think we can get away from that.
We're thinking of our friends in Texas, right?
But man, you just don't expect that.
You know, Texas has been branded and portrayed as this over-the-top progressive state that everybody wants to get through with no flaws, no issues, no problems.
And this isn't a minor speed bump or something.
This is something that they have to face down the road and really figure out how they're going to fix this thing.
You got some strong feelings on Texas.
Well, you know what?
I have family there.
I have friends there.
And I would only imagine what it would be like to be in that situation.
You have a personal chef in Texas.
Yeah, my uncle.
My wife's uncle was my personal chef.
He would make me a breakfast sandwich every single morning.
Phenomenal.
Kai?
Shout out Bill Cox.
Kai, do you miss Texas?
Before we get into the topics, you know, because I think the people know we are now in Boca Raton, Florida.
We got Eric Galera back there, Paula Scarsiga, Sam doing the ones and twos.
And just before we get started, we get back to you, Kai.
Let's just give a shout out to Mario over here.
He is representing PBD.
He's got his eyes focusing on us.
He's on time today.
Clap it up for Mario, everybody.
He is holding it down.
Thank you.
Respect to Mario.
If you appreciate Mario standing in for PBD, give me a thumbs up over there.
Adam is standing in for PBD.
The audience wants to know what's on your mind.
Things are on my mind.
Kai, tee it up for you before we get into topics.
You miss Texas.
I totally miss Texas.
You do, Miss.
I love, no.
I love the non-one degree Fahrenheit weather.
And I don't know if you guys have seen the picture where you have over all of America right now.
It's like, it's like one degree, three degrees, five degrees, 10 degrees.
And then you see the one part in Florida where it's like 7 degree Fahrenheit, 80 degrees.
I'm sweating.
I came in sweating this morning.
And you weren't even biking to work.
I wasn't even biking.
I didn't even walk to work.
My Uber did not have his AC vibe.
I go, buddy, what's going on here?
So anyway, that's what's going on with Pat.
We're thinking of you, Pat.
He's traveling.
I think he's in Kentucky right now.
Yep.
He's in Kentucky.
Shout out to Matt Sapala, Money Spart guy.
He's doing an event there.
So I hope that goes well.
They're with Tim Thibault, legendary Florida.
Yeah.
Did you hear that?
He's in baseball.
What's he doing?
He announced it today.
He's done with baseball.
He's going to stop pursuing the dream.
Maybe he broke it last night at the event.
I was going to say, do you think Pat or Sepala or anyone there at PHP had some influence in Tebow saying, screw it?
I'm going all business now, baby.
Well, maybe they had some influence in him announcing it or being public, you know, out in a forum there where he could actually say anything.
So he was the lead speaker at the event yesterday, and today he broke the news that he's done with the sports group.
Well, the news broke.
I don't know if he actually had a press conference.
Maybe it came out of last night, but yeah, Tebow's done.
He was chasing that dream in baseball just like he did in football.
You got to give him credit.
Well, he married a supermodel, a South African supermodel.
So I think he's going to be all right, bro.
Does that just call, you know, cure every ill, just every single one?
If you can marry a supermodel, it's not a bad thing.
It never worked for Tom Brady.
Why would it work for him?
He's a stud, though.
Yeah, Tom Brady worked.
It worked out okay for him.
But you heard about what's going on with Tom Brady right now.
Obviously, last week he got schwasted.
He was throwing the Lombardi trophy across the boat, whatever.
Now, apparently, there's a petition.
We know about the Gavin Newsom petition, but now there's a petition for him to return, what, like almost a million dollars of PPP loans.
Have you heard about this?
The Brady organization.
Have you heard of this?
Well, yeah, I heard that he got the loan, you know, with his business, with his company.
He has a legit business.
I mean, it's not like some TB12 fake thing.
So it's legit, I mean, with supplements and all the merch that they sell and everything, but really people are trying to get him to.
Guys, guys, you know, Tom Brady's struggling right now.
You know, he's down on his luck.
Times are tough.
And he's going after that PPP loan, and they want to return it.
But you know what?
Tom Brady should have to return the PPP loan.
I don't think so.
Because it's a separate thing.
It's not Tom Brady's money.
It was for the business, a legit business that they used probably for realistic reasons.
And I don't think, I mean, why should just because he's super successful and really rich, should he be immune from his business, which is a completely separate entity?
I'm sure it's not like he's just funding it every single day.
I'm sure he wants that thing to live on its own.
I think it should be separate.
And if it, you know, if it qualified for a loan, right, legally, they should be able to get it like any other business.
160,000 signatures already.
In how many days?
I don't know how long it's been up.
Let's see.
All right.
There's Kai doing the research.
Mario, where were you on that one, bro?
No comment.
Mario's like, who's Tom Brady?
Everybody that signed it is a Buffalo Bill fan, a Miami Dog.
Well played, right?
And then Bill Belichick is responsible for 40,000 of the signatures.
Drew Brees might have been leading that chart.
Former patrons.
All right, let's get into the topics today.
And here we go.
Let's get down to business.
Bet David podcast, episode 41.
Here's what's on the agenda today: the roll call.
Look out, Netflix.
Those big mouse ears in your rearview mirror are closer than they appear.
That's Disney Plus coming after Netflix.
Insiders at COVID-19 vaccine makers sold nearly a half a billion dollars of stock last year.
As the stock was going up, boom, sell.
We'll get into that.
Shout out to our New York friends out there, Manhattan and Brooklyn new lease signing surge in January.
So it looks like people are getting back to New York.
That's exciting stuff.
We'll get into that.
Verizon climbs 4% after legendary investor Warren Buffett reveals $9 billion investment into Verizon.
4%.
Here's a big story.
Facebook meets Apple in Clash of the Titans, quote unquote, from Zuck.
We need to inflict pain.
Pretty intense.
Mafia style.
I went rushing with that actually.
You went was a Putin thing, you know.
Anyway, Apple could soar.
Prediction here.
Apple could soar 66% in bull case scenario as it searches for a golden partnership to build electric vehicles.
Kai, I know that, you know, coming from Norway, you got some major thoughts on EVs.
In the news today, this might be our top story.
Robin Hood CEO, Vlad Tenev, is reportedly staying at a hotel instead of going home after receiving death threats.
He's on Capitol Hill today testifying for everything that happened in the GameStop Reddit Wall Street bets saga.
So we'll get into that.
Speaking of that, big short investor Michael Burry says the Tesla boom is remarkably similar to the dot-com and housing bubbles.
If there's anybody that would know about that, it's him.
Getting back to the Europe stuff, Ford's Europe car lineup to be all electric by 2030.
Same with Jaguar's Land Rover car range to be fully electric by 2030.
So they're thinking electric could happen in the next 10 years.
Fully electric within the next 10 years.
Kai, you'll be like 31 at that point, prime of your career.
You're just getting started, driving an electric vehicle.
Stud.
Stud.
And he's always been talented, apparently.
He'll be ubering in an electrical car.
Always.
Uber everywhere.
All right.
Here's a big story.
Biden did a town hall a couple days ago.
And the lead story from that is he said a lady got up and asked him the question: I got $50,000 in student loan debt.
Would you, you're going to cancel that?
He goes, I will not make that happen.
His number seems to be $10,000, $10,000.
So we'll cover that.
Texas, that we talked about, shout out to our friends in Texas.
If you're listening, Tigran Bekian, our friend Tigran Bekian, he is the marketing manager at PHP, our good friend.
We did a FaceTime with him yesterday.
You know Tigran.
Of course.
Covered it.
He said he's been out of power.
Really?
He's got nothing.
He's FaceTimed us yesterday.
We all saw him.
And snow everywhere.
It was crazy.
What's going on in Texas?
The Texas grid got crushed because its operators didn't see the need to prepare for cold weather.
Almost 3 million Texans are now without power as the state battles an unprecedented winter storm.
Getting back to Biden, he says he would compromise on the timing of the $15 minimum wage.
We covered that last episode.
He might touch on that.
Go green, save green.
Congress looking to save buyers $7,000 on a purchase of a new Tesla Chevy Cadillac or other electric vehicles through the Green Act.
How much money would they have to give you to go green?
We'll get into that.
Trump, our good friend Trump, you might remember him.
He was the president for the last four years.
Well, he ripped Mitch McConnell as it seems like the band-aid is off, the gloves are off.
He ripped former House Senate, I'm sorry, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.
He went scorched earth on him.
Yeah.
Well, McConnell went in on him prior to that, but he said, you know, we'll get into that.
He said he'll got some quotes for you.
Rush Limbaugh, respect.
I was not a Rush Limbaugh fan, quite frankly, but I do respect the man.
You can respect, but don't have to like.
You did not know who Rush Limbaugh was.
Really?
I don't watch TV.
You don't need to.
He's on the radio.
I think he called.
I don't listen to the radio.
He thought it was like Lambeau Field, but rebate packages.
He's like, Lambo Field guy.
Like, that's a totally different guy.
But to be on the radio for 30-plus years, my friend SBJ S-Bag Joe is literally like crying.
That was his hero.
So respect to the Rush Limbaugh fans out there.
Bill Gates will touch on this.
Rich nation should move to 100% synthetic beef.
And last but not least, your boy, Fauci.
Dr. Anthony Fauci says the U.S. may not have enough COVID vaccines for everybody until June, which is later than planned.
They thought it was going to spring.
He's always got good news, doesn't he?
I mean, when he opens his mouth, it's something depressing.
You're not a fan of Fauci.
Not really.
Nothing personally.
What grade would you give him?
I would give him a D plus, D plus?
That?
Maybe what grade are you giving Fauci?
Like a C.
I mean, what has he done?
He hasn't done anything.
Let's get to the audience here.
Valutainers out there, fans of the Bet David podcast, before we get into the topic, give a grade right now.
We're going to be watching the comment section.
Kai, would you do it?
Give a grade for Fauci.
Is it an A?
Is he killing it?
Is he crushing it?
A plus?
Is he more like a C student, barely getting by?
You know, D's deck get degrees, baby.
You know, we know that.
That's how I graduated college.
Or is he an F?
Adam, he's got failing.
He's got one job.
Okay.
He's not in the science room or in the laboratory with a lab coat on under a microscope.
He's not curing COVID-19.
He's not the vaccine.
He has one job, and he has failed miserably at it.
He needs to update people with legitimate, consistent information that's in tune with his boss, i.e. the president.
He couldn't do it with Trump.
He can't do it with Biden.
Okay.
Biden kept him on.
He said Biden liked him on.
Of course.
I mean, he's the old people.
He's a mascot.
It's like you go to an NBA game.
You got the guy jumping off the trampoline and doing the triple flip dunk like the gorilla.
That's Fauci for COVID.
He's got my sons.
Phoenix.
I mean, he should be wearing one of those coronaviruses.
What do we got?
What are the kind of grades we got?
One of the comments.
There's a lot of F's.
Yeah, he's terrible.
And you know what?
Here's the other thing he should do.
Hold on, let me hear these comments.
Let me know what we got here.
Let's see.
There's B's.
F.
He flip-flops.
He flip-flops.
Here's the other thing.
A lot of F's for Fauci.
When he speaks, when he speaks, he needs to exert a calmness.
Everybody's freaked out about coronavirus since March.
You listen to him, you get more freaked out.
His one job, I think, should be to bring hope, to calm people, to encourage people and say, we've got this.
We're working on it.
The smartest minds are involved.
This is going to be tackled.
I mean, he's up there bumbling and stumbling and fumbling.
He doesn't know what he's doing.
He's bumbling, bumbling.
Chris Verman up there.
They threw him into way big, way too much of a profile that he wasn't used to.
I mean, not anybody can do that.
He turned into a COVID rock star.
Well, nobody knew who he was before this.
And that's a lot of fun.
That's a good thing, though.
If you don't know who the head of the CDC or whatever, that's probably a good thing.
That means you don't have a freaking pandemic surging right now.
I just think people are looking for the solution and easy answers from him, and he's not capable of providing that.
So I think it's a D plus.
Kai, give us an update on the grades.
I mean, you saw the comments.
What kind of grades we got going on?
No, it's mostly F's, C's, some B's.
F's, D's.
Okay, give me the bottom line.
We got a $5 donation from Odra saying he needs to be replaced.
So, I mean, I think there's a repeal and replace Fauci.
I think that's what we're going to say.
That's what it sounds like.
Repeal and replace Fauci.
What's the bottom line on the grade, Kai, based on everything you saw?
C to D out.
C minus.
Fauci.
Fauci.
Okay, let's talk about, let's get into the topics.
I think with the Fauci topics, a good segue is what's happening with these vaccine makers.
Let's talk about this story right here.
Insiders at COVID vaccine makers sold nearly $500 million of stock last year.
Executives and directors at Pfizer, Moderna, and other companies, AstraZeneca being one of them, developing the COVID-19 vaccine sold approximately a half a billion dollars in stock last year, reaping rewards of positive vaccine developments that drove up the value of the drug maker's share.
In dollar terms, much of the sales came at a single company, which was Moderna, maker of one of the two COVID vaccines authorized for use in the United States.
Executives and directors there sold more than 320 million of their stocks.
That's the majority of it.
In more than 700 transactions, Merck company, Insider sold 58 million of their shares.
Novavax executives sold more than 40 million of their shares after the company vaccine hit milestones in August and September.
And here's the bottom line.
Corporate compensation experts say these kinds of sales are the natural consequence of a long-term shift to using stock for a greater share of executive pay with the goal being to tie pay to performance.
In this case, the development of life-saving vaccines.
This is a pretty big story.
Mr. Zenner, your thoughts?
You know, it's very clear for me.
I would be way more worried if they didn't do this because that would just show that they're not confident in the vaccine.
I mean, that's when you should be really scared of the executives that are behind this, that putting it out there, that is going to get us back to normal in this country.
Let's not underestimate what this vaccine is going to do.
It's going to bring normalcy back to the country.
It's going to open up the economy even more.
It's going to get the kids back into school.
It's going to get Christians and Muslims and every faith back into church.
It's going to get us back into baseball stadiums and football stadiums and NBA arenas.
So why wouldn't they do that if you have the ability to do that?
If they pay you in stock options, you're with a company that is developing the vaccine that is going to really help save the world, cash in.
You know, it's not illegal, number one.
It will always draw headlines, right?
Because it looks like, ooh, what are they up to?
Clearly they know something, right?
That's a really loose interpretation of insider training, but it's really not because they didn't get it from somebody else.
So you're not going insider trading or anything like that.
There's nothing that the SEC or the Department of Justice or anybody can do about this.
I have no problem with it because they have confidence in the vaccine.
And so far, you know, the vaccine is being produced and it's out there.
So no, no issue from me.
Kai, do you feel the same way?
Where are you at?
I don't even consider the vaccine as an issue here of like they have faith in it.
I'm just thinking, if you look up the stock price, Mario, can you bring up the stock price for Moderna?
Look at Kai, baby.
Yeah.
Mario, on the ones that put him to work.
What do you got, Kai?
The power's already going to his head.
He's already talented.
You need to give me data now.
But if we look at here and then go all-time or max.
What stock price you're looking at, right?
Moderna.
Moderna.
Okay.
What do you got?
Max.
Time length-wise, Mario?
Above there?
Right above?
And then a little bit to the left.
Hit that one?
I mean, I don't need to be an insider to know that Moderna is trading at its all-time high.
What are the odds that there's going to be a new pandemic within the next few years where everyone in the world is relying on their vaccine?
So, I mean, heck yeah, sell.
As long as they legally can sell their stocks and they're not bound up in any way, sell, sell, sell.
Great point, young Kai.
What is it in the Jedi?
Young what?
Padawan?
Young Padawan, the thing you always say.
I'm always like, what are you calling me?
Yeah, but isn't that?
Great point.
I mean, it's at an all-time high.
Is it an all-time high right now?
Certainly as long as it's been.
Kai, go to, that's max, okay.
And you just look at the stock price, like, dude, we are killing it right now.
Let's go.
Sell, get rid of it.
Our compensation is tied to the stock price.
That's, I mean, that's part of the rules of the game.
Let's go on.
Here's the other thing.
You guys, too, is, you know, you look at the headline.
This is another one of these things that's going to offend a lot of people that don't understand it because they only see 500 million and they think people are getting rich.
But I think this is 13 separate drug companies.
All right.
And you're looking at a lot of executives that get paid in stock options.
So really, it's not even that much.
I don't think.
I don't think these guys are like having a backup.
Other than the fact that there's 320 million out of the half a billion coming from Moderna strictly.
I mean, Moderna.
Moderna went all in on it.
But they were also the first one that got really good.
They developed it.
Yeah.
So they've been at the forefront because you've had Pfizer and then there's a few other ones, but Moderna is one of the big ones they've been talking about.
So we've got no problem with them cashing out here.
Is that the uniform opinion here?
But I don't know.
That make that money, baby.
What is the other option?
I mean, you couldn't have a problem with it because it's not illegal, number one, and it's human nature and it's common sense and it's a smart move by them.
So you think this is just sort of a headline of the day and it'll just go out the window?
I think it's the type of headline that attracts a lot of clients.
We're talking about it.
We're talking about it.
Type of headline that attracts clinics, but what else?
I mean, I think if you just don't really understand the inner workings of when you have stock options and when they're vested and when you can use them, you wait.
If your company's public and you're paid in stock options, or that's part of your incentive, man, you're watching the clock.
I mean, you are you counting down any single day until you can sell those things, all right?
Because that's why you have them.
You know, these people talk about that.
Talk about that.
Investing period.
What are your thoughts on that?
Well, no, my thoughts, you know, just I know people that have been in public companies and they receive a lot of stock options.
It controls their life almost, man.
It's the biggest thing about how many stock options do you have?
When are they invested?
When can I cash them in?
Really?
I mean, and that's why it was funny because we were talking about Bumble the other day, right?
How they went public.
Oh, we were talking about Bumble.
Yes, we were.
And the CEO, Whitney Heard, right?
Yeah, I think that is.
How she told her employees, don't follow and don't monitor the stock price.
And I'm just going, how can you ask them that?
I mean, that is a big part of their life in their future.
But it's also from a different standpoint of more a because Jeff Business said the same thing that if the stock price goes up 10%, that doesn't make him 10% smarter or 10% like it only smarter.
Exactly.
So with a company like Tesla, as well, where the stock price has shot up so much, they're not suddenly way better.
It's just that the market is overvaluing them.
So you're saying don't bet it's not overfuture.
That's their message.
Because what do you, if you, the more time you're focusing on that, the less time you're focusing on the business and actually creating something that's going to reflect the market.
Keep your eye on the ball, is what they're basically saying.
Don't worry about what you know, peripheral.
Now, obviously, if you're trying to secure it and stuff like that, then obviously you don't want to sell it on a downturn or like when it's hitting the bottom.
But the grand scheme of things, you got to focus on what's getting you there and what can get that up, not necessarily just look at it and hope it goes up.
Okay.
Okay.
Is that it?
Anything?
You had some thoughts on the vesting yesterday.
We were talking about vesting.
No, it's just if there's any, obviously, with the insider trading from Moderna and something like that, but as long as they're properly in their contracts, however long they have to hold those stocks, then obviously you can't sell them.
So that would be the only way to have you.
Do you guys know anybody that's been vaccinated?
Yeah, my mom.
Oh, yeah.
How did you go for her?
Did she have to do the two?
She got, yeah, double dose.
She's doing great.
You know, multiple people.
Yeah, I know.
What's funny is I know people that have been vaccinated.
A couple of my friends, I have a friend who's a doctor.
He got vaccinated.
Well, my friend's wife is a doctor.
He's like the plus one.
He's the plus one.
He got, you know, he kind of got in the club because you know the uh he was with the DJ, the doctor over there.
But I have multiple friends.
My uncle got I know multiple people that got vaccinated.
Ironically, um, the one person who says they've had some um some fallout from this is my brother-in-law who is a dentist.
Uh-huh.
And he's like, I would not get vaccinated.
It ain't happening.
Like, he's just sort of on that, on that side of the equation.
But he said a couple of the people that work in his office, a hygienist, you know, healthcare workers, that quote unquote, they all had bad reactions to this.
He's sort of like a anti-vaccine.
Finding faults with where were you going with that?
No, you know, and Eric can probably speak on this.
I heard, what, 33% of the military is refusing it, right?
30 to 33%.
I haven't heard anything.
I've never seen anybody being able to successfully refuse it.
So if they're refusing it, I wonder what their, you know, the law ramifications are.
We get insight from our former Marine, Eric Galera.
Now, Eric, you're saying that in the military, if they say you're getting a shot, you're getting a shot.
Yeah, there's no question.
If they tell you to do something, you do it.
Even a shot.
You signed the contract, yes.
They tell you to move.
They tell you to do this.
They tell you to get a shot.
It's part of it, yes.
So, I mean, I'm sure with good lawyers, you can probably fight it, but I can see it being a very difficult thing to.
So, when you were in the military, Marine, because you're a reserve now, they said, Hey, buddy, you got to go get this shot, this shot, this shot.
You said, Yeah, no question.
Right.
So, with the vaccine right now, you don't think that there's any truth to the story that 33% of the people are going to be.
No, no, no.
I don't doubt that there's a lot of people that don't want to get it.
And maybe now with this being a different situation, there's, you know, lawyers trying to back up these people.
But in my experience, before COVID, I've never seen anybody successfully not get a shot because they didn't want to get it.
Gotcha.
That's our former Marine Eric Alera, guys, weighing in on the equation.
Mario, would you get the COVID vaccine shot if they were giving it out?
Would you get it?
It depends.
It depends if I had to for whatever reason.
So I know people that have taken the shot, they're feeling good.
I know people who are refusing it extremely saying I will never allow them to vaccinate me.
But for me, it depends on circumstance.
Okay.
So personally, no.
I mean, I work with Patrick Bett David, Adam.
So what does that mean?
I have a certain set of beliefs.
Okay.
Principles and shout out to Patrick Beth David.
Anytime there's nobody mentioned, we will give him a shot.
I'm commenting in the chat right now.
So if you want to talk to Patrick David David, is that him talking about the soyboy stuff right there?
Is that Patrick?
All right.
Shout out to the soyboy mafia.
We're out there.
Would you get the vaccine?
Yeah, I have a pretty much similar approach as Mario does.
And the one thing that scares me is if they start mandating it for flights.
Because you hear that thrown out there and I show that you've been vaccinated.
You literally can't fly.
Well, internationally, I could probably see that happening.
But they've even thrown it out there domestically.
And then they want to come up with this electronic, almost like ID card that shows, it's almost like a passport.
It's like a health passport where you can show that, have a barcode scanned shows that I was vaccinated.
I just don't think that's the path we want to go.
Did you get the vaccine?
Kind of depending on what's needed and what you can or can't do without it.
But with the vaccine card, I mean, I'd be surprised if they're able to put in a system like that.
Because as much as we have things now, if you think of like the efficiency of the government and how they can track things and keep control of things, it's like just updating addresses and how slow things like that are and go.
I have a hard time seeing that they'll be able to create some sort of big brothers system for how to track it overnight instantly where they have to.
You're saying that the government is inefficient.
Yeah, and it's slow.
Guys, in the comments section, I want to know yes if you would get the vaccine and no, if you would not do it.
Paul, you got to weigh in on this?
Where you at, buddy?
Yeah, actually, there's a movie that actually has this scenario called Songbird.
It actually came out, I believe, in April, May.
Michael Bay produced it.
But very similar circumstances that Tom was describing, you know, scanning and you can only get in, only the vaccinated people can get in certain places and all that stuff.
But if you need someone to get it done, hire a movie crew.
You know, they got special effects guys and visual effects guys.
They'll make it happen.
Make what happened?
They'll build a set.
They'll figure out the whole system.
Some of the creative.
Paul worked in Hollywood for a while.
He's a big movie guy.
Now he's running Value Tainment.
He is the, I called you our lead editor the other day and you G-checked me.
You're a value payment.
Let's be very sad.
You G-checked me.
Running Value Tainment.
True that.
True that.
But you G-checked me.
What's your title?
Director of Production.
Director of Production.
I called him lead editor, and he verbally bitch slapped me and he said, hey, buddy.
All right.
So in the comment section, what do we got going on here?
We got yeses or no's?
A lot of no's.
Okay, here's the question, guys.
Before we move topics, how much money would someone have to pay you today to go get vaccinated today?
Money in your pocket today.
I want to know in the comment section how much some, all the no's out there, how much would someone have to pay you, Mario?
How much money is it going to end up in your pocket to get vaccinated today?
What's the number?
They can't buy me for a vaccine.
They can't buy me love.
What about I'm for sale?
Nine grand.
Nine grand.
Not even ten.
No.
I'm for sale.
Why nine?
On for sale.
Give me nine.
He's a dirty dirty.
He's a California people.
He's from California.
Okay.
Kai, how much money?
I'm going to outdo Tom and say $9,001.
$9,000.
Kai's net worth just doubled, ladies and gentlemen.
Congratulations.
Paul, Bob Barker?
Yeah, I mean, if we're playing Price's Right rules, I've got to go, you know, I'm going to go $9,999.
Wow.
$1 less.
Under the limit, that'll tax you.
They'll have to claim on tax.
How about you?
How much you?
How much would someone have to pay you today to get vaccinated?
Now that I found out that we have a choice.
You got a choice now, baby.
It's America.
Then I'm asking for 50 G's.
50 G's.
Straight up.
I would do it just for a free Uber ride.
There we go.
I'm in.
I'm in.
My Uber today, you screwed me, bro.
No AC.
And you're driving around in South Florida.
You got no AC?
He's showing up to the Bet David podcast to fill in for the man PBD and you got no AC.
So what?
The car is not equipped with it?
He said, I got an AC problem.
I go.
Yeah, you're going to have a tip.
We're going to have a rating problem, home slice.
Kai, what do we got on the comment section?
Five ounces of gold in Bitcoin.
Okay.
It's a little bit all over the place.
But 10K, no money.
Gotcha.
So speaking of the big brother, because we were going there with this, let's talk about this main story right here.
Facebook meets Apple in the clash of the Tech Titans.
I mean, are there two bigger companies in the world right now?
Like straight up, Apple and Facebook?
What's Amazon?
Maybe, right?
Obviously.
Okay.
But two of the biggest companies in the world.
And Zuck, quote unquote, says we need to inflict pain.
Here's the story.
When Facebook was embroiled in controversy over its data collection practices, Tim Cook in a national television interview said that his own company would never have found itself in such a jam.
Zuck shot back to Cook's comments saying they were extremely glib and not aligned with the truth.
And in private, Zuck was even harsher.
He says, we need to inflict pain.
Can I get the Italian accent of that?
I don't do Italian accents.
Okay, I gotcha.
We need to inflict pain on this guy.
That's where you're going with that.
We need to inflict pain.
He told his team in private, how'd that get out in the public?
We can address that.
Facebook and Apple's visions are diverging and increasingly incompatible.
Facebook wants to capture and monetize eyeballs.
Listen up now.
Facebook wants to capture and monetize eyeballs on every possible device and platform.
Apple, on the other hand, wants to draw users to its own hardware-centric universe, partly by marketing itself as a private-focused company.
Underline that.
I'm sorry, a privacy-focused company.
Last summer, Apple announced the app tracking transparency tool, which, once rolled out, will allow ad tracking only if consumers opt in when they receive a prompt on an iPhone or iPad.
The change means that Facebook and other companies would no longer be able to collect a person's advertising identifier without permission.
And in the face of pushback from Facebook and others, Apple delayed the rollout of this new tool for a few months, but said late last month it will arrive early this spring.
Kai, I know that you've got some strong feelings on this.
You were excited to address this topic.
What are your thoughts?
I'm definitely teaming Apple on this one.
I think privacy is something important that a lot of us don't even understand of how they're able to track and how they can be in the background and stuff like that.
So I think definitely privacy is something that we should be more aware of.
Now, from what I've understood on this app, you can either say allow or don't allow.
So it's not like they're completely cutting off.
Like if you really want Facebook in the background lurching to see what's clicking allow?
So they can, I don't know.
We'll see.
What'd you do to my phone yesterday?
We clicked allow.
No, no, we clicked not allow.
No, no, you got a mixed.
You allowed?
It was not allowed, and then we allowed it.
Why would you allow that?
Because then you can get better ads.
They can monetize you.
Yeah, I'm coming after you, buddy.
But you can finish your thoughts.
So, yes, I'm definitely more on Apple side here.
I think the only argument that I know Facebook is making is that small businesses will have a harder time targeting people because you don't have the same actual case.
Oh, you're thinking of small businesses right now.
That's the card they're playing.
That who, Facebook?
Yes, there's what other card do they have?
No, that they're creepy and just watching you in the background.
Would you call it?
Would you call it what was the analogy?
It's like a creepy old uncle at a children's birthday party or something like that, where you have Quinsaniera yesterday.
Yeah, for the creepy example.
The point is it's creepy.
Exactly.
That's the analogy for Facebook?
Yeah, because they're creeping in the background.
Creeping on the comments.
They're seeing what you're doing.
They're looking at where you are, all this stuff like that.
And I think for most people, we're not even aware of it.
And something like that is they're selling the data just like crazy, trying to make it.
So Kai is coming out and he's saying he is on Team Apple.
I'm on Team Privacy.
Team Privacy.
Yes.
Are you on Kai's team or are you going somewhere else with this, Carl?
I'm not going to start agreeing with Kai about his family.
My first time on a podcast, I'm not going to make him feel any more confident than he already is.
He's already feeling too confident.
You know what?
No, as a matter of fact, steal his swag.
You know, how dare you, number one?
How dare you come on his show?
You have a comment like that.
No.
I like bickering CEOs, number one.
I think that's great for America.
I think that's great for news.
I'd like to see more CEOs go at it personally.
Whenever I see Zuck v. Cook, I always go Cook.
I mean, come on, Zuck.
How do you root for him, right?
You're not the robotic man.
I think Zuck, after 10 years of being full frontal on American pop culture and tech and everything, I think you're going to be inclined to not believe anything he says right away.
That's my first time.
Are you saying that Cook is more believable?
100%.
100%.
Do you trust Apple more or Facebook, guys?
Apple.
Here's the deal.
Does anybody here not have an Apple iPhone?
Delaire, I know you were an Android and we had to convince you not so subtly to switch it up.
Just because you trust them more on the surface, they might be actually more devious.
I mean, who knows?
He might just be playing us all.
But Cook comes across as the non-creepy uncle.
I mean, he kind of comes across as that uncle, but maybe not as creepy.
One more point here.
You know, you look at Facebook.
You look at Apple.
You get some of these other tech companies.
Their market cap is about equivalent to the GNP of some countries.
So you know what I think that means?
They should have armies.
They should have their own military.
If Facebook has a problem with Google, they can send tanks over there.
You're looking for a hot war.
I mean, look, this would escalate a little bit more.
It would be interesting.
You got a beef with Kai this morning.
You want to get these CEOs feuding?
And my last point is, and I made this the other day a little bit.
I think there's more room just in general for stories like this.
I think something like this or other stories would fall by the wayside because 80% of the stories in the past were all politics.
We're all Trump.
We're all elections.
Who's taking the oxygen out of the room?
Sucking it all out of the room.
So now you have the opportunity to have these discussions where maybe you wouldn't have heard about them before, or maybe in actuality, they're no big deal, but we get to discuss it.
Is this a big deal?
Facebook versus Apple is a pretty damn big deal.
I mean, it's a big deal.
But when you use the quote, we need to inflict pain.
Yeah.
That's a pretty big deal.
Yeah, but you know, something like that is all context, too.
I mean, we need to inflict pain.
Right.
You don't think you did it like a Stalin time.
What was Cook thinking there, man?
Maybe we got to inflict a little pain back.
I mean, it's just how you say it.
But he said it in private.
So, like, how does that get leaked?
Somebody on the team is saying.
Sounds like Facebook is doing some privacy stuff in the Apple war room.
Maybe the guy, a boomer like me, didn't know how to use the thing and he did the young buck like you.
No, but I think that's it.
And I disagree with Tom on one point: he says he trusts Facebook or Apple more because, or you don't know if we can trust Apple more.
One thing that comforts me is Apple makes a lot of money selling this phone.
They don't need to only monetize the data on the phone or the private.
So that aspect of it, I trust that they're making, I mean, thousands of dollars on the equipment and the hardware.
And then you're plugged into the ecosystem.
They're not relying on the monetization of only the data that they're selling to monetizers.
However, with Facebook, it's free.
I don't see a lot of people spending money on the Facebook.
I mean, they have the portal and a bunch of other hardware that they're selling, but I don't see a lot of people spending money on that.
Kai, do me a favor, break that down in plain English.
What are you saying right there?
You're giving me hardware, data, mining, blah, blah, blah.
Facebook probably only makes money, or mostly like 99% of their money by selling ads.
Say that again slowly.
Facebook makes money 99% of your money, you said.
Hypothetically, the majority of their money by selling ads.
Yes.
People pay money for ads.
Ads, the more small businesses you were talking about.
Small businesses, probably mostly big businesses.
The more ads they sell or the more data the ads have, the more they can target the better the ads.
So the geo-targeting and stuff, geophishing?
Yes.
Did I use that term correctly?
No.
Not at all.
They'll target those.
However they target, they can choose.
So the more data they have available, the better they can target.
That's how they make their money, which means they need more creepy phones listing in the background so they can.
So what you're saying is Facebook makes their money by creeping.
Pretty much.
So listen to this stat.
I got a stat I just pulled up here.
Mario, as for the fourth quarter earnings, Facebook reported $28.1 billion in revenue, of which $27.2 billion came from ads.
Yes.
Given the numbers?
8.1.
Let me bring this up so you guys can see it too.
Great insight by Mario over there.
He's coming.
He's saying 90-something percent of their money is ads.
I don't think that's breaking news, though, right?
No.
And with Apple, they're making money on subscriptions.
They're making money on products.
Exactly.
Updated number four.
What do you got there, Mario?
Yeah.
So 2020, 97.9% of the subscription.
98%.
Yeah.
So you said 99%.
You were right.
You were right.
Yeah, I was throwing it out there.
What's a percent or two?
What?
Price is right rules.
He went over.
Oh, you're out, Bob Barker.
All right.
What was the quote by Happy Gilmore?
What was the quote?
Happy Gilmore, by the way, just turned 25 years old.
The price is wrong.
The price is wrong, bitch.
You know, for about say that.
Oh, I said it.
I went there.
Okay.
Shout out to my good friend Adam Sandler, long-distant cousin of mine.
Happy Gilmore is now.
That was a classic scene.
And then Bob Barker went years old.
And then Bob Barker, rest in peace, beat the living crap out of Happy Gilmore.
He just did his swing again.
He did his infamous swing.
We saw that.
And then shooter McGavin, shooter, came in and gave a little throwback to the scene.
But where were we going with that?
Sorry, Bob Barker, price is wrong.
Paul wait in.
No, so long story short, I trust Apple more simply because they're not relying on the data to make money.
I see what you're saying.
We are exposing the truth here, guys.
Mario's crunching numbers.
What are your thoughts here?
You team out there.
I'm on team Facebook.
I learned yesterday that I got a lot of app things going on in the background.
What was the one thing?
Now we're going to talk about the Fjords thing.
We talked about Fjords the other day.
My buddy SBJ talked about, oh, you're from Norway.
I want to go to Norway and see the Fjords.
And two minutes later, we get off the phone.
He's getting ads on Facebook.
For Fjords, Fjords are like Norwegian rivers.
Yes.
They're valleys and fjords.
Peaks and valleys.
Exactly.
Peaks and valleys.
Which is very likely.
And so Facebook was creeping on the come up in the background.
Yep.
Yeah, I'm on Team Apple here, bro.
I've been on Team Apple since I switched from my BlackBerry in like 2010.
There you go.
When did you get your first IP?
About that time?
Yeah.
I do kind of miss the BlackBerry, though.
You could do some things on it.
What could you do?
I don't even remember what you could do on that.
It had a bigger keyboard.
I mean, if you're like writing and things like that, it had a thing for each letter, a key for each letter.
But I think they should bring back the flip phone.
I mean, I think I would buy a flip phone if they brought it back.
I would have that as an alternate.
Just for nostalgia purposes.
I think it's more dramatic when you're done.
You just like make that noise.
I'm done with you.
Click.
Now you're just like.
A razor.
Motorola released a razor.
Eric obviously still has a flip phone.
Well, he just had that before he went over to iPhone.
Congratulations on living in the modern era, 2020.
Yeah, Paul.
There's one other story.
Use your mic, buddy.
Yeah, there's one other story that I want to bring up.
But remember, in, I think it was like San Bernardino in California, there was a terrorist, a domestic terrorist guy.
And full years ago in 2015.
And they wanted to go after the police department wanted to go after FBI wanted to go after his phone data.
And Apple said, no, that's part of our user agreement.
We're not allowed to give out private information.
Wow.
So that's a huge, to me, a huge example of them being pro consumer and pro-privacy.
I think even on a terrorist attack, that's the problem.
No, there's more to the story.
Well, I think you have to get an affidavit.
You have to go through the court system, essentially.
FBI wanted to create for them to hack and essentially create a back door to access the phone without having to wait for the court data and stuff like that.
Because they were saying there would be a second, there was possibilities of being a second attack.
Apple then said that if they created an opening or a back door into it, that could be then transferred on other phones, which would decrease the privacy and security of the access to.
Privacy is a real thing, is what we're saying, guys.
Privacy is a real thing, and you can choose to allow it or not allow it on your phone.
Yes.
And you got to give Cook a lot of credit because that's leadership when you think about it.
Because it would be, you know, it's almost like you'd want to give that to the authorities, especially.
I mean, that was brutal.
That happened in December of 2015, and they go into these office buildings and they shot all these employees.
It was horrible.
And you would think, yes, if this could stop a future one, it takes a lot of guts to say, no, you know, the bigger picture here is more important.
Respect.
I mean, it says right here, Facebook and Apple's visions are diverging and increasingly incompatible.
Incompatible?
What does that?
I mean, what does that mean exactly?
Is Facebook not going to be on the iPhone?
No, it's just they're going opposite directions.
Yeah, they are.
Opposite directions.
Okay.
Let's go to the next story.
Big news today.
Big news today.
We know it's on Capitol Hill.
There's a lot going on today.
We will talk about, I'll give you the lead into this, and then we'll kind of give some stories with this.
So Robinhood's CEO, his name is Vlad Tennev.
He is reportedly staying at a hotel right now instead of going home after receiving death threats.
That's pretty serious.
So Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev is staying at a hotel because of the backlash following the GameStop trading rally in late January.
It was a couple weeks ago.
Robinhood restricted trading of GameStop shares on January 28th following a 2,000% surge in the share price driven by retail investors, Robinhood users, including members of Wall Street's Wall Street Bets Forum on Reddit, who cheered GameStop's rally, accused the firm of unfairly manipulating free market trading.
Some of the backlash was violent.
Tenev received death threats and has avoided going home in the past few days.
The police in Menlo Park, California, which is basically just outside Silicon Valley, they were told last week that a handful of protesters had thrown dog feces, which is dog shit, at Robinhood's headquarters and saw through a statue on the property.
So people are running up on Robinhood's headquarters.
Tenev is said to testify in a congressional hearing on Thursday, which is today.
It could be happening any second about the firm's decision to restrict trading.
And let me give you a little more insight here.
You know, I printed out this article right here.
So here are some of the players that are going to be testifying on Capitol Hill today.
So the leaders of Robinhood, Vlad, Melvin Capital, which is a hedge fund, Reddit, because we just talked about Reddit.
They received $3 billion of new funding.
Citadel, they were all testify as well as this is sort of like a Reddit trading star roaring kitty all about last month's GameStop trading turmoil.
Here's a couple quotes, and then I'm going to get it over to you guys.
So we think congressional hearing will focus on understanding exactly what occurred during the week of service disruptions, making sure that all activity was appropriate, and also determining how to avoid a similar event in the future.
The prevailing narrative was that a band of Reddit-inspired small traders rose up against Wall Street by buying GameStop, forcing a short squeeze by professional hedge fund managers who were forced to cover their negative bets or risk catastrophic losses.
Robinhood, which is a millennial favored stock trading, they made the unpopular decision to restrict trading of certain securities, obviously GameStop being one.
And then Tenev, this is what he had to say.
I want to be clear.
Any allegation that Robinhood acted to help hedge funds or any other special interests to the detriment of our customers is absolutely false and marketing distorting rhetoric.
That's the word from Vlad Tenev.
A lot of drama going on.
This is going on on Capitol Hill today.
Tom, I know you got some strong feelings on this one.
Well, we'll see.
The heat's going to be on him.
I don't believe that quote, what he just said.
I think the hedge funds were protected clearly.
There is real anger.
I mean, there are some really, really ticked off people.
David Portnoy is the founder of Barstool.
I mean, he wants him out.
Call him for his head.
Yeah, you know, he's one of the, he founded this thing.
He's a co-founder of Robinhood.
Vlad.
Yeah.
And it was, you know, it's a popular, I mean, a highly thought of app until a few weeks ago.
And now it's all gone in the toilet.
I think his days are numbered.
I think they got to get him out.
I mean, if you're not.
Oh, you think he's done?
Well, how does he stay?
That's what I say.
Because as a CEO, you want to exude some strength and some confidence and some, you know, project that you know what you're doing and that you can control a crisis.
And that just hasn't happened.
I don't think it's a great look when you say you're hiding out in hotels and you're the CEO.
Now, I've never had death threats, so I don't know what I would do, so I'm not going to try to act like I'm in his shoes.
But, you know, death threats get thrown out there a lot.
There's a difference between a death threat where you're in true danger and someone's going to come to your house and kill you or someone posting something really stupid on social media.
Does that count as a death threat?
It does.
It does.
I know in the definition, but is it how legit is it?
I don't know.
You're saying there's different levels to it.
Well, kind of.
Bro, we should rip his head off.
In a sense, it's better to be safe than sorry.
True, but then how about saying something like this?
I've got around-the-clock security around me because I'm still working and I'm trying to fix this mess for the people that feel like they, you know, that weren't handled.
They're handled fairly.
And this is a quote from our friend Vlad, and then we'll flip it over to Kai.
He says, as soon as the emails went out talking about what happened with Robinhood, the conspiracy theories started coming.
So my phone was blowing up.
How could you do this?
How could you be on the side of the hedge funds, which he says he's not?
Tenev, who is 33 years old, respect to at least, you know, young dudes making things happen, is reportedly being coached for the hearing by Robinhood's chief legal officer, Dan Gallagher, a former SEC commissioner, who also coached none other than Mark Zuckerberg on his congressional hearing.
You need to be coached.
You can't go in front of these guys without being prepared.
What's the quote?
Kai?
Proper preparation, prevents poor performance.
Piss poor performance.
You know, I think it'll be a fun thing to watch today.
I think it'll be really interesting.
I mean, you go into these saying, is it going to be a dog and pony show?
Because a lot of times the senators like to huff and puff and nothing gets done, right?
They pull you in front of Congress.
They have a congressional hearing.
They act all tough, but then nothing really gets done.
This might be a little different today.
It'll be interesting to see how he handles the bright lights of this type of scrutiny.
And, you know, I'll say this about the guy.
I know nothing really about him.
Okay.
I just kind of evaluate by, you know, what he's doing since this crisis started.
And I don't think it's been stellar.
Number one.
But he probably got into this business with good intentions if you name your company Robin Hood, right?
So, you know, it's not like he's, you know, when you set something up like that, it's almost like you're not in favor of the rich to the poor.
But the hedge funds know what they're doing on all these transactions and they're going to and they're going to manipulate this thing to their advantage.
So it'll be interesting.
He's been under the radar and under the public profile for so long, but today it's the opposite of that.
And he could get exposed or he could come across as someone that can say the dude's in a hard place.
And we talked about this a couple weeks ago.
And I used the quote from what's the song from Reservoir Dogs?
Well, a little green bag.
And he's like, clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, here I am stuck in the middle with you.
He's getting his funding from big Wall Street firms, hedge funds, investment firms like that.
But his customers are the millennial retail traders like the guys on Reddits.
You're really in a hard place right there.
So he has to obviously appeal to where he's getting his money, clearly, because he can't just say, I'll F you guys, because then maybe the business gets screwed.
But he obviously can't screw over his actual customer base.
He's in a tough spot.
But Kai, what are your thoughts on this?
No, I think if you think of it, and again, this is reportedly staying at a hotel.
So it's not confirmed that he's staying at the Marriott Resort, whatever, whatever.
For all we know, this could be fake news.
Like, we know there's more than that.
You don't think he's...
No, who knows?
You think he's faking that he's staying at a hotel to draw sympathy?
Who knows?
This might be something.
This might say that he's a coward.
However, I'd think he's staying at a hotel, bro.
I mean, who?
I mean, he probably has security still.
I don't buy the hotel thing.
You don't think he's a good person?
I stay at a lot of hotels.
I don't want Vlad next to me and the people trying to kill him.
Okay.
I'm in Marriott right now.
Yeah, I think it's more dangerous if you go to a hotel.
You're putting everybody else in jeopardy.
Yeah, Vlad, stay away from my hotels.
However, I do think that Tom has a point that the people that are the traders, like the day traders and a lot of these people that joined the Wall Street Bets, I see them as the people that are gamers.
They're the people that are kind of like trolls where they're keyboard warriors, like people call them, where they throw a lot of comments.
Keyboard warriors.
Warriors.
Yeah, exactly.
Where they throw a lot of comments.
What's your famous Drake quote?
He goes, trigger fingers turn to Twitter fingers.
Yeah, something like that.
No, it's that.
It's that.
You know, back in the day, you'd roll up on somebody, whatever.
Yeah.
Now it's just, I don't like you.
I'm the toughest guy on YouTube.
I'll show you what's going on, buddy.
Ali's a soybo ma, yeah.
So we had to go there.
So I think a lot of these people that are just accusations now.
However, you got to take them serious to an extent of making sure you're protected and you're taking proper precautions.
But I do also think that this will fade.
It's a storm and it's obviously weathering up.
This too shall pass.
This too shall pass.
Well, here, you brought up that the gamification of it.
Here's some of the quote by Representative James Comer from Kentucky.
He's a Republican.
He told CNBC he's been proud to see a company like Robinhood emerge, leveling the playfield for retail investors.
So he's sort of on the side of Robinhood.
He says, however, Cromer, here's a quote.
So Robinhood may be a glorification of the gamification of investments.
If you want an exciting video interface, you should go to GameStop and buy a video game.
Don't go to Robinhood to buy GameStop.
Is that essentially what you're saying here?
Is that it's just there if you want to play video games, go play video games.
Kai's a great video gamer, but if you want to trade, trading investing is supposed to be boring, is essentially what he's trying to say.
I'm not.
I don't necessarily, that's not what I'm pointing to at.
What I'm pointing at is the people that are doing this and that are part of the Wall Street Bets and are part of all this movement of let's short GameStop or let's increase GameStop.
I think these are the type of people that would also be more prone to be playing video games or talking trash over the internet or just hiding.
Well, plus they're in forums where you can get all that stuff.
They're holding out the Reddit.
Exactly.
I want to know from our audience, are you guys on the side of Robinhood?
Are you guys doing anything with Robinhood?
Are you investing?
Where are you at with this?
Are you pro-VAD?
Vlad?
I love the comment section over here.
Kai, would you manage that?
Oh, it's so funny.
You're getting annihilated sometimes.
Hey, you know.
Am I getting crushed over here?
You got some supporters.
You have some hate.
Trigger fingers turned to Twitter fingers, buddy.
This is what we're doing.
A bunch of keyboard warriors in this chat.
Keyboard warriors, and we love it.
If they're not talking about you, you're not doing something right.
The first time I heard about this, because this was so big a few weeks ago, it was just crazy.
There's a convenience store where I live, and I would go in there, and the guy that works there would go, I don't know why he decided to tell me this, but hey, man, hey, I bought some AMC stock.
And I'm going, God, you know, that's really, that's interesting.
And that's all I thought.
I'm randomly told you that, and I'm going, man, that's really cool that you did that.
I mean, that you found the time.
I find it a little bit odd.
And this is before I knew anything about what was going on.
I find it a little bit odd, you know, with movie theaters being down, but maybe he's thinking that they're going to come back or he's got some information.
And then the next day, I'd go in there and he told me he bought more stock and this and that.
And then I talked to him.
I saw him on Sunday.
I said, hey, man, I was trying to reach you.
I wanted to find out how things went for you.
What did you do?
He goes, he bought it at six.
It was as low as six, right?
AMC, I think he got.
He said he made 30,000.
30,000 bucks doing this thing.
He's kept it in there.
He hasn't been able to get it out yet, or he's chosen not to.
Maybe he's going to keep it in there and move on.
And AMC specifically.
Yeah, well, I think he may have had some GameStop too.
Mario, would you pull up GameStop stock?
Let's see what this has to say.
Because GameStop lost 90% of its value.
My point is he's not the guy you would expect to be some guy that would be making a small fortune investing.
This guy that works at the gas station is a convenience store.
And here he had that opportunity through Robinhood.
It's the type of person it caters to, but he got his information from Reddit.
I mean, they were getting their marching orders, and they just did this thing.
Is that what he said, though?
Well, I mean, clearly, yeah, but that's how they all did it.
You know, that's where the form was.
It's collective.
It's collective.
And I think that it is what Tom's saying, that it's not these typical people that would.
And then obviously a situation like this, there isn't a realistic return that this happens all the time.
The frustrating thing would be if you made money and they wouldn't let you get it out, right?
I mean, that's where the real anger was.
They would stop the traditional.
They would only let you sell.
They wouldn't let you buy.
Is that what was going on?
Yeah, Robinhood.
There was a period on Robinhood where they shut down buying and they would only let you sell.
Now Robinhood claims that that's because they needed enough cash on reserve.
Because from my understanding, how it works is that there's a time when Robinhood, when you buy the app on Robinhood, is obviously just kind of the interface.
And then on the back end, they then buy it from somebody else that kind of does it on the back end.
So they were saying that they didn't have enough money to support the trades that were being bought.
And that's why they had to do another round of funding to get in more money so they'd be able to pull, have the pool to cover their costs.
The funny part of the story is watching those hedge fund managers who everybody thought was so smart get killed.
Yeah, and I think, and obviously, and obviously I see that a lot of the people were saying Main Street versus Wall Street and that Main Street won and stuff like that.
And I agree.
And for hedge funds, now obviously they're trying to claim that this was all bad and they're going after the Main Street people.
But in a sense, they lost.
They just need to take the L and stop crying.
The biggest winners were the hedge funds that bailed out the other hedge funds.
Steve Cohen, the new owner of the Mets.
He came to the rescue of a couple of them.
I mean, could you imagine the terms on those?
That's like a money.
You think he was the money winner?
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
To bail him out in a matter of days and pump a couple billion into their account so they don't get destroyed or good point.
Let's talk about this GameStop stock.
You go max.
Yeah, go max, Mario.
Yeah.
I mean, look at that.
Look at that surge.
But even there, if you look at it, it's now at 45.
Go before the peak.
See where it was at before the peak?
Just six months, Mario.
Yeah, you're looking at it.
Six months.
But then you're still looking at what?
It went from 45 to, and before that, it was at what?
5, 10?
Yeah.
So that's a 4x return since the beginning of January.
I'd love to see how many senators made money on this.
I bet they did.
I bet there's a few.
Well, speaking of senators, let's talk about what, you know, she's not in the news a lot these days, but she's going to go take her mantle today.
Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, a long-standing critic of Wall Street, is calling for a ban on forced arbitration, which essentially prevents consumers from going to court if they are wronged by a company or product because they agreed to the terms of service.
Interesting.
She's not sort of defending the retail traders out there.
Here's what she said.
Robin Hood promised to democratize trading, but hid information about its prerogative to change the rules by cutting off trades without notice and about customers' inability to access the courts if they believe they've been cheated behind dozens of pages of illegalese.
Warren said in a statement, What is not clear from Robinhood's response to my questions is the full extent of Robinhood's ties.
Here it is, Kai, to giant hedge funds and market makers.
I'm going to keep pushing regulators to use the full range of their regulatory tools to ensure the fair operation of our markets, particularly for small investors.
So she is on the side of the small investors because that initial sentence threw me off.
Where are you at with this, Kai?
I was confused with what you were reading.
Yeah, I say next story.
Yeah, I'm moving on to the next story.
She's anti-capitalism.
We should ignore everything she says.
So we're not on the fan.
We're not on the side.
So here's what we're doing.
There you go.
Nice try, Elizabeth Warren.
You're out.
Okay.
You know who we're missing right now?
You know who we're missing right now?
Yeah, can you hear that?
Shout out to Patrick Bed David.
Can we?
Tell your point.
We've been waiting.
Tell your point.
We've been waiting.
Let's move on to the next topic.
This is something that I believe you were very interested in talking more about.
And here it is.
Let's talk about Bill Gates and what's going on with him.
He says, I believe it's on page eight.
He says, Bill Gates, rich nations should move to 100% synthetic beef.
Bill Gates recently said that he believes rich nations would help the global fight against climate change by consuming only plant-based, 100% synthetic meat products instead of beef.
You can get used to the taste difference, and the claim is they're going to make it taste even better over time, says Gates.
The philanthropist and Microsoft co-founder said that he is hopeful that a turn to plant-based proteins will combat methane emissions produced by livestock.
Even Gates recognized that this idea is hard to swallow, saying that people you can't have cows anymore, saying to people you can't have cows anymore, talk about a politically unpopular approach to things.
However, the global hunger for plant-based foods continues to grow.
Here are some numbers for you.
Morningstar forecasts that the plant-based meat market will reach $74 billion by 2029, the end of the decade, up from currently $12 billion.
That was in 2019.
And Beyond Meat is working with McDonald's and fast food chains like Taco Bell and KFC to roll out plant-based sandwiches and other alternative meat items this year.
Is that the end of this story, Kai?
Yep.
Okay.
This is some, this is, I mean, is this 100%?
That's what he's saying.
What do you think about that?
Here's what I think about it.
Bill Gates needs a side hustle.
He needs something else to do other than come up with these wild, stupid things that he does three times a week.
He's too bored.
He's got a side hustle.
100%.
He's been talking about vaccines.
Well, then hustle more on that and keep beef out of it.
Okay.
Warren Buffett is good friends with Bill Gates, right?
I think they're the best of friends.
Do you know that there's 7 million cows in Nebraska and there's 1.8 million people in Nebraska?
Do you know how big the beef industry is in Nebraska in this country?
I mean, are you on?
I mean, for him to throw something out that, I mean, it's almost like I think it does Bill Gates' legacy a little harm because he almost comes across as a crackpot.
Now, there might be some scientific thing that he could spin and, you know, in 387 years down the road, if we did this, it would benefit.
But no one's going to buy this right now.
Or have you ever tried fake beef?
I've had a beyond meat.
And they're okay.
I mean, it takes like a bad turkey burger, if you ask me, you know, beyond meat.
It's okay.
I mean, and I think they're going to be improving it constantly.
But how can you make a statement like this when that industry is so big, it affects so many jobs and so many livelihoods?
It just seems when I see a Bill Gates headline now, I'm going, how crazy can it be?
So you think that just when you see a Bill Gates headline, is it like instant non-credibility at this point?
I don't know.
Well, Bill Gates is who he is.
So his accomplishments speak for themselves.
But how are you going to get America to go 100% fake beef?
That will not happen.
You will have a lot of Americans moving to poor countries.
Okay?
Because he's saying all rich countries should get rid of beef and just have fake beef.
Well, a lot of Americans would be leaving this country.
Well, I mean, listen, according to the numbers, here we go right.
Morningstar forecasts that the plant-based meat market will reach $74 billion by 2029, up from currently $12 billion.
That was last year.
I say that's a small number.
I'd say 74 will be higher than that.
It's big, and they're going to improve it every single year.
It's going to get better and better and better.
But I just don't think we're there yet where Americans can wrap their arms around it.
I think the problem that we're having right now is the fact that, I mean, this is why we're talking about, because if he said rich nations should move to 40% synthetic beef, we wouldn't even be questioning this.
He'd be like, all right, cool.
Like, have more, you know, synthetic beef, whatever the hell synthetic beef is, you know, fake meat or whatever.
But the fact that he's saying 100%, again, headlines is the fact that people are like, what, what do you mean?
I can't have a freaking hamburger.
Eric Glaver, every day for lunch, he has a hamburger.
Every day.
It's crazy.
We know what your number one thing that you like to eat is, but burgers is at the top of the list.
Yeah, I went there.
Now, would you eat fake meat?
Absolutely not.
You would not?
No.
That's my point.
You're going to get a lot of money.
You just wouldn't.
If we said 100% fake beef, you're not even going to have a bite of that.
No, I want my meat.
No.
And there's too many people.
I want my meat steak.
And people, there's too many people like that.
I mean, you go to Texas right now.
You're going to tell some dude in Texas driving around in his truck, hanging out.
It'll be like, I can't have a hamburger.
It'll be like prohibition.
There'll be a huge underground black market for damn the underground beef market.
Or the mafia is going to get involved and it's going to become a bigger business than it is now because it's going to go underground.
I mean, history has shown time and time again that's how it works.
Kai, give me something different.
Give me a different perspective.
I know you love hamburgers.
You're from Norway, though.
So there's what do you, what do you got?
Here's a prediction.
Ooh, what you got?
We have the gasoline industry or the gas for car gas cars versus electrical vehicles.
Yes.
I think in the future, you're going to see a push towards, you know, how we're pushing towards electrical vehicles.
It's going to be a push towards more plant-based beef and a lower decrease on beef.
I don't think it's going to go 100% overnight.
That's not.
We have Eric Galares in the world, a lot of them.
What's his point on the admissions?
Point on the admissions is essentially, if you're plant, if you're um, if you're planting, right.
So to create a cow, you need, you need uh, you need a lot of acres for food and they need to eat, and 90 essentially, if you think of it, roughly 90 of the food that a cow eats goes to just maintenance, right 10 goes to growth.
So if you they need to eat a lot of food in order to gain a lot of weight right, so say they're a hundred pounds then they need a thousand pounds of food, which that food could be better used if you go, if you go directly to grain and or they create fake, beat fake beef out of it uh, so there's a lot of inefficiencies with beet and raising um animals because they need to eat a lot just to maintain or to grow and get bigger.
So that's where he's saying the uh admission comes out that it's more pollution for sustaining animals than to let just eat the grass or the, the plant base that you could be planting on the same area.
Let me pick up where you went, by the way, well done.
You're going to predictions.
I mean he's drawing diagrams, then diagrams.
That makes sense.
Good job yeah, so so that's that's.
His argument, that we're.
He's saying that we're a first world nation, that we can afford that and we can um, make more use out of the land that we're on.
Uh, so that's kind of where he's going with the admissions of the methane that cows produce and then also just the general stuff around it.
Now, how realistic is it to transition from one to the other?
I don't know.
But uh, I one thing I suggest is we do a blind meat test where we have a fake bird.
Put that on an idea and we see I see an episode there can we get, can we can put that on an idea?
Yeah, a taste, a taste test?
Yeah I, i'd want to see, i'd want to see a burger.
Yeah, not be able to spot the difference between and real meat.
I would love that.
I would love to go beyond meat, I would love to, you know, be a connoisseur of beyond meat, because the health benefits alone I would yeah, I would be ecstatic if I were to be.
You know, the NBA players have really helped push beyond meat.
They're based in El Segundo, which is the next city over from where I live, and and they really, they really are blown up.
Could you imagine if Elon Musk had come out and said we should be 100 fake beef, could you imagine what would have done to the beef?
Indeed yes yeah, but you know what I just it's unfair to pick on one industry when you have as much influence as you do, as Bill Gates and and I.
And if I was in that industry where I could be really, truly harmed, I would be really resentful for him to say something like that.
I think it would be more responsible to say hey look, the benefits outweigh, you know, having this much beef consumption.
And here's why let me tell you, you know, this country's capable of maybe getting there.
I think it'll be.
It'll prolong life, it'll cut down cardiovascular disease and heart disease.
But he comes out with his 100 and that just scares everybody and it completely dilutes his point.
And now you're not going to believe him.
You're not, you're going to be anti this, whatever he says about it.
I think he's I got, I.
I disagree with you and i'll tell you why.
Like I said, if he said hey, we should eat more synthetic beef, and that's all he said and just kind of left it, just you know hey, do you do what you want, we wouldn't even be talking about this story right now, the fact that he listen, agree with Bill Gates or don't agree with Bill Gates.
The guy, it is a genius and he knows what he's doing.
If he comes out there and says rich nation should move to a hundred percent synthetic beef, he knows that that's going to be a headline, Like, you know, thinking of headlines here, you write the headlines for VT POST.
You know, that's clickbait materials.
Exactly what we're doing right now.
We're talking about this topic, talking about your predictions.
Listen, things were trending in a different direction in America and in the world for everything.
But what I think happened is the pandemic, you know, made exacerbated a million different types of changes to say, hold on, what's going on here?
You talked about electric car vehicles versus gasoline and oil power.
You know, clearly there's some green changes going on with that.
Clearly, this beef topic that we're talking about right there.
I can't tell you how many calls I'm getting from people.
Bitcoin, Bitcoin, Bitcoin, Bitcoin.
So you got the Bitcoin.
You got the Ethereum.
You got the crypto.
Like, you know, clearly people are making a move in that direction.
Obviously, Zoom, you know, you're not traveling for meetings, talking about emissions.
And Bill Gates says he's one of the, you know, flying private planes and doing all that.
He gives off more emissions than anybody.
Things have changed.
And I think this is kind of to your prediction.
This is something that we're going to.
Have you ever even thought about not eating a normal burger less than five years?
Because someone said, oh, you can have a veggie patty or a burger five years ago.
It wasn't even a freaking question.
Now I'm like, yeah, it's been proven you shouldn't eat more red meat more than once a week right now.
Wink, wink, at you Galera eating swallowed hamburgers a day.
Think about the first cell phones, right?
And how far we've come with that.
I think it can be the same thing.
We talked about Blackberry and iPhone, something like that.
Exactly.
Have you ever has anybody tried the sausage that Beyond Meat makes?
Is that any better?
This guy eats it every day.
This guy eats it literally every day.
Sorry.
Paul, what do you eat every day for lunch?
Soriso.
It has changed my life.
Really?
Because you can't eat regular chorizo every day.
You'll die.
But Sorizo gives you that opportunity to have that amazing chorizo flavor, but healthy.
Interesting.
This podcast is brought to you by Soriso.
Hey, it gives you, if you can eat regular chorizo, you will die.
I really want to like it.
I really do.
I would love to fail that taste test because I would be all in.
I really would.
And I think they will eventually get a bad thing.
I mean, you're a Cali boy.
This must be like all over the streets of LA going to LA.
I mean, you must have a million friends that are going vegan and doing all that kind of stuff, no?
Yeah, but it's already happened, right?
I mean, that's already just organically kind of no one's making a big announcement that, hey, I'm going.
It's already happened in California.
Last point on this from me: Bill Gates better hate steak because if he's ever caught in a steakhouse right now, people are going to take pictures of this hypocrite and they're going to be sending it everywhere.
So he better not eat a burger in public when you come out with a statement like this.
Is it me?
I think Bill Gates, like, I'm on the side.
If Bill Gates says something, automatically I'm thinking, Bill Gates knows what he's doing.
He knows what he's talking about.
I think he, like, kind of, you said, like, I don't know, he needs to kind of have a side hustle or stick to his day job.
I kind of think he's that smart and that informed that he kind of knows what he's talking about.
My question to you is: when you hear Bill Gates say something, do you have like the, oh, he's a fake news kind of a guy?
Like, I had that problem with Trump, no doubt.
If he said it, I was like, I don't know.
Here's my problem with him.
And to your point here, it's not that I doubt his brilliance.
I mean, clearly, the guy's a genius.
I just question his motives.
And that's the one thing when I hear the agenda.
If what he's saying, does it benefit him somehow down the road?
And whatever's happened with him in the past has kind of created that for me, where that is more or less the first thing I think of when he says that, is this benefiting him, his foundation, or something more to the detriment of how it would affect everybody.
Maybe this is just me being naive.
I'm Tim Sharo.
That's a perfect segue to some comments right there.
But I don't think he does it for his money or to improve his, like, I just think he genuinely cares.
I think the jury's out on that, to be honest.
The jury's out.
Do you trust Bill Gates?
Like, just trust him as a human being?
Like, trust his instincts?
Or do you think he's kind of like a selfish looking out for himself?
Like, where are you at with Bill Gates?
More stuff he could be doing if he wanted to further his hidden political agenda in that sense.
The guy's been top five richest guy in the world for the last 20 years.
I think he is a believer of what he's doing.
Now, obviously, does everyone agree?
Most likely not.
But I do think that he, especially with kind of his views on climate change and the things that need to be done in order to reach the goals, I think that he's kind of in tune with those.
And I can see where he's coming from.
You trust Bill Gates' instincts, Paul?
You trust Bill Gates?
I'm going to say no.
You do not trust Bill Gates.
If he says something right away, I'm not going to just blindly incline.
Only because I've heard enough red flag stories in the last 10 years about him.
That's my question.
I'd love to hear the audience.
Just trust or mistrust in Bill Gates.
Do you trust him or do you not trust him?
Eric, where you at with this?
Trust or mistrust?
I don't trust him, and there's no solid data I can give you.
He gives me a vibe.
I just can't trust him.
So he doesn't have the trust factor for you.
Interesting.
Mario, do you trust Bill Gates?
No, so I have an opinion on this.
I think that sometimes saying someone's name, we get a little emotional, right?
So as I'm listening, I'm like, man, everybody's so emotional about Bill Gates.
I'm not crying.
You're crying.
I'm not crying.
But I think that when it comes to something like this, what I take out of it is how anything extreme is always going to rub us the wrong way.
But if we are naive to believe that we can't get there, then we're very naive.
Everybody, both sides, middle, I don't care.
Because if you would have told me a few months ago that everywhere you freaking go, you're going to put on a mask, even when you're walking in an office and when you're going to the restroom, and then you feel guilty for not wearing, if you would have told me that would have been society today, where you look at a chick, you look at a dude, you're looking at people, you're looking in business meetings, and then you're doing interviews recently right now.
I was like, I prefer to keep a mask on.
I'm going to wear my mask.
And you have to be all personal content.
If you would have told that to me six months ago, I would have said, hell no, that's extreme.
100% of people won't do it.
So when I hear 100% today, here's what I take from this is we cannot be naive.
For me, anything at an extreme is too much.
So yes, I agree with you, Adam, where if you say, if he would have said, look, we can gradually increase and start moving into a little bit more plant-based.
That was my point, by the way.
Right, Tom.
Thank you.
And I agree with Tom, not with Adam.
I never agree with Adam unless it's about what we're going to eat.
So the other part is that I also trust the science.
If there are facts that are leading, and I just looked up an article here while you guys were talking, but science does say that methane emissions are increasing.
So what the hell are we doing about it?
You know, it's really good for me.
I'm 33, but what about, you know, and I do think about what about the youth?
What about society?
What about the environment?
Like, we're kind of effed up, you know, to not care about those things because we do need some longevity.
What freaking planet are we going to live on?
So I think that is important as well.
But anytime we go extreme, I think that's the case.
But the other part, I think regulation is very important too.
When we interviewed, if you go back and you watch, if you haven't watched it already, go watch the interview with Chad Sullivan.
But he talks a direct impact about the meat industry.
Go watch that interview and understand a little bit more about the whole aspect of being a business owner and what they had to go through dealing with COVID and regulating where meat was coming from at that point.
Because if you understand the world that they're in, you can't just put them out of business either.
You have no idea who you're affecting.
So if regulation is included, I mean, meat could gradually get better if you process it better.
Because look, if you're going to pick right now, and I'm reading the comments, but are you going to go to Burger King?
You're going to go to McDonald's?
You're going to go to Shake Shack?
Are you going to go to In N Out?
Are you going to go, are you going to go to a restaurant like a down here, Chop Steakhouse, and you're going to go ask for a burger?
Where do you get your meat from?
So I hate to go long-winded on this, but I think, look, if you're extreme about it, you're going to get a lot of hate.
If you're naive about it, don't forget what happened with Mask.
You're probably going to put one on right after this podcast, wherever you go.
And then from there, we need to improve regulation, but we can't be emotional when it comes to an individual and their name and whatever they did on their past.
Because if you're perfect, then I mean, you should be the one commenting.
Walking on water.
Great insight by the legendary Mario.
I'd also be curious to know how much of, because obviously, if you have like organically plant-raised meat, which is like the non-processed, the straight cows just coming right off the farm, that quote-unquote healthy meat, the high-quality meat, right?
But then you also have all the like crappy meat, which is a lot of like the McDonald's meat and a lot of just ground stuff and the stuff.
What Paul used to eat before he went to the soy resale and that percentage, I'd be curious of like how much is the quote-unquote good quality meat and how much of the meat out there is just kind of the stuff that they're force-feeding the cows so that they gain weight.
There's a documentary there as soon as possible, because that meat can't be too healthy either.
And that's where I think that a lot of that could be moved more towards a plant-based meat, and that would also help environmental.
I think the point is things have changed, right?
Things have changed, whether it's electric vehicles, whether it's Bitcoin, whether it's synthetic meat.
We're open to new things now to say, no, we're never doing, I'm never doing this.
Like our friend Galera said, I would never, like, maybe you're going to consider that now.
I don't know.
Even when we do the taste, I look forward to this taste test.
Yes.
Okay, that's what.
And just last point about Bill Gates.
This is why I kind of find the instant credibility.
I won't say instant credibility.
This is why I trust him.
Pull up something called the Billionaire Pledge.
Pull up something called the Billionaire.
Are you guys familiar with this?
This Billionaire Pledge?
You know about this.
Okay, basically, this is what he started with, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
He's basically saying, listen, guys, we've had the luxury of living in America here, making billions, right?
He's a capitalist, right?
He's a Democratic capitalist.
You can be both.
Wait, Should I agree to the privacy notice here or no?
Let me know if I should agree or not agree.
I'm not sure anymore.
This is about building.
This is about building on a wonderful tradition of philanthropy, Stop Mario, that will ultimately help the world become a much better place.
That is the number one quote on his site.
To me, if you're a billionaire and you're basically saying, I think, what's the number?
They're going to pledge 90%, 50%?
Is it more than 50?
I think some of these people are pledging 90% of their wealth.
If you're worth $100 billion and you give $90 billion to a charity of your choice, that's pretty impressive, man.
That to me gets you some instant credibility.
But you don't trust Bill Gates.
Anyway, if you want to check that out, Billionaire Pledge, Bill Gates, the Giving Pledge.
That's what it's called.
The giving pledge.
It certainly puts pressure on other billionaires, doesn't it?
When you get some of them off the top, hey, Zuck, did you do it?
Yeah, I did.
Hey, Musk, did you do it?
Yeah, I did.
A lot of them that, or I mean, obviously there's some of them that just put it into a trust for their kids and their kids' kids and all that good stuff.
But a lot of them also have other foundations.
Like, I know there's a Norwegian billionaire, a hotel tycoon, that was approached, and he said no, because he had already a different charity he was doing himself thanksgiving to, where he was.
But at least he has that charity.
Yeah, yeah, no, no.
He was planning to do that.
I mean, how many yachts do you need?
How many homes do you need if you can actually help the world?
To me, that's where I think, I mean, Bill Gates, listen, he could be, I'm not saying he's the type of this person.
If you've got, what, $80 billion, what's his net worth right now?
Some ridiculous.
Bill Gates?
Yeah, I mean, I'm guessing somewhere.
No, it's $130 or is he in the $100 billion range?
He's number five in the world right now.
So somewhere near $100 billion.
All right, cool.
$133 billion.
$133 billion.
Do you know how many planes and boats and yachts?
But he's just like, look, I just want to help the world.
I like what he's doing.
That's where he is.
I like what he's doing with clean water and sanitation in the third world countries.
I mean, he's saving lives, so I respect him for that.
But he also didn't build a non-profit, right?
So this guy has motives that are self-serving as well.
So I think you just got to be cautious with his messaging.
But he's also revolutioned giving money or philanthropy pretty much the most since you have a Rockefeller or those people as well.
So he's obviously changed it and given it the business aspect of making it as efficient as possible.
I got respect for Bill Gates.
All right, let's get to the next topic.
This was Joe Biden, your friend, our friend, friend of the show.
He might call in later.
He did a town hall the other day, and someone stood up and asked him, would you cancel $50,000 in student loan debt?
What was the quote that he said, Kai?
He said, I will not make that happen.
He stood his ground.
Here's the story.
President Joe Biden shot down a proposal to cancel $50,000 in student loan debt for every borrower, despite the pressure from leading Democratic lawmakers to do that.
Obviously, that's the Bernie's of the world, the AOCs, the Elizabeth Warrens.
An audience member at a CNN town hall told Biden that student debt is, quote unquote, crushing her friends, family, and fellow Americans.
We need student loan forgiveness beyond the potential.
$10,000 your administration has proposed, she said, we need at least $50,000 minimum.
Will you be able to make that happen?
Biden responded, I will not make that happen.
One sentence.
Biden has proposed canceling $10,000 in student loan debt as a part of the coronavirus relief, while Democratic senators Chuck Schumer and Elizabeth Warren called on Biden to cancel up to 50 grand in student loan debt per borrower.
During Tuesday's town hall, a couple days ago, Biden expressed skepticism about the idea of canceling the billions of dollars of debt that people who have gone to Harvard, Yale, and Penn, referring to Ivy League institutions.
Is that going to be forgiven rather than use that money to provide for early education for young children who come across disadvantaged circumstances, Biden said.
So a lot of the concern with Biden was he was going to go extreme.
He was going to pander to the AOCs of the world.
He was going to cave.
He's a puppet.
He's not going to stand his ground.
He's spineless, all the sleepy Joe.
And he's like, no, I'm not going 50 grand.
Sorry.
I'm not going to do it.
I might give you 10.
I might, but I'm not going 50.
Line in the sand.
I'm not going to do it.
And obviously the story two weeks ago was AOC says, no, we need to push him.
We can't just settle for 10 grand.
We need to push.
We need to push.
It seems like he's made up his mind.
Do you believe him, Tom?
You know, I do.
I will say this.
I'm mad enough to say that I underestimated him a little bit, and I'm impressed.
I'm impressed by his actions here.
I'll judge him on a per-case basis.
But for this, I think it takes strength to flat out say to someone asking you that question because the politician always wants to validate them, make them feel good.
Yes, I'll do whatever.
Yes, it's complete BS.
I think it takes strength to walk around.
He could say, I'm thinking about it.
It's something we're considering.
He came out and said no.
It's not going to happen.
And I applaud him for that.
And a couple of things.
Number one, I guess my biggest fear was that he would be that puppet.
And he's showing so far that he's not.
They've completely minimized the squad and these radicals.
I mean, these far left.
He's basically saying, I got no time for you.
Here's my theory on this.
Joe Biden is old school.
He was a senator for 40 years.
All right.
He's paid his dues.
He's not going to finally get in the big chair and let these young punks who don't know what they're talking about, who run on pure emotion, who don't bring any of the real concepts of what America, what made America great into their arguments.
I love the fact he's heismaning all of them.
Stiff arms.
He's giving him the stiff arm.
Great analogy right there.
But you know, he doesn't even listen to him, which is even better.
And imagine what that's doing to them.
It's minimizing them completely.
And now they're just sounding like, you know, with crazy.
These young punks.
Yeah.
And you know what?
Speaking of young punks, Kai, how you doing over there, buddy?
Student loan debt.
What are your thoughts on this?
No, I think, I mean, the first thing that comes to my mind is why are we letting universities off the hook?
Okay.
Well, go deep on that.
Go ahead.
No, exactly.
But the kids have the debt.
I mean, they knew what they're going into.
You don't look, it's not like they're all hidden costs.
I mean, you see very clearly.
I remember when I was looking at schools, I saw very clearly like tuition, semester, XYZ.
And you're like, all right, you're doing two semesters a year times four years, and you can crunch the numbers pretty quickly.
So I think if anything, if we're trying to limit student debt, you should go after the universities that are hiking up these educations where you're paying, I don't know, 20, 30 grand a semester for a Zoom college.
I don't see that.
Well, I mean, look about the, what does Harvard have in their Harvard fund?
What is it called?
Endowment.
And their endowment fund.
Hundreds of billions and billions of dollars where they could pay for every Harvard student the next probably tens of years.
And somehow they still need that money just laying around there.
And they're charging full price even though nobody's on school at school.
So, I mean, I think that's what I think is outrageous that we're accepting that they can just charge these astronomical fees without even thinking, oh, and then the question is, well, we need to forgive the student debt from the people, the students coming there.
But it's like, no, first of all, you know what you're getting into.
Second of all, why aren't we turning the lens of focusing on the schools?
Why the hell are you charging this tuition?
Like, what are they actually getting for this tuition?
And why is it so high?
And I think those are the two bigger questions rather than looking at what you're going to do.
Another interesting study, which was done by University of Chicago, a working paper published Monday by the University of Chicago Becker Friedman Institute for Economics showed that erasing all student debt would distribute $192 billion to the top 20% earners in the U.S., but just $29 billion to the bottom 20% of U.S. Say those numbers one more time, please.
By forgiving the student debt, $192 billion would go to the top 20%, top 20 earners in the U.S., and just 29% would go to the bottom 20%.
So the rich would get richer is what you're saying.
Well, the rich would get less, they would get more debt erased.
Because they have bigger loans.
Of course.
And you're going to Harvard.
And the percentage of them are more in school.
Grad school is debt.
So here's the question, guys, because I want to cover a couple of topics.
What's the number?
Is it 10?
It's clearly not 50.
Is it zero?
What number are you comfortable with erasing?
Why is he doing it at all?
I mean, zero.
No bailout whatsoever.
Where does it?
Okay, thank God he said no to wiping it all away because there'd be no such thing as debt.
Agree more.
Agree.
What about car loans?
What about mortgages?
What about credit card debt?
Everybody would be up.
It's incredibly slippery slope.
Look, I don't think you want to – that's not his job is to finally become president and then just figure out what debt loads he can wipe away.
So I would say – Well, especially when you're adding more stimulus, 1.9 proposals.
Can you imagine?
Imagine just the payment.
What's the current student loan debt?
1.5 trillion, Mario?
You want to?
1.8.
1.8?
Is it that high now?
How do you even manage this, you know, as far as wiping away these loans and the percentages?
And it would be an absolute nightmare.
So kudos to him.
Mario Aguilar, what's the number?
1.7.
1.7.
Kai, you've been like one point off on every, like Bob Barker would be very upset with you right now.
You're like one, you're a little over on everything.
It is what it is.
Paula Scarsico, what you got?
Kai would be going to the showcase showdown for us.
I think Kai had a point, but I want to go further on Kai's point.
I think, again, they're trying to solve maybe the student loan debt, but really there is an opportunity for the country to make more money.
And we all are a free market capitalist here, but they should change the tax bracket of universities.
Instead of you can charge whatever you want, cool, but now you're paying taxes.
Yes.
Have been protected by the government and don't pay taxes, but they can charge whatever you want.
Well, there's a little bit of a math problem wrong there.
So I think reversing that would actually solve more problems.
You'd increase the revenue of our country and be able to afford a lot.
And then people can pick and choose whether they want to go there and again, give them more of their freedom back.
Plus, they could use, they could earmark some of that tax money to take care of $10,000 or $10 of this debt.
You can actually pay for this own problem.
The big part of it as well is like you have, I get that schools, if you're just thinking like class and this and that and the other, that they're not taxed.
But you have schools that have major football teams, you have major baseball teams, all these other sports teams where they have to be major football and basketball.
Yeah, where they have arenas that are housing like thousands of people where they're charging for the tickets.
They're charging for sales of jerseys or what have you, food, anything like that.
And on top of that, they have major TV contracts and all of this, they're funneling money in and they're still not taxed.
That doesn't make sense either.
So bottom line, we agree with Biden on this.
Are we thumbs up or thumbs down on Biden's decision to stand his ground?
You said thumbs up.
Yes, stand his ground.
100%.
Stand his ground.
Thumbs up on this.
Thumbs up.
Positive in his book.
Joe Biden getting thumbs up.
I love Paul's idea, though.
Seriously, my daughter just graduated from college last year and she got completely robbed because she wasn't able to experience the final month.
She couldn't even have a graduation.
They should cut a check and pay some of the money back to the parents.
That's not what we signed up for.
You know what I mean?
Especially a school like she went to, Pepperdine, where the graduation is on a cliff overlooking the ocean.
It's an incredible experience.
And she got robbed.
Probably the only Pepperdine class that wasn't able to do it.
Yeah, colleges, man, it's changing.
If you watch what's going on, it is changing.
It needs to affect the actual universities, though, because it's starting to affect the big college football programs.
They're giving the football players more leeway.
You know, it used to be total control by these coaches.
They make $5 million and they're just dictators.
Now, if you're not happy where you are, you can enter this transfer portal so you can essentially just leave if you're a college football player.
College coaches are freaking out.
I think the same thing will happen with chancellors.
If they start saying, hey, look, you know, we're going to take a good look at this gravy train that you've created for yourself.
You're creating all your own rules.
You're responsible for educating these kids, which a lot of people aren't in favor of your methods right now.
I would love for them to take a big, big look at it because there's a lot of money there that could be going in other directions.
Great word, gravy train.
I like that word.
All right, staying on politics.
We just covered Biden and his town hall.
Let's talk about Trump versus McConnell, the fight we've all been waiting on.
Donald Trump rips Mitch McConnell as he seeks to exert leadership after the impeachment trial.
Donald Trump attacked Senate minority leader.
That's a new title for him.
Minority leader Mitch McConnell, the GOP's highest-ranking elected official, after comments he made about Trump's culpability for the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on January 6th.
The Republican Party can never be respected or strong with political leaders like Senator Mitch McConnell at its helm.
Did you hear that quote right there?
The Republican Party can never again be respected or strong with political leaders like McConnell.
I mean, this is gloves are off.
They are talking trash.
The statement came three days after McConnell criticized Trump over the attack on the Capitol, although he voted to acquit him at the impeachment and trial.
McConnell said he did so because he did not think it was constitutional to hold an impeachment trial for a former president.
The Senate Republican leader held Trump responsible for the attack, saying his false claims of fraud in the election he lost to Joe Biden inspired extremist followers to commit violence, the insurrection, as he's talking about.
Quote unquote from McConnell.
This was an intensifying crescendo of conspiracy theories orchestrated by an outgoing president who seemed determined to either overturn the voters' decisions or else torch our institutions on the way out.
This is McConnell versus Trump.
Here's what this is basically what you have here: McConnell, who believes in institutions.
I mean, McConnell, he looks like a turtle.
You can still go on the, but one thing he does respect is the rule of law and institutions.
And he's basically called out Trump saying, you don't respect either of that.
You don't respect the will of the people.
You don't respect institutions.
Came out and just ripped in to, did you see the speech?
McConnell?
Yeah, McConnell's speech.
He ripped into Trump, but then obviously, in typical McConnell fashion, voted not to impeach him, you know, because you can't impeach a non-sitting president.
Non-sitting president.
So then Trump basically came out and he said, listen, with leaders like this guy, the Republican Party ain't going nowhere.
So whose side you got?
You got Trump's side?
You got McConnell's side?
You got to pick a side.
Well, with Trump, you get the highlights.
You get the bluster.
So he called McConnell a dour, sullen, and unsmiling political hack.
I mean, that's good writing.
I got to give him credit for that.
I mean, he did not say those words.
Those are the exact words.
No, no, I'm saying.
He didn't come up with those words.
Maybe he did.
I'm not sure.
What was the quote?
He called McConnell a dour, sullen, and unsmiling political hack.
We've heard Donald Trump speak.
He's never used a dour, sullen politician.
But here's the thing.
He's like, he's a loser.
He's not saying those words.
But you know, Donald Trump isn't just doing this for, you know, to get his name out there.
There's more to this.
And one of his problems with McConnell is his wife, Elaine Chow, right?
Who served in the cabinet as the transportation secretary.
So he felt because of the influence of his wife on McConnell that they're incapable of being tough on China.
And that was basically the crux of his argument once you get past the personal attack.
You think this is somehow related to China with the McConnell and he remarried an Asian woman?
Here's a quote.
You know, Trump literally said this in this release.
He goes, likewise, McConnell has no credibility on China because of his family's substantial Chinese business holdings.
And he went in there to talk about it.
And McConnell's wife died.
Yeah, but he selected her to be part of his cabinet.
So he knew what he was doing.
He looked at her and he said, yep, you're from China.
What's up?
Let's do it.
Yeah.
So the rest of his quote was, he will never do what needs to be done or what is right for our country.
Where necessary and appropriate, I will back primary rivals who espouse making America great again.
So this is.
But he just won re-election.
He's going to be there for another, what, six years?
How long are you?
I mean, how long?
No, this is a quote from Trump in here.
That's what I'm saying about McConnell, primary rivals, but McConnell just re-elected him.
No, what Trump's saying here is, where necessary and appropriate, I will back primary rivals who espouse making America great again and our policy of America first.
So he's saying, you know, McConnell disciples, he's going to put money in to get them out.
Like, they're not good for the Republican people.
McConnell disciples.
Yeah, so you ask yourself, is this Trump trying to flex a little bit and say, I am going to be impactful over the next few years?
I am going to have a say in this next election.
If I'm not running myself, I'm going to be the leader of this Republican Party.
And I think that's part of it.
And then the last thing is you had to ask yourself, how's Trump going to communicate without Twitter?
And he did this all on a release, essentially, that he sent to the media.
He'll figure out a way.
And he still got his message out, right?
Who's got more control currently in the Republican Party currently, McConnell or Trump?
Well, I mean, McConnell has it inside Washington, D.C., but who's got the support?
I don't know.
We'll find out.
Trump's got the base, obviously.
He still has some questions.
McConnell's got his question.
What do you think about that?
I mean, I think McConnell versus Trump.
I think it all comes down to control.
Obviously, it seems like McConnell's trying to get past the Trump era and return to normalcy, if you want.
Trump's trying to stay relevant.
He's trying to stay influential, whether he's just trying to stay relevant enough to have a good position to run in 2024, or if he's trying to full-on become the godfather of a new Republican Party.
I mean, we'll kind of have to wait and see, but it seems like there's obviously an argument there.
And Trump does still have money that they didn't use on the campaign.
I think it was like $100 billion or something like that.
Renomedo few hotels.
What?
Couldn't you?
No, I think $30 billion or something.
What's he going to do with the money?
This is his campaign money that he, yeah, the war chest that he never fully went into.
What's he going to do with it?
He can promote campaigns for rivals of McConnell's Peeps.
Just can't build a hotel.
No, no.
Yeah, he can't use it.
They tore down his Atlantic City because he has today.
No, yesterday.
Okay.
Yesterday.
So this is going to be interesting.
If the Republican Party ever wants to get back into the good graces or in the White House, would you not think that Trump and McConnell are going to have to kind of work together on this?
I don't know if McConnell's going to be here that much longer.
Maybe.
But I think it answers a bigger question, too.
Is Trump going to be able to communicate?
Now, it's different than Twitter, where it's nonstop and it's constant.
And this was 622 words, this statement, right?
How many words can you do on a tweet right now?
This would take a few tweets.
It would take a while.
So he's still able to get his message out, but it just doesn't bombard the day and stop everybody in their tracks.
I mean, he might be able to get one or two of these out a week as opposed to every hour he's sending a message like he used to.
A little segue here.
You know whose opinion I would actually genuinely love to have heard on this would have been Rush Limbaugh.
Respect to Rush Limbaugh.
He was in the news recently, passed away at 70 years old.
It was lung cancer after a year-long last year.
He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
We're not going to go too deep on this topic, but this is a topic that he would have a field day with.
McConnell, who he's been outspoken for against for years.
He was obviously a big Trump advocate.
He would have been an interesting opinion on this.
But the McConnell-Trump battle is, I think, something that will be continuing for the years to come.
I don't think either of them are done weighing in on everything that happened.
But McConnell was very clear.
He said, Trump, you did this.
You promoted the lies.
You were the conspiracy theorist.
You provided the fuel to the fire of the insurrectionists who raided the Capitol.
And I think that McConnell, at the end of the day, believes in institutions.
So it'll be interesting to see where that goes.
Here's a story right here.
Moving on.
Big short investor Michael Burry says that the Tesla boom is remarkably similar to the dot-com and housing bubbles.
The hype around Tesla reminds Michael Burry of the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s and the housing bubble of the mid-2000s, he said in a tweet.
The cyan asset management boss, who has been a vocal critic of Tesla for several months, revealed in December that he was short on Elon Musk's company, Tesla.
Tesla's stock price has rocketed more than 800% since the start of 2020, lifting its market cap to north of $780 billion of the idea that Tesla's lofty stock prices are self-fulfilling because the business can issue shares to fund its growth.
Burry said, saw this same thesis many times while partying in 1999.
That's what Burry said.
Can you pull up a picture of Michael Burry and then also of Christian Bale, the character he played in the big short?
Thank you, Mario.
He says, Michael Burry says, the last big short got bigger and bigger and bigger too, he said in another tweet.
Enjoy it while it lasts.
He says, finally, what do Tesla, Bitcoin, and option gamma traders have in common?
It rhymes with rubble.
Like Barney Rubble.
That's bubble.
So here's a picture of Michael Burry and the character he played in the big short, the sandal-wearing flip-flop, you know, guy, Christian Bale, great actor, by the way.
But basically, Michael Burry, who does not give interviews, he's not really out there on the scene.
Over the last few months, he's like all over the news these days going against Elon, going against apparently Bitcoin, but he's betting against Musk.
Would you bet against Musk at this point?
I wonder if he was playing the drums when he did that.
Wasn't he doing that in the movie all the time?
Frantic energy with this guy.
By the way, you know how much he made?
Not from the movie or from the, but actually from the big short from shorting the housing market?
How many billion?
No, he personally made 100 million.
His investors made 700 million.
So I thought it would be more than that, too.
I thought he was walking away with billions in that thing when you watched it in the movie.
I don't know.
Let's just say this.
For me, everything in life is scoreboard.
Have you done something before?
Do you have credibility?
This guy had some serious credibility for what he saw that no one else wanted to see.
And clearly, I think smart people, they were making so much money during that housing bubble, they wanted to ignore it.
Maybe in the back of their mind, there were so many great movies about the market crash and just the financial crisis of 2008.
Man, they're unbelievable.
And that was one of them.
So I think you have to pay attention to this.
I don't think you just throw it aside like this guy's a quack.
I don't think you have to take it and say this is going to happen in a few weeks.
It'll be interesting to monitor because that is an abnormal spike in a stock price, number one.
Number two, their sales probably don't justify that type of thing.
There's going to be a lot more competition to Tesla.
So I think it's interesting for a guy that stays under the radar screen as much as Burry does.
He doesn't like the tension like this, even though they made a movie about his life and everything, but you don't hear about him every day.
For him to come out this aggressively makes you just wonder, is he obsessed with this like he was the housing crash?
And maybe he does have some information, but then you're battling two extremely smart guys.
Elon Musk might already be one step ahead of him.
And I think maybe that's the way I might be leaning that Elon Musk is no flyby night guy that just happened to be proven himself.
So I think I would be leaning towards, if it does take a little dip, it's not going to be a good thing.
Burry versus Musk on Tesla going long or short.
Who you got?
I just say big short of the housing bubble versus Tesla stock price, it's not going to be the same thing.
It's going to dip, no question about it.
He's probably got something to this, but I don't see this thing completely going under like you have a different opinion on this guy.
I think it all depends on how long is the time frame we're looking at.
How long is how far out are we looking?
Because I think, obviously, if you look at the stock, it's gone like a hockey stick.
It's gone straight up in 2020.
Even Elon Musk tweeted at one point, I think the stock price is too high, in my opinion.
And Burry said something about it's going to get crushed like a souffle.
I think that was like the first quote that he came out with a couple months ago.
So definitely a sledgehammer on a Sloof Flint.
Is that what Burry said?
Is that what Tesla?
That's what Elon said.
Oh, that's what Elon said.
Okay, then Burry came out something about a sledgehammer.
So that's right.
So, no, so I think that obviously it's the, but justifying, if you look at the earnings, if you look at the cars they're producing and the value of the company, like it just doesn't match up.
So a lot of it, I think, is hype stock in a sense of they're just projecting out future earnings, which to one extent, like obviously Tesla's been groundbreaking, but I don't see it being that crazy.
Especially considering a lot of what they did early on is a lot of the patents for the cars are open, meaning Volkswagen or anyone can go in and borrow the patents and implement the technology in their cars as well.
Because Elon Musk's main vision when he started Tesla wasn't to create the biggest car company in the world.
It was to start the transition from fossil fuel to battery.
And I think we can all agree, seeing by 2030, Range Rovers done with electrical with gas vehicles, Sam Ford, Ford.
So I think we can all agree that he's one.
No, he can stop right now.
Mission accomplished on that.
Exactly.
There's no going back.
We're not suddenly five years from now going to be like, ah, screw electrical vehicles.
We tried that.
It was a fad.
We're going back.
Change.
Change.
Exactly.
I mean, it's very powerful words right there.
Just like we talked about with the synthetic beef, just like we talked about the electric.
Everything.
So I mean, listen, here's my two cents right here.
In the 90s, what year were you born, bro?
98.
98.
Ridiculous.
Ridiculous.
I was graduating high school at that point.
He wasn't even alive for the last dance of Michael Jordan.
You weren't even alive.
You weren't even alive the last time Michael Jordan.
That's like us watching something on World War I when you're looking at the last dance.
That's so sacrificial.
I have an opinion on this, Adam.
I have an opinion on this.
Yeah, let me finish my point here, and then I'll switch it over to you.
The dot-com bubble, if you had any company that just ended with dot-com, people were willing to give you millions and millions of dollars.
Like any more Cuban.
Yeah, I mean anything.
Dot com, dot com.
So it was a house of cards.
Same with literally the housing market in 2008.
There was just a lot of bad fake mortgages, unqualified, you know, no asset, no income, all that nonsense.
So he's comparing Tesla, the price of Tesla, to two basically house of cards.
I think it's fair to just say maybe Tesla, its price is a little overvalued, but the company is not a house of cards.
So I think it's an unfair analogy right there.
So I understand the comparisons.
For someone who doesn't want his name in the news, he's putting himself out there.
He's drawing that analogy right there.
So will Tesla go down?
Kind of like what you said, how long with the time rise in there?
Yeah, it might go down.
But the backbone of the company and the idea and the leader of the company clearly is on the right side.
Let me ask you guys a question.
Mario, you do your point, and then I'll throw a question.
Because my question is: what if Elon said, I want to put more time into SpaceX, into digging tunnels, and he stepped away from Tesla?
What would that do to the stock price?
If he wasn't day-to-day and he backed off a little, I think that would be bigger than anything, probably.
Well, he's propping up a lot of companies just by tweeting stuff.
So, yeah, I mean, if you step down, like kind of like how Gates stepped down, I'm sorry, Bezos stepped down from Amazon.
What would happen to the stock price at Tesla?
Mario.
No, somebody in the comments, and I lost it, so many comments on there, but I agree with Adam in this sense because there are very different scenarios.
There are different companies in this sense.
But the keywords for me are remarkably similar, but similar in terms of what he's seen in the economy market.
What's not similar to me is the individual.
And I don't like to bet against a visionary.
You know, I wouldn't bet against an Elon because we've seen his character.
And I'll never forget the quote I've heard of: if you want to test a man's character, give him power.
Well, Elon Musk is sitting on some pretty big checks right now.
He's sitting with a lot of power.
What are we watching him do?
Right?
So that's that part of it.
The other part is, you're right with the housing stuff, you had a lot of fraud.
You had a lot of crappy leaders.
You had some executives at the top that are just dirty, the kind of people that you don't want leading companies, and they destroy the market at that point.
I agree.
I do think Elon is kind of like that Tony Stark individual.
So I wouldn't bet against you guys.
You're saying to your other point, money doesn't change you.
Money exposes who you really are.
It enhances who you already are.
Exactly.
Yeah.
Exactly.
By the way, best movie to watch on the housing crash and just the whole 2008 financial meltdown is Margin Call.
Have you ever seen that movie?
The cast in that movie is so phenomenal.
Demi Moore, Jeremy Irons.
Kevin Spacey.
Kevin Spacey.
It is a phenomenal movie.
Everybody, if you haven't seen that one, check that out.
All right.
Let's get on to the next topic, but good stuff right there.
All right.
So let's talk about two towns or cities or states that are trending certainly in different directions.
Here we go.
We're talking about obviously New York City and then our previous home state of Dallas, Texas.
Manhattan and Brooklyn new lease signings surge in January.
Both boroughs had the most new leases during the month of January since 2008, since right before the housing crisis.
The number of leases of new leases signed in Manhattan are up 57% from January last year.
Meanwhile, Brooklyn had a 46% increase from January 2020.
So both boroughs are up almost 50%, if not a little bit more.
Where's the rest of this story?
Hold on.
Bear with me, guys.
Tell you what, I wasn't expecting to hear these headlines.
About what's going on here.
Here we go.
Both boroughs have seen increases in new lease signings, which does not include lease renewal.
So new leases, because of the continued decline, quote unquote, because of the continued decline in net effective median rent, record concessions, and high vacancy, aka rent prices are going down.
Throughout the course of the coronavirus pandemic, New Yorkers have been fleeing the big apple, don't we know it, to live in suburbs and other states, wink, wink, Florida, all together.
And because of that flight, rental prices go down.
This is supply and demand.
This is economics 101.
Median rental prices in Manhattan are down 16% compared to last year.
And median rental prices in Brooklyn are down 13%.
So basically, rent went down because people were moving the hell out of there, supply and demand.
The enhanced affordability, here's a quote right here.
The enhanced affordability caused a surge in new lease signings since September as tenants move around the city looking for better deals.
You're bipping, you're bopping, you're moving around looking for a deal.
And inbound migration has expanded.
Kai, I know we talked about this yesterday.
How much does it cost to rent a one-bedroom in New York City?
Most expensive city in the country.
So we found on average, the number was $2,375 for $2,400.
That's right now.
That was, I believe that was right now.
And what was it last year?
We saw there was a 21% decrease from last year.
So right now you're talking about $2,700, $2,800 for a one-bedroom in New York City.
You're paying almost $3,000.
Okay.
So New York's making a comeback.
Is that what's happening right now?
Is this a good sign the pandemic?
I mean, what's happening in New York?
It's a great sign.
I mean, we need New York to be strong.
Not everybody can move to Palm Beach County.
I just drove through it.
We're here in Palmer.
You went to Boyne, you went to Boca.
You drove back.
Yeah, I mean, there's not enough room for everybody to come to Palm Beach.
And Worth Avenue isn't big enough for everybody to shop on that street as opposed to Fifth Avenue.
I think this is great.
This is encouraging.
I mean, it's depressing to me to think that New York was struggling the way it was.
I went to New York in February, right before pandemic.
Literally, right before.
Yeah, literally right before, and just walking around Times Square and Broadway and everything.
Packed.
No, no, I can already sense a little change in February.
New York was last year.
Garbage was everywhere.
And that's just leadership in that city that we could go on about the Blasio.
But we need America to be strong.
Or, I mean, excuse me, for New York City to be strong.
It would destroy the country if New York were to continue to decline like they were last year.
It's still the hub for advertising, for finance, and for a lot of media and for a lot of major important things in this world.
So I'm excited to hear encouraging news like this.
Exciting.
New York making a comeback.
Are you ready to move to New York?
What do you got, Kai?
Let's do it.
No, I think, but I definitely think I agree with Tom in the sense that it's good news because obviously it's a turning point because all the other stories we've been talking about in New York is them leaving.
This person left.
That person left.
That company moved.
This company.
Of my closest friends who moved down here from New York, he said every single one of his single friends moved to South Florida.
Every single one.
He said, All the married people with kids, they stayed there.
Yeah, you're a little bit more tied down.
People are established, you know, you're living in Long Island, whatever.
But he said every single one, they had the opportunity to move.
He's like, Yeah, they're all down here in Miami.
They're out there.
They're out in Brickle.
They're out in South Beach.
They got the hell out of there.
But it seems like a year later almost, reality sitting back in New York.
New York's not dying.
I mean, Jerry Seinfeld did a big thing like New York ain't going nowhere.
Okay.
Don't bet against that.
But that was more a pep talk that he was giving at the time because it was going somewhere.
It was going south.
And he kind of needed, he almost sounded like he was delusional saying that.
But this is good.
A positive sound like this can only have ripple effects for the rest of the year.
Well, I'll tell you what, man.
If you told me a year ago, one year ago, because usually in the summers, so I've been doing the remote work thing like before it was like WFA, work from anywhere, WFH, work from home.
I've been working from home, working from anywhere for like almost 10 years now.
Like people have been wondering, how do you do that?
Like remote thing before it was in vogue right now.
And I said, so every before the word or expression was invented.
Ooh, before you're even born, bro.
Four hour work.
Before you've been born, exactly.
And so usually in the summers, I would at, well, at one point I was dating a girl from London, so I would spend some time in London.
We'd do the Europe thing.
But I always love New York.
So if you told me a year ago, and I would spend summers in New York as well, if you told me a year ago, where will you be living during this pandemic, this summer, and the options were New York City or Addison, Texas, I would have been like, bro, it's not what?
You even freaking talking about it?
Everything changed.
Things have changed.
Things have changed since the pandemic.
So it's good to see New York City making a comeback.
I mean, save that money, move around, find a spot that, you know, things.
I mean, things are on sale.
Vacancy is down or vacancy is up.
So, I mean, it's, it's.
Yeah, but crime's up.
And that's what they got to get their handle on.
I mean, crime is way up.
Is crime up in New York?
Really?
Hell yeah.
Yeah.
LA?
Big time.
LA, big time.
Okay.
Thank you, Sam.
All right.
So shifting gears here, we're talking about New York City.
Now let's talk about Texas.
What the hell is going on in our former home state of Texas?
So more than 2.8 million Texans are without power as the state battles an unprecedented winter storm.
Well, the entire country is battling a winter storm, but it seems like Texas right now is the poor child for what the hell this weather is doing.
So frigid temperatures in Texas are causing a surge in electricity demand and leading to rolling power blackouts across the countries.
Across the country's second largest state, which prompted President Joe Biden to declare a state of emergency in Texas earlier this week, at least 2.8 million Texans have experienced power outages as of 2 p.m. local time.
That was Monday.
When Hurricane Harvey, a category 4 storm, made landfall in Texas four years ago, almost 400,000 Texans lost power.
So look at those numbers.
400,000 during a hurricane, and now almost 3 million right now in Texas.
The National Weather Service tweeted early Monday morning, earlier this week, that the temperature at its base had reached minus 2 degrees Fahrenheit, the coldest temperature recorded in over 32 years.
It is currently negative 2 degrees Fahrenheit in Texas.
We got out just in time.
Kai, what the hell's going on in Texas, bro?
No, I definitely think this is crazy.
And last time they recorded temperatures like this, I think it was in 1930s and then right around 1900s.
I mean, obviously it's unprecedented.
If we see here what Mario pulled up, Texas, top area by outages, 496,000 homes.
You're looking at, as of last night, 2.7 million people were still without power, which is just wild.
Now, in Texas.
Now, why is this happening?
From what I've been reading, it's a lot of that Texas is on its own power grid, and that power grid has been having issues.
And given that it's its own system, they can't just lend excess power coming from other states the same way as normally.
Yeah, if this happens in another state, they can take in power from another state.
They can come in and help it.
They can't do it.
They're isolated in Texas.
They have their own grid.
So we always hear stories about Texas is going to secede from the Union.
Texas is his own republic.
Texas will do what it wants.
Not today.
What's up now, Texas?
The listen is easy.
It's not that.
We always hear stories.
I haven't heard that in a long time.
So where did you hear these stories?
Where'd I hear what stories?
Texas wants to expand.
What do you mean?
This was like the story.
We covered this on the podcast that I had a few months ago.
I don't hear it that often, but it does come up, but I don't hear it that often.
We covered this.
Did we not cover this on the podcast?
What was the big story in the news about Texas a few months ago?
It was a possibility.
Right before the election.
Possibility of seceding.
They were thinking about it.
Governor Abbott.
Are you defending Texas?
I'm not defending Texas.
I'm a former Texas boy.
Buddy, you're a Florida boy now.
You enjoyed this 80-degree weather, okay?
I'll ship you.
I will ship you back to Texas negative two degrees.
There'll be a Guatemalan in Texas with no boots on.
No boots on the ground.
I'll have a scarf.
Did you guys hear what Elon Musk tweeted?
So the Texas Electrical Grid Operator is called Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the E-R-C-O-T.
And Elon Musk tweets out they're not earning that R for reliability because all the power is out.
Not exactly an endorsement, but this is a serious, serious issue.
I mean, I wonder how many people have died.
I mean, I feel old people.
How are you checking on old people in this?
I mean, I don't know.
I don't know your uncle, but what's going on with them?
It's a wood-burning stove or a wood-burning fireplace.
So they're okay.
They could crank up some heat.
You know, Tesla's, I guess this is.
Can you show some images, like actual images of what Dallas looks like or Houston looks like of what Houston had snow.
Of the snow?
I mean, this is unwe'd never see something like that.
I remember one time because I was living in Texas, in Dallas, from one afternoon, Sunday.
That one Sunday afternoon, it started snowing.
Yep.
And as soon as it came, it just melted.
But I was like, what's going on here?
This is what Texas looks like right now.
Just cover it is a huge title.
This looks like it's freaking Minneapolis right here.
Tom's hometown.
Looks like it's Minneapolis.
Look at this.
What?
That's Tigron's backyard.
Yeah, and the problem in a city like Texas.
Spring Valley Road.
That's right by the office.
Beltline, literally.
Beltline Road.
I lived on Beltline Road.
You know what I did?
This might have helped keep people warm.
I left my apartment.
I burned that shit to the ground.
I said, I'm out of this apartment.
I will never be at this building again.
V V and M, they're coming after me.
They actually pulled off.
They built a soyman.
A snowman.
A soyman.
Nice.
Well played.
Well played.
But bottom line is we are thinking about our friends in Texas.
Yep.
Genuinely, we're thinking about all our friends at PHP.
We're thinking about people who are suffering through this cold weather right now.
We're not used to this, and we're rooting for you guys.
The wholesale price of electricity in Houston went from $22 a megawatt hour to $9,000.
Yeah, their natural gas supply has been cut off.
And imagine your home and your power goes off for 10 minutes.
You freak out.
So my hearts are with everybody in Texas that is dealing with this right now.
I hope it gets turned around quickly.
I hope they can fix this reliability grid that they have because it has in the area.
At some point, this weather will return, and you just can't have this.
Not in a state as progressive as Texas.
It affects so many lives.
Plus, when you have snow like this, these cities aren't equipped with snowplows.
Minneapolis can handle it.
Milwaukee can handle it.
Infrastructure can be counted.
Yeah.
It's impossible.
Dallas got caught off guard.
Caught off guard.
And enough of the seceding talk, all right?
We don't want to piss Mario off with that.
But that was a one-time thing.
Apparently, enough of this.
And you wonder, like, Elon Musk sends out that tweet.
I wonder if he – now, granted, you just don't make a fly-by-night decision to say I'm moving to Texas.
You have to think that through, but this doesn't help the recruiting, right?
For the people that are moving to Texas.
I mean, it exposes the fact that, you know, what it says.
Snow's there.
This helps.
This helps the recruiting to Florida.
You might say that.
Does Florida not look like the best state in the union right now?
As of now.
As of now.
Wow.
We did it.
It's hard to do.
Guys, we did it.
We got to Florida.
Well, I didn't agree yet.
I mean, Florida's great.
I mean, it's fine.
Are you going to say California?
You've been talking trash about California.
California still.
California.
We all know that.
Guys, this is the Bette David podcast.
We are thinking of our fearless leader and CEO, Patrick Bett David.
We want to thank him.
Number one, we want to wish him safe travel.
Comment here says 2% wants to secede, Adam.
Okay, good.
I'd like to keep it at 1%.
I'd like to keep it at 0%.
I'd like to keep all 50 states in the union.
Anyway, back to PBD.
He's traveling right now.
He'll be back.
I want to say later this afternoon, we'll check in with Pat.
We're thinking of him.
He just came back from Kentucky or is on his way back from Kentucky.
We want to thank Pat for entrusting us to be at the helm while he's gone.
I feel like Borad said, I'm the king of the Kessel, king of the Kessel right now.
But we've had a good time.
Final thoughts here, guys, before we shut this thing down.
Yeah, Adam, I got to say, this is a tough job.
You don't just don't sit into Pat's chair there.
It's a tough gig.
So good job running the show today.
Thank you, buddy.
Keep the show really fluid and good job.
Thanks for everybody to tune in.
And, you know, I will just say this, a quick little plug.
You know, a lot of these stories we cover every single day on VTPost.com.
So if you like the topics here, we literally, a lot of these ideas come from the stories that we write on VTPost.com.
Our whole team here does a great job with social media.
So if you haven't discovered it yet, go there.
And then take that next leap and become a VIP premium subscriber because we have extra special content for you, a whole bunch of prizes that's a dollar a month.
You kidding me?
And we cater this news site for people like you that want the facts, they want the news, they want to be entertaining.
They see people going with their day.
So it's vtpost.com.
We welcome you.
And if you haven't discovered us yet, come find us.
And he's the editor-in-chief.
We got him here.
He's on the show.
He's right here.
And speaking of editor-in-chief, we got the young Buck Kai.
He used to be the editor-in-chief of research.
Now you're talent, bro.
How does it feel?
Final thoughts being talent these days.
No, it's all good.
It's all good.
We're out here.
We're holding it down.
Kai, wait a minute.
Kai, way to undersell.
See if you got anything.
Way to undersell that, Kai.
Anyways, I just wanted to thank you guys.
Adam, I just got a text from Patrick Bet David, and he said, Are you ever going to make your point on today's podcast?
Here we go.
What's your point with that?
That's right.
What's your point with that?
Well, Pat, we love you.
We're thinking of you.
Thank you for entrusting us to hold down the podcast.
Pat will be back.
So for anyone being like, what the hell is this soy boy freaking guy doing on there?
