True Anon Truth Feed - Episode 277: Unbank Yourself
Aired: 2023-03-20
Duration: 01:14:46


=== Clearing the Air (02:52) ===

[00:00:00]  Hey guys, kind of need to sort of clear things up before we get started with this episode.
[00:00:08]  So as many of you know, Liz and I and Young Chomsky are out South by Southwest and an incident occurred, which I feel like we need to kind of grapple with before we really like continue on this venture and build and grow with you guys.
[00:00:23]  Listen, look, I don't want to be doing this.
[00:00:26]  Brace doesn't want to be doing this.
[00:00:27]  Young Chomsky, well, he doesn't really need to.
[00:00:30]  Yeah, he's not really doing much here.
[00:00:32]  But I think, look, I was the last, the last person to think that we would be here saying this to you guys.
[00:00:39]  But we really care about transparency and we really, really care about accountability.
[00:00:43]  Oh, God.
[00:00:44]  And sorry.
[00:00:46]  No, but seriously, Brace, let's take it seriously because I don't want to retake this.
[00:00:54]  You know, we should be up front with everyone.
[00:00:57]  I hooked up with one of the robot dogs.
[00:01:00]  What?
[00:01:01]  Yeah, I did.
[00:01:01]  And I know there's been...
[00:01:03]  That's where you went with that.
[00:01:04]  I was setting you up and I was like, this man's going to hit a dunk.
[00:01:07]  And you went robot dog sex.
[00:01:09]  I hooked up.
[00:01:09]  I didn't.
[00:01:10]  Whoa.
[00:01:10]  Okay.
[00:01:11]  I didn't have sex with the robot dog.
[00:01:13]  I hooked up with it, sexually.
[00:01:39]  Hey y'all, what's up?
[00:01:41]  We are just kidding.
[00:01:42]  We didn't do anything.
[00:01:44]  Oh, my God.
[00:01:45]  First of all, South by Southwest would burn our application.
[00:01:48]  They'd say, no, thanks.
[00:01:50]  There's podcasts there.
[00:01:52]  What are they doing there?
[00:01:53]  I don't know.
[00:01:53]  Fucking talking.
[00:01:54]  Yeah.
[00:01:55]  Yeah.
[00:01:55]  Well, that's.
[00:01:56]  I would hope so.
[00:01:58]  Question.
[00:01:58]  Yeah, answered.
[00:01:59]  What do you think about those robot dogs?
[00:02:00]  They're freaky looking hot.
[00:02:02]  You've known my thing on this.
[00:02:03]  And listeners of the show should know this.
[00:02:05]  I have started killing real dogs so that when robot dogs do become a member of the police force and I'm forced to fight back against them in a Terminator, like one of the later Terminator movie kind of scenarios, I will have no hesitation in pulling the trigger.
[00:02:20]  Oh, I thought you were going to say you could dress up as one large dog in the skin sword.
[00:02:24]  Why the dogs that you killed?
[00:02:25]  That's, that's, see, this, look at, that's weird that you thought that.
[00:02:30]  Yeah, I kind of went to some weird kind of like robots of any kind.
[00:02:35]  But no, we, we.
[00:02:36]  Coperni, the like French label, they had those, um, what is it called?
[00:02:40]  What is, uh, I have no idea.
[00:02:42]  What are the robot dog company called?
[00:02:44]  Boston Dynamics.
[00:02:44]  Yeah.
[00:02:45]  They had those Boston Dynamic ones on the runway.
[00:02:47]  So like Bella Hadith's like walking out like and then they had the robot dynamics dogs out there and it's like, yeah, we get it.

=== Boca's FDIC Insured Mystery (15:13) ===

[00:02:53]  Oh my God, it's crazy.
[00:02:54]  Oh my God, the future is so great.
[00:02:56]  These things are ugly.
[00:02:57]  Disgusting.
[00:02:57]  Weird.
[00:02:58]  The Hadid sisters?
[00:03:01]  I mean, yeah, well.
[00:03:03]  I have no comment.
[00:03:04]  I have no comment either on that.
[00:03:06]  Hello, everyone.
[00:03:07]  Hello.
[00:03:07]  I'm Liz.
[00:03:08]  My name is Brace, inventor of Whoa, whoa, whoa, Witch House.
[00:03:12]  And of course, we have with us producer Young Chomsky.
[00:03:15]  Is that a self-defining?
[00:03:16]  No, there was one band.
[00:03:18]  Yeah.
[00:03:18]  It was just Salem.
[00:03:20]  But I will say the Witch House aesthetic I disliked at the time.
[00:03:24]  Same.
[00:03:26]  I feel like that is the general, like, I don't know what to call it.
[00:03:30]  Is it hyper pop?
[00:03:31]  It's like when someone spends too much time on the internet, but they also have to like music.
[00:03:35]  That's the kind of music those people like.
[00:03:37]  To me, that's like what Witch House was.
[00:03:39]  I like this theory, but can you expand a little bit?
[00:03:41]  You know how Witch House was like that thing that happened?
[00:03:45]  I mean, you know, it was of its time.
[00:03:48]  It was like 2011, right?
[00:03:49]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:03:50]  I feel like that, obviously, like SoundCloud rap, like the kind of like emo white guy thing kind of came out of that, that part of it.
[00:03:59]  But then also, I feel like that was a heavy influence on like the internet, like Instagram people music.
[00:04:04]  Oh, I see.
[00:04:05]  Which is just a fucking another world to me.
[00:04:07]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:04:08]  Totally other people.
[00:04:08]  I don't understand.
[00:04:10]  Almost all of it, unlistenable.
[00:04:12]  I love Bo Diddley.
[00:04:14]  I've been going crazy about Bo Diddley lately.
[00:04:16]  As you should.
[00:04:17]  Yeah, I love, because Rincon turned me on to one of his albums to the 70s.
[00:04:22]  And I've just been mid-period Bo Diddley is incredible.
[00:04:25]  That's nice to hear.
[00:04:26]  He only had that one.
[00:04:27]  I like that.
[00:04:27]  A little hot tip for listeners.
[00:04:28]  Yeah.
[00:04:29]  Shaving a haircut, two bits.
[00:04:33]  Liz.
[00:04:34]  What's up, Frieze?
[00:04:36]  You know how we talk about the show about debunking a lot.
[00:04:39]  Debunking?
[00:04:39]  Debunking.
[00:04:41]  We've debunked.
[00:04:42]  We've bunked and debunked.
[00:04:43]  I like debunk and debunk.
[00:04:46]  But what about debanking?
[00:04:49]  Debanking.
[00:04:50]  Debanking.
[00:04:51]  My new rapper named Debanking.
[00:04:52]  Debanking.
[00:04:56]  It's a hot topic.
[00:04:57]  Well, last week we had Jacob Silverman on the show.
[00:05:00]  R.I.P. He was struck.
[00:05:03]  We had, I think I mentioned this, but I'm going to say it again.
[00:05:06]  We had scheduled that interview.
[00:05:07]  We were so excited to have him on.
[00:05:08]  We were so excited to talk about crypto.
[00:05:09]  And then as we were interviewing, as we're chatting with him, Silicon Valley Bank, Kaput collapsed, taken over by the FDIC.
[00:05:22]  We didn't really talk about it that much last week.
[00:05:24]  We talked about it a little, but it was a developing story and it hadn't developed into maturity.
[00:05:29]  The bonds hadn't matured yet.
[00:05:31]  No, the bonds had not matured yet.
[00:05:33]  The bonds hadn't matured yet.
[00:05:34]  And so I think we should kind of dive in a little bit to what happened because there's a lot of kind of interesting angles to this, pretty much all of which are bad.
[00:05:46]  So we got to start from the beginning.
[00:05:49]  Father Junipero Serra and the Spanish conquest of California.
[00:05:56]  Okay, well, well did you have to learn about all the missions in school?
[00:06:00]  Yeah, I did.
[00:06:01]  That guy was a real, I will say the worm turning on that guy was well deserved.
[00:06:06]  He was not a nice guy.
[00:06:07]  No, he was not.
[00:06:08]  Anyways, Silicon Valley Bank, right?
[00:06:12]  Yes.
[00:06:12]  SBV, SVB, excuse me.
[00:06:14]  And I want to say here, I already fucked it up, but here's the thing.
[00:06:18]  It has not been a great year for three initials.
[00:06:22]  It has been really rough.
[00:06:24]  And this is a true and on financial.
[00:06:26]  This is financial advice, just as everything we've said on every episode and especially on this episode will be.
[00:06:32]  This is not.
[00:06:33]  If you have your money in something with three initials in it, and that goes for us too, FBI Pension Fund, take it out.
[00:06:43]  Yeah, take it out.
[00:06:45]  Thank God that Sam Bankman Fried did not bank at Silicon Valley.
[00:06:49]  I mean, there's just too many.
[00:06:51]  They'd be fucked.
[00:06:51]  And thank God that Bank of America puts against, I believe, usually conventions of naming of the, you know, what do you call it when you shorten the, you know, the abbreviations.
[00:07:04]  Use the O.
[00:07:05]  Yeah, Bofa.
[00:07:06]  Bofa.
[00:07:06]  Bofa, what?
[00:07:08]  So Silicon Valley Bank was a bank started in the 1980s, a small bank that mainly served the technological sector.
[00:07:16]  And as far as I can tell, about 2,500 venture capitalist firms, which is kind of a lot.
[00:07:23]  They're the 16th largest lender in the United States.
[00:07:26]  Clients are mostly high-tech firms.
[00:07:28]  Etsy banked there and Roku famously banked there, which Roku, I got to say, came out of this.
[00:07:34]  They've been keeping it quiet kind of since Roku rolled out, but yeah, they have.
[00:07:38]  Yeah, I got something to say about Roku.
[00:07:41]  This bank had some money in it.
[00:07:43]  Yeah, they had a good amount of fucking money in this bank.
[00:07:46]  I mean, as we're going to talk about it, it was a lot of tech firms, like you said, and they were keeping large deposits.
[00:07:52]  In fact, so large that about $150 billion out of the $175 billion in the bank were over the FDIC insured limit.
[00:08:04]  That would be most of the accounts in the bank, right?
[00:08:06]  So I think I want to stop right here, first of all, and say FDIC insured limit.
[00:08:12]  Yes.
[00:08:12]  Whenever I enter a bank shirtless and I go up to the counter and say, you are so fucking beautiful to the lady there or the guy, you know, I don't care.
[00:08:21]  I look and I see the bank will always say it's FDIC insured.
[00:08:24]  Yes.
[00:08:25]  And that, from what I understand, means that if I have an amount of money that I got from selling cocaine in there that's from under, that's under $250,000, a quarter of a million dollars, that money is insured by the government so that if the bank goes belly up, I still have that money.
[00:08:44]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:08:45]  Okay.
[00:08:45]  Yeah.
[00:08:46]  Just making sure.
[00:08:46]  Yeah, the limits used to be about $100,000, and they were raised actually after the financial crisis in 2008 to 250K.
[00:08:54]  That's where I lost my shirt.
[00:08:56]  Yeah, but you always want to stay at one of these FDIC insured banks for sure.
[00:09:02]  So there were about 37,000 customers accounting for that, accounting for those uninsured deposits, which is not that many.
[00:09:14]  Meaning that the average account was like over $4 million of those uninsured deposits.
[00:09:20]  So we're talking about like big fucking accounts, right?
[00:09:23]  Yeah.
[00:09:24]  It's not like, I think that there's like some weird, you know, it's not like your grandma's savings account.
[00:09:31]  Yeah.
[00:09:32]  It's literally Roku, Etsy, these big companies.
[00:09:34]  My grandmother is Roku.
[00:09:37]  Keeping $5 million in like a checking account, a savings account, which is very weird.
[00:09:43]  So around three years ago, a pangolin working in what's called a bat lab, which is also known as a night lab, which is a lab that only functions at night.
[00:09:54]  It's kind of like a cool nightcluby thing, RBG lights and stuff in there, in China released a virus, right?
[00:10:03]  The entire world shuts down.
[00:10:05]  And for some reason, the economy starts doing really good for high tech people.
[00:10:11]  In that amount of time, in the past three years, Silly Con Valley Bank more than tripled the amount of deposits that it had in there.
[00:10:19]  So it went from being like, you know, a decently big bank to being like a pretty big bank in terms of being a community small bank.
[00:10:27]  Yeah.
[00:10:27]  You know what I mean?
[00:10:28]  Yeah.
[00:10:29]  A lot of people have blamed that rise in deposits on some of the PPE, PPP loans, PPE, PPP loans.
[00:10:37]  I kind of like don't really buy that.
[00:10:39]  I think most of it was because, you know, like you said, the economy went crazy boom because the Fed back then cut interest rates real low.
[00:10:47]  Yeah.
[00:10:47]  Right.
[00:10:48]  Basically 0% interest rates.
[00:10:51]  And everyone was just lending, lending, lending.
[00:10:54]  So VCs were flush with cash that they were pouring into all of these companies.
[00:10:59]  Right.
[00:11:00]  So the bank is just taking in, raking in all this fucking money in the past three.
[00:11:04]  I mean, tripling the size of their deposits in there.
[00:11:06]  That's pretty big.
[00:11:07]  Yeah.
[00:11:08]  And the thing is, is that this bank, I mean, look, they had deep, deep relationships in the Valley.
[00:11:12]  Yeah.
[00:11:12]  And they'd been there for a long time, like you said, like since the 80s.
[00:11:15]  And they actually survived the first dot-com crash.
[00:11:19]  Unless.
[00:11:19]  Which a lot of people didn't.
[00:11:20]  Yeah.
[00:11:20]  Diapers, pets.
[00:11:24]  But they were so, the way to think of them is kind of like, not like Bofa, not like Chase.
[00:11:30]  I don't understand what you mean by that, but yeah, okay.
[00:11:32]  But like a merchant bank.
[00:11:33]  Yeah.
[00:11:34]  Okay.
[00:11:35]  Like for the most highly concentrated group of entrepreneurial assholes in history.
[00:11:40]  Is that an Adderall thing?
[00:11:41]  Like you're doing like a joke?
[00:11:43]  I mean, yeah, a bunch of fucking hopped up techies.
[00:11:46]  But like for this very specific, specific industry.
[00:11:50]  Yes.
[00:11:50]  That's like the bank.
[00:11:51]  Yes.
[00:11:52]  So like imagine this.
[00:11:54]  You're a startup.
[00:11:55]  Yeah.
[00:11:55]  Right.
[00:11:55]  You're a small business.
[00:11:56]  You got this idea.
[00:11:57]  You're like, damn, I wish that I could make color-blocked workout gear that also could offer you a delicious Adderall Soda.
[00:12:10]  So I'm going to cut you off right there and say, you're thinking 2019 startups.
[00:12:15]  Now, the product that we make is so arcane, unusable, and like some bizarre, like part of some small part of some payment process or thing that you will never use.
[00:12:28]  We're not making any physical thing, but okay, we're making leggings.
[00:12:32]  Well, okay, when that, when you guys want to seek financing, right, oftentimes, and you go to like a venture capital, okay, yeah, okay, yeah, go to a venture capital firm.
[00:12:41]  Often, what would happen with their relationship with SVV is they'd say, okay, we're going to give you this, you know, 500, I don't know, $500, $600 million round of financing.
[00:12:53]  Sounds great, but as caveat, you need to put it all in Silicon Valley Bank.
[00:12:58]  And in return, Silicon Valley Bank would be like, thanks for the business, guys.
[00:13:02]  Love you.
[00:13:03]  You're our fam.
[00:13:03]  You're our community.
[00:13:04]  We love to support the community.
[00:13:06]  Let me help you out.
[00:13:07]  I'm going to get you tickets to Andreessen's dinner.
[00:13:12]  I get to go eat with Andreessen, Mark Andreessen.
[00:13:15]  Is that how you say his name?
[00:13:17]  He doesn't, famously, doesn't serve eggs at meals.
[00:13:20]  Because he could be the only one.
[00:13:23]  He's king eggs.
[00:13:24]  He finds it dominant, like it's like a domination alpha thing, but you know, I'm not like these guys.
[00:13:30]  Or whatever, you know, or oh, do you need help with the mortgage?
[00:13:32]  Or, oh, do you need, you know, whatever, you need a little like better financing from hook you up.
[00:13:38]  Well, their other thing, too, is this is this is such a Silicon Valley thing, right?
[00:13:42]  They also did a lot of financing for wineries that were started by founders or VCs.
[00:13:47]  Yeah, that must be nice.
[00:13:48]  And so that's like, I know, and that's, it's, they, that's like their business clientele.
[00:13:52]  So, you know, they sort of did this like a lot of founders, a lot of VCs had their personal checking accounts in this place, too.
[00:13:58]  Yeah.
[00:13:59]  You know, it was a community bank for possibly the most reprehensible community in North America.
[00:14:04]  Absolutely, absolutely.
[00:14:06]  I mean, you know, and you have to think about it too.
[00:14:08]  I mean, I don't want to like brag too much on it's so easy to go after the startup people.
[00:14:14]  And I have to say, we as a culture have for quite some time, deservedly.
[00:14:19]  Yeah.
[00:14:20]  But now maybe the time to clown on the VC people has come and we really need to go after them.
[00:14:24]  But I will say this about startup people.
[00:14:25]  A lot of them, they're young.
[00:14:27]  They're out of Stamford.
[00:14:28]  They're just trying to, you know, get by by selling like, you know, fake medical supplies, whatever fucking Thera is doing.
[00:14:37]  But the point is, a lot of them have never had checking accounts or bank accounts before.
[00:14:41]  They can't get loans for a house or a car or whatever from a traditional bank.
[00:14:46]  So this, you know, taking these conditions from Silicon Valley Bank seems like a sweet deal.
[00:14:52]  Absolutely.
[00:14:52]  Yeah.
[00:14:53]  Right?
[00:14:55]  So we should talk about what actually happened with this run on the bank because it happened really, really quickly, sort of shockingly quickly.
[00:15:04]  So up until last Wednesday, Silicon Valley Bank was regarded, I think, by most people, though it's later come out that some people knew that something was up maybe even a few months in advance.
[00:15:15]  But by most people who even knew what it was in the first place as a solid bank, right?
[00:15:22]  Good rating from Moody's.
[00:15:23]  You know, people were like, which don't get me a start on that.
[00:15:26]  I got to tell you, whoever came up with Moody's, whoever came up with these rating things, fucking cheese dog.
[00:15:33]  It was so great.
[00:15:35]  There was like some alert that was like, Moody's has now downgraded SVB.
[00:15:40]  It's like, it's already collapsing.
[00:15:42]  Yeah.
[00:15:42]  Moody's will downgrade it after the fact.
[00:15:44]  Thanks for the heads up, guys.
[00:15:45]  We should literally start our own one of those.
[00:15:47]  It seems like a way to print money.
[00:15:48]  It's easy.
[00:15:50]  Anyways, it's doing, you know, it's the bank.
[00:15:52]  You're still going to the bank.
[00:15:53]  You're still starting your little startup.
[00:15:55]  Till last Wednesday, there is a great conflagration.
[00:15:59]  There was a firefight!
[00:16:01]  Yeah.
[00:16:02]  Market closes.
[00:16:03]  They announced that they're raising capital to shore up liquidity, basically in a stock sale.
[00:16:07]  They're going to have a stock sale, a bunch of other things.
[00:16:09]  But this is not something you really want to hear from a bank.
[00:16:11]  You don't want to hear them being like, ah, we need to shore up liquidity.
[00:16:14]  It's sort of like, well, wait a second.
[00:16:16]  Short up liquidity.
[00:16:17]  So again, you know, I'm a guy.
[00:16:20]  I've had one.
[00:16:20]  I didn't get my first credit card until I was like 27 years old because I was too afraid of them.
[00:16:25]  And I'm still.
[00:16:26]  I'm still afraid of them.
[00:16:27]  And I got to tell you, everyone I knew who got a credit card when they were young is in insane credit card debt now.
[00:16:32]  Oof.
[00:16:34]  Yeah.
[00:16:34]  Well, it's, you know, it's what happens.
[00:16:36]  But you want your bank to have liquidity because from my understanding, liquid means money, right?
[00:16:43]  Yes.
[00:16:43]  One of the most important things for me, just like speaking personally as my soul, from my soul, a bank needs to have money.
[00:16:51]  Yeah.
[00:16:51]  Yeah.
[00:16:52]  You want that.
[00:16:53]  You don't want to hear that they need, that they're having a hard time shoring it up.
[00:16:56]  Because shoring up liquidity means you're trying to find money.
[00:17:00]  Yeah.
[00:17:00]  Right?
[00:17:01]  In English?
[00:17:02]  Okay.
[00:17:02]  Yeah.
[00:17:03]  I mean, the bank was like decently well capitalized, but there was like a couple changes it allegedly didn't anticipate, which we can talk about, but it basically needed a bunch of money.
[00:17:13]  Yeah.
[00:17:14]  So it sells around 20 billion in securities, taking, and when it says in this press release that they're selling the securities and we're going to take a $2 billion loss on that.
[00:17:23]  That's how badly they needed to shore up money.
[00:17:26]  Again, not a thing you want to hear.
[00:17:27]  That's not confidence building.
[00:17:29]  So I'm some little founder guy.
[00:17:31]  I'm a motherfucking laptop.
[00:17:33]  And I see this news.
[00:17:35]  Yeah.
[00:17:35]  And I'm like, well, how come they're so desperate for money right now that they're willing to take a $2 billion loss?
[00:17:42]  Right?
[00:17:43]  That would raise some hackles on my bank.
[00:17:45]  Yeah, and a bunch of people started getting nervous.
[00:17:48]  So then they see this like press release then comes out that Peter Thiel's founders fund is withdrawing its money out of the bank.
[00:17:56]  And kind of all hell breaks loose after that.
[00:18:00]  Yeah.
[00:18:01]  The next day the bank stock opens to like a 60% loss.
[00:18:05]  The following day it gets another 60% loss.

=== Banks In A Gold Rush (16:21) ===

[00:18:07]  I mean, it's just fucking nosediving.
[00:18:10]  And Twitter, where a lot of this stuff was kind of being reported on and talked about because it's all moving so fast.
[00:18:17]  I mean, it starts going crazy.
[00:18:20]  You start seeing people say like, I can't, you know, I can't get any money out.
[00:18:24]  There was like someone saying that they were logged into the account, their bank account, and the bank had turned it to view only.
[00:18:31]  I would have loved.
[00:18:32]  Just like fucking.
[00:18:34]  Just like my dream is to be the Ellis Island name-changing guy, to be the guy that during the bank collapse who's making the bank harder to use sounds like the most fun job ever.
[00:18:44]  Yeah, I mean, it is.
[00:18:45]  It's like very funny to laugh about.
[00:18:47]  Can you imagine that like moment of fear when you're logging into your bank account to wire all your money out and it's just like view only?
[00:18:55]  Yeah, and just like everyone else in the Toastly office is like in hushed silence, right?
[00:19:00]  And then the ding of your smart toaster oven goes off.
[00:19:04]  Toast is burning.
[00:19:06]  A bunch of CEOs showed up at like actual branches, including, I think, the like former Lyft CEO, like demanding to get their money out.
[00:19:17]  So it really was a kind of like, it's a wonderful life moment.
[00:19:20]  Yeah.
[00:19:20]  But with, again, the worst people that you could ever imagine.
[00:19:25]  So like we said on last week's podcast, by Friday morning, the FDIC swoops in, closes down the bank, it takes it into receivership.
[00:19:32]  Case closed.
[00:19:34]  I mean, I will say it was them coming in and doing that on a Friday.
[00:19:39]  It was before noon, I believe.
[00:19:42]  Real quick, they came in.
[00:19:44]  That's not usually how things are done.
[00:19:46]  Usually the FDIC waits until like close of business day to kind of let things calm down.
[00:19:50]  You know, it's all about calming expectations and perceptions.
[00:19:54]  And so much of what happens in the financial economy is like based on that.
[00:19:59]  And so it's all about calming everyone down.
[00:20:03]  That did not, I think them coming in as they did kind of shows how chaotic and unpredictable what was happening was.
[00:20:11]  They should have tweeted calm down.
[00:20:13]  Yeah, just say that.
[00:20:14]  It works.
[00:20:15]  Fellas, if you're in a fight, that's your number one.
[00:20:17]  That's all six chambers of the fucking revolver right there.
[00:20:21]  Yeah.
[00:20:21]  I mean, by Monday, the federal government, they announced that the depositors will be backstopping the accounts.
[00:20:26]  They are ensuring all the accounts even above the 250K threshold.
[00:20:29]  We can talk about that if we want.
[00:20:31]  And they announced this short-term kind of lending facility to help out other banks in order to prevent a run, trying to basically calm everyone down.
[00:20:40]  I will say, people don't seem very calm.
[00:20:42]  It's been about a week.
[00:20:43]  It's been almost a week, I guess, since this happened.
[00:20:46]  And the bank stocks are trading like penny stocks.
[00:20:49]  Everyone's kind of all over the place.
[00:20:51]  Well, I got to say, I think if there's one word that would describe the reaction to last week's and current events, but really the events of last week and last weekend, calm would be probably at the bottom of my list of words to use.
[00:21:06]  I think what we saw was one of the, I got to be honest, a very funny, but also kind of crazy freak out by some of the most annoying human beings ever pushed out of a vagina.
[00:21:25]  But let's head back into the vagina for a second here to talk about what happened, the vagina of time, and talk about what happened three years ago, the past few years, why this bank collapsed.
[00:21:43]  Yeah, okay.
[00:21:44]  So we, you know, we talked about this a little bit.
[00:21:46]  You know, deposits tripled since the beginning of COVID.
[00:21:49]  That's probably a good place to start.
[00:21:51]  Like, let's all go, let's get in the mindset.
[00:21:54]  Let's remember 2020.
[00:21:56]  Your favorite year, Brace.
[00:21:57]  I'm wearing Kentic Cloth.
[00:22:00]  I'm kneeling.
[00:22:01]  It's the U.S. Capitol.
[00:22:03]  Who's that to my right?
[00:22:04]  It's Nancy Pelosi.
[00:22:06]  That was crazy.
[00:22:09]  Yeah, people still love bringing that up, but I say not enough.
[00:22:12]  Leave it in the end.
[00:22:13]  More politicians.
[00:22:15]  Biden should have been in Kenticloth.
[00:22:17]  Yeah.
[00:22:18]  This was also around the same time that really annoying teenagers were posting like money printer go burn and like GameStop.
[00:22:26]  Remember, everyone's buying apes.
[00:22:28]  People are going crazy.
[00:22:29]  Yeah.
[00:22:30]  Everyone, basically, everyone was insane.
[00:22:32]  Yeah, saying that, like, you didn't buy an ape with me, but okay.
[00:22:36]  Like I said, venture capital was salivating.
[00:22:39]  They're, you know, borrowing is so cheap.
[00:22:40]  There's just fun money everywhere.
[00:22:42]  They're putting it left.
[00:22:43]  They're putting it right.
[00:22:43]  They're putting it at anything, you know.
[00:22:46]  And so VCs, they put a ton of money into startups.
[00:22:48]  Those startups, they, wow, they love banking at Silicon Valley Bank.
[00:22:52]  So nice.
[00:22:53]  So all their deposits go whoosh.
[00:22:55]  Now, what does the bank do when it's got all these deposits on its hands?
[00:22:58]  Well, it's a bank.
[00:22:59]  So it's got to go put them somewhere.
[00:23:00]  Right.
[00:23:01]  So, you know, it's not going to just sit on cash.
[00:23:04]  What is this?
[00:23:04]  No, it's got to get a return.
[00:23:06]  Yeah.
[00:23:07]  I never understood that, but yeah.
[00:23:09]  Well, yeah, because basically that's what banks do, right?
[00:23:11]  It's a classic arbitrage.
[00:23:13]  Yeah, they make money from your money.
[00:23:15]  Yeah.
[00:23:16]  That's how, how else would they make money?
[00:23:18]  They should just, for me, a bank should just be a literal giant room where money sits.
[00:23:23]  Yeah, well, we can talk about that.
[00:23:24]  But I mean, that's what banks do, right?
[00:23:26]  You put your money in the bank.
[00:23:28]  Yeah.
[00:23:29]  They give you like, I don't know, what, 0.1% interest on it.
[00:23:34]  It is.
[00:23:34]  It is.
[00:23:35]  And then they go invest it even at, you know, 1.5%.
[00:23:39]  They're making a nice little, nice little spread there, right?
[00:23:42]  Yeah.
[00:23:43]  Yeah.
[00:23:43]  That's how banks make money.
[00:23:44]  I know, but it should be illegal.
[00:23:46]  And also, like, there shouldn't be inflation because I think prices for all goods and services should be set by the government.
[00:23:53]  So, okay, back to SVB.
[00:23:55]  They have all those deposits, right?
[00:23:57]  And they're going to invest them in somewhere.
[00:23:59]  And so they put them in long-term investment securities.
[00:24:02]  Not a big deal.
[00:24:03]  Bonds, mortgage-backed securities, basically fixed-income debt vehicles.
[00:24:08]  Pretty standard stuff, I got to say.
[00:24:10]  Safe.
[00:24:10]  Yeah, safe.
[00:24:11]  Not a big deal.
[00:24:13]  Really quick, before we talk about what happened to those supposedly safe investment vehicles, we should say that in the midst of this, in the middle of this, before we get to 20, what year is it?
[00:24:25]  23?
[00:24:27]  There's a bit of regulatory failure we got to talk about.
[00:24:29]  The vaccine.
[00:24:31]  No, back in 2018, so before COVID, all this stuff.
[00:24:35]  Okay, yeah.
[00:24:35]  Congress rolled back a bunch of regulations for mid-sized banks, including regulations that govern entities like SVB.
[00:24:43]  Yeah, because I remember calling me crazy, right?
[00:24:48]  2008, big bank collapse.
[00:24:51]  Yes.
[00:24:52]  Every couple.
[00:24:54]  Yeah, it was a big deal, right?
[00:24:56]  Oh, no, no.
[00:24:59]  Oh, no.
[00:24:59]  The bank's got no money.
[00:25:01]  Bailout, very famous, you know, blah, blah.
[00:25:04]  We all know about it, right?
[00:25:05]  A big thing with that, right, is they were like, we got to make sure this can't happen again.
[00:25:10]  And they put all these laws in, right?
[00:25:11]  Yeah.
[00:25:13]  And then from what I understand, people were like, actually, we don't really need those laws.
[00:25:18]  Well, some of those laws we don't need.
[00:25:19]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:25:20]  I mean, basically, these mid-sized banks, pretty much, I guess, like, what, 100 to 250 billion caps, let's say, were like, come on.
[00:25:29]  You don't need to like, you don't need to judge us.
[00:25:31]  Like, we're J.P. Morgan Chase.
[00:25:33]  We're just, we're little small guys.
[00:25:35]  We're small.
[00:25:36]  We're so cute.
[00:25:36]  Why do you, why are you looking at me?
[00:25:38]  Why are you looking at me like that?
[00:25:40]  Oh, I guess I mostly invest.
[00:25:42]  Oh, Etsy keeps their money here.
[00:25:44]  Oh, it's so cute.
[00:25:46]  Roku does.
[00:25:48]  It's not anything crazy.
[00:25:50]  Yeah, so the whole thing was all these banks that are mid-sized banks, they're like, we're not systemic banks.
[00:25:56]  Yes.
[00:25:56]  So a systemic bank is a big ass bank that's part of the system.
[00:26:01]  The system that tries to control you.
[00:26:03]  No, but it's like, it's too big to fail kind of thing, right?
[00:26:06]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:26:07]  And so these banks were like, we're actually not too big to fail.
[00:26:10]  We can fail, but in exchange, there's less regulatory oversight.
[00:26:16]  There's less stress tests.
[00:26:18]  Yeah.
[00:26:19]  You know, you guys aren't coming down here breathing down our necks every other day, right?
[00:26:22]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:26:23]  Basically, like, we shouldn't be subject to the kind of strict capital requirements that these larger banks are subject to because we, you know, we don't have that kind of same systemic risk like the big, you know, the eight globally systemic banks that the U.S. has.
[00:26:40]  Well, a little guy, SVB CEO, that would be Silicon Valley Bank CEO, Greg Becker, was also chair of a tech lobbying group during this time called TechNet, which sounds fake, but is actually backed by basically the entire, I mean, Apple, Google, all these kind of things.
[00:26:58]  Etsy, actually.
[00:27:00]  And lobbied hard via that group and via, I think, another group that he was a part of, but part of this whole like sort of ecosystem of small banks essentially lobbying to get these regulations rolled back on these mid-sized banks.
[00:27:14]  Yeah, the big thing was that banks that really rely on short-term funding, like Silicon Valley Bank, they should be subject to stricter rules about what they've got on hand.
[00:27:25]  I mean, it makes sense, right?
[00:27:26]  Like if your deposit flow is more volatile, you should have to keep more capital on hand, easily like liquid assets on hand, because it's, you know, if it's if your deposits can increase or decrease really rapidly or really inconsistently.
[00:27:44]  You need to have some money there.
[00:27:45]  So what you're saying is if there's a chance that you got a kind of funky little deposit base that all this shit, they might need to all take their money out at some point because they're crazy people on the internet.
[00:27:55]  You need to have money to cover that.
[00:27:57]  Yeah.
[00:27:58]  What you're saying here is the bank needs money.
[00:28:00]  Yeah, all this stuff is like totally like, it sounds so stupid to keep repeating and say kind of like in different ways, but it's like, it all makes sense.
[00:28:09]  It's this, of course that should be the case.
[00:28:11]  Yeah.
[00:28:12]  But not for, you know, dear Greg Becker, who basically, like you said, lobbied Congress to get these rolled back and how and did.
[00:28:21]  Yeah, bipartisan support for a rollback of this stuff.
[00:28:25]  You know, there's a lot of past few days here.
[00:28:27]  I'm sure if you've been paying attention to this stuff, you've heard the clips of like Trump announcing these rollbacks and all that stuff.
[00:28:32]  But yeah, basically they were excluded from this like heavy stress tests and all these capital requirements.
[00:28:39]  Yeah, and I want to say too, like, I love clowning on Congress.
[00:28:43]  I mean, I don't even know what the fuck Congress does anymore.
[00:28:45]  Well, to me, it basically they're clowns themselves.
[00:28:48]  They are.
[00:28:49]  I know it's corny, but I hate, I fucking hate Congress.
[00:28:52]  Anyway.
[00:28:53]  We'll be talking about one of the dumbest motherfuckers in the day later.
[00:28:57]  But the Fed does bear some responsibility here because the Fed went above and beyond what Congress even recommended.
[00:29:05]  So much so that Brainerd, I feel, please don't make that.
[00:29:11]  Crazy ass name.
[00:29:13]  Brain nerd?
[00:29:14]  Yeah.
[00:29:15]  No.
[00:29:16]  He gives head in an erudite way.
[00:29:18]  She.
[00:29:19]  Okay, well, I can't say that joke then.
[00:29:22]  But she even wrote this crazy dissent on the Fed's decision on this, basically predicting every single thing that was going to happen with SVB.
[00:29:30]  And so the point is, is that the Fed and Congress, they basically gave these mid-sized banks, including Silicon Valley Bank, Silicon Valley Bank.
[00:29:39]  It's going to be real, that's real tough for me.
[00:29:41]  Yeah, Silicon Valley Bank.
[00:29:44]  They gave them basically the runway to grow rapidly without triggering any of the kind of liquidity requirements that would have like backstopped any of this kind of run from happening, or at least get them some additional scrutiny to stop this, right?
[00:30:08]  So like we said, over the next couple years, right?
[00:30:10]  Go back, the market goes bananas.
[00:30:13]  Crazy.
[00:30:13]  There's like all the IPOs, remember the IPO bonanza.
[00:30:16]  There's like basically a gold rush.
[00:30:18]  Phase.
[00:30:19]  Everyone is insane.
[00:30:20]  Yeah.
[00:30:22]  But then a dark cloud moves over Washington, D.C. Joseph Brandon Ebenezer Biden.
[00:30:32]  Hitler, as we call him where I'm from.
[00:30:34]  What's his middle name again?
[00:30:35]  Hitler.
[00:30:35]  Robinette.
[00:30:36]  Robinette.
[00:30:37]  Which, by the way, fully pause on that one.
[00:30:40]  Robinette?
[00:30:41]  Hey, because naming your male son middle name Robin is crazy enough.
[00:30:46]  But be like, what if there was a more female version of this?
[00:30:49]  Robinette?
[00:30:51]  Get out of here.
[00:30:52]  It sounds like a group of dancers, dancing birds.
[00:30:54]  The Robinettes.
[00:30:55]  That would be very cute.
[00:30:56]  Dancing birds.
[00:30:57]  I like that.
[00:30:58]  I'm thinking about that.
[00:31:00]  Does.
[00:31:00]  Yeah.
[00:31:01]  Anyway, he gets elected.
[00:31:03]  He puts an end to the party, right?
[00:31:05]  The war in Ukraine starts.
[00:31:06]  So sick.
[00:31:07]  The Fed announces that, oh, inflation, too crazy.
[00:31:11]  Now we've got to start raising rates.
[00:31:13]  And the party is over.
[00:31:17]  So what you're saying here is because of inflation, the funny money stops being funny and starts getting real and scary.
[00:31:25]  Kind of, yeah.
[00:31:25]  And there's just less, there's less.
[00:31:27]  I was thinking about this last night because we call it funny money or people call it frothy money.
[00:31:33]  There needs to be a one word for it.
[00:31:37]  And I thought of it, but I can't remember it now.
[00:31:39]  But it was either sputum or spiz.
[00:31:41]  I like spiz.
[00:31:42]  All right.
[00:31:42]  We're calling it spiz.
[00:31:44]  Yeah, too much spiz.
[00:31:45]  There was too much spiz everywhere.
[00:31:47]  It was getting everywhere.
[00:31:50]  So, okay, higher interest rates, right?
[00:31:52]  That does a couple things right off the bat when that happens, right?
[00:31:55]  That's last year.
[00:31:56]  One, startup valuations, they crater.
[00:31:59]  This starts breaking the tech sector.
[00:32:02]  All the IPO bonanza, that's over.
[00:32:05]  So that was, from what I understand, the big scam in the tech sector, right?
[00:32:08]  It's like the same kind of thing as the art world scam, where you get, you have this thing, and then you get someone to really overvalue it.
[00:32:15]  Yes.
[00:32:16]  And then you sell it.
[00:32:18]  Like in the case of like a painting, you know, you have your friend who's like an appraiser appraise it for way too much money and then you sell it.
[00:32:25]  Or in the case of a company, you get it appraised for way more than it has any right to be, and then you sell the shares at that inflated price.
[00:32:33]  Yes?
[00:32:34]  Yeah.
[00:32:34]  I mean, VCs, I got a lot to say about these assholes, but VCs are basically like trust.
[00:32:41]  First of all, they're just brokers.
[00:32:43]  All they're doing is connecting finance.
[00:32:45]  That's all they're doing and skimming off the top.
[00:32:47]  They're totally useless little worms on this economy.
[00:32:50]  But second of all, they're just house flippers.
[00:32:52]  That's all they're doing.
[00:32:54]  They're literally just like dressing up someone else's company and then flipping it through like IPOs or these like the SPAC vehicles that they basically invented.
[00:33:03]  Yeah, so sick.
[00:33:04]  We spacked.
[00:33:05]  Yeah, we spacked when there's spiz.
[00:33:07]  Yeah.
[00:33:08]  When there's spiz, we're spacking, baby.
[00:33:10]  But that's the thing is, so this was like bonanza time and then the bonanza comes to an end.
[00:33:15]  The spiz dries up as if it was on a sock.
[00:33:19]  And the fun times are over.
[00:33:24]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:33:25]  So all those bubbles pop.
[00:33:26]  The VCs start pulling back on funding as a result.
[00:33:30]  And, you know, it's not as cheap to borrow anymore because interest rates are up.
[00:33:34]  So all the financing gets tighter.
[00:33:35]  And at an institution like Silicon Valley Bank, which is, again, highly, highly concentrated amount of VC funded startup cash, that's basically their entire deposit base.
[00:33:48]  They're going to feel that pullback almost immediately.
[00:33:51]  Yeah.
[00:33:51]  Right.
[00:33:52]  And so cash inflows start slowing down all their bank accounts, you know, because what the thing is, is, you know, if you're running a company, and even as the spiz stops flowing, right?
[00:34:03]  You're still running your company.
[00:34:04]  You've still got the same like cash outflows.
[00:34:08]  You've still got PayPal.
[00:34:09]  I mean, you still got payroll.
[00:34:11]  Yeah.
[00:34:11]  You've still got, you know, all of like your costs.
[00:34:14]  You've got your burn rate, whatever.
[00:34:16]  Yeah, we're still inventing beans.
[00:34:17]  So that doesn't stop.
[00:34:19]  But like all of the deposits are getting drained.
[00:34:22]  They're not getting filled up as quickly as they were in the past with all the free money.
[00:34:27]  Yeah.
[00:34:28]  Please stop smiling.

=== Treasury Bonds Waning (11:24) ===

[00:34:29]  I just thought that was an interesting phrase.
[00:34:31]  You're making me say spiz.
[00:34:32]  I'm not making you say spiz.
[00:34:34]  I just think it's there needs to be one word for something instead of funny money.
[00:34:37]  I think it's too many words.
[00:34:38]  Now, the other thing that was the problem for this little bank, which is really not that little, is that when interest rates rise, bond prices fall, right?
[00:34:50]  Bonds have a fixed, you know, bonds are fixed interest income.
[00:34:53]  You know, they're locked in until maturation, until the end of their sort of their life cycle.
[00:34:59]  So the whole thing with the bond is this, right?
[00:35:01]  Because it's like the old lady way to invest.
[00:35:04]  That's from what I understand.
[00:35:06]  Yeah.
[00:35:06]  You're like, all right, I buy this government bond.
[00:35:09]  In 10 years, I get more money.
[00:35:13]  Well, yeah.
[00:35:14]  Well, so it's real safe, right?
[00:35:15]  Because so you buy a government bond, right?
[00:35:18]  And you, let's say it's a 10-year treasury.
[00:35:21]  Yeah.
[00:35:22]  And you get that, basically you pay $100.
[00:35:25]  So in 10 years, you're guaranteed to get $100 back.
[00:35:29]  And in the meantime, you're going to get a fixed interest rate as a payment annually.
[00:35:34]  That's called a coupon.
[00:35:36]  So you get locked in, 10-year rate.
[00:35:38]  I don't know.
[00:35:38]  Let's say you get locked in at like 1.5%.
[00:35:42]  So you get paid $1.50 a year.
[00:35:46]  Boy, yeah.
[00:35:47]  And then at the end of 10 years, you get your $100 back additionally.
[00:35:52]  And so that's, you know, individuals buy bond, people buy bonds, people are buying a lot of bonds right now.
[00:35:57]  And if you wanted to, we could set you up with an account on Treasury Trends.
[00:36:02]  You could, I mean, if you think that interest rates are going to go up, you could ladder, you could start laddering houses.
[00:36:07]  How would I think that?
[00:36:08]  Who would tell me that?
[00:36:09]  Are they going to?
[00:36:10]  Yeah, well, we can talk about it.
[00:36:11]  But so who really buys bonds are institutions.
[00:36:15]  Yeah.
[00:36:16]  Those are real big players.
[00:36:17]  Because they also have a lot of money, right?
[00:36:19]  Like you put $1,000 into a bond, you know, what?
[00:36:22]  You're getting peanuts.
[00:36:24]  You put $1 billion into a bond, you get a lot of money.
[00:36:27]  Well, and it's safe.
[00:36:27]  Yeah, it's safe.
[00:36:28]  Right?
[00:36:28]  And if, you know, so Silicon Valley Bank bought a lot.
[00:36:32]  I mean, if you're a bank, it's a great way to make money.
[00:36:34]  Like we said, it's that classic arbitrage play on deposits, you know?
[00:36:38]  So even at 1.5%, you're making bank because you're only charging or you're only paying out to the customer like 0.2% on their bank deposit.
[00:36:48]  So you're making great money, right?
[00:36:51]  But when the Fed raises interest rates, that means the value of long-term bonds, you know, it goes down.
[00:36:56]  So on their books, that declines.
[00:36:59]  And this wasn't like a secret.
[00:37:01]  You know what I mean?
[00:37:01]  Like people knew about this.
[00:37:02]  It's not like suddenly like CFOs at companies were like, wait a second, what?
[00:37:07]  And certainly not at banks.
[00:37:08]  Yeah.
[00:37:09]  Right?
[00:37:09]  So I mean, the Fed gives bondholders plenty of time to sell their books.
[00:37:12]  Like none of this comes as a surprise to anyone.
[00:37:14]  It's not like anyone's like caught flat-footed or whatever, right?
[00:37:17]  But it's, you know, for some reason, none of the kind of traditional hedging of duration risk that happens at other institutions happened at SVV.
[00:37:29]  And that seems like a complete failure on their part.
[00:37:32]  So you had in this moment, the bank getting squeezed on both basically their net interest margin and their deposit cash flow.
[00:37:41]  It was like kind of a perfect storm, right?
[00:37:43]  And so a lot of people in the Valley started to kind of notice that this was happening.
[00:37:47]  In fact, I mean, I've heard people say that this was like an open secret.
[00:37:50]  Everyone knew that this was a problem with the bank.
[00:37:52]  Yeah, if not longer.
[00:37:54]  And no one really seemed to care until they did.
[00:37:58]  And it seems like, from what I've heard from people in the financial press and others, that this was less of a total collapse than more of a targeted assassination.
[00:38:10]  Really?
[00:38:10]  Meaning that people who maybe should not be named, but who perhaps rhyme with Phil or Kiel or Neil, you know, people who have positions in things like neobanks or perhaps were interested in, you know, maybe they took some short positions that we don't know about, saw an opportunity and took it.
[00:38:34]  And that basically this was like a total hit job.
[00:38:37]  But it really did.
[00:38:38]  spark an insane run on this bank.
[00:38:40]  Well, I will say, just in terms of Teal, I sent you guys this earlier, but his anti-woke bank did collapse itself and closed down, I think, last year.
[00:38:52]  That's too bad.
[00:38:52]  If only could hang on a little bit longer.
[00:38:54]  Our money was in there, to be clear.
[00:38:57]  Well, just from our rumble streams.
[00:38:59]  Yeah.
[00:38:59]  Just his money that he gave us, that he put in there.
[00:39:02]  I feel like what was really interesting to me, and I feel like was kind of a good test for the general mood, was seeing the reactions of the VCs to all of this stuff, right?
[00:39:15]  And I feel like there was basically two main tracks that VCs or like tech people, but mostly VCs, took on this.
[00:39:24]  There was going crazy and trying to actively and publicly foment a bank run at other banks in order to assure that the feds would come in and sort of rescue everybody to basically to try to spread the very contagion that they themselves were warning against.
[00:39:41]  And then there was a sort of like backroom kind of thing, which we have a little less insight on.
[00:39:48]  But of course, all of these people, the thing with the VC is VCs also kind of act like politicians sometimes.
[00:39:56]  They assume themselves to be.
[00:39:58]  All of this was very public.
[00:39:59]  And many of them are former tech journalists too.
[00:40:03]  And so all of this was, of course, not leaked to the press, was like given to the press, and the press ate it up.
[00:40:09]  Because although VCs make very good villains, they're also very buddy-buddy with a lot of tech reporters and outlets and things of that nature.
[00:40:20]  So in trying to foment a bank run, I think this was the most publicly obvious stuff.
[00:40:27]  It became pretty obvious, at least by Friday afternoon, that there was a certain crowd of very loud – often it's kind of like the Jabba guard type people on the internet who were trying to spread panic and to get people to withdraw money in huge quantities from other banks in order to do the same thing.
[00:40:51]  Not even Silicon Valley Bank or First Republic, like any bank.
[00:40:55]  So the most notorious is Dave Sachs, of course, named after the famous Ball Sack.
[00:41:01]  Bill Ackman, which is, of course, named after what teenagers from many decades ago would have said if they had seen his ugly visage.
[00:41:09]  Mark Cuban, of course, named after this sandwich, which he has eaten many times, judging by his weight.
[00:41:16]  And Jason Kalakanas, who, of course, doesn't need to be named after anything.
[00:41:22]  But if there was to be another word for shit, such as the Inuit having 500 words for snow, if the English-speaking American had 500 words for shit, Kalakanas would make up 499 of them.
[00:41:35]  What is it?
[00:41:35]  Calakanis?
[00:41:36]  Calakanis.
[00:41:37]  But I call him Kalakanas.
[00:41:39]  Yeah, it is Calicanus.
[00:41:41]  So these guys were going fucking psycho.
[00:41:45]  I mean, tweeting with all caps.
[00:41:48]  Listen, I've tweeted at all caps many times.
[00:41:50]  Amazon, fire the person that delivered the packages that came to my house.
[00:41:55]  Amazon grocery delivery app, fire the person who brought the things to my house.
[00:41:58]  I mean, you know, I'm out there 24 hours a day trying to get everybody I interact with fired.
[00:42:03]  But these guys have audience of millions.
[00:42:06]  Yeah.
[00:42:07]  And they were saying so much, like they were posting like Mad Max kind of things like, listen, this is affecting, you know, whatever, Tech Street today, Wall Street tomorrow, and on Monday, Main Street's going to feel the brunt of it.
[00:42:20]  Of course, most people on Main Street do not have $250,000 or above in their bank accounts.
[00:42:26]  I think they have somewhere under like, I don't know, like $6,000, $5,000 in their bank account.
[00:42:32]  I think it's an average.
[00:42:33]  SVV is like not, I mean, these people basically convinced everyone or were trying to convince everyone that like retail and commercial banking are the same thing.
[00:42:44]  Yeah.
[00:42:45]  Like what these companies had at SVV was not like, oh, my grandma's savings account, but they were saying shit like that where they're like, oh, people would feel differently if these were farmers.
[00:42:55]  You're right.
[00:42:56]  Well, first of all, farmers, I hate when these people say farmers, right?
[00:43:01]  Because the majority of farming in this country is done by giant agriculture.
[00:43:04]  No, I know.
[00:43:05]  They're just trying to like invoke this like great depression.
[00:43:07]  Like, oh, my poor little, I've just got my little savings up in the middle of the day.
[00:43:12]  Oh, he does.
[00:43:14]  He has turnips and things of that nature.
[00:43:16]  And now he's just nothing.
[00:43:17]  Oh, let me just hook my other overall on so I can be presentable to Mr. Bankman.
[00:43:22]  It's like, who the fuck are you talking about?
[00:43:24]  Listen, baby doll, I'm the most famous Maoist in America.
[00:43:27]  I know the farmer.
[00:43:29]  I know their mindset.
[00:43:30]  The American peasant is with me.
[00:43:34]  I just think, it just makes me mad because it was like, no, these are on average, $4 million accounts that are like payroll accounts.
[00:43:43]  Well, what these little pigmen might oink at you is this, Liz.
[00:43:46]  They were saying, and this was the big thing that you saw from a lot of these VC, a lot of these like big wig tech people types, is that, well, okay, you might think we're villains, right?
[00:43:56]  But all these small startups, okay, you might not like those guys that much either.
[00:43:59]  But think of the people who work for them.
[00:44:02]  Now, I want to be clear here.
[00:44:03]  I don't like those people either.
[00:44:05]  I don't really like, I also dislike those people.
[00:44:07]  I mean, yeah, exactly.
[00:44:08]  Being from the Bay Area, not a huge fan of a lot of those people either.
[00:44:11]  But here's the thing.
[00:44:12]  Here's the other thing, baby.
[00:44:13]  All those non-alcoholic sodas, who needs them?
[00:44:15]  Kin?
[00:44:16]  Give me a, I don't drink it.
[00:44:17]  I don't want to drink that.
[00:44:18]  Give me a nice, you know what I'm drinking right here?
[00:44:20]  Diet Coke.
[00:44:21]  That's Belly Hyde's, you know?
[00:44:22]  Yeah, I know.
[00:44:22]  Oh, I do know.
[00:44:24]  And that's why I don't drink it.
[00:44:25]  I think I've referenced that before in the show.
[00:44:27]  Anyways, anyways, anyways, here's the other thing about this bank that people really should keep in mind.
[00:44:33]  There was almost no chance that all of these accounts would just never get their money back, right?
[00:44:38]  Oh, of course not.
[00:44:39]  Like, maybe they would get like some kind of like, you know, 10, 15, 20% haircut.
[00:44:44]  Maybe lose.
[00:44:45]  Maybe.
[00:44:45]  Maybe.
[00:44:46]  But not even.
[00:44:47]  But like that wasn't, there was no chance that like they were just going to close the accounts and steal, take the money.
[00:44:54]  This money did not disappear.
[00:44:55]  No, that's the thing is that this bank was, I mean, SVB, you know, it was insolvent, but it wasn't insolvent, right?
[00:45:02]  I mean, I know that sounds like, that sounds stupid, but like basically once the FDIC took it over, first of all, immediately anything under 250K guaranteed.
[00:45:11]  And then everything above the uninsured, it's like all it would take was like a week or two after basically the FDIC in receivership is like selling the bank's assets to get a return, everyone would have been made whole.
[00:45:23]  It would have been fine.
[00:45:24]  It would have been fine.
[00:45:25]  And here's the other thing too.
[00:45:26]  There are programs that even I know about.
[00:45:29]  Somebody who has had one bank account since he was like 18 or whatever.
[00:45:34]  Same bank account?
[00:45:36]  Why would I open an account?
[00:45:37]  No, I'm just curious.
[00:45:37]  I don't know.
[00:45:38]  I've switched banks.
[00:45:39]  I'm just curious.
[00:45:40]  It just never occurred to me.
[00:45:42]  That's good.
[00:45:43]  Loyal.
[00:45:43]  Well, I guess.
[00:45:45]  I mean, you've seen my debit card.
[00:45:48]  It does look very loyal to the washing machine.
[00:45:51]  I do.
[00:45:51]  The debit card is missing about half the debit card.

=== Sweep Accounts and Fees (03:42) ===

[00:45:54]  It's definitely It's just missing It looks like it kind of took Ozembic.
[00:45:58]  It did.
[00:45:59]  It is slimmer than most.
[00:46:00]  I will say that.
[00:46:02]  But here's the thing.
[00:46:04]  There are services that you can do, that you can pay, that will spread your company's money across different banks so that it's all under the FDIC.
[00:46:13]  Yes, sweep accounts.
[00:46:14]  That's all, which Silicon Valley Bank actually offered.
[00:46:16]  But here's the thing is that it's, I don't think that the CFOs at these companies were just like that stupid.
[00:46:23]  Like there's no way that's, I mean, maybe, but I really doubt it that the CFO of Roku like didn't know about sweep accounts.
[00:46:29]  But I'm like, what is my man doing then?
[00:46:31]  But I think that the bank required them to keep those high deposits because it wanted to lend them out to hit the returns.
[00:46:39]  That's what it was doing.
[00:46:40]  Otherwise, it wasn't making money.
[00:46:42]  Well, I want to talk about one of those fucking VCs for a second.
[00:46:45]  The one who is probably stirring up the most insanity.
[00:46:48]  I'm not going to go through all my notes because, first of all, most of them are just either conjectural about the man's personal life or rather rude about some of his past ventures in upkeeping his personal appearance.
[00:47:03]  But Jason Kalakinis, that's what I'm calling him.
[00:47:07]  He's a former journalist like many of these VC types who was involved in a sort of like Forbes type like 30 under 30 thing during the first dot-com boom, which was like, you know, under 100, you know, like top tech companies.
[00:47:24]  And basically has now admitted to mostly making it up.
[00:47:26]  But like this, essentially like an access journalist during the very first stages of the tech, first tech revolution.
[00:47:34]  You know, he does that until the mid-2000s when he joins a venture capital firm, makes one good bet, one good bet, baby, $25,000 in Uber's first round of funding.
[00:47:45]  He turns that into many, millions of dollars, and he will not shut the fuck up about it.
[00:47:52]  Here's the thing.
[00:47:53]  Lots of guys when they were younger did something cool.
[00:47:56]  Some of us, you know, played on a pretty good hardcore 7-inch or, you know, maybe even two.
[00:48:01]  Actually, the second 7-inch wasn't that good.
[00:48:02]  But.
[00:48:03]  Fris, you don't have to tell everyone about my past.
[00:48:05]  Okay, that's true.
[00:48:06]  Yeah.
[00:48:07]  Liz was Liz, Liz was in direct control.
[00:48:10]  So here, like, the guy made one great bet, one great bet, in a company that has never turned a profit.
[00:48:19]  And he has parlayed that into this career as like kind of like this like influencer.
[00:48:24]  He's like a wise old man of the VC community.
[00:48:29]  He essentially has an unlimited amount of money he throws around.
[00:48:32]  He makes a lot of bets.
[00:48:33]  And to be clear, when talking about VCs, VCs make a lot of bets.
[00:48:37]  Yeah.
[00:48:37]  Right?
[00:48:38]  It's essentially the way I think of this.
[00:48:40]  And again, like as I have a kind of vulgar understanding of this, the way that they do it is like, you know how when you've played the roulette before, right?
[00:48:47]  I love roulette.
[00:48:48]  You know how sometimes when you first start playing it, you're like, what if I just put a fucking chip on every number?
[00:48:55]  And if I, I mean, obviously that doesn't actually work out like that bet wise, but that's kind of what they do.
[00:49:00]  They put a chip on like every number, hoping that their number will get called and it's like huge returns.
[00:49:06]  Because at the beginning of the kind of rush, right, there were those huge returns.
[00:49:11]  Like way back in the day, I'm talking about like in the early, you know, post, let's say post.com crash before like 08 in that kind of intervening time.
[00:49:24]  And then up through the, you know, post like 2009 through to like 2018.
[00:49:32]  Yeah.
[00:49:33]  You could make a lot of fucking money if you hit it big.

=== Fat Blogs Strategy (06:51) ===

[00:49:36]  Absolutely.
[00:49:36]  You know what I mean?
[00:49:38]  And so there was that kind of gold rush.
[00:49:40]  So much spiz.
[00:49:41]  There was so much spiz.
[00:49:43]  But like, and we can talk about, you know, it's reached a ceiling now.
[00:49:47]  Yeah.
[00:49:47]  There's not so much left for tech to kind of innovate on in this arena.
[00:49:52]  And so these guys are left kind of spreading their spiz around to things that can just basically extract fees.
[00:50:00]  Yeah.
[00:50:00]  Because now there's no more Googles to make.
[00:50:03]  No, it's only rent-seeking, like little bullshits.
[00:50:07]  But when the Cold War started, it wasn't.
[00:50:09]  No, no.
[00:50:10]  It was like we could make Therados.
[00:50:12]  Yeah.
[00:50:12]  Absolutely.
[00:50:13]  We could make WeWork.
[00:50:14]  You know, all the giants.
[00:50:15]  All the greats of today.
[00:50:18]  Jason Kalakinas also made something.
[00:50:20]  And I know this is, we probably are too time crunched to put this out, but you know what?
[00:50:25]  I want to talk about it.
[00:50:26]  He made something called Fat Blogs.
[00:50:30]  I'm going to say it.
[00:50:31]  He made something called Fat Blog.
[00:50:32]  This was actually before Ozempic.
[00:50:34]  This was before all apps that tracked your calories or whatever.
[00:50:38]  Jason Kalakinas on his blog, which he still keeps, made something called Fat Blogs.
[00:50:44]  And I was looking up his fat blog.
[00:50:46]  There's an LA Times article.
[00:50:47]  They were called Fat Blogs.
[00:50:48]  He called them Fat Blogs.
[00:50:49]  I was looking at an LA Times article about fat blogs, and I read the fat blogs themselves.
[00:50:54]  And it's basically just him berating himself for being fat.
[00:50:57]  And then, I know, they actually are kind of pathetic in the way that a lot of tech people are pathetic, like you would see a wounded child or like a, and then, but then the child turns out to be a 3,000-year-old devil vampire.
[00:51:10]  And so he, but he's still married here.
[00:51:13]  And so he, uh, he is, you know, talking about losing weight and all this kind of stuff.
[00:51:18]  And I look at several of the blogs and it's just all like Epstein-related people in it.
[00:51:24]  Oh my God.
[00:51:25]  It's like joy.
[00:51:26]  Every single one has like an Epstein person in it.
[00:51:28]  And then I found one that wasn't.
[00:51:30]  And I was like, wow, fuck, there's no Epstein connection here.
[00:51:33]  And of course, Jason Kalakinas himself, page nine of the black book.
[00:51:36]  Oh, of course.
[00:51:38]  And then, of course, later said he met Ghelane.
[00:51:41]  I think he met Epstein with Zenny Jard in front of the show and played ping pong once with Ghelane Maxwell.
[00:51:46]  Anyways, he is a very loud and proud libertarian type of person who immediately, immediately when SVB started to collapse, was demanding tanks on the street, the federal government to come down, black helicopters.
[00:52:03]  Specifically the Federal Reserve.
[00:52:04]  Federal Reserve.
[00:52:05]  Which, by the way, I, of course, I am America's probably number one libertarian thinker, right?
[00:52:11]  And I'm not saying I am a libertarian.
[00:52:13]  I'm just saying I am the foremost libertarian.
[00:52:16]  You're just always thinking about libertarians.
[00:52:18]  Well, it's just like an atheist who might know a lot about theology.
[00:52:21]  I am one of the most advanced libertarians in the country.
[00:52:24]  I'm just not a libertarian.
[00:52:26]  Right.
[00:52:26]  I like that for you.
[00:52:27]  Yeah.
[00:52:27]  I'm sort of a Warren Democrat.
[00:52:29]  And native.
[00:52:31]  And so I think that was something that really jarred a lot of people seeing this stuff is all of these people who had talked about, you know, especially in terms of student loans, how like they, if any of those were forgiven, that was a bailout.
[00:52:46]  People shouldn't do that, immediately demanding not only a bailout, but essentially threatening apocalypse or warning of apocalypse with an undertone of threat if that bailout was not made immediately.
[00:52:58]  Yeah.
[00:52:59]  And so Jason, all these guys were essentially trying to gin up scare stories about other small banks.
[00:53:05]  Yeah.
[00:53:06]  And another small bank did close, Signature Bank, although the reasons on that are being debated a little bit.
[00:53:11]  I think that was a little more crypto related.
[00:53:12]  I think it was a little, although now the Fed saying it's not crypto related, it's crypto related.
[00:53:17]  But they were trying to gin up these, essentially these bank runs, warning of all this contagion.
[00:53:21]  It never happened, but they did get what they wanted.
[00:53:24]  They were bailed out.
[00:53:25]  So behind the scenes, although due to his stature, I would say that it seemed physically rather difficult, was a man named Gary Tan.
[00:53:33]  And Gary Tan here I use as a figurehead, an emblem, because there's a lot of Gary Tan's out there, but I personally dislike Gary Tan the most because Gary Tan is a piece of shit.
[00:53:44]  Gary Tan is, I think he's in charge of Y Combinator.
[00:53:47]  I think he's a, I mean, is it an initialized, one of these venture capital firms?
[00:53:52]  You know, he is like one of the biggest bum haters in all of San Francisco.
[00:53:58]  If you are in need of food and shelter or anything, this man would set you on fire.
[00:54:02]  However, if you invented Juicero, he would gladly crawl over a fucking bed of nails like a little worm in order to lick one of your toes.
[00:54:14]  Anyways, this cat and all of his little fucking friends decide to, including Kim Mai Cutler, another person I really dislike.
[00:54:21]  You know, I heard Jan Chowsky did a couple of with that, snort like a damn bull.
[00:54:29]  And which with the Septim Piercing to match.
[00:54:32]  And they form a WhatsApp group, you know, start hitting up politicians.
[00:54:39]  They're like, they write a white paper out.
[00:54:41]  They're warning of this impending collapse.
[00:54:43]  And it's funny because there's a long article about this WhatsApp group and a long article about their behind the scenes kind of like machinations.
[00:54:50]  But the article itself is forced to admit that basically the white paper got in the hands of like regulators and politicians about 90 minutes before the FDIC announced like the bailout.
[00:54:59]  So it clearly did not have an effect.
[00:55:01]  No, but they're all patting themselves on the back.
[00:55:03]  Well, they're sort of forced to admit, be like, well, maybe it didn't work, but now we're politically active and together.
[00:55:09]  They've organized.
[00:55:10]  Which is funny because Gary Tan is politically active.
[00:55:13]  Gary Tan actually led the recall of Chase of Boudin and has formed a pact to go against non-friend of the show, Dean Preston.
[00:55:24]  Interesting.
[00:55:25]  Yeah.
[00:55:26]  You know, it's true that, I mean, these VC group chats had a big effect on all of this shit.
[00:55:31]  I mean, whether they were, you know, this, maybe not so much on the scrambling to like show their solidarity and get the federal government to do the thing that they were already going to do, which is what the FDIC is set up to do.
[00:55:42]  Yes.
[00:55:43]  But certainly in the run itself, chatting back and forth with each other, basically organizing a total hit.
[00:55:51]  Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
[00:55:52]  Carrying each other into a bank run.
[00:55:56]  Yeah, 100%.
[00:55:57]  I mean, it's funny.
[00:55:58]  If there's something that we've learned from covering the stuff that we've covered in the past week is that whenever you get a bunch of money men together in a group chat, something funk is going to go down, right?
[00:56:07]  And again, I say it is gauche for a man to be in a group chat in the first place.
[00:56:11]  I like that.
[00:56:11]  That should be our, that's our position.
[00:56:14]  Yeah.
[00:56:14]  No men in group chats.
[00:56:16]  It's just, it's, what do you do when you know what that means?
[00:56:18]  Group chats?
[00:56:19]  It's for the ladies.
[00:56:20]  It's for girls.
[00:56:21]  It is literally, they're for girls.
[00:56:23]  You could say it in a positive way.
[00:56:24]  Yeah.
[00:56:25]  You know what?
[00:56:26]  Group chats are for girls.

=== Men In Group Chats (03:53) ===

[00:56:28]  It's called girl talk.
[00:56:29]  It's girl talk.
[00:56:32]  Girl talk.
[00:56:34]  They're like, well, girl talk.
[00:56:38]  Brace.
[00:56:39]  What do we feel about him, ladies?
[00:56:40]  Don't say that in your group chat.
[00:56:43]  A lot of happens in the girls groups.
[00:56:45]  I don't want to know.
[00:56:46]  I never want to know.
[00:56:47]  It's not for you.
[00:56:48]  I don't.
[00:56:49]  It's not for me.
[00:56:50]  Okay.
[00:56:51]  You're right.
[00:56:52]  It's not for me.
[00:56:53]  Girl talk.
[00:56:54]  Another character I don't want to let slip away like some kind of greased pig or something would be Rokana.
[00:57:01]  You know, we've never talked about him on this show.
[00:57:05]  I want to plant my flag.
[00:57:06]  We have talked about him behind the scenes of the show.
[00:57:08]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:57:09]  But I'm saying we have not given this man his proper due.
[00:57:11]  I want to plant my flag here and say, fucking Rokana sucks ass.
[00:57:17]  He fucking blows, dude.
[00:57:19]  I'm so sick of this dumb motherfucker.
[00:57:23]  He is the most fence walking dude ever.
[00:57:26]  And like, I'm not saying he's walking a fence between good and bad.
[00:57:29]  He's just two different kinds of annoying.
[00:57:31]  He's so annoying.
[00:57:32]  I just, I resent that I know who he is because he posts so much.
[00:57:37]  You know, we hate posting politicians.
[00:57:39]  Posting Congressman, it's over.
[00:57:42]  Stop it.
[00:57:43]  Stop doing it.
[00:57:43]  It's annoying.
[00:57:44]  You're annoying.
[00:57:45]  He represents South Bay.
[00:57:47]  That's already annoying.
[00:57:49]  I know.
[00:57:49]  So annoying.
[00:57:50]  Also annoying because you know I don't know where that is.
[00:57:54]  That's crazy.
[00:57:55]  You don't know where the South Bay is.
[00:57:57]  That's crazy.
[00:57:57]  It's the South Bay.
[00:57:59]  Well, I got the idea.
[00:58:00]  But you know, my thing is there's no West Bay.
[00:58:02]  Yeah.
[00:58:03]  Well, that's not.
[00:58:04]  That's San Francisco.
[00:58:04]  Well, there is a West Bay, but it just also includes San Francisco.
[00:58:07]  I don't know about that.
[00:58:08]  I don't know.
[00:58:08]  It's all South Bay to me.
[00:58:10]  Anyways, he represents South Bay in Congress, which, of course, includes Silicon Valley.
[00:58:14]  And he is literally, and I know this phrase gets thrown around.
[00:58:18]  There's a few phrases that I hate that just get like people learn them once and then say them for every single thing.
[00:58:24]  But he is literally controlled opposition because he like he like went and kissed the ring.
[00:58:30]  Like, you know how like AOC and the squad or whatever, like we're pretty easy.
[00:58:34]  Like they were cowed by Nancy pretty early on, right?
[00:58:37]  Or like, you know, established.
[00:58:39]  You know, they kissed the ring and stuff.
[00:58:41]  But you know, this guy put the ring so far down his throat that his large intestines look like the butthole of the guy that hit Nancy Pelosi's husband with a hammer.
[00:58:59]  I mean, this guy goes to Nancy Pelosi and he has, he tells her, or he repeats that the quote she gave him was like, you need to, like, power is never given, it's taken, which is such a funny thing to have Nancy Pelosi tell you.
[00:59:13]  And, you know, he has been sort of walked this tightrope between being like, I'm a Bernie guy.
[00:59:17]  He was like a chair, co-chair of the Bernie campaign, which, by the way, co-chairs of anything, one of the most useless positions you can ever have.
[00:59:23]  Co-chair of the Bernie campaign.
[00:59:25]  But he's also like, I love Silicon Valley technology.
[00:59:28]  He's just like this guy who wants to be everything to everybody.
[00:59:32]  And he is, to me, a fucking nobody.
[00:59:35]  He went around screaming about the need.
[00:59:36]  We got to bail out the banks and we got to bail out Silicon Valley Bank and all this shit.
[00:59:41]  He's like, you know, putting forward this legislation with a friend of the show, Elizabeth Warren, to try to like roll back the rollbacks.
[00:59:47]  But really what he is, is he's a fucking tool, these Silicon Valley dumbasses.
[00:59:52]  And he's in fact hosting a campaign event with friend of our show, David Sachs, one of the people who was on Twitter trying to foment that bank run in just a few weeks.
[01:00:04]  Jesus.
[01:00:06]  And I hate this motherfucker.
[01:00:07]  Well, that sounds like a perfect event for some targeted activation work.
[01:00:15]  Young Tom C, why don't you just put a bleep right here?
[01:00:19]  Like a bleep.

=== SVB's Fall: Morons and Anxiety (04:32) ===

[01:00:21]  If that message was unbleeped for you, then it was meant for you and you only, we've given you explicit instructions on what to do.
[01:00:29]  So all this is to say, I think the venture capitalists and their lackeys in the government did not cover themselves in glory during this whole affair.
[01:00:36]  Les affaire de SVB.
[01:00:39]  Yeah.
[01:00:40]  I mean, I think the thing that's like, I think the thing that's really annoying about this is that this, I don't really give a shit about this bank.
[01:00:49]  I mean, it sounds like it's run by fucking morons across the board and that its deposit base were a bunch of fucking asshole morons.
[01:00:56]  That's a woke bank.
[01:00:58]  Yeah, the woke bank.
[01:00:59]  The woke bank.
[01:01:02]  But I will say that the bank probably would have been fine.
[01:01:05]  Like even though it had those bonds on its portfolio, like it would have been fine because eventually it would have made the money back.
[01:01:14]  Right.
[01:01:15]  The reason why it would have been fine except for it was forced to sell some of that portfolio because deposits were fleeing.
[01:01:22]  Yeah.
[01:01:22]  And so the problem was the deposit base.
[01:01:24]  Yeah.
[01:01:25]  All these asshole guys, you know, they either saw weakness or they saw an opportunity.
[01:01:30]  Or they get a text from their VC.
[01:01:32]  And they all fucking freaked and ran and they precipitated the collapse of this thing.
[01:01:38]  Yeah.
[01:01:39]  Right.
[01:01:39]  And so it's like, I don't have a lot of sympathy for pretty much anyone involved in any of this.
[01:01:49]  I mean, I think that they are in, you know, people like Jason Calicanis or whatever.
[01:01:54]  Kalakamas.
[01:01:55]  Yeah.
[01:01:55]  I mean, I think they, you know, they tweet that kind of stuff and they're able to kind of foment this, you know, anxiety because so many people can feel that shit in the economy is like not great.
[01:02:08]  Yeah.
[01:02:09]  You know what I mean?
[01:02:09]  Like, even though on the news, you know, you got Joe Brandon saying all this stuff is good.
[01:02:13]  Like, don't believe your eyes.
[01:02:14]  Everything's fine.
[01:02:15]  But everyone knows like something's wrong.
[01:02:18]  At least I get that feeling.
[01:02:18]  I don't know if you get that feeling.
[01:02:20]  But like everyone kind of feels like, man, they were like selling apes on TV.
[01:02:25]  Like something's wrong.
[01:02:27]  This doesn't really make sense.
[01:02:28]  The funny thing is, is like we had this huge like upsurge in this crazy spiz, right?
[01:02:35]  Like euphoria, spiz, euphoria.
[01:02:37]  Exactly, exactly.
[01:02:38]  And then that like really took a nose turn and people are like, well, maybe that didn't affect the economy.
[01:02:44]  Yeah.
[01:02:45]  You know?
[01:02:45]  Once the spiz dries up, the party's over is what I say.
[01:02:48]  Well, it's true.
[01:02:50]  I mean, there was all that spiz in the economy and it's like, it was one of the biggest bubbles in history.
[01:02:55]  Yeah.
[01:02:55]  I mean, everyone would say it at the time, whether it was crypto, whether it was everything else, you know, that like, how is this sustainable?
[01:03:00]  How could this be sustainable?
[01:03:02]  And like, what we're seeing now is that bubble being popped and it's like really fucking ugly.
[01:03:06]  You know what I mean?
[01:03:07]  Like this shit is going to start breaking.
[01:03:10]  You know, the Fed basically, with them raising interest rates as fast as they did and as hard as, as fast and hard as they did, I mean, they're going to break stuff.
[01:03:21]  Yeah.
[01:03:22]  And this is part of that, you know, and I think so much of the spiz was concentrated in tech that, you know, that whole industry is really due for a reckoning.
[01:03:33]  And it's hard because I don't think anyone has any kind of sympathy for any of these motherfuckers because of the way they fucking carry themselves.
[01:03:39]  And it's not only just the way they carry themselves now.
[01:03:42]  It's like you were saying earlier.
[01:03:44]  Like there is no like innovation coming out.
[01:03:47]  I think the one thing I guess people would point to is AI, but obviously you people know how we feel about that.
[01:03:52]  But like the thing that is coming out of the tech sector is literally just rent-seeking bullshit, right?
[01:03:58]  Yeah.
[01:03:58]  And so it's like none of the companies that I would, I would, I would really be shocked if there was any company that was started in the past decade that did anything even approaching remotely useful thing for society, right?
[01:04:13]  I mean, it's true, right?
[01:04:14]  Can anyone, I mean, I don't know.
[01:04:16]  What does?
[01:04:16]  Like what, what, like, the most they can do is they can destroy another industry and then move in on the carcass of that, like Uber.
[01:04:24]  But that's, again, that's even more.
[01:04:25]  Even Uber, you can like point to the time that you took one and you're like, well, that was nice that I was able to do that.
[01:04:30]  Yeah, exactly.
[01:04:31]  But all these other things, you're like, what, what is that?
[01:04:34]  It's not anything.
[01:04:35]  And, you know, everyone's had kind of a miserable time for the past three years.
[01:04:38]  Yeah.
[01:04:39]  And a lot of that they blame on tech, not incorrectly.
[01:04:42]  And like, yeah, for me, like, yeah, I use my ape because I own the IPA rights to.
[01:04:46]  And I did make a hit series that was sort of a crossover with the TV show Big Mouth.
[01:04:50]  But for a lot of people, there's no use for any of this shit.

=== Shadow Banking Carcasses (06:32) ===

[01:04:54]  Right?
[01:04:55]  It's just fucking, it's a fake industry for the most part.
[01:04:58]  And I'm sorry, but like, it's crazy that this bank run had some of the least sympathetic motherfuckers probably that you could name in America as its spokespeople.
[01:05:10]  Yeah.
[01:05:10]  Right?
[01:05:11]  Like people, Gary Tan is a person that I personally hate.
[01:05:14]  Like, I hate, I knew who I have hated him for a long time.
[01:05:18]  I would spit in his fucking mouth non-sexual style if I saw him on the street.
[01:05:24]  You know, David Sachs, another one of these fucking guys, Jason, it's like all these people are people who swung their fucking dicks around, acted like they're fucking these like puffed up, synthol, fucking chested little fucking creeps for the past years, bragging and fucking swinging their weight around.
[01:05:39]  And by that weight is fucking substantial.
[01:05:43]  And now they have, there's a little bit of like, oh, you made it, maybe you made a bad bet.
[01:05:47]  Maybe there were some bad decisions here.
[01:05:49]  Maybe you did something fucking stupid.
[01:05:50]  And not only are they refusing to take any, and of course, these are all the guys who are like, you have to take accountability for all your actions.
[01:05:55]  No accountability for their actions.
[01:05:57]  They're crediting themselves with the bailout.
[01:06:01]  And I think that, I mean, fuck, I think they should have just let these people fucking sink.
[01:06:05]  But obviously, 250, that's the other thing, too, is 250K.
[01:06:09]  That limit means nothing now.
[01:06:11]  Yeah.
[01:06:11]  Like that's a big green pill, which is what I call money things.
[01:06:17]  Just kidding.
[01:06:18]  I would never call it ink pilled.
[01:06:20]  But that's a big, that's a big money thing from this.
[01:06:22]  It's like, apparently that just means nothing, right?
[01:06:25]  Well, I mean, look, the FDIC should either, well, I guess I think Congress is the one who makes these laws.
[01:06:30]  And so the FDIC can't do it.
[01:06:32]  Congress would have to pass a law to do it.
[01:06:33]  But it's like, maybe if the FDIC should raise the limits to a million, then they should raise the limits to a million, whatever.
[01:06:39]  The problem is, is that now, like basically all of the cost of this quote-unquote bailout is getting absorbed by the entire banking system.
[01:06:48]  Yeah.
[01:06:49]  Which is like, okay, fine.
[01:06:51]  And then you have someone like Yellen or Biden or whoever their spokespeople are come out and they say, oh, the taxpayer is not going to bear any of this.
[01:06:58]  Taxpayers are not going to bear any of this.
[01:06:59]  But that's not really true, right?
[01:07:01]  Because the entire banking system is just going to pass the cost of having to basically cover these deposits on everyone else in the form of fees.
[01:07:10]  Like a pass-through, like what you're fucking, which by the way, that shit should be illegal too.
[01:07:14]  I mean, think about how insurance does it, right?
[01:07:16]  It's the same thing.
[01:07:17]  Yeah.
[01:07:17]  And so actually, no, the cost for us will go up because of these assholes.
[01:07:22]  And I think, like, you know, I was trying to understand this like fucking bank and, you know, what this company was at, or like what they were actually doing and who these people were.
[01:07:31]  You know, and I think that honestly, like, I mean, because of the unique nature of the deposit base, the easiest way to think of them is more like a shadow bank than a real bank, right?
[01:07:42]  Because of like the wheeling and dealing that they were doing, because of the way they were like, oh, it's easier.
[01:07:46]  You put your money here, it's safer, it's five million dollars.
[01:07:49]  You keep these high accounts, we're gonna help you out with these mortgages, we're gonna make it easier to lend, we're gonna do all this quid pro quo stuff, like almost mob mentality.
[01:07:56]  It's way more like shadow banking than anything that you or I or grandma or even a 1920s farmer or whatever is uses.
[01:08:04]  Yeah, right?
[01:08:05]  We don't have access to any of that kind of shit.
[01:08:07]  This is like shadow banking stuff.
[01:08:08]  And it's like, you know, people forget this, but like GE back in 08, like GE almost fell because it was operating as a shadow bank, like and all of that shit.
[01:08:21]  Like it was making all of its money off of its financing arm and doing all of its crazy voodoo derivatives magic until whoops, you know, this, you know, caught, they got caught with their pants down like everyone else.
[01:08:34]  And GE had to fucking call the president directly and get bailed out, right?
[01:08:39]  And it's like, I guess the point, the point about all of this is like, I got really pissed seeing these, you know, whether it was the Silicon Valley people, these fucking assholes, or the people on TV, the government on TV or the Fed or whatever, basically like lying to us, saying this isn't a bailout when you know the cost of all of this will get passed down to us.
[01:09:02]  You know what I mean?
[01:09:03]  Like the fees for holding our money at regular banks will go up, whether that'll be a fee on our account or lower interest rates on our savings.
[01:09:11]  Like that's how the bank will recoup these costs that they now have to bear because of these fucking assholes running a shadow bank, basically.
[01:09:19]  Yeah.
[01:09:20]  And it's just like, it's fucking bullshit.
[01:09:22]  And the real green pill, if you want to talk about green pills, is there's like basically two roads here that we can take, which is either it's like, which way, post-history, man?
[01:09:33]  Like, you end the Fed, which I don't think we should do.
[01:09:37]  Well, or the Fed just needs to, I mean, when you take this logic to its end, the Fed just needs to extend a checking account and a line of credit to every single American in the country and we have public banking.
[01:09:49]  Yeah.
[01:09:49]  And that's it.
[01:09:50]  Because what's the fucking difference?
[01:09:51]  The difference is that same function is just getting fed through this private banking system, which is really just, you know, investment vultures that have been grafted on a public utility to, you know, like suck fees out of us for the same fucking privilege.
[01:10:22]  Well, as TrueAnon has always said, keep your money in cash.
[01:10:26]  I was wondering if you're going to bring that up.
[01:10:28]  You got to keep your money in cash.
[01:10:29]  I mean, theoretically, these people were keeping their money in cash.
[01:10:32]  No, keep your money in cash.
[01:10:34]  Oh, you mean like cash?
[01:10:35]  I mean cash.
[01:10:36]  We need to have a vault-based society where all of your goods, if you own anything that's worth over like $150, it's encased in a room in your house, no matter how small your house is, in a room that is dedicated, vault door opening.
[01:10:52]  You open it up and you can swim in your goods.
[01:10:54]  Speaking of green pills, wait until we explain sometime in the future that loans create deposits.
[01:11:01]  I'm going to cut you off right there, Liz.
[01:11:03]  We're never going to speak of green pills again or any kind of pills.
[01:11:08]  But yeah, banks, I think this is my, this is the banksters that are in charge of Washington.
[01:11:16]  To me, I think there needs to be maybe a little movement against them.
[01:11:20]  Perhaps some sort of Occupy movement?
[01:11:23]  Well, I've been scouting out locations, right?

=== Founding The City (03:18) ===

[01:11:27]  Zakati Park.
[01:11:29]  I've been down there.
[01:11:30]  Yeah.
[01:11:31]  Flashing.
[01:11:32]  And I'm like, this would be a great place for a motherfucking Tent City.
[01:11:37]  And a couple maybe anonymous masks.
[01:11:40]  I was going to say, you know, who is in need of a new location for their city?
[01:11:45]  Who?
[01:11:47]  Our old friend, Black Hammer.
[01:11:50]  Black Hammer?
[01:11:51]  What?
[01:11:51]  Black Hammer ex Ducati goes so hard.
[01:11:54]  No, check this out.
[01:11:55]  But Black Hammer lost a major source of $500 investments from the Russian government.
[01:12:01]  Yes.
[01:12:01]  We need to hook them up with Saudi Arabia.
[01:12:04]  So what we need to do is combine.
[01:12:06]  They call this the Iron Triangle.
[01:12:08]  We need to combine, or the Golden Triangle, depending on your view of it.
[01:12:12]  We need to find Occupy Wall Street, Zakati Park, Black Hammer, and a NEOM-like development funded by Saudi Arabia.
[01:12:21]  A sovereign wealth fund.
[01:12:22]  Sovereign wealth fund right there at Zakati Park.
[01:12:25]  Oh my God.
[01:12:26]  I'm buying in.
[01:12:26]  This is a libertarian dream.
[01:12:28]  I'm buying in.
[01:12:28]  I'm in.
[01:12:29]  I'm already in.
[01:12:29]  You know what?
[01:12:30]  It's a charter city.
[01:12:31]  And here's the thing: we're builders.
[01:12:33]  We're builders.
[01:12:33]  We're founders, founding the city.
[01:12:36]  And we're building it.
[01:12:37]  And we're growing.
[01:12:38]  And we're growing it.
[01:12:40]  Well, happy St. Patrick's Day.
[01:12:43]  Can't believe we didn't cover that.
[01:12:45]  Fuck those people.
[01:12:46]  Whoa.
[01:12:47]  Jesus Christ, Liz.
[01:12:49]  I don't mean the Irish.
[01:12:51]  This isn't many.
[01:12:52]  We just speak this.
[01:12:53]  They can hear this.
[01:12:54]  I'm telling you, everyone is so fucking drunk and annoying.
[01:12:57]  I don't want to deal with it.
[01:12:59]  Okay, cool.
[01:13:00]  Those people.
[01:13:01]  The partiers, the revelers.
[01:13:03]  Get out of my way.
[01:13:04]  I got places to go.
[01:13:05]  Yeah.
[01:13:06]  Where do you got to go?
[01:13:07]  Yeah, I got to go to the pub.
[01:13:08]  I got to.
[01:13:09]  Wait, how do I do an Irish accent?
[01:13:11]  Oh, let's see this.
[01:13:12]  What was that?
[01:13:13]  What is that?
[01:13:14]  No, do it.
[01:13:14]  Do it.
[01:13:15]  Do it again.
[01:13:15]  I'm about to go to the pub.
[01:13:16]  No, horrible.
[01:13:17]  Horrible.
[01:13:20]  I got to go to the pub.
[01:13:21]  Yeah, that wasn't.
[01:13:22]  I've got to go to Preps.
[01:13:23]  Irish Americans.
[01:13:24]  What?
[01:13:24]  Do you believe in leprechaun?
[01:13:26]  Yeah, I believe in leprechauns.
[01:13:27]  I see that video, dude.
[01:13:28]  You guys have seen that shit?
[01:13:29]  What?
[01:13:30]  Which guy?
[01:13:30]  I want the gold.
[01:13:32]  You know what I'm talking about?
[01:13:33]  You guys haven't seen that?
[01:13:35]  Are you fucking kidding me?
[01:13:36]  No, I don't see that.
[01:13:38]  Literally 100% of all of our listeners will be on my side for this.
[01:13:41]  That is crazy.
[01:13:42]  You guys haven't seen the leprechaun video.
[01:13:45]  I want the gold.
[01:13:47]  You never seen that?
[01:13:49]  Well, insert the entirety of the audio from that clip right here.
[01:13:52]  We're about to watch that after the episode is over.
[01:13:54]  That is wild.
[01:13:56]  Of course, I believe in leprechauns.
[01:13:57]  They literally have them on film.
[01:14:02]  Or possibly a crackhead, as one of the leprechaun gawkers says.
[01:14:08]  My name, of course, is the top leprechaun in this entire little motherfucking Blarney stone.
[01:14:13]  Leprechauns are kind of just white goblins.
[01:14:16]  Brace Belden.
[01:14:18]  I'm Liz.
[01:14:19]  We are, of course, joined by the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow himself, Young Jomsky.
[01:14:26]  This has been TrueNOD.
[01:14:27]  We'll see you next time.
[01:14:28]  Bye-bye.
[01:14:30]  Jeff's got short, Jeffrey Lexington Jefferson, Jeffrey Lexter John's fashionable, Jeffrey Lexington Jefferson, Jeff,