Grubstakers - Episode 07: Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act

Episode Date: March 19, 2018

It's a special emergency episode responding to the recently passed Senate Bill 2155. It's such an emergency we released it a day late. We talk about the efforts by some Democrats to portray their watering down of Dodd-Frank financial regulations as a defense of small "community banks" and how corrupt and hollow these kinds of lies are. It's interesting we promise. Listen to the whole thing there's a game at the end. DO NOT SKIP TO THE GAME.

Hey everyone, welcome to Grubstakers. This week we're going to give you a rundown of the new Dodd-Frank legislation, the bill that just passed the Senate. We're just going to break down how it affects banking, financial institutions, all that this week on Grubstakers. Thanks. Because of my success in the private sector, I had the chance to run America's largest city for 12 years. I taught those kids lessons on product development and marketing. They taught me what it was like growing up feeling targeted for your race. And that's just not true. You know, I love having the support of real billionaires. Hey, welcome to Grubstakers. I'm Sean McCarthy, here with my friends as always.

Andy Palmer. Steve Jeffries. Yogi Poliwog. And, you know, this week we're doing a special episode because the people power came together and they passed a bill in the Senate. And, you know, it's like when the very day that students around the nation walked out of their classrooms, it was so inspiring. And all these protests. This was on Wednesday, March 14th, all these protests demanding action on gun control.

And just the very same day, Congress listened. And I'm just so tired of people saying that, you know, these institutions that we have are not responsive to demands for change from the people. Because on that very same day, Congress passed a bill to roll back Dodd-Frank, the financial crisis reform legislation passed in 2010. And, you know, it's just been so frustrating for us activists trying to get Dodd-Frank repealed, as we have been for the decades since it passed. We have been emailing our Congress people, telling them that the Volcker Rule discriminates against financial institutions. That's right.

That's right. We've been walking up, not out. We've been doing everything. We've been saying that these data requirements, that they have to keep track of racial characteristics of the people they're loaning to, to make sure that they don't engage in illegal racial discrimination. We've been saying that this is onerous. It's burdensome. You can talk to coal miners in West Virginia. You can talk to the person who's lost their manufacturing job in Ohio. All of them will tell you the same

thing. We need to roll back Dodd-Frank because it is strangling growth and job creation in this country and finally the the congress has resisted the pressure from uh big financial reform from uh uh you know the the roosevelt institute or whatever and they have passed um this this bill uh passed the senate uh as the the same day those students did a walkout. And, you know, Dodd-Frank is really boring, and it's not a particularly sexy topic, but we do actually have, I would say, a somewhat expert here.

Stephen knows a lot about it. So I do want to talk about it today because it's incredibly important, you know. And, again, like, so Dodd-Frankank itself um it's a thousand pages plus long and then this uh bill that just passed it's senate bill 2155 called the economic growth regulatory relief and consumer protection act because you know congress generally names things for the opposite of what they actually do um that bill is 196 pages long. That's it? That's nothing. 196? We could do that in like what? It's a novella. Yeah, we could knock that out in

I don't know, a couple of Game of Thrones books? Yeah. Pops a matter off? That's like one Jamie chapter. But like I guess like unsurprisingly we haven't read the entire bill so we're not qualified to talk about it because you have to read the entire thing before you can talk about it.

Well, it's a good piece of bipartisanship. Right. I will say this about Barney Frank. In late 2015, Barney Frank went on The Brian Lehrer Show, and several people called in and said listen bernie sanders i do not agree with your policies and he replied i i'm not bernie sanders anyways yogi and i know nothing about dodd frank so what we're going to be doing is we're going to be playing the role of Robert from Radiolab during the intro, but we're going to do it for the whole episode and be like, oh, that's interesting.

You don't say. Right. Well, that's good, though, because you and Yogi can play the audience, and Stephen and I will be like the wise teachers. Who are, you know. You say wise. Explain that some more for me. But so basically...

You say you survived a genocide attempt, but I think you're lying. Now, Dodd-Frank, three Ds. Too many Ds? I think so. But, all right. Well, so let's just kind of talk from the beginning here because there was this financial crisis 10 years ago. And in fact, I think today we're recording on the 18th, which is the 10-year anniversary.

It's 10 years to the day since Bear Stearns was acquired by J.P. Morgan. With the government guaranteeing. Yeah, basically.P. Morgan. With the government guaranteeing. Yeah, basically. Yeah. So 10 years from the day that, you know, really the first, let's say, ripple of the financial crisis that, as we've mentioned, threw millions of people out of jobs,

millions of people were thrown out of their homes, these kinds of things. And Dodd-Frank was passed in 2010. And the basic idea, it's, as we mentioned, more than 1,000 pages. Hey, great job. All right, I'm like, all right. Okay, Peter writes, should I be worried about Bear Stearns in terms of liquidity and get my money out of there?

No, no, no. Bear Stearns is fine. Do not take your money out. If there's one takeaway other than a plus 400 or something, Bear Stearns is not in trouble. I mean, if anything, it're more likely to be taken over. Don't move your money from Bear. That's just being silly. Don't be silly.

Mad Money's back after the break. Okay. That's great. I love a guy with a show called Mad Money where he plays sound effects, says people are being silly to try and move their money out of a heavily leveraged

firm that's about to collapse. Do you know how long before the collapse he actually said that? I think it was a few months. It might have even been a few weeks. Great job! That's the drop right there. The guy is still on TV. This was six days before it was

bought by JP Morgan. Nice. Yeah, so we're celebrating the 10-year anniversary of Jim Cranor's... Don't be silly. ...beginning of his slide into insanity. Yeah. Still has a job, has faced no punishment. I think that's really the theme of the financial crisis.

Oh, yeah. It's just no punishments. I don't know what they have to do to get fired, because it is one of those things where they can go good financial advice yeah i feel like advocate socializing the means of production dodd frank i kind of feel like it's sort of the obamacare of like it's sure it's not what anyone really wanted but it's something better than what came before it's certainly better than what came before. Yeah. And so you have this, like, the sort of the minimal politically palatable regulation for certain aspects of the finance industry and real estate sector.

So what is Dodd-Frank? Well, it's named for... Barney Frank, as we've mentioned, was the congressman from Massachusetts. And Chris Dodd was a senator for Connecticut. And they are the two people, the two main writers of the legislation. But yeah. But what is it actually? Shut up, Andy.

But yeah, as Chris mentioned, it's a, or as Stephen mentioned, it's an overly complicated kind of workaround where it has something called the Volcker Rule, which is... Volker. That's interesting. So after the Great Depression, they put Glass-Steagall in place, which was a law that separated... It essentially said you couldn't make risky financial investments with federally insured depositor money. After the Great Depression, we established that the FDIC will guarantee bank deposits up to $250,000. And so Glass-Steagall said that these bank deposits cannot be used for risky investments. And then that was repealed in the 90s and then the Volcker rule was part of Dodd-Frank

which was sort of a more roundabout complicated way of doing that that I guess Stephen might want to explain a little more explain the Volcker rule if you could just like the difference between the Volcker rule and Glass-Steagall yeah the like Glass-Steagagle was more of kind of they're making almost like a chinese wall between the investment activities of a financial institution that is like is that like a chinese fire drill where it just doesn't work or why is it every chinese they're defined they're defined they're defining like the saying this is where the commercial activities like mortgage lending business loans and stuff like that will take place saying this is where the commercial activities, like mortgage lending, business loans, and stuff like that will take place. And this is where the more speculative proprietary trading will take place. And never the two should mix.

And then Volcker Rule is more of, like, it's a very specific set of checkdowns on, like like a transaction like is there any way that this commercial activity could be construed as using um using sort of the the fdic backed portion of a of a depository institutions um business to underwrite a more risky proprietary trade. So FDIC-backed means when they're about to go out of business, the government insures it. The FDIC insured deposits up to $250,000 today. Yeah. Yeah. And we'll talk a bit about how

rich people kind of game that. But basically the idea is there's a moral hazard is the term, I think, where basically if you're using money that's guaranteed that you will get this back from the federal government, even if you go

bankrupt, you have an incentive to make as risky an investment as possible because even if you go bankrupt, you have an incentive to make as risky an investment as possible because even if it goes bust, you get your money back. But if it doesn't go bust, you make as much return as possible on your capital. Yeah, but saying using, there's kind of a difficulty in explaining the Volcker Rule and Glass-Steagall if you sort of say that, oh, well, they can't use the deposit money from the commercial side in order to make these bets. Like the bank lending, those deposits are created in the act of making a loan. Loans create deposits.

So it's a bit of difficulty explaining to the public exactly how it's a moral hazard. I think the better way to characterize it is that you have these large financial institutions that we all depend upon to have be a safe haven for our funds and to be able to safely and securely transfer funds between accounts. And that's sort of a public utility that should be protected. And at the same time, those same institutions want to be able to make more risky bets that although they don't literally operationally require using people's deposits, and indeed can't, they're still connected to the same capital requirements. And so banks are very much capital constrained in that they have to have a portion of their balance sheet set aside in order to take potential losses if any of these deals go

bad. Dodd-Frank, Volcker Rule, Glass-Steagall. But what does this have to do with meat? It's like, and that's what really frustrates me about this financial reform. And obviously, the Democrats in particular who are backing this are banking on this. Nice. It's very... I don't get it. It's complicated and it's boring and it's hard to explain. And, you know, when you have a thousand page piece of legislation and then a 200 page fix to it that's all written in a way

to be hard to comprehend i think the long and short and we'll explain a little bit more about the details of this but the long and short is capital requirements which is that financial institutions are required by law to keep x amount of cash on hand to ensure that if there's a run on the bank where they go bankrupt or a bunch of people try to take their money out, that they have cash on hand to match those. But what happens is that they always want to reduce these capital requirements and they find fancy legislative ways of reducing these capital requirements because the lower capital they have to keep on hand, the more they can lend out and the more returns they can generate

and the higher they can push their stock price. But the more systemic risk is created for the financial institution or for the financial system. And of course, this Dodd-Frank water down, whatever you want to call it, does loosen capital requirements in all sorts of horrific ways. And I would say that would be the long and short. And it's just like, you know, they're banking on the fact that the four of us I mean like Steven's an expert and I'm like a guy with too much time

on my hands and then Yogi and Andy are just you know general plebeians exactly between us we full of chemicals it's hard enough for us to understand and explain it Between us, we... Full of chemicals.

It's hard enough for us to understand and explain it, you know. And so, of course, like the general public, the line that the Democrats have been using is, you know, community banks. This will benefit community banks. And so it's hard. Is that like credit unions and stuff? Right, right. So, like, and I guess let's just talk about this a little bit. So basically, Dodd-Frank sets up the idea that once you have more than $50 billion in assets, you are considered systemically important. And then from there, you know, try to check their ability

to respond if there's a run on the bank and a bunch of people try to take it. That's where they put the CEOs. They get a list of their fears and then just run them through a battery of really degrading. It's a combination of four times a year. So it happens once a quarter. They put them in a room.

Joe Rogan makes Jamie Dimon sit on a bed of worms. Yeah. Jamie Dimon, how can you face your fear? They actually film it all, and it's available upon request. And Jamie Dimon tells him, he's like, oh man, that's far out, bro.

Hey, what do you think about, like, the banks? Do they, like, keep aliens there? Like, tell me the truth, bro. I do you think about the banks? Do they keep aliens there? Tell me the truth, bro. I got some pot. Now I'm just thinking about Joe Rogan putting Jamie Dimon

in his suspension tank and taking DMT with him. He's like, yeah, man. He told me what happened to that Federal Reserve gold. The Fort Knox gold. You know they replaced it all with Bitcoin, right? The stress test, they put them through stress tests, which are actually very adverse financial scenarios for the bank

that make sure that they do, in fact, they could, in fact, facilitate all of their payments if people did try to you know have an old-fashioned bank run to another institution or something and the if they could maintain their capital ratio in the downturn right yeah and there's also what they call they do a living will. If the bank does fail, how exactly should its assets be unwound as to not create as little turmoil for consumers? Right, so basically...

Does it also have like a pillow provision that you just hold over until it stops tipping? There's a do not resuscitate provision. Oh, there's assisted suicide for banks. Actually, they passed in a couple states. Only banks in Oregon can use that.

By the way, who gets suffocated by a pillow? You can breathe through a pillow. Sorry. Tangent. You want to test that out? Yeah. Come at me. Do it during the break. $1,000 a month in Patreon and we will find out

if we can suffocate Andy with a pillow. There should be an assisted bank suicide provision. See, I'll bet like Steven and me together, if we both held the pillow, we could probably get Andy. I was going to sit on the pillow.

I think Yogi could definitely kill Andy with a pillow. I mean, if you push hard enough, but it's just your hand over someone's mouth. No, it's the pillow, but your hand holds the pillow. Also, the key component is you're asleep. You wake up with most of the fight out of you. We'll just wait until a day where's like hung over like he was last week why wait just resting my eyes uh but so anyways uh these uh provisions like stress tests and living wills these apply to currently to every bank with uh or financial institution with more

than 50 billion in assets this uh repeal that was just passed by the Senate raises that immediately to $100 billion. And then in 18 months, it raises it to $250 billion. And just for reference, Countrywide Financial, which according to Elizabeth Warren, was originating one out of every five mortgages in the country in the lead up to the 2008 financial crisis. Countrywide Financial had assets of $200 billion when it went bust in 2007. Yeah, so Countrywide Financial. Destroyed the financial system.

We'll go bust with $200 billion. Essentially, $250 billion is no... It's not a mathematical number. It's just a lobbying number because this is what the medium-sized stadium banks want it to be at, so that's what it's going to be at now. Yeah, and it really takes just like four or five

or fewer of these 250 billion asset banks to really fuck with the entire economy, if they were to go down. Of course, yeah. So who's making these laws and then getting their pockets lined by banks' money out of all this shit? It's mainly the stadium banks, like the medium-sized ones um though actually we'll so we'll talk a

little bit about like there's some interesting provisions for banks with 10 billion or less in assets in this um that they will sort of they'll benefit from in the sense that it will allow them to not have to collect data on mortgage discrimination like racial discrimination and these kinds of things and it will allow them to originate um much riskier loans well banks can't be racist they're not supposed to be there's laws against it but um part of dodd frank is that banks are required by law to collect data on like racial uh background there's these kinds of things which um they are under dodd frank which they were not doing before they were but it was sort of the inverse of that right internal data to make right certain

products available to certain groups of people right wells fargo in the lead up to the 2008 financial crisis was of course targeting black churches and black community groups. Bank of America settled, I think, several hundred million for what they call a redlining case. Right. Where certain, like a neighborhood with predominantly black or Latino customers were only marketed certain types of loan products, or were just excluded. The Latinos were marketed the extra zesty interest rates. The muy caliente.

Adjustable rate mortgage. Rapido APR. Interest-only loans. But yeah, so there's that aspect of it. But the main beneficiaries are what has been dubbed stadium banks, where there are, according to The Intercept, there are 18 banks that have stadiums named after them that will benefit hugely from this law.

And stadium banks generally have valuations between $100 and $250 billion, which is the new high cap at which regulation sets in. But not... I mean, some stadiums are Bank of America. That's not... Right. So, yeah, Bank of America is over the $250 billion mark. But, again, there's even stuff in there

for these bigger banks, which we'll talk about a bit. So when you mention stadiums, do you only mean, like... Because there's places that are like amphitheaters that are owned by banks as well. Do you mean those as well? I think it was just sports stadiums. I have the Intercept article here, which like Citizens Bank is where the Philadelphia Phillies are. Comerica is where the Detroit Tigers are.

MNT Bank is where the Baltimore Ravens. MNT Bank. Yeah. Baltimore Ravens. M&T Bank. Yeah. Baltimore Ravens. SunTrust is a huge beneficiary of this bill, and that's where the Atlanta Braves play. So no playoff threats for the Mariners. But before we really get into this, I do want to talk a bit about kind of the pushback against what we're saying now. Where it's like there has been some activist pushback against this bill, as there rightly should be.

But there's also been 16 Democrats and one independent from Maine voted for this bill. And they've kind of pushed back saying like, no, we're not gutting Dodd-Frank. In fact, one of them, Mr. Michael Bennett, the Democratic senator from Colorado, in fact, wrote an editorial for the Washington Post saying, titled, No, Congress Isn't Gutting Dodd-Frank. Oh, good. Yes. And, you know, just an interesting thing not noted in the article, but it is noted by, according to Splinter News, Michael Bennett has received more than $1.9 million donated directly to his campaign in the last five years from the financial sector,

and that's not including his super PACs and these kinds of things. I'm sure the super PACs are negligible. But just a couple quotes from that Washington Post about how Congress is not gutting Dodd-Frank. He says, quote, As the industry consolidates and community banks shutter, it has become harder for small businesses and individuals with good but not perfect credit to receive loans.

And why I wanted to highlight that quote is everyone that I've read says that this bill will actually further industry consolidation, because what's going to happen is now these 50 to 250 billion dollar banks are not subject to these kinds of regulatory standards, and they can start gobbling up other smaller banks so if anything like this consolidation problem that he's warning about which there has been which is why you know i think it was john tester took like a graphic on the senate where he was like since dodd frank you know x number of small community banks have like closed or been consolidated but that's just like yeah that m&a activity started

before before the crisis even right and was greatly exacerbated when a lot of small banks failed. The total number of depository institutions decreased by several thousand banks in the U.S. because of the crisis. That was part of our crisis response where we got like, you know, J.P. Morgan and these other, J.P. Morgan buys up Washington Mutual and this kind of stuff, where we were pushing consolidation as a way to stop these risks. And absolutely, this bill, in my opinion, and of many experts will make the consolidation problem worse, because, you know, now these stadium banks, these 50 to 250 billion will be like, oh, let's go snatch up the small guys. Because, you know, if it adds, say $5 billion to our assets, that's no fucking big deal because it's not going to push us over this new regulatory threshold. Crisis? Consolidation? And I thought my Wi-Fi being turned off was the biggest problem in the country. But just one other thing from this Washington Post editorial called, No, Congress isn't gutting Dodd-Frank.

No. It's like a Vox article. Actually. Explaining why Congress isn't gutting Dodd-Frank. No, circumcision isn't a conspiracy Dodd-Frank. No. Circumcision isn't a conspiracy to make you enjoy sex less. But so anyways,

he says... You want me to circumcise? Everyone here circumcise? What are y'all rocking? I'm not circumcised. Yeah, I got a cut. You got a cut? What are you doing?

No cut? Nope. Wow, the uncircumcised are Yeah, I got a cut. You got a cut? What are you doing? No cut? Nope. Wow, the uncircumcised are a maximum population. Super majority. Yeah, super majority. That's right. Oh, you're not cut, Yogi? Uncircumcised to the bone.

Wow. I was going to say if it was 2-2, we could say the uncircumcised people inherently understand Dodd-Frank better. It turns out there are actually neurological receptors in the foreskin that give you the ability to comprehend financial legislation. Oh, but so anyways, just kind of a fun thing from this editorial. Whatever the repercussions of this, though, just know that I can't really feel them. I'm much less sensitive to these things. We haven't done a stress test yet. much less sensitive to these things.

So he goes, as we move forward, Democrats should consider two questions. One, are we going to fight for regulations that don't accomplish their stated purpose? Two, are we going to let political hyperbole keep us from addressing the legitimate concerns of small businesses, community banks, and millions of credit-worthy Americans?

Ah, yes. This will be known 50 years from now as the famous cross of Bitcoin speech. But yeah, you know, millions of credit-worthy Americans who have been demanding that, you know, SunTrust and State Street get regulatory relief. And that Warren Buffett be able to throw more mobile homes owners out on the street. But he goes, he goes on, on issue. Tell me what deregulation looks like.

Deregulation looks like the people united can never be regulated. You know what? I was thinking of another word to do instead of regulated, but you start, you just can't finish. You start, and you just can't finish. The Sean McCarthy story. Sounds like you're stuck in a liquidity trap. He goes, he continues,

on issue after issue, voices on the left and right routinely decry modest concessions as a betrayal of principle. More often than not, that principle turns out to be little more than a tactic to garner media attention by casting small differences on policy as cataclysmic.

Until this changes, we will struggle to make progress as both parties retreat to their corners instead of doing the unglamorous, vital work of governing. And you can substitute the unglamorous vital work of governing. And you can substitute the word governing with creating another financial crisis. Yeah, I mean, you could say one could just as easily say it's because of a lack of governance that we've gotten into this position. But it is funny.

Like, the other thing about this bill is, like, some of the Democrats who push it say it's, like, bipartisan. And it's like, why is that an attribute? Like if both parties are like, yeah, we want it to, you know, help Warren Buffett fuck you out of your trailer home. When we both agree that we like him more than you, you poor piece of shit. I mean, I basically take. So we cross the aisle to hate you i take chomsky's position that like whenever you can whenever big business and government unanimously support some idea across the aisle warning bells should

be going off like immediately right for this i just like the idea that they're like people in my district and people in your district both chose to vote for someone who was going to screw them over and we have the responsibility responsibility to screw over our constituents. Yeah. Because if we're not going to screw them over, who will? Yeah. If they both voted for someone who was going to screw them over and those people did not do their job of screwing them over,

that's just a dysfunctional Washington. Hey, just because they voted school bullies into office doesn't mean we've got to stop bullying them. It is crazy that like you know even on this level of political corruption it's like how easy is it to pay off our

government? You know with all the stuff about the election and politics in general all this stuff is like layered in text and difficult language only because you know 90% of the population won't even open the fucking document, let alone understand if you tell it to their face. Yeah, I think like people inherently understand that Wall Street is bad, you know, like they,

it's obviously shrouded in a lot of complication, but that's why they couldn't do the big thing is because they have to, I think Elizabeth Warren said they're using community banks as a shield for this, where it's like the only thing Democrats are talking about is these community banks. Well, community banks are actually pretty well taken care of. Anything with less than $10 billion in assets is not subject to these Dodd-Frank regulations, really. If you look at their net income for small banks under $50 billion. Yeah. They've only, I mean, they're doing fine, basically. They've improved their profitability for most of the years since the crisis. Right.

So let's talk about what capital requirements mean. Basically, a capital requirement is saying that a bank that is over a certain size needs to have a certain amount of money on hand so that... Yeah, they need to retain a certain percentage of their earnings and just set that away as like the part of their balance sheet that would absorb any losses by the way their loans they go bad and the idea is that yeah if they're if their investments go bad this will take a hit and it will be fine yeah the bank will survive yeah by the way if you're still

listening right now thank you we're gonna have some zingers at the end what should we talk we should talk about like andy's sex life at the end or something the big stay tuned this is our tease to like force people to listen to this financial deregulation thing but yeah like according to the intercept uh uh the FDIC reported that as of the third quarter of 2017, 96% of the nation's 5,200 community banks were profitable. So 96% of these community banks are profitable, and yet this deregulation. Yeah, we're supposed to worry about them. Right, exactly. Day and night issues.

You know. The Democrats. But so I did want to talk about one other fun little media reaction before we get into you know the the meat of this legislation the real good stuff what you at home are listening for to get into like the volcker rule and what capital requirements are you've waited 30 minutes but we're finally getting into it they're salivating at the bit that's right but volcker rule i thought that was about a bird glass steagle is that some sort of glass jewish maker glass steagle is actually a proposal by the john birch society to nuke the city of steagle

um okay so there was a political magazine article which kind of follows the themes same theme of the washington Post editorial we just talked about. And the political article was called Behind the Dodd-Frank Freakout. And it just so happens that Politico on this Behind the Dodd-Frank Freakout article has a picture of Miss Elizabeth Warren looking a little hysterical. And I hate to use— Women. Exactly. Like, I hate to use the ey pull eye pull thing but it's pretty

clear that politico is gaslighting Elizabeth Warren because like the entire pull yes the entire theme of the article is like look at this woman and like these crazy leftists freaking out about this uh this bill eating eye pulls this bill that like wouldn't really change that much and it's like why is it such a big deal and uh the entire evidence of this political article is um government officials who support the deregulation going on background and making quotes because of course you know you wouldn't want to associate your name with this bill you support you know know, like, I did listen to an interview with Mike Conscall, one of those, like, financial commentators. He's like, one interesting thing is that

a lot of the 2020 contenders are, they basically all don't support the bill. Oh, yeah. Well, it's terrible. And so I think that's important. It's like an indicator of, like, where the public has, they know Wall Street is no good, basically.

Well, they know nobody went to jail. More of... The zeitgeist is we need to regulate. They actually had to work hard to convince people about this bill that would have just been a throwaway 10 years ago. That they wouldn't have had to invest all this

political capital into saying like, well, actually, the community banks are suffering and we're just helping them. invest like all this political capital in saying like well actually the community banks are suffering and we're just helping them they wouldn't I don't think they would have had to have that big of a project basically to yeah to defend this bill zeitgeist is that like some kind of German time ghost I think zeitgeist is a word that means thermite was used to blow up the Twin Towers. Yeah. So, outside of people getting money for

fucking other people over, and the banks obviously want to do this to make more money, what is the anti-us slant on why this is good for the country? Well, actually, if I could just finish the Politico article. I just want to pull... That's the first time that's been said i need to finish this article um but so uh just like one uh a couple

poll quotes that i found kind of humorous so the from the political article uh the narrative that this bill is a huge thing for wall street so we're smoking victory cigars that's just ridiculous said one former government official who now sits on the board of a mega bank wow and i'm just like the complete lack of self-awareness there uh and he says the largest banks mostly think this is irrelevant and i think he's actually lying there because there are some provisions for the largest banks um i mean they're not gonna smoke victory cigars until they get their bail out and dump their assets right before the market crashes i just love that though one former government official who now sits on the board of a mega bank can't understand why people think the system is not working for them i mean dodd frank is 10 years old now or yeah well it's okay it's eight

yeah eight years old it's eight years and ten it's eight years old now and it i I think the banking community is saying like, it's pretty much the same as what they started. This is going to be a long term project. And so if these, you know, if we can only get most of the benefits to the 250 level, billion dollar level, I mean, that's like a more effective. They're establishing a beachhead, I guess. Exactly. Yeah. Because like, and the other thing is like the way deregulation works is you deregulate one sector, and then that sector is suddenly more competitive than the other sectors,

and the other sectors are like, well, you've got to deregulate us, too, because they have an unfair advantage. And then the other fun little quote that I like— It sounds like capitalism works. The other fun little quote from the Politico article is, this is an aid to a moderate Senate Democrat, and he's complaining. He says, are we really going to kill each other over a carve out in the supplemental leverage ratios for predominantly custodial banks? Right now, there are bigger threats in the world.

And I like how he's kind of doing this thing where he's like making it like complicated supplemental leverage ratios that doesn't matter but of course these carve outs for the supplemental leverage ratios will benefit banks like state street um which we've taught uh which has big surprise about 244 billion dollars in assets as of uh 2014 or 2016 so i don't know how they got this 250 number. But State Street has also, as of February of last year, pleaded guilty to a large-scale fraud. Three of their executives are still undergoing prosecution for fraud. And, of course, they set up that fearless girl statue on Wall Street and then ironically had to settle a sex discrimination lawsuit for $5 million. So it's like, yeah, these extremely fraudulent institutions are the ones that we should be deregulating. All I took from that Senate AIDS quote was that there are special banks for janitors.

I just love that, though. It's like, are we really going to kill each other over this deliberately obscure and complex way we've thought up to directly aid, like, the most pernicious financial institutions in this country? Is this really worth our time? They're gaslighting the American public. All right. Well, so anyways. So, Yogi, you had a question, and I guess that's kind of, that's I think an overview of the press reaction and kind of the lobbyist and let's say complicit journalist pushback to this where they're like, guys, don't freak out.

You're being crazy. The articles that start with no, you actually shouldn't freak out about this bill that was a freak. I did have a question. Which one of the major banks are in support of ass eating? Because that's the only thing that I need to know more about. I did have a question. Which one of the major banks are in support of ass eating? Because that's the only thing that I need to know more about. I like the idea of there being like a Washington Post article like, No, that person in my phone really is Frank from work, honey. No, AIDS won't affect you if you're pure of heart.

That's good to know. No, honey, that's a pimple, not a blister on my penis. We don't have to use a condom. But so, yeah, that's just kind of like an example of the pushback, where it's like they're relying on the fact that, by and large, the public doesn't know that much because it is very complicated, deliberately, about how finance works. And they're saying they're saying oh no we're just tinkering with the small banks when in reality they're going up to 250 billion and then there's a lot of other

stuff in there so i guess with the time we have left we'll we'll try to talk about uh what's actually in this bill a bit and then you know we'll get to like the juicy stuff what's the reward at the end what do people get if they listen to this episode if they listen all the way through we'll get to the juicy stuff. What's the reward at the end? What do people get if they listen to this episode? If they listen all the way through, we'll talk about Andy. A fun game. Oh, yeah. We do have a fun game. We have a fun game at the end.

That's our teaser. All right. If they make it through this episode, they will want to play a game with us. I want to cut in the Saw audio. Do you want to play a game? I want to play a little game. It's where we deregulate mid-sized banks. But it's just something where it's like,

I know it's boring, I know it's hard, but you know what? We have a responsibility to use our hundreds of listeners to stop this. But I think it's also just like, it's worth highlighting because like... That was a real misuse of a plural. Our hundred of listeners, our hundred listeners.

It's worth highlighting because, you know what? My opinion, there's no point in having an opposition party if they're both Wall Street parties, you know? And when a third of the Democrats in the Senate crossed the aisle to vote for this, to fuck over consumers, and we'll get into more how they're doing that, like, there's no contrast anymore. It's like, it's expected that there's going to be at least one Wall Street party, but my opinion is you don't need Democrats who are also the Wall Street party, because people, even if they don't understand all of the complexities, they should understand when you bubble D, you're voting against Wall Street. When you bubble R, you're voting for Wall Street.

And these people are just kind of crossing the aisle to have two Wall Street parties. But I think there is a party, sir, within the party that's kind of forming that says, well, actually, we really can't even abide supporting this bill because we have ambitions later that depend upon, you know, progressive people voting for us in 2018. And they're really undermining the party unity and need to be purged. It is kind of adorable that a Cory Booker New Jersey senator

in Obama's campaign in 2012, he actually went on Meet the Press to complain about how Obama's ads portrayed Mitt Romney and his leveraged buyout firm Bain Capital unfairly and how nice people in the financial services sector were because they were giving him all this money at that point. Did Cory Booker vote for this?

No, no, that's the thing. Right, so he's changed his tune. He's put a finger up in the wind, and he's like, Oh, no, I want to run for president. I can't be for this anymore. He just got like a mid-century Brooklyn accent. I, Cory Booker, am tired of the millionaires and the billionaires. Cory, what happened?

He gets a hair transplant, so he has some white hair on the side of his bald head. He starts saying, like, look, I'm not saying. I'm just saying the Dodgers have no place in L.A. Corey, you don't even like baseball. It was a travesty. All right, so I guess to talk a bit more about what this bill itself actually does um the congressional budget office uh estimates um the budgetary effect of this bill is subject to considerable considerable uncertainty and i'm quoting now in part because it depends on the probability that in any year a systemically important financial institution will fail and

there will be a financial crisis or that there will be a financial crisis, or that there will be a financial crisis. CBO estimates that the probability is small under current law and would be slightly greater under the legislation. So the Congressional Budget Office says that this will increase the chance of a financial crisis. What the CBO can't really cover is the systemic risk that people bring up like all those small to medium sized banks stand to lose the most potentially from the bill that these political assignees are saying like oh we're we're protecting the small and little guys and yet that this very legislation like could harm them and then If there's another financial crisis.

I mean, last time around, thousands of small and medium-sized banks bit the dust. Oh, yeah, of course. CBO? CBD? CB4? R2D2? C3PO? What does all of this have to do with me?

The bill provides regulatory relief for one of chris rock's most underrated movies nice yeah thanks uh but so i guess like uh i have some notes here just for like some highlights of what this bill will actually do down to earth um uh it it repeals the volcker rule for um uh uh banks with less than $10 billion in assets that make 500 or fewer loans per year. Head of state. Which according to Intercept, 85% of all banks and credit unions qualify for this. So 85% of all banks and credit unions will be able to ignore the Volcker Rule. And it also allows them to – well, actually, just to get into the Volcker Rule, and it also allows them to – well, actually, just to get into the Volcker Rule, I think, Stephen, you were talking about how now that these smaller banks will be able to avoid the Volcker Rule, there's going to be a lot of Wall Street vultures and these kinds of things who will be flying out to these smaller banks being like, hey, you should engage in risky lending practices.

It's just like The Bachelor. I mean, they're just establishing a clear – It's all about the parents episode. That's what's happening here. They fly to the small towns and convince them with roses and bribes of delusions grander. Yeah, the rose is the downward red line on the stock market. Yeah, these small banks that probably wouldn't be doing a lot of prop trading

are going to get courted by big wall street non-financial institution firms in order to make these in order to buy these riskier products right i mean it's kind of like it's just kind of the nature of regulation as soon as you regulate one thing uh they'll be constantly looking for workarounds so of course now they're going to try and go to these smaller banks and and them on this nonsense. I can just imagine, like, just this, like, older guy with a couple of Wall Street guys come into his office trying to, like, talk him into, like, kind of selling over. And he's like, listen, when I open this up, I just wanted to start a nice community bank run by a family. And the Wall Street guy puts a briefcase on the desk, opens it up and it's full of cocaine. That's right.

A month later, the older guy is like, We gotta move! Yeah, Bitcoin! Put it on Bitcoin! Yeah, I mean, that's basically... The Wolf of Main Street. I like the idea of the Wall Street guy pitching him and being like, well, you know, that all sounds nice, but... And then he motions his hand and, like, three Lamborghinis roll up. He's like, you know what?

Let's start engaging in predatory lending practices. Yo, let's embezzle the plaintiff. But so it's going to repeal the Volcker Rule for these smaller community banks. This is the relief that they're getting, you know, when 96% of them are profitable. And it's also going to essentially, I don't want to say legalize discrimination.

Legalize it. It turns out the it this whole time was discriminatory that's what people were marching for they're like we want credit unions in small institutions higher interest rates to latinos and black families what do we want discrimination when do we want it tomorrow just like When do we want it? Tomorrow. Just like another fun fact, in the lead up to the financial crisis, in addition to targeting these black churches and community groups, some Wells Fargo people also refer to them as, quote, mud people. Oh, wow. Really? Mud people. You know what degrading that is? That's past race. That's past gender. That's literally, what's the worst part of life?

Mud? Mud? I think mud's the worst. These people are mud people. Ugh. I guess it is like slightly above shit. So maybe they're like... You're not a mud man?

Not a mud... What about mud restaurant? Shit is fertilizer. Maybe they meant it as a good thing. Shit is like at least you can grow shit out of it. Mud is literally just a nuisance. You can bake it up and make a house out of it. Yeah.

One of the Wells Fargo people is being subpoenaed or something. How am I being fought against on mud being bad? What if that was his response, like the Wells Fargo banger is being grilled about this, and he's like, look, I meant like bikini mud wrestling. They're like a universally good thing that we all like. But, so anyways.

By mud people, I meant objects of my desire. Living in a ditch with a lot of mud, dream life. But so, David Dayen wrote this wonderful article for The Intercept that breaks down a lot of this stuff and was probably my primary source for this episode. But so he talks about how essentially banks already collect these racial data in lending practices for their own files.

But the problem is basically this bill makes it so they do not have to make that data public or share it with regulators anymore. And that makes it much more difficult to litigate against racial discrimination when all this data is out. When you don't have the data set available to the regulators to see if they're engaging these practices. You can't show through the data that discriminatory lending is occurring. So essentially this is just legalizing discrimination by small banks. Long and short, I would say. Legalize it! So I guess

the other things to talk about are the stadium banks. I think we mentioned very quickly according to the Intercept, 18 stadiums around the world are named after one of the banks that gets significant help from the bill. We mentioned it's section 401 that raises the assets under which you get the enhanced regulation to 100 billion immediately 250 billion 18 months from now they can no longer waterboard bank ceos enhanced regulation techniques and that's just a Travis...

I don't want to live in a country where we can't. That should be what happens next time there's a TARP thing. Everyone who has paid taxes that are then being used to bail out a bank just gets to get in line and waterboard

a bank CEO one by one. A lot of people don't know this, but TARP referred to an actual TARP that they put over their head and waterboard a bank's CEO one by one. Well, I mean, a lot of people don't know this, but tarp referred to an actual tarp that they put over their head and water it down. You know, my theory when the tax bill passed was it's like, it should be legal, the tax bill for the rich people, but it should also have a provision that every billionaire has to have sex whenever they have sex on webcam

and people can just call in and make fun of them while they do it, and they have to listen to it. Yeah, and they're public employees. They're on the public side of banks, and that's part of it. Yeah, yeah. So according to The Intercept, this bill would relieve 25 of the 38 largest U.S. banks from enhanced regulation. So, you know, when they talk about community banks, we're talking about 25 of the 38 largest in the country. And we mentioned Countrywide had $200 billion in assets when it failed.

Intercept also points out National City was a $145 billion bank that collapsed leading up to the financial crisis. The financing arm of General Motors, GMAC, had $210 billion in assets. It received $17 billion in bailout money. So it's just like this $250 billion standard is just a way of covering all of these banks that are very influential to local senators like John Tester in Montana and, you know, these kind of regional banks that are very powerful and have a lot of influence and can give money in re-election campaigns and uh just one other thing about this is essentially these enhanced standards the bill does have language that says the federal reserve can reapply the enhanced standards so that's something in it that defenders point to and they're like well the feds

can still you know reapply these standards standards. But we can't really expect the federal board that Trump is appointing to really enforce these standards. And Jerome Powell is kind of not really a big regulator guy, the new Federal Reserve chairman. Not a fan. And another thing

is the foreign banks. So basically every bank, every foreign bank in the country which includes deutsch bank which is um president trump's personal bank which made him significant loans what country are they in germany um but so they uh every foreign bank that operates in the u.s except for hsbc would also be exempted under these 100 to $250 billion rules. So Deutsche Bank gets exempted, uh, Barclays, which is another stadium bank. The, of course the Brooklyn Nets, uh, play in their stadium.

Um, uh, so yeah, like all these significant financial institutions get kind of exempted, uh, from this. So it's, it's just so ridiculous to me to say that this is focused on community banks. And I mean, even the largest sort of segment of the banking market, like the trillion dollar banks, like Bank of America and Citi, they still benefit, well, certainly indirectly from these regulations that it sort of cements their position within the market as a system like for real systemically important banks if you if they have lobbyists going out to to lobby congress for these changes that like they would argue don't even really affect them it's just to be to make it more competitive or more fair i would say that it only strengthens their position as the likelihood of a bailout.

Elizabeth Warren talks about that. It increases the likelihood that there will be a bailout for the biggest banks. Right. And I guess the other thing to cover before we get to the fun game is how this benefits the big banks and also Mr. Warren Buff buffett which is a tease for

next week because we'll be talking about buffett but um but so uh according to the intercept again the same article uh section 401 of this bill changes the frequency of stress tests for big banks from semi-annual to quote periodic there's no definition of periodic um so it's like it could be less than twice a year which is what the current law says or it could even be once every three years that might that might not seem very serious to sort of the average person when they hear it but i mean considering the onset of the last financial crisis like one month so much can happen oh yeah and so if they make it periodic and then they have people enforcing these when these stretch tests are done that might not be very amenable or more conservative and don't have an eye towards regulation, that could make all the difference.

Right. So essentially like we're letting the Federal Reserve take the eye off the ball, which is just a weird thing to do. And the other part of that, I think one of the most significant is the Federal Reserve does operate a regulatory capacity over banks at the national level. So there's language in this legislation that changes it, essentially it changes the word that the Federal Reserve can tailor their regulatory approach from bank to bank. And the current language says the Federal Reserve may do this. The new legislation says the Federal Reserve shall do this. They shall tailor their regulatory approach from each bank. And what this does for like a good lawyer, the word shall, it gives you a big opening in the legal sense that now, you know, the best paid lawyers in the world work for all these banks.

Suddenly they can start suing, you know, the Federal Reserve for saying, oh, you're not tailoring your regulation to our specific bank. You're not doing a good enough cost-benefit analysis. The legislation opens up huge legal avenues where maybe the incentive for the Federal Reserve suddenly becomes, let's not, you know, let's just go with what the industry wants because otherwise we're going to get tied up in litigation.

And the other part is like, as Stephen mentioned, a crisis can happen, you know, in a month. It unfolds very fast. So, you know, maybe they're trying to respond to a crisis and suddenly there's a law that says, oh, the banks have the ability to stymie it by saying you are not tailoring your regulation to our specific circumstances so it opens up a big legal avenue for uh these financial corps um yeah legalize it we're we're at an hour all right well uh let's just finish up here real quick um and then i guess like one other thing uh just about the bank legislation itself uh section 403 lights city

group and other big banks count municipal bonds as quote highly liquid assets towards their leverage ratio so we were talking about you know how this reduces the capital requirements uh municipal bonds like city and local bonds, counties and these kinds of things are very much not highly liquid in that they can't really be sold and traded easily. And some cities are extremely in debt and not in good financial condition.

So it's like a municipal bond is not a cash asset, but by allowing a city and JP Morgan and others, the biggest banks to count these municipal bonds as cash on hand it's going to allow them to increase their leverage and increase their profits and also increase risk to the system bond municipal oh my god um yeah i guess like uh the the main thing i want to highlight from this is just, like, the Democrats who voted for this and, you know, how in the pocket of Wall Street and these mid-to-big-size financial firms they are. And I think the party doesn't really need this. Yeah, I mean, the Democrats have, I think there was a poll I saw that had a double-digit lead overall for 2018 elections. Yeah.

And this totally works at cross-purposes to that. I think they will pay a political price. Yeah, so like, and just to tie it into next week, we're doing Mr. Warren Buffett. V! Warren Buffett, like, owns a surprising amount of things. And one of those things that he owns, uh, is,

I believe it's called Clayton homes, which, uh, he owns Clayton. Yeah. So he owns both Clayton homes and Vanderbilt mortgage through, uh, Berkshire Hathaway.

And Clayton controls 49% of the manufactured home market. So he controls almost half of the mobile home market. And weirdly enough, this bill is essentially going to make it easier for foreclosure and discriminatory lending. I think... Yeah, it allows him to vertically integrate the lending process for those homes. What the bill would do is eliminate a requirement that the seller of these homes

not steer people towards specific lending options. And so now they can do that. They would have an incentive to, mean if you're clayton homes to steer them towards um community lenders that are owned by in part by berkshire wow so it's not bait and switch but it is a go down this fork over that that fork huh yeah i mean if you're most people wouldn't think twice about a seller for their home saying, hey, you should check out this lender. They have this and this deal.

Right, right. And you don't have to disclose that you have a relationship or you get a financial cutback anymore. No, they don't agree. And also just a fun fact about Clayton Homes as owned by Warren Buffett. According to The Intercept, in 2016, Clayton Homes foreclosed on one in every 40 properties, which is over three times the national average. And I can just imagine those people having all their belongings thrown out in the street and thinking, well, at least the friendly grandpa billionaire did this to me.

But, yeah, there's just so much crap in this bill. And I know we're running out of time, but I do want to talk about just a couple more things before we finish here. There's something called broker deposits. So we mentioned the, and I know, people are, like, tuning out because they're like, we want the game. We want to get to the game.

We've listened to so much boring financial fucking regulation crap. We are excited for the game, but just give me three more minutes, people. All right, so there's something called broker deposits. So the FDIC insures all bank deposits up to $250,000. How rich people get around this is they put $250,000 in a bunch of different bank accounts. You know, if you have a million, you have four bank accounts, each with $250,000 in it. And there are what are called broker deposits,

which are financial institutions like Promontory, interestingly, I believe, managed by a former Clinton budgetary official, Bill Clinton. But so Promontory is one of these services that says, okay, you can have one account with us, and we will open bank accounts up to $250,000 with all these other institutions. So in response to this, the FDIC mandated, according to The Intercept, that banks taking

broker deposits need to limit their take and hold more capital reserve requirements against them, because this is gaming the system, you know. But Section 202 of this new bill, written by Democrat hero Mark Warner of Virginia, essentially strips capital requirements and limitations on broker deposits, according to The Intercept. So, you know, we're going to get rid of this kind of regulation of people just horrifically gaming the system as well. And just all that in the name of community banking relief.

When we found Sean, he was yelling this on a street corner. And we thought, we might as well bring him in and put him on mic. That's true, though. I just feel like I'm screaming into the void about this shit. I mean, here's the thing. You're not wrong. It sucks because it's one of those things where it's so easy to feel

helpless and hopeless. And, you know, it's frustrating, I think, you know, especially for Andy and I, because what the fuck are we supposed to do? Not, like, in this conversation, but just in general. Like, I think what you can do is tell people that it's happening, number one. And vote for Democrats. That'll fix it. Well, I mean and vote for democrats that'll that'll fix it well uh i mean vote for i said there's like a party sort of within the party who just can no longer abide this type

of legislation oh yeah russian plans and so vote for like vote for them vote uh support russian hackers join a community bank i think that's a thing. It is funny that this shit happens and then there's like the fucking establishment Democrat wing that's freaking out like, oh, they won't vote for sanctions on Russia. Meanwhile, there's no bigger domestic threats whatsoever to the health and financial

security of this country. And then just lastly, I was going to say, don't support terrorists who support this bill in Congress. Yeah, support the banks that actually fund and launder money for terrorists. Yeah, no, I mean, I was really disappointed at Congressman bin Laden's support of this bill. And the many wife scandals that he had. He cheated on all his wives yeah with other wives so i guess last thing we mentioned uh custodial banks which are banks that kind of hold assets

for rich people mostly uh big ones that would benefit from this are state street we mentioned all their um fraud scandals. Very recent. Like, you know, every bank was doing fraud up until the financial crisis. I thought this was the bank that keeps all the pink stuff you put on vomit. But very few of them, you know, just had like the commitment

to like stick with the style and be publicly caught doing it. That's right. Continuously, like seven or eight or nine years after the financial crisis. State Street, three executives are still undergoing prosecution. They'll be one of the hugest beneficiaries of an adjustment to their leverage ratio, their supplementary leverage ratio, which is this, as we mentioned, sort of complicated thing that essentially reduces their leverage. According to the Intercept, the FDIC has estimated that the capital reduction for these banks would be as high as 30 so state street new york melon and one other big one

are going to get this uh big reduction in their capital ratios and i can predict no negative benefits from that all right so when's the crash happening? New York melon, New York honeydew, New York pineapple. Northern Trust is another one. So State Street, Northern Trust, New York melon. Keep an eye on those, folks. I think we should take bets as to which one collapses the entire system. I don't like this Northern Trust nonsense. Got the word trust in the name?

Come on, bro. You know in the South they call it the trust of northern aggression and the last thing i want to do just i do want to name all the democrats who voted for this nonsense just so you can know to ignore them when they put a beat over it do it all right so here we go here we go you got senator tom carper of delaware he's taken money from the financial institution senator ch Chris Coons, also of Delaware. Delaware, interestingly enough, has one of the most lenient financial laws in the nation. They were like kind of implicated in the Panama Papers because a lot of companies incorporate there because there's very little disclosure requirements. And so, of course,

the two senators take a lot of money from the financial industry. So you got those two. You got Joe Donnelly, Democrat, Indiana. You got Maggie Hassan, New Hampshire Democrat. You got Heidi Heitkamp, North Dakota. She's, I think, up for reelection. She took a lot of money for this. You've got, you know, Doug Jones, of course, voted for this because when people in Alabama were crying against Roy Moore, they were like, this guy, if we let this pedophile into Congress, he's not going to deregulate the big banks.

He's not going to allow State Street to, you know, reduce its capital reserve requirements by 30%. That was the chant at Doug Jones rallies. Let State Street reduce their capital reserve requirements by 30%. So Doug Jones voted for this. Lovable grandpa Tim Kaine voted for this. No, not Tim Kaine. Or is he a father?

Lovable uncle? Lovable brother? Part of the secret to Tim Kaine's success in Virginia politics has been finding a way to appeal to the rural folks in southwest Virginia. And one of the ways he did that was playing the harmonica.

Throwing their mortgage. He appealed to the rural folks in Virginia by allowing allowing warren buffett to kick them out of their homes part of how he appealed to rural voters was by promising to repeal supplemental capital requirements for small and medium banks but when they get like kicked out when they get foreclosed on he's he's there with his constituents just playing them a nice sad tune on the old mouth organ as they drag their belongings into the street i just imagine him like using his spanish language skills to explain to a latino person why it's good they're getting discriminated against now what's what's spanish for 10 higher interest rate than a white borrower, than a Blanco borrower?

Remember that Bloomberg Spanish drop in there? So Tim Kaine is a voter for this. Tim Kaine has taken... Is this Tim Kaine breaking it down? Hell yeah. Is this his song? His hit song, I've Taken More Than $900,000

from the Financial Industry in the Last Five Years, according to Squatter News. That's almost a hit. It's like, who do you think bought the harmonica? You look on there, it just says, Property of JPMorgan Chase.

Angus King is the independent we mentioned from Maine. He voted for this. Joe Manchin up for re-election in West Virginia. Democrat. He voted for this. Joe Manchin, of course, a big fan of killing coal miners. We'll get into that in another episode. Claire McCaskill, Democrat Montana,

has taken more than $800,000 from financial services. Not Claire. She voted for this. Senator Bill Nelson, Democrat Florida. Florida, of course, known for their very stringent financial standards and never overvalued property market. Interestingly enough, the Great Depression was actually also preceded

by a property boom and bust in Florida in the 1920s, as well as the Great Recession. Senator Gary Peters, Democrat, is MI Minnesota. I should probably know this. I think it's Missouri.

You're right. It's probably Missouri. Anyway, he voted for this. Not him. Senator Jeanine Sheehan, no relation to Jeanine Garouffalo uh democrat new hampshire because they both have the same name yeah listen sean i can tell you're grasping at straws and i'd help you out but only one of these people plays harmonica

god yeah you know i we all set all shot ourselves in the foot where we're like, yeah, let's do a comedy podcast about complex finance where like 40 minutes of it is just set up trying to explain finance. First off, the first 30 minutes is us trying to understand it ourselves. And then the second 30 minutes

is us trying to explain it to our listeners who probably tuned out 20 minutes ago. And then we barraged them with the listeners. You're going to have a fun game, ladies and gentlemen. I want to thank State Street, New York Mellon, New York Mellon on the drums,

Northern Rock, which will now be able to market hedge funds with the same name as financial institutions. Thereby. Clayton Holmes on drums. John Tester, of course, we mentioned Democrat Montana, taking more than $780,000 from financials. Debbie Stabenow, also Missouri or Minnesota. We're not sure. It's Missouri.

She's Missouri. Missouri is M-O. So it's Minnesota. Minnesota is M-N. M-I is Michigan. Oh, Michigan. Oh, wow. Well, anyways. I think Gordon crushed.

Provided the catering. Just more harmonicas. And, of course, big shout-outs to our boy, Senator Mark Warner, who, of course, wrote that part of Section 202 that would make sure that broker deposits are not subject to additional scrutiny. You know, looking out for people gaming the FDIC rules. He has taken over $1.3 million from financial services. The forgotten Warner brother.

All right, so I guess we just do the game, and then we'll harmonica out of here. Sounds good to me. All right, so what's the game? All right, ladies and gentlemen. You waited. You waited the whole episode and here we are and now your treat guys i know what you're thinking these this group of dipshits thinks that they know the truth oh about the stock market and trading and capitalism

but i know better well now you got the chance to show us better with the number 198 rated game and finance best brokers stock market game we are going to uh fire up this game it's there there are a bunch of stock market simulators where you get a set amount of money and then you trade real stocks and then you just see how much money you can make earn real money you do not earn real money oh damn it uh but you do earn real satisfaction you have a chance to beat a grub staker at our own game yes the reason we went with best brokers is it's available on both iPhone and Android and maybe the other ones and not available on Linux. And you can friend people and then you can play against them.

So we're going to all get our names. Mine is grub stakers. Andy, there's going to be grub staker, Sean grub staker, Steven and grub stakers, Yogi. And we're all going to start out with $25,000 when this episode drops.

And we're going to see who can do the best investing. And if you friend us, then you'll join our little leaderboard and get to compete with us. And it's a race to a billion. That's the goal. Yeah, you start at $25,000 and it's a race to a billion. Yes. Which is entirely possible investing in the stock market with $25,000. I think the person who's going to win this game is the last person among the four of us who's alive.

It's going to be like 70 years from now. So you can pay money in this to give yourself more money. We're going to say don't do that on our system. Yes, if you're going to spend money, just give it to us directly, and we will declare you winner of this game. Or you've got to spend real money to make fake money. Yeah. What if the market collapses?

Do you get a virtual fake money bailout from this app? But yes, you know what? I have not done any research, but I will say from this, I will be putting all of my money into Berkshire Hathaway and Warren Buffett's new foreclosure on mobile homes machine. Andy, what are you going to put your money in? I put all my money in weapons manufacturers as well as oil companies and prescription drug manufacturers.

I like to trade. I figure the most evil corporations are going to get the best returns. I'm going to put it into eating ass companies mainly. I like it. Arms distributors. Arms distributors.

Raytheon. And also State Street, New York, Mellon. All the guys who are really going to heat up When this Senate bill becomes law Actually on my So I've had this running I'm the only one who's going to spend money Because I've been playing this for a while

Wow Andy So I'm at $30,000 but I'm going to spend $3 to reset it to $25 Oh okay So I don't have a lead But my best performers are Boeingeing northrop grumman and raytheon well just wait till john bolton gets confirmed a national security advisor andy wins the game immediately you can also get like massive they let you trade uh crypto on here so you can get massive returns uh really quickly uh or the opposite depending on uh you know whether

someone sneezed whether one of the the winklevoss winkies sneezed on his computer earlier so if you play with us and you join our app game shenanigans and you win we'll give you $2 on Amazon. That's fair. $2. Yeah. Why not? We can each put up $0.50 or $0.75. However much. Fuck. I can't do math. Sean will put all of the $2 in. I'll put the $2 up.

But thank you very much for listening. Yeah. Thanks for listening. We appreciate you listening to our podcast and let us know what you like about it if you want Andy to do more drops like I always say he should let us know and

more importantly there weren't a lot of Dodd Frank drops for this one he was there on the harmonica that's true he did he did do some

killer harmonica work today rate review and subscribe and all that nonsense we don't tell you any shit usually but we crossed 500 hits

and we wanted to say thank you to our listeners thanks for our listeners because without you we're literally yelling at the void yeah and um just last thing so this senate bill still has to pass the house um the republicans there are threatening and saying we want to get rid of the volcker rule entirely and gut dodd frank moore but i think in the end they're going to succumb and just say all right this is all we can really get and i think the house is going to pass this but I would still encourage you if you have time

to contact your rep and your senator and just tell them they're a fucking idiot if they vote for this they probably are going to ignore you but you know what just remember their names and vote against them as soon as you can because they're not your friend that's all I would say and with that my name is Yogi Poywall Steve Jeffers, Andy Palmer, Sean

McCarthy let's go buff it make me some money baby And with that, my name is Yogi Poywall. Steve Jeffers. Andy Palmer. Sean McCarthy. Let's go Buffett. Make me some money, baby. Thank you. ¶¶ La la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la