Grubstakers - Episode 15: Paul Singer

Episode Date: May 14, 2018

Hoo boy this week episode was late due to legal red tape.Nevertheless our episode is about hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer and man is this dude a piece of work. If you don't believe us check out our research on our tumblr page. Enjoy!

Hey everybody, welcome to Grubstakers, the podcast that asks, is there such a thing as a good billionaire? This week we're taking a look at hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer. Hear all about his brilliant investment strategy, which involves using bankruptcy courts to go after companies and take their workers' pensions, and also use courts all around the world to go after countries that are in debt and take aid money and put it in his own pocket.

This episode will be about how Paul Singer is a good billionaire. All that and more coming up on Grubstickers. I think we disproportionately stop whites too much. I taught those kids lessons on product development and marketing, and they taught me what it was like growing up feeling targeted for your race. I am proud to be gay. I am proud to be a Republican. You know, I went to a tough school in Queens, and they used to beat up the little Jewish

boys. You know, I love having the support of real billionaires. We all ready? Yeah. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to Grubstakers. Sean P. McCarthy here, as always, joined by my friends. Andy Palmer.

Yogi Paiwal. Steve Jeffries. And this week, we got a special episode for you about one Mr. Paul Singer. And this is particularly relevant in the wake of a Donald Trump president withdrawing from the Iran deal, as you might have heard. On May 8th, Trump made the decision to reimpose U.S. sanctions on Iran, bring us that much closer to going to war with Iran, and there was an interesting article from loblog.com, L-O-B-E-L-O-G.com, and they pointed out that there's three billionaires.

It's Bob Loeb's Loblog. There's three billionaires in particular who really have been big advocates and funders of this policy. They're the casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, the Home Depot co-founder Bernard Marcus, and hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer. And today we're going to be talking about Paul Singer, who is one of the most disgusting vultures I've ever done research on. Oh, yeah.

And it's interesting just like the way he uses the courts and the law and the political process to take money out of the hands of starving people, you know, and it's just something where it's like it's not apparent on the surface what an evil bastard he is i think what you're talking about is creating jobs um a lot of billionaires you know steal off the backs of poor people paul just steals the backs it's crazy um but yes so uh paul singer in addition to being a complete vulture and a scumbag, and again, we're not the people to coin the term vulture him as a vulture with a large beak, which he interpreted as an anti-Semitic attack on his nose. And we would just like to say that

we would never want to disrespect vultures by associating them with the Jewish people. Anyways, but the point is, in addition to his business practices, which we'll get into, Paul Singer donated more than a million dollars to, he was initially a big opponent of Donald Trump. He spent millions trying to get Marco Rubio elected, which shows his investing acumen. The Rube! He thinks this guy can fucking win. But after that, and he actually was an initial founder of the Fusion GPS doc,

you know, the P-tapes or the idea that the research dossier against Trump. He was an initial founder of that. But since Trump's been elected, he's come around full circle. He donated more than a million dollars to Trump's inauguration committee. We still don't know where all that money went. And he's been a booster of him since then. And he funds a lot of radical pro-Israel organizations, including the hawkish Foundation for the Defense of Democracies,

as well as Birthright. He funds Birthright and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, et cetera, et cetera. And in 2007, according to The the nation he's probably responsible for more hand jobs than any human on earth um but just to give you an idea uh in 2007 according to the nation paul singer said quote we think that it is necessary to do so in regard to bombing iran and soon so that was a decade ago so he must think it must be necessary to do it even sooner now. But basically, Paul Singer is an ardent person who wants to go to war with Iran. And now that, you know, billionaires have such influence on our political process, you know, he is one of the people who is really lobbying for this war with Iran that we're potentially looking at.

So we thought it would be interesting to explore the man. And in honor of the nearly departed, here is Senator John McCain. That old Beach Boys song, Bomb Iran. Bomb, bomb, bomb. Did you know that Singer was trained in the classical piano since age 10? So he could probably play that song. But anyway, so just to kind of get into Paul Singer, we think we're not really qualified to introduce him.

Instead, the eminent Andrew Ross Sorkin at the New York Times Dealbook did an interview with Paul Singer, and we think the intro that he did really sums him up. And make a note of the musical choices. Yes. We would just like you to note the music that Paul Singer himself chooses to come out to. We're going to take a hard turn from wearable devices and technology to spend some time with one of the smartest investors out there these days. It is a true pleasure and a rare opportunity to hear from Paul Singer today of Elliott Management. Come on out here, Paul, if you could. How are you?

That music seems very, you know, like you're coming into, I know you're an activist investor, but that sounded like very kind of takeover style music. For those of you who don't know singer is his when sorkin says that not even paul singer is amused his face is just blank like a like a muppet being held by someone with a hangover i love i love this fucking kiss ass piece of shit andrew ross sorkin like i know you're a brilliant investor like it was such a stroke of Einstein genius to be like, yeah, when you take water out of hungry people, you actually get money. Yeah, so let's go into why everything Andrew Ross Sorkin said is true.

So, Paul Singer, to give you a bit of background. Oh, and the song, for those who don't recognize, was against the machine bulls on parade right yeah you know because he's a bull which you know because the the wall street thing but anyways the the great irony is that rage against if you ever think culture like music or comedy changes anything all you need to know is that paul singer and paul ryan both loveage Against the Machine that spent their entire career making music about how those people should be burned alive in front of their families.

So, you know, it's all art is co-opted. There's no point. I just want the audience to know we entered it out 20 minutes of Sean talking about how our podcast means nothing to nobody. Alright, so... My five-minute rant about people named Paul ruining music.

Paul Singer is notoriously concerned with privacy and security, so research on this episode was even harder than usual. He has a subsidiary through the Cayman Islands. Well, I'll get into more of the business stuff, but just to give you a quick thing, according to Fortune magazine, employees at his firm, Elliott Management, his hedge fund, are not allowed to post photos of themselves anywhere on social media or whatever because he's obsessed with security. He doesn't want his employees being able to be found. So finding information about his children or his ex-wife or anything, it's all similar.

The guy is obsessed with security. So it's your honeymoon, and you just have to say no to every single picture opportunity. Sorry, honey. I need this job where I defraud the people of peru out of their rice rash if i if i don't get on that plane and go to peru someone else will um but so basically the point is that uh the research we've uh collected for this um episode will necessarily be incomplete but we think it's pretty damning, and we think the stuff that's out there is even worse. And so I'll just give you a brief biography of Mr. Singer, and then we'll get into his business practices. But so according to Forbes magazine, he's worth about $2.8 billion as of May 2018.

He grew up in New Jersey. He's one of three children. This is according to Fortune magazine. One of three children of a Manhattan pharmacist and a homemaker. He majored in psychology at the University of Rochester, graduated in 1966, got a law degree from Harvard Law School in 1969. And in 1974, he landed a job working in the real estate division of an investment bank as an attorney three years later he leaves that job to launch elliot associates with and again i'm quoting from fortune 1.3 million from quote friends and family so another beneficiary of friends and family llc play the friends and family drop do i have a friends and family drop? We probably don't.

Friends intro. I like how they call him like Sorkin calls him a genius and this like savant investor. You know when he's like really he's just doing what any creditor would by like

going to incredibly distress people and then extracting concessions from them on their debt yeah you know it really takes a real genius to be like you know those things that are uh keeping uh people from uh collecting debts from uh one of the top 10 starving nations in the world uh oh morals yes we'll just we'll just get rid of those and and conscience that's the genius and scruples only paul singer had the strength of character to go to argentina yeah andrew ross sorghen for the record he writes a a decent blow by blow history of um the financial meltdown called too big to fail and i say it's decent in the sense that it gives it has a lot of interviews with players that were there so it really kind of gives you the minute-by-minute.

HBO made a movie about it. But I remember reading it where I was like, something is wrong here. Because at no point does he talk about fraud or any of these things. And it's just like, because this is a deal-book New York Times reporter who fucking kisses the ass of these horrific people. And it's like, know again paul singer they were they were too busy uh doing what's best for the uh middle class american to realize that some of their loans were not proper but it's just like the thing is like when we talk about corporations like city

group they're incredibly evil but paul singer is the guy who when Citigroup goes, okay, we will accept this restructured debt negotiation agreements, Paul Singer goes, no, no, this is not evil enough for me. It just really takes something else to sit down for an interview with a guy like that and just butter him

up. Anyways, just to finish the biography, he gets this $.3 million uh from friends and family uh so 77 all right uh so 77 he sets up elliot associates um his hedge fund today uh the it's known as elliotott management corporation uh serves as the management affiliate of the hedge funds elliott's associate and elliott international limited which are his two subsidiary head funds and he also has like some cayman islands affiliates where we'll talk about his more shady deals he does through the cayman's islands to uh avoid transparency um he

was uh divorced in 96 we know he lives in the... Boo! He doesn't value the sanctity of marriage. And as we all know, whenever a billionaire's been divorced, we conclude that they don't eat the butt. So let's not forget this. His wife...

He got divorced. End of episode. He's bad. He got divorced about a day after his wife said, you know, I think Palestinians are human beings. The next day, the house was just empty with a note that said divorce papers. So he was divorced in 96, lives on the Upper East Side. He has two sons, one of whom is a gay man who was married in Massachusetts in 2009, which makes Paul Singer a very pro-LGBT causes Republican, which has not stopped him from

donating countless millions of dollars to the most horrifically anti-gay Republicans in the world. But of course, he still has his own little foundation, which is trying to find pro-gay Republicans who want to, you know, strip poor people of their meager inheritance. I also read that he was a big proponent of gay marriage being legalized in New York as well. Oh, well. You know, his son sounds cool, unless he has since gotten divorced. He wanted gay marriage to be legal but only for david geffen um so anyway so uh he's uh we mentioned a an accomplished musician he's been playing classical piano since uh age 10 uh his favorite band is led zeppelin these are just like factoids

from the fortune profile because again it's hard to find information about this guy. He once jammed on stage with Meatloaf. So, you know, that's really all we know. Oh, and his building, I believe Jerry Seinfeld has a place there. As well as the actress Glenn Close. So if you ever wanted to see the two most insufferable Jewish people in their respective industries meet one another and awkwardly avoid eye contact in the hallway. Head to the Upper East Side. Oh, oh, hey Paul.

What's the deal with Argentina? What's the deal with the Republic of Congo? It's not democratic. And it's not a republic. And as far as I can see, they don't do the congo why do they call it food aid it goes to paul singer instead but anyways oh yeah and so uh elliot uh management corporation has about 34 billion uh under asset

assets under management today it's a huge hedge fund. And we mentioned a bit on the Bill Ackman episode where most hedge funds are in a downturn. It's also in a bit of a downturn, but it's still beating other hedge funds. And again, we're really about to get into how they have done that. And it's kind of sickening,

but I guess it is really the logical conclusion. So we mentioned Paulul singer is a lawyer and in the course of my research somebody made the a good point which is essentially that he's not really a good investor he's just a lawyer who realized that he could use the courts as a creditor to force people to repay him right and so uh i just want to quote a bit uh from the investigative journalist greg palace who i'm very reliant on for some of the research in this episode. So basically, they're saying that he makes the point that Singer's modus operandi is to find a forgotten tiny debt owed by a very poor nation, such as Peru or the Republic of Congo. And I'm quoting here. He waits for the U.S. and European taxpayers to forgive the poor nation's debts, then waits a bit longer for offers of food aid, medicine, and investment loans.

Then Singer pounces, legally grabbing at every resource and all the money going to the desperate countries. Trade stops, funds freeze, and the entire economy is effectively held hostage. So basically, yeah, that is what the vulture debt strategy is. He buys up these debts of very poor poor countries usually on the secondary market and then just goes to every single courtroom he can find around the world and sues to try and claim some food aid or other repayment and say hey i own the debt i am first in line as a creditor you know it's disgusting and uh multiple people have said that paul singer literally kills babies which again sounds like hyper have said that Paul Singer literally kills babies,

which, again, sounds like Hyper Bowl, but no, he literally kills babies. Apparently. Yes. No, no, it's Hyper Bowl. I think that's... Oovable? Yes. Yes, precisely.

I got a Hyper Bowl when I was back at the legal cannabis shop in Seattle. That's definitely one you can't blame on your Irish dad. The thing is, when you hit a hyperbole, nobody believes how high you are. No matter how you try to describe it. They're like, no, you're exaggerating how high you are right now. You're like, no, it's a hyperbole.

So how is he killing these babies, Sean? Well, so we'll get through a few of the nations that he's done this with, but we mentioned the Congo. I guess I'll get into the Congo later, but in the case of the Congo, during a cholera epidemic, he basically sued a Belgian court to try and stop aid repayment that would have allowed them to maybe install clean water oh wow so uh but i'll get into the conga later his business is kind of referred to

as like he specializes in distressed debt restructuring but he's more like he's like waiting to pounce on that sovereign debt and then just restructuring the country so that they're able to repay him first right so like he's literally like hey you guys are fucking up and how you owe money in aid and i'm going to take advantage of that yeah well yeah i mean because it's like as long as he's a creditor and as long as he refuses to come to terms he can say that as a creditor i should have first right to any money going into this country and again we'll get into it like in the case of argentina where he literally went to a port in another nation and got a judge to let him seize one of their ships like their navy's ships to try and get repayment um but again we're kind of jumping ahead here because i do want to talk about

how um what really made him yeah, billionaires don't have power the same way governments do. It's not like they can seize a Navy ship. It was later returned to Argentina after it began, like, shelling some journalists looking into him. It was on the A&E reality show, Repo Navy Ship. I like the idea of Dog the Bounty Hunter

breaking into a Navy ship. Bringing it back to Paul Singer. I'm the Dog. That'd be a good one. Spin off your Argentinian battle cruiser into a reality TV show. I want to see like billionaire storage wars

where it's just like a bunch of billionaire or they like crack open the books for some country defaulting on their debt. And someone's like, that would never happen because billionaires don't go broke. No, no, no. It's not there. They're bidding on like, you know, a country's book and they're like, oh, oh, that one's got pensions. Okay. You know. Right. So anyways, I did want to talk about how essentially this strategy that Paul Singer employs is a recent phenomenon.

It's not inherent in, you know, whatever system. And there's a law on many books against this for the longest time called Champerty. Webster's Dictionary defines Champerty. I did look this up so champerty is a an illegal agreement in which a person with no previous interest in a lawsuit finances it with a view to sharing the disputed property if the suit succeeds and again this is what paul singer does uh both with corporations and with these distressed nations where he has no interest in these bonds until the country defaults then he like buys them up on the secondary market for cheap and then just wages a never-ending

lawsuit to get his payout and throw wrenches in the works of whatever aid restructuring process until he's made whole and so this really started for him in 1995 when elliot management his hedge fund purchased about 2.87 billion of panama's debt for a bit think about 17 and a half billion but so basically when panama tried to restructure that debt vast majority of the bondholders agreed except for elliot management in 96 of july they filed a suit against panama in a new york court uh demanding repayment in full eventually the new york supreme court sided with elliot management and foreign policy magazine called it a quote groundbreaking moment in modern

finance because sovereign governments before this point were generally uh not sued uh in regular courts that were supposed to deal with internal issues to a nation and so this kind of like lawsuit shopping practice became their real bread and butter for the 90s and 2000s he eventually he got almost 50 million out of that thanks to the new york supreme court and uh also judging by his like love for acdc you know he jammed out to that the whole time he was suing them um but so basically uh with the um with the statute in place from Panama, he moves on to Peru. And Peru is an interesting case because he, I'm quoting from Fortune here.

In 96, he buys defaulted Peruvian debt. He explained the firm's position saying, quote, Peru would either pay us in full or be sued, end quote. And so what happened was Peru argued against that under what I mentioned above, the champerty laws, which, as we mentioned, don't allow an investor to buy a claim with the sole purpose of bringing suit. But what happened was a U.S. lower court sided with Peru in 98, but the ruling and the definition of champerty was later overturned in 2000.

In 2000, he was awarded about $58 million, and he later lobbied successfully for the repeal of the state of New York's Champerty statue and then donated, uh, I think, uh, 1500, um, uh, 2,500 to New York state assembly member, Susan John, uh, for helping, uh,

get rid of the Champerty statue and also changing, uh, an obscure law in New York governing compound interest, which increased his payout from the Peru thing. So the guy really has his tentacles in Albany as well as other places. So this thing where it's possible for a private investor to sue sovereign nations, is that a side effect of trade agreements, essentially? I think it's just, yeah, I mean mean i think it's partly a consequence of globalization but i think it's also just a consequence of activist judicial rulings because it was entirely

what really set this thing off was the uh judge and the new york supreme court eventually saying that he had standing to sue pan in a New York court. And since that time, he's shot lawsuits all over the place. And the United Kingdom in 2010 passed a law saying that these kind of lawsuits are not valid. But the United States has threatened to do such a thing, but has not. So he can still use U.S.s courts to sue which is what he did in the case of argentina and it's so it's not recognized by argentina right argentina refused to pay they don't consider him an interested party i guess other than the fact that he bought up all

this debt right before okay michael little yeah uh well and it's interesting because like he was lobbying back in 2012 to try and, like, get the U.S. to, like, cut off trade or sanction Argentina until he was made whole, which is why he was a big booster of Mitt Romney, because the idea was Romney would help him do that, which, of course, one of Paul Singer's associates was Romney's foreign policy advisor. So, you know, you can imagine. That's another thing about Singer I hate is he's really bad at picking political people to support. Romney, Rubio.

For as much of a genius as people consider him to be, he kind of sucks at knowing who's going to lead the country next. Well, to be fair, his opponent was Obama. That's all he can do against them. I do just want to return to the Peru case because the Peru has a fun little anecdote. So basically, Peru's president from 1990 to 2000, while Singer was dealing with him, was a guy named Alberto Fujimori. He has been, as of 2009, sentenced to 25 years in prison by a court in Peru because of kidnapping and murders carried out by a death squad of the Army Intelligence Service known as the Colina Group in their campaign

against leftist guerrillas in the 1990s. Not Alberto. So basically, the story of how Paul Singer got paid by Peru is that he let Fujimori, when Fujimori was fleeing the country in 2000, one of his last acts as president was ordering the Treasury to pay Paul Singer $58 million because Singer had seized Peru's Air Force One presidential jet. So in exchange for this criminal murderer and kidnapper paying off Paul Singer, he literally gave him the keys to this plane that allowed him to flee the country

and evade justice for nine years. That was way loud. But yeah. What was that dude's name again? Alberto what? Fujimori. Wow, what a name. Yeah, no wonder. Yeah, I think he was actually... Sorry, Pru has a big Japanese

ethnic group. Oh, really? Yeah. I didn't know that. I think he was extradited from Japan, if memory serves. But yeah, you know, killing in the name of. But so anyways, those are just the kind of shady things he does. And we should, I guess, mention the Republic of Congo as well, because he goes from Panama to Peru to the Republic of Congo.

Really a world tour of corruption. You want people killed for money? You follow Elliott management. One thing I'll also mention about Paul Singer, it's kind of genius, because his name is Paul Singer, when you try and Google him, it just shows up a whole bunch of singers named Paul. Like, constantly I was finding things about Paul Simon and Paul Anka. And I'm like, I'm not trying to find out about these people.

I'm trying to find out about this fucking billionaire. Yeah, but so, like, defenders of Paul Singer's practices, such as his Wikipedia page. The Wikipedia page for Elliott Management argues that they, quote, unquote, exposed corruption in the Congo through their practices. Of course. By doing it. Yeah, I know. And I do just want to go through the Congo because, like, you know, the previous stories, I'm sorry if these dragged at all, but the Congo thing is just so horrifyingly mind-bending to me. But so basically, and I didn't know this before today, the Republic of Congo and the Democratic Republic of Congo are two different countries

and if you want to know the difference the Democratic Republic of Congo is the one where Belgium committed a genocide and the Republic of Congo is the one where France committed a genocide so it's important you not mix up those two massive colonial human rights abuses

but so basically is there a centrist Congo where the Massive colonial human rights abuses. But so basically... Is there a centrist Congo? Where the genocide was done by the British? The centrist Congo where they just had, like, too many babies. But so anyway... It was a respectable genocide. They cared about decorum.

I think the respectable genocide is the one Paul Singer founds in Israel, funds in Israel. All right. Anyway, so there's a great article on this in The Nation. But so basically, paraphrasing here, the Congo, Republic of Congo, has had three civil wars since 1993 with, quote, 70% of the population under the poverty line in the late 90s elliot through a variety of shadowy subsidiaries one of which i believe kennington came out with the yeah kensington excuse me is a cayman island subsidiary of elliot capital management so they just run these transactions through the Cayman Islands to avoid disclosure. Basically, in the late 90s,

they bought about $100 million of defaulted Congolese debt for roughly $0.07 to $0.10 on the dollar, according to The Nation. Basically, and this is a country that twice ranked in the top 10 of the World Food Program's list of hunger crises wow and again quoting from the nation kensington has filed at least 15 separate lawsuits against congo and its business partners in places ranging from the british virgin islands to hong kong to

the united states they even filed a lawsuit in brussels against the belgian government to confiscate a 10 million euro foreign aid payment from belgium to congo and of course this is how you expose corruption in the government right um and again uh our good friend greg palace makes the point that uh these actions took place in the middle of a cholera epidemic in uh west africa um he's been seizing uh like so it's up to about 400 million that he was able to squeeze out of this desperately poor nation um how much how much almost 400 million wow and again you know one of the poorest nations on earth 70 below the poverty line uh the top 10 world hunger crisis nation where people are literally starving to death and he just goes around from court to court and just mucks up the works and just says, no, you cannot give aid here because we are a creditor

and we are owed first. And, you know, it's just kind of ridiculous. It's literally cutting in line for your take when the take being given out is for people to finally have food, basically. It's like the scene from that movie where we're like, please can I have more porridge? And a guy would be like, buddy, I got a membership here.

Let me cut in line. Let me get my porridge first. Yeah, right, right, right. That's fucking nuts. Well, I think what he was doing is exposing the corruption in the Congolese government. You know, when people can't access

water without cholera in it, they really start thinking about the corruption of their government while he's in a palatial Upper East Side mansion. But is that the defense, though? I mean, on the Wikipedia page. Literally, if you go to Elliott Management's Wikipedia page, it says, And in the late 90s, Elliot management exposed corruption in the Congo. That's fucking

disgusting. Yeah, so just like... Also, there was a human gorilla hybrid army that was defending a diamond mine in the Congo. Did he expose corruption in that too? Yes, but... By funding it. They had a big fight, and

I think it was a straight-to-TV Michael Crichton movie. What year is it? It was the late 90s that he bought up this debt. He spent a long time in court in this, but in November 2005, as Bloomberg reported, reported uh the uk court the uk's hide court ruled that uh the the company should be paid uh for two consignments of congolese oil rather than pay a congolese government controlled company so basically i think that was 30 yeah it was 39 million they got out of this in 2005 so it's just kind of like a drip drip but did you say they made 400 million i think they were awarded like 375 million by a u.s court and again like these numbers are hard to verify but um so wait but

he bought up about 10 million dollars of debt it was like he bought 100 million of debt at about 10 cents on the dollars according to the nation oh that's where he made that's where he got that 3 000 return right yes because buying it for right ten cents on the dollar and then the other thing they'll do is they'll demand interest payments and uh court costs etc etc so it's like the longer it takes to repay the more they're able to kind of like compound this the democratic republic of condos combos congo is uh gdp well no around that time. Well, this is the Republic of Congo. Republic of Congo.

Not the Democratic Republic. There's a huge difference. Edit it out. Wait, so this guy's basically flipping countries, but instead of flipping them for profit, he's just flipping them into the ground? Yeah, basically. Wow.

But it's just funny. Two diplomats that Greg Palast interviewed, or at least basically they gave the quote. He asked them if you could say anything to Paul Singer, what would you say? And one of them, a Congolese diplomat, said you are literally killing babies. Where does that drop? How did we not get that?

Well, unfortunately, he didn't say it into a microphone. I just looked at the GDP of Congo. Yeah. And it looks like he was all in. He was awarded about 9% of their GDP. Oh, my gosh. It was almost a 10% stake in one year's worth of their product. Right.

That's fucking insane. And we should mention... Yeah, billionaires earn their money. We should mention... No, but he's an activist for gay rights, guys. We shouldn't pick on him. Yeah. Exposing corruption.

Yeah, that's right. It's an incredible bounty. And some to return home. She doesn't really belong anywhere, does she? What the fuck was that? It's a trailer for the Congo. I was like, what the fuck is Andy doing?

You know, that reference that all of our listeners will get. The 1995 hit smash based on Michael Crichton novel. The Congo. I was going to edit it in, I think because it's in, well, I've got to edit this part out as well, but in Planet of the Apes, one of them is named Congo or something, but I was going to put in a, like, I think because it's in the, well, I've got to edit this part out as well. But in Planet of the Apes, one of them is named Kongo or something.

But I was going to put in a very African guy going, Kongo, anytime Sean McCarthy says it. No, but this movie stars Tim Curry. How come you know? You know what we should do? He's, like, grabbing, like, this rice bowl out of this child's hand. No, this belongs to Paul Singer. 9% of it belongs to Paulul but he's also in drag we should have congo night where we all yell at the movie congo uh that makes rocky horror i know all i said just saying yeah sorry i cut you down so quick turn into a cult phenomenon yeah

yeah but um oh yeah so Paul Singer like his quote he actually was quoted in the nation uh responding to this article where he said I'm paraphrasing but essentially like uh we only go after nations that we know can repay and you know a lot of these attacks on us in the press are uh debtors who are trying to engage in populist rhetoric to make uh to avoid paying their bills you know and again like as his other defenses of course there is corruption in the government of the congo he is correct about that but again one of the poorest nations on earth and you are sucking money out through a process that was illegal until the 1990s right because you are a vulture scumbag. You are not an investor.

You just have a law degree from Harvard, and you worked at a law firm, and you figured, oh, I can use the courts to collect on debts by just refusing to take a haircut and negotiate a settlement ever. He took a strategy that he was using on small companies earlier in his career, and he was like, what if I did the same thing but with countries? Right. And he doesn't need a haircut because he's bald. Got him.

Thread. But he's a leech. I mean, the reality is the motherfucker's a blood-sucking parasite. He's also another one, when we speak about parasites, it's hard to do research without stumbling into some uh rather unsavory corners of the internet i don't know what you're talking about john i don't i don't understand that uh it's anti-nothing i don't see what i don't see what you're getting at we were doing some of the research for the panama thing and i was like wow this website has a lot of uh

good information and they keep saying this is characteristic of the Jewish mind. I'm like, oh, no, I shouldn't be here, should I? One of the things with researching billionaires is you have to double check the website you're on. Make sure there's not a giant Star of David on fire. A lot of in-private tabs. Hey, stay tuned for our rothschilds episode it's gonna be like 20 real information and 80 mark zuckerberg is a rothschild and uh bill still talking about the money changers yeah conservative activist bill still well this is a tangent but uh bill still is kind of like one of those crazy right wing um you know

audit the fed guys but he's also actually not a gold bug he believes the treasury should print money as they did in the civil war and as a economics ba i cannot help but respect and admire that that he is not a gold bug he wants fiat currency from the treasury i found out about this guy uh from there's a reddit subreddit on documentaries and someone was like this three-hour documentary takes down the federal reserve and it was like upvoted to like the very top and i was like all right i'll give it a watch and i start watching it's this nerd-ass guy with giant glasses in the 90s and he's like and jesus opposed the money changers back and then he just keeps saying money changers throughout the documentary and each time you're like man he really wants to

say jews like uh yeah and bill still will also he still does youtube videos and he'll say i'm still reporting from the free speech cap the one-time free speech capital of the world and then he'll say, I'm still reporting from the one-time free speech capital of the world. And then he'll do ads for shit only old people need, like medicine for when you fall down and your grandchildren don't love you anymore. Oh, but so we mentioned Kensington International. I'll get in for both of those. I forget if I mentioned earlier, but basically it was only because of the Paradise Papers that we know that Paul Singer set set up this kensington international subsidiary so it's just kind of

ironic because he complains about corruption and lack of transparency when his entire way of operating is through cayman island affiliates right that avoid any transparency and what this is partly what makes it so hard to piece together because his profits are entirely based as we mentioned in the case of congo he sued them in at least 15 different jurisdictions it's entirely based on lawsuit shopping and we mentioned in 2005 uh the shopping the uk high court ruled in his favor but since then in 2010 the uk has passed a law that does away with that but he's still able to sue them the u.s courts other nations such as argentina which we should mention briefly here you can't be stopping how paul singer be shopping

paul singer be lawsuit shopping y'all ever notice billionaires be shopping for lawsuits all right so yeah so what happened with argentina was they defaulted in 2002 on their debt at which point he uh uh purchased oh no he purchased their debt almost a billion in uh 2001 um and then started lawsuit shopping there and we mentioned the ship in 2012 uh as according to the website, conservative transparency.org, he got a court in Ghana to detain an Argentinian naval vessel while it was in the,

while it was in port in Ghana, in Tima. Um, he also attempted to seize the Argentinian presidential airplane while it was in the U S, uh, gone after personal assets of Argentine politicians. Um,

both of, both of which, uh which are relics from Nazi Germany. I love this anecdote. He threatened to seize the display Argentina was preparing at the Frankfurt Book Fair. Which I love. It's a homecoming display. It's like $400 worth of Malcolm Gladwell books. He's like, yeah, worth of malcolm gladwell books he's like yeah this will make me whole um but yeah and so he set up like a task force uh which was and he

lobbed he got like i think 12 conservative house members to sign off on a letter to the obama presidency being like you gotta blockade argentina until they pay up to paul singer you know so it's like this guy essentially is not an investor. He just uses the political process and the courts to make his capital multiply. Man, he must have loved Thatcher. But yeah, sorry, Yogi, Steve, anything else on Argentina? I was going to say, I remember him comparing, a lot of his rhetoric was comparing Argentina to past cases of defaulted sovereign debt from Weimar Germany. He's obsessed with Weimar Germany.

Yeah, or Greek debt or Zimbabwe. Examples of countries that were facing either a huge shortfall in their productive capacity or like Argentina had debts denominated in money that they didn't have monetary sovereign authority to print. became a campaign issue in 2012 where he basically had Romney completely on his side to go after Argentina whereas Obama was more hesitant because as we mentioned most of Argentina's other creditors had settled with them at this point so Paul Singer was just kind of being the asshole but I think in two but various U.S. courts awarded him his money from Argentina and in 2015 they came to a settlement but it was just kind of a ridiculous issue where again this practice was illegal until the 90s and it was entirely a bought and paid for operation where he just got the courts and the political system to support his claims to sovereign debt that you know what romney had to say about the uh

uh the situation in argent? No, what did he say? He let the dogs out. We'll shorten that. So one of the things that I found very disgusting about the Argentina situation is not only what Paul Singer did, but the reporting of it from business periodicals. Is that what it's called? Yeah, yeah. No, they all kiss his ass.

But like, you know, this one, San Diego Free Press, hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer makes Argentina cry for itself. Paul Singer versus Argentina. A thriller reaches its climax. You know, it's all very like Argentina find relentless foe in Paul Singer's head. They treat the way Paul Singer acted as a win. It's sad because it's like, sure, he made money off of their pain, but that's not a win. That's more like hey, the world is a shittier place now. What about Paul Singer's

con? Good to go. Wait, wait, wait. I got one. I got one. Paul Singer makes it rain, but not the water they desperately need in the Congo suffering from a cholera epidemic that has killed thousands. Who let the dogs out? desperately need in the congo suffering from a cholera epidemic that has killed thousands singer's also been a regular attendee of the coke bros who will do a special episode about next weekend but um they're all special but this will be an extra special one uh but anyway so he's a

big supporter of the coke bros organizations and the Koch Brothers have had these twice-annual summits since 2003 where they get many different billionaires and multimillionaires from around the country together to pool funds for astroturfed anti-tax campaigns and these sorts of things, like think tanks like the Cato institute the heritage foundation american enterprise institute etc so paul singer has been a big contributor to that he supported a lot of conservative causes and it's like maybe he believes this stuff maybe he doesn't but it also directly benefits his pocketbook so it makes sense that as an investor if you're investing in political shit you will invest in the rhetoric and think tanks that would directly increase your profits at the expense of others with your political investments. And just on the plate of the 99%, this is from the same Fortune profile, Paul Singer said, quote, resentment is not morally superior to earning money. What is a moral failing, according to him, is, quote, depreciation in paper money's value.

That's right. So, you know, we gotta mention it. That was John Stuart Mill's, right? It's really a rallying cry. At the next Occupy Wall Street. Yeah, you're gonna try it. You're gonna have the libertarian Occupy. Depreciation in paper money's value

is the real moral failing. Not evictions. Mike, check. Mike,ictions. Mike, check. Mike, check. Mike, check. We should not. We should not depreciate value. Depreciate value.

The expense of lenders. Oh, God. Anyway, so I guess we talked a bit about his foreign subsidiaries. We should talk a bit about some of his actions in the United States. I do just want to talk about two companies in particular. The first is called Owens Corning. And Owens Corning was a manufacturer of aluminum and other things that operated since, I think, 1955 in the United States.

But basically, they exposed lots of their workers to asbestos knowingly. And so they were sued starting in the 70s for asbestos exposure and they filed bankruptcy in 2000 because of these asbestos lawsuits sounds like they're keeping their workers warm the um your honor it was cold instead of buying blankets we figured just put asbestos all over the place Asbestos is a Mexican porno It's staying in This is our worst episode

I'm sorry, ladies and gentlemen It was hard to research Paul Singer, okay? But anyway, so Owen's Corning This is absolutely fucking stupid I'm sorry, ladies and gentlemen. It was hard to research Paul Singer, okay? But anyway, so Owens Corning files... This is absolutely fucking stupid. David Irby, nice. Yeah, yeah. Owens Corning files bankruptcy in 2000, and the agreement they enter into is that all profits from that point on

are supposed to be paid to sick workers while they're winding down in bankruptcy. Instead, Paul Singer buys them in bankruptcy and launches an attack on the dying workers. So basically, and again, I owe the research here to Greg Pallast as well as Business Korea wrote about this briefly. In January 2005, President George W. Bush had a televised meeting to promote a, quote, expert who pronounced that over half a million workers suing the industry were liars. If workers couldn't breathe, he said to the grinning president, it wasn't the fault of asbestos. Wow. And again, sorry, this is a quote from greg powell uh the expert was not a doctor but his research was partly funded by paul singer and so was bush uh since the death of enron's ken

lay singer and his vulture flock at elliott international had become the top contributors to the republican national committee and uh he wrote that as of 2012. So anyways, the point here is they set up this campaign on a multi-front. And also, this was part of Bush's push for so-called tort reform. And the idea is to make it harder for workers, among others, to sue companies for knowingly exposing them to asbestos and killing them. And eventually this and other tactics allowed him to strong arm the workers into instead of taking all of the future profits, he got them to only take 20% of the profits. Again, billionaire, one of the richest people in the world with his 32 billion in assets hedge fund going after poor workers who are dying

and don't have jobs anymore because their company is bankrupt and strong arming them into signing these agreements for you know peanuts because they are desperate for money and they need to survive and of course they pocket 20 cents on the dollar paul singer pockets 80 cents on the dollar and this is how this fucking monster makes his money. And this is who Andrew Ross Sorkin thinks is a brilliant investor, figuring out how to separate dying asbestos patients from their last little paycheck of cash out from their settlement. Now here's a bailout in America we can all get behind.

Homeless people have change. Let's take the change from them, okay? Let's make a change to take change. Take the change you want to see. Yogi, you are a brilliant investor. Thank you. That's what I've been saying all along. Play bulls on parade when I walk into the room.

This is going to be our Paul Singer strategy, is we slip in the puddles of urine made by homeless people and then shop around to different jurisdictions to eventually fund lawsuits against them. Yeah, the nation of Ghana has awarded me a $2 million judgment against you, crackhead Eric. It's crazy how you would presume that if you did something... No, this box is mine. I have been awarded it in a summary judgment i will be taking your box and your soup pants give me those shoes the singer do this for like really small fry stuff like a pin at a bank or something oh yeah oh yeah he impounds it um but yeah so the end of that Corning story is he flipped Corning, his coordinate business career, selling it for a near billion-dollar profit.

And, again, this is just destroying livelihoods of dying people, what he does best. And then we should mention Delphi as well was another U.S. company. It was part of the big auto bailout Obama engaged in. Stephen, are you able to talk about that about yeah so in 2009 with the auto the at the height of the financial crisis almost there's an auto bailout of gm and chrysler and senior noticed that um well preempting this bailout he looked into a company called Delphi Automotive.

And they happen to be the maker of auto parts critical for both companies. And they ended up, let's see, they go bankrupt. Yeah, they went bankrupt. But basically, the Treasury was trying to do a structured deal with them, if I read that right. But that Singer and a couple other hedge funds reject it, because the original deal that the Treasury set up would have saved 15 of—this is according to Hedge Clippers, the website that tracks hedge funds. The original deal the Treasury Department tried to set up would have saved 15 of 29 of the Delphi plants and quote, countless jobs.

In the end, instead, all but four of the factories were closed. And basically the hedge funds were, by holding out and refusing to play ball, able to extract additional compensation, shutter additional plants, which means payroll layoffs,

which means more money in their pockets because the major cost that these hedge funds try and cut when they go in for buyouts is cut payroll, particularly pensions. So this is much like the Peru case. Yeah, yeah. It's a lot like the Peru case, except just with one U.S. company. They happen to be strategically incredibly important to two companies that are getting bailed out by the U.S.

Yeah. And in the case with pension cuts, what that means, essentially, in sort of plain, I want to say plain English, but it essentially means that these workers have paid into their pension their entire working career, and then government finds itself low on money. Paul Singer sues them, and what the government does is then, as the result, they have to turn over pensions, so they basically take money that people have been paying in their whole working career to pay Paul Singer. Oh, of course. And I mentioned on a previous— Paul Singer's been working his whole career working career to pay Paul Singer. Oh, of course. And I mentioned on a previous...

Paul Singer's been working his whole career to get to that moment. The brilliant investment strategy of separating retirees from their pensions and putting it into your fucking meatloaf playing with ass pockets instead. But so I mentioned my father on a previous... Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. He's played with Meatloaf? Guys, I think he's pretty cool. Did you know that if you have a billion dollars,

people rarely tell you no? Hey, Meatloaf, I'll give you a million dollars to pretend like I have any business belonging on a stage with you. I think he just bought Meatloaf's debt, actually. He did a structured buyout of Meatloaf. I'm sorry, but this

Peruvian court ordered you to let me shred on your stage. I've never even been to Peru. That's what their court said, man. I'm sorry. So according to the British version islands, you will be opening for me tonight. Found a sympathetic judge over there.

Okay, so anyways. There's like a judge whose girlfriend was once, like once cheated on him with meatloaf well so and that was the thing we mentioned a bit about the new york courts uh according to um greg palest they basically found a reagan appointee who was or no a nixon appointee judge in new york who was like 87 i think and on the verge of death and basically shopped their lawsuit around this was either for argentina or peru but they basically shopped their lawsuit around this was either for Argentina or Peru but they basically

shopped their lawsuit to him because they knew like we don't know if any money or favors were exchanged but they knew he would be sympathetic so again lawsuit shopping that's the way it works you can find judges and you can corrupt them and when we talk about the Koch brothers and this is available to all Americans

yes in most malls you'll go to restructuring shop you know justice is blind you know everyone every American has the right to shop their lawsuits to Hong Kong and the British Virgin Islands until

they get a sympathetic hearing we'll get into this on another episode the decline of malls in America. One of their biggest tenants, what did you say? But yeah, so to circle back to Delphi, we mentioned the pensions, and in a previous episode,

I mentioned my dad worked for the airlines. I didn't specify. He was a baggage handler. He loaded baggage. He cleaned the planes for takeoff, and because he was a member of the Teamsters Union, you know, in the 70s, that was a good middle-class job in America,

and he got to travel the world mostly for free, and he got a pension. But what happened after 9-11 is a lot of these airlines did these bankruptcy proceedings. So the other thing that, I mean, what Paul Singer really does is uses the court bankruptcy proceeding profit process to make profits. And my father's pension was slashed when U.S. Airways declared bankruptcy, slashed pensions. Of course, the executives still got paid out, and the hedge funds and et cetera got their payout. And the exact same thing happened here with Delphi.

Again, to quote from Hedge Clippers, Delphi's 20,000 retirees lost up to, quote, 70% of their pensions. An estimated 8,500 workers lost their jobs nationwide. And I just want to quote one other person, Dan Loeb. He's another billionaire. We'll do a future episode on him. He has a hedge fund as well, but he was part of this deal with Paul Singer, and he boasted that, quote, virtually no North American unionized labor remained after the hedge funds rampaged through

the company. So, you know, destroying unions, baby. What if Rage Against the Machine comes out and we're like, yeah, we wrote that song about how unions are bad. See, the bulls are the hedge funds and the unions are the

machine. But yeah, so anything else on Delphi before we move on from that? Let's see. Obama, the person he hired to actually oversee the restructuring campaign with the bailout was himself a hedge fund manager. Oh, yes, of course. Steve Reitner yeah yeah i mean it's like uh it's kind of an interesting point where uh the entire reason that obama got into conflict with paul singer over the argentina issue is that as we mentioned

banks like city and stuff had settled with argentina and they couldn't collect until excuse me uh enough bondholders agreed to go along. And because Paul Singer wouldn't go along, Citi and these other major banks couldn't get their payout. So they lobbied the Obama administration to be like, hey, force this guy to take his payout, whereas Singer lobbied Romney to be like, no, let's embargo Argentina and get me my big payout. You know what I got to say, though, that I respect about Delphi?

And it's in ancient Greece've got to say, though, that I respect about Delphi? And it's, is in ancient Greece, before going to war, a country would consult with the Oracle of Delphi. And, you know, they would get guidance on whether or not they should go to war. That's right. And now before we go to war, we consult with the Delphi hedge fund to see whether or not it's going to have good returns on. History repeats itself. Yeah. And that's the reality is that history is always happening. So Obama.

So this guy, Obama, hired Stephen Radner in his memoir, like years later, he described like a closed door meeting in march 2009 right in the middle of these deliberations to resolve delphi's fate pretty much and i'm quoting from uh a nation article um he writes that delphi now in the possession of its hedge fund creditors told the treasury and the gm to hand over 350 million immediately because if you don't, we'll shut you down. Jesus Christ. Yeah, and again, this is 8,500 jobs, 20,000 retirees losing 70% of their pensions. And it's just like what frustrates me, and we talked about this a little bit, we were essentially at a point where the arguments for capitalism are supposedly that this, you know,

makes people, you know, richer and better off. But now what happens is like when you can't argue that, it becomes more important to defend the system of capitalism than it becomes actual human lives where it's like they just have to argue that this creates some sort of value for the economy by going in and you know basically taking hostages of like 20 000 employees pensions and demanding that the treasury give you i think about 12 some billion in uh bailout money public money is how they made their fucking money doing this yeah but, resentment isn't a good moral principle. You know what's a good moral principle? Making money.

Not debasing paper currency. It is interesting, though, the people that are pro-capitalism will say that all this stuff is just corruption and that's going to happen regardless of what system you use. But I guess the question does stand, though, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.

Is there a system of capitalism where it exists where this type of corruption doesn't happen? Is that possible? I mean, it's kind of a big ranging question like my the way I've come around to this philosophically is I think the first principle is that you can't have any voluntary transactions without guaranteeing people rights economically which means everyone has the right to a house, everyone has the right to healthcare

everyone has the right to food, everyone has the right to a decent job, you know like the job guarantee that I'm glad is gaining popularity and people will say correctly that this is essentially social democracy, which is a form of capitalism. So I think the first step is you implement social democracy, which is what we have in the Scandinavian countries, where, you know, for all their flaws, in the case of Finland, there is no homelessness, they have no homeless people in Finland, it's still a capitalist country, it still has these kinds of exploitations, and there's still work to be done.

But essentially, once you get to that first part, then you figure out the second part, which is worker control of the means of production, which means that these firms like Delphi will be owned by the actual workers instead of vulture hedge funds. Yeah, so basically, like, it's hard to say that it's not going to happen in capitalism

because by definition, essentially, capitalism is a process where someone owns money and then invests it to return more money. So you're always going to have that person who controls value. I hope to punish Andy. David Geffen removes Nirvana from all streaming services well isn't it interesting how senior like senior's story with the bailout isn't was it end up being incredibly important for structuring the labor movement after that right that was like the main rallying cry of occupy was about how the banks got bailed out like people got sold out right right like this is like a quintessential example of that well and again we'll talk about this more was about how the banks got bailed out, like people got sold out. Right, right, right. And this is like a quintessential example of that.

Well, and again, we'll talk about this more on the Koch brothers episode, but Singer has been part of a class of billionaires who's really launched an assault on American history because I mentioned these fundamental rights and the social democracy stuff. You know, FDR said this all in 1944. He said you have a right to a job from the government. He called it the second bill of rights, the economic bill of rights.

You have the right to a house. You have the right to health care, et cetera, et cetera. And what the Koch brothers and Singer and other billionaires have really done is strip away this history and strip away the union history in America, which did have a very strong union scene. You know, at one point, more than 30 percent of private sector workers in America were unionized. Today, about 6.5% are. So, you know, unions have absolutely been destroyed in this country. And it's partly because of hedge fund deals like Delphi that destroyed, you know, 8,500 union jobs and destroyed 70% of the pensions for 20,000 employees, that it's been a sustained assault on unions, both financially and ideologically,

which actually is a good segue into the Paul E. Singer Foundation, because if you read Paul Singer's Wikipedia, it notes him as a philanthropist. And I've noticed this with a lot of billionaires. They are called philanthropists because they set up a private foundation with no accountability, and then they wash that money by donating it to a list of conservative think tanks that promote their bottom line interests and i just want to talk a little bit about you mean good investment yes they do good investment and the other thing he's a signer we've talked about this a bit he's

a signer of the giving pledge which i think bill gates came up with where they give away half of their money it's about four people we've covered yeah yeah gates buffett uh is basil's and musk in there or no i'm not sure actually musk was yeah gates and buffett are in there musk might be in there i think musk is in there zuckerberg is i think zuckerberg yeah zuckerberg's in there um he's pledged to give more but we'll see but anyways the point is first off 50 of your assets by the time you die, go fuck yourself. You have no right to any of that money, you parasite scum. But second off, the giving pledge only says that they'll donate to a causis that they believe will better the world. So in the case of, what was that greek billionaire who died steve it is

interesting how bootlickers will say like oh this person is so good they gave to this charity uh that will better the world whereas it's peterson peterson yeah it's basically saying this person robbed people of their money exploited them out of their money and then they get the sole decision on what it is that betters the world right right and yeah so like in the case of uh uh pete peterson who's a billionaire who died recently andy make a pissing sound uh yes anyways burn in hell but so pete peterson signed the giving pledge and i think he was worth somewhere in the range of about $3 billion. But he's been a big advocate for cutting the debt and the deficit, which of course means cutting food stamps for desperately poor people. So he signed the giving pledge by donating half of his fortune to his own foundation.

What does his own foundation do? It buys ads to warn about how bad the deficit is, and it lobbies ads to warn about how bad the deficit is. And it lobbies members of Congress about how bad the deficit is. So it's like, you know, in a world with like millions of people in desperate shortage of food and water and all these other essentials, what do you think to do with your billion dollars? You lobby for making the lives of poor people in the United States worse, and you get called a fucking philanthropist for doing it. And you get tax deductions. Right.

It's ridiculous. But so anyways, just to tie this back to Paul Singer, the website conservativetransparency.org was able to look at his foundation's donations for the year 2011 and 2012. Again, it's a private foundation. We don't really have public disclosures of what they're doing. The only legal requirement is they give at least 5% of their assets to a nonprofit every year. But, of course, Cato Instituteato institute heritage foundation these lobbying groups for the rich and billionaires are considered non-profits so uh just to go through the top

six donations of the paul singer foundation the charitable fund that makes him a philanthropist and gives him a tax cut i mean if there's a better example for why non-profit is an empty term. The NFL is a non-profit. The number one, the Schwab Charitable Fund. And Charles Schwab is, of course, another conservative billionaire, so we have no idea what he's doing with it. Number two, the American Israel Education Foundation got $1.5 million. Number three, the Birthright Israel Foundation

got $1.5 million. You know, paying for those sloppy bjs uh andy already made that joke i'm sorry people hjs uh number four is the american enterprise institute for public policy research they got 1.2 million this is a conservative lobbying organization number five donors trust conservative lobbying organization. Number five, Donors Trust, conservative lobbying organization. This is the worst Letterman top ten list I've ever heard. 1.15 million. And number six, the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research got 925,000. Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, he's actually the chairman of the board of trustees of it. And if you haven't heard of the Manhattan Institute, they are the ones who gave Mr. Charles Murray his original grant money.

And he used it to write a book called Losing Ground about how welfare makes poor people lazy. And then later wrote the book The Bell Curve, which was a racist book about how differences when stratified difference between racist when stratified by IQ means we should end all welfare and let poor people starve. And look, you might think I'm being unfair with that summary, but it's actually on the book jacket. But so, yeah, like the point is essentially the tops and then you go through the list. There's a couple charities and then it's just Israel, Israel, Israel. Interestingly, he donated a fair bit of money to the organization that we mentioned on the Howard Schultz episode, that gave Howard Schultz that award, and they do their little war crime seminars. He gave some money to them, and just a lot of other Israel organizations.

His big issue is Israel, which is why, of course, he opposes the Iran deal and thinks we should bomb them a decade ago. I mean, you can judge, but have you ever had a small child throw a rock at you? Have you guys actually had a child throw a rock at you? A child has thrown a rock at me before. It's very terrifying. Did you send a cruise missile to their house? I threw a rock back, Steven. What did you do to deserve the rock in the first place?

I don't remember, but it was in India. It was a long time ago. But I threw a rock back, but it skipped on the ground. And when someone throws a rock at you and it whizzes by you and your rock skips, you're like, I lost this fight already. Well, Yogi, if Paul Singer had been supporting you, you would have been in a tank for that interaction. All right. So I know we're kind of running low on time, but I think we've covered a lot of the basic stuff.

We mentioned also the way the tax code works. Paul's the capital gains are charged at a lower tax rate than wages for some reason. I mean, I would argue corruption, but essentially Paul Singer, when he makes money from his hedge fund, again, destroying pensions and killing people in the Congo, he pays a lower rate than he would if he punched a clock. And then he can defer some interest payments through the carried interest loophole, which allows him to defer tax payments. Yeah. Hedge fund managers make money in two ways. payments uh through the carried interest loophole which allows him to defer tax payments yeah like hedge fund managers make money in two ways usually they have like they take a percentage of the total assets under their management right the two and they also take a percentage of the profits above

some like quote hurdle rate that they have to pass and so the carried interest part is like the second part of that basically right where it like instead of it being treated like a a bone like a normal bonus that like a uh just an employee an office or something gets and having that tax that your whatever your marginal rate is it's taxed as the as if it were a capital gains so i do want to just mention his corporate spying because this comes from another uh fortune piece uh so two things so he it goes it goes into a hostile takeover of a company called arconic um basically uh they they uh demanded the arconic ceo resign and then he wouldn't so it set up a proxy fight which proxy fights basically uh hedge funds like singers um they try to get their own people on the board to make their cuts to increase profitability's. They try to get their own people on the board to make their cuts, to increase profitability.

And sometimes they try to get these public companies to sell to private companies, which increases the shares that they already bought and own. So basically, this Arconic CEO sends Paul Singer a soccer ball, and then he sends a note insinuating that Paul Singer had allegedly engaged in debauchery while attending the 2006 World Cup in Berlin, and this had included wearing Native American headgear and warbling singing in the rain in a public fountain. What? He pledged to send Singer a feathered headdress next.

And unfortunately for this hilarious stunt, the CEO of Arconic was forced to resign. But yeah, Paul Singer, the worst thing he did, cultural appropriation. Officially a bad billionaire. But so, and just part of the same article in Fortune, on at least three occasions, according to both court testimony and the accounts of seven people who spoke with Fortune, children of people facing the hedge fund's attacks have been pulled into the fray in some way in an apparent bid to gain information or leverage against their parents. an iconic PR consultant in Germany. Neighbors of his children in London receive visits from people asking them

about drug abuse by them or their father. Elliott declined to comment on the use of private investigators in its activist campaigns. So basically, the point is, like many billionaires, he hires private investigators to look into people that he is dealing with,

that he is on the opposite ends of a hedge fund, of shareholder battles with, and he goes after people's kids. Like, there's another story about a company called CompuWare. They flew out to meet with the hedge fund, and one of their employees started with a dossier. He started by casually flipping through a six inch thick manila folder of purportedly

embarrassing information on his guests and said something along the lines of and you know you have a daughter that's doing this that and whatnot a person was paraphrasing the fund manager I wonder why he's so obsessed with privacy but yeah you know and just like during the meeting. I wonder why he's so obsessed with privacy.

But yeah, you know, and just like it's hard to trace Paul Singer because he makes it hard to trace Paul Singer. But again and again, just the most evil shit in the world. You see this guy's fingerprints all over and yet the New York Times, the paper of record, brings him out

as a genius investor instead of what he is, which is just a parasite on the legal system, a parasite who gets his way by lobbying Albany to change carried interest laws, to give himself a big bonus, to change laws that prevent champerty. That is his entire strategy that was illegal until the fucking 90s. And it's just, I don't know, man. We're supposed to think these people are genius capitalists who create value. Bernie 2020. Which Bernie?

Madoff? The one that killed that widower in the Jack Black movie. I think we mentioned it. But so Cory Booker, Obama in 2012 was running a very populist campaign against Mitt Romney. And so he interviewed people that Romney's hedge fund, Bain Capital, had, you know, done the same strategy Paul Singer did, where they go and buy it off, cut the pensions, lay off the workers, sell it again to make money. So they had a lot of attack ads against Romney, where they interviewed these workers being like, yeah, they destroyed our lives.

These people already have money, you know, what's wrong with them? And so Cory Booker, who was at this point on the payroll of Wall Street in 2012, went on Meet the Press to be like, Obama's attacks against the hedge fund industry are very unfair. These people create value for the American economy and they make jobs and and they, you know, suss out corruption or whatever else. And it's just so funny that like now Cory Booker is and they you know suss out corruption or whatever else and it's just so funny that like now cory booker is like you know on the bernie train he's on the job guarantee and we're gonna punish these people and uh you know it's like it's gonna be a fun primary season yeah let's see where he's looking tomorrow on um on a tangent before we go, I just want to say that one of the things that's happening here with Paul Singer is it's very similar to the Greek situation where...

Which he was also involved in. Yeah, which he was also involved in, where, you know, creditors would basically sue to force Greece to pay all its money. And someone who had to deal with that is this economist, Yannis Varoufakis, who was the Greek finance minister. And I've been listening to his book on tape, and it had this wonderful segment that I'm going to play. It's when he first becomes Greek finance minister, and he starts getting some phone calls. The phone rang again. Once again, the unknown number on the screen began with the US dialing code. I picked up to hear a distant, gentle male voice, with what sounded like a New England

accent. You do not know me, Mr. Varoufakis, but I felt the urge to call you to congratulate you on your election, and to lend all the support I can give. My name is Bernie Sanders, and I'm a senator from Vermont. Mutual friends have given me your number, and I hope you do not mind the intrusion. My favorite Bernie Sanders impression, where he's a sinister Russian.

That's the real international Jewish conspiracy. You mean real life. Yeah. But yeah, so in the case of Greece, Singer and another hedge fund owner would not go along with the 80% haircut of the loan principle proposed by the European Central Bank. They wouldn't even cut 8% value of the bonds they held. They would demand it, either the Greek government, this is from Greg Pallas, pay several times what the speculators had invested, or they would undermine the entire bailout deal, bringing down the remnants of Greece's economy and Europe with it. Held hostage, the Greek government dipped into emptying its purse and paid them every penny they demanded.

But interestingly enough, when they issued future bonds, the Greek government was careful because of Singer and said, and these bonds cannot go to repaying creditors like Paul Singer. But yeah, so I don't know. Master Vulture, Master Parasite, and the Koreans, not anti-Semitic people. And before we go, I want to give a shout out to Andy Miller, who is the only listener who's playing the market game with us on the app Best Brokers. And currently on our leaderboard, Andy Miller has negative 44% on his investments, which is impressive.

Like he would be, Andy, you would be a great short seller. This is, he went from 25K to 14K in a matter of weeks. He should have filed his lawsuits in different courtrooms. Well, I think, do we have a verdict on Paul?

The only good billionaire. What grade would you guys give him? What's your scale? I think I'd give him an M.E. at a meatloaf. I think that's appropriate. He's a family man. He supports his gay son. That's right.

It's weird how him being pro-gay people is odd once you learn everything about him. it seems like he'd hate gay people for no real reason because of his corruption. Yeah. It's interesting how a self-interested man acts in a self-interested manner. And on that, thank you for listening to Grubstakers. I'm Andy Palmer. I'm Yogi Paiwal. I'm Sean McCarthy. Steve Jeffries.

All right. We'll see you next week for the Coke Bros. We'll be right back. We're the pocket full of shells. We're the pocket full of shells. We're the pocket full of shells. Weapons, not food, not hope, not shoes, not need. Just feed the war cannibal animal. I walk the corner to the rubble. That used to be a library. Now that's a divine cemetery now.

What we don't know keeps the contract alive and movable. They don't gotta burn the book, they just remove them. While our warehouses fill in quick as a cell. Rally round the family, pockets full of shells. Rally round the family, with a pocket full of shells. They rally round the family, with a pocket full of shells. We'll be right back. guitar solo We'll be right back. Closing Parade