Grubstakers - Episode 80: Stephen Feinberg

Episode Date: July 9, 2019

This week we cover Steve Feinberg he created Cerberus Capital Management named after the three headed dog that guarded the gates of Hades his personal mansion. He helped shut down the department store Mervyn's for a profit, and also became the parent company of DynCorp which allegedly (lawyers)participates in human trafficking.

First they think you're crazy, then they fight you, and then all of a sudden you change the world. Berlusconi flatly denies that any mafia money helped him begin a start in the dynasty. I have always had a thing for black people. I like black people. These stories are funnier than the jokes you can tell. I said, what the fuck is a brain scientist? I was like, that's not a real job. Tell me the truth. But anyway. Five, four, three, two. We good?

Yeah. Hello, welcome back to Grubst stakers the podcast about billionaires i'm sean p mccarthy and i'm joined by my friends steve jeffers you'll be probably uh we did want to clarify some people actually believed it when we said that andy palmer was fired that's right uh he was laid off as part of restructuring he was laid off not fired yes uh but uh we we would want to make it very clear that we will be donating andy's share of the patreon money to jeffrey epstein's legal defense fund listen we need billionaire dirt we have to keep the people out and about to get more dirt on them we're recording this sunday july 7 and then just yesterday we got

the news that jeffrey epstein's been arrested in Manhattan. We don't know the exact charges yet, but this is the first of the billionaires we have done episodes on to be arrested. That's right. I think it was one count of trafficking a minor, and then another count of trying to traffic a minor. One count of jealousy for his entrepreneurial spirit spirit i heard it was because he was downloading music from napster still i'm pretty sure this is a downloading music issue guys he's failing to innovate not creating enough jobs i guess that's what they got capone on that's right yeah illegal downloads napster i was a kazaa kid back in the day. Yeah. But you know, so one billionaire

arrested 2,000 ago. But it is interesting where it's like, you know, hey, we'll see by the time this comes out, he's supposed to appear, Jeffrey Epstein's supposed to appear in court in Manhattan on Monday. So you'll probably have more details about what the exact charges are, assuming he is not assassinated on the way to the courtroom by some sort of bald man with a barcode tattoo on the back of his neck. Steven, you're shaving your head tonight, right? What? I'm insinuating that you're going to be our assassin for this crime. I was thinking, like, he's being held in Manhattan,

so we could get, like, a fucking lynch mob of coked-up Comptown fans storm the jail cell. I think we should show up and show our support. It's our most listened-to episode. We gotta show up. As prison abolitionists, we have a duty to make sure that they free Jeffrey Epstein. You don't really believe in it unless you believe in it when it's an unpopular position. No one should live in a cage. They're caging people.

But I guess we'll keep an eye on the Epstein developments and we'll probably do some updates, but it should just be noted we just did the episode on Leon Black who has some kind of tenuous links to Jeffrey Epstein. Leslie Wexner is the Victoria's Secret billionaire who was kind of tenuous links to jeffrey epstein leslie wexner is the victoria's secret billionaire who um was kind of jeffrey epstein's sponsor i read in that daily beast article like a woman alleges that epstein molested her at leslie wexner the billionaire's house and

his leslie wexner's security prevented her from leaving oh really yeah so it's like you know there's there's a lot of i think david coke was in epstein's like rolodex of context there's a lot of, I think David Koch was in Epstein's like Rolodex of contacts. There's a lot of different billionaires that are connected to this pedophile guy. I just really hope they get Dershowitz. Yeah, goddamn. Yeah, what a piece of shit. But I guess we'll follow up on that in the near future. But this week we're talking about Steven Feinberg is the founder of Cerberus Capital. And there's also more stories related to, uh, that that just broke today,

which we'll get to in just one second. But, um, basically this is another private equity guy. And I think, um, Steven Feinberg founded, uh, Cerberus Capital Management in 1992, which is a private equity firm, uh the three-headed dog that guards hell in Greek mythology. You know, which I'll give credit for at least being like an appropriate name for like an asset stripping and flipping and community destroying financial entity. Yeah, this is like almost as good as Blackwater as far as representing what it does. Well, if you two don't know, from the river Styx,

the bodies of our souls go to the gates of Hades and they were met with Cabrus, the three-headed dog. Cabrus? It's the Greek pronunciation, Sean. I went to private school. This is the shit you learn when they know that your parents have money,

ladies and gentlemen. Bullshit you don't need to know. I thought he was wearing a monocle. Epstein just got the shit kicked out of him for saying that i went to private school i saw i saw hercules yeah well there you go but yes a private equity firm called i can't even say it anymore cerberus cerberus uh that's that's. Yes. You know, I mean, like, at least they're doing that instead of calling it, like, Ally Financial or some anodyne bullshit. Right, right. They're getting right to the message.

Though apparently he regrets the name, but it's stuck now, so whatever. Why would you regret that name? I don't know. Because people, because they keep writing articles about how he's responsible for the sandy hook massacre yeah we wanted to call it three-headed bitches but we're gonna care about this instead yeah uh but so cerberus has been involved in uh remington they owned remington for a while or just quoting from forbes the firm attracted negative attention in 2013 for its stake in freedom group which manufactured the rifle used in the sandy hook massacre oh and uh you know they they rolled a bunch of different gun companies up into one

mega conglomerate and called it freedom group jesus christ which you know is one definition of freedom man i love this freedom group got the best bullets in the game yeah the uh but so they they've been involved in a freedom group uh the gun business they've been they own dine core is like private military contractors we'll talk more about in a minute and uh they were involved in the uh auto bailout to a big degree oh really they bought into chrysler they bought into a gm's financial unit uh so they've just been kind of all over the map uh with um uh very shady dealings that often have to be bailed out or funded by the government um but i guess just with regards to steven feinberg he was uh he started out at both he started out at drexel burnham

lampert which again we just did this Leon Black episode. We talked about Michael Milken a lot. That was, of course, Michael Milken's firm where he ran his Ponzi scheme inside a trading ring. And it's like, I'm starting to become convinced that Drexel is like the fucking original cartel that the government breaks it up and then they splinter into all of these different,

smaller, more violent, warring cartel factions. It's like the original fucking wasp's nest. Once you break them apart, they're sharpened by their pain, and they want to inflict as much as they can to society. They coordinate false flag attacks on elementary schools um to drive up their sales wait so the thought is is that they they committed the conspiracy of the shooting so that it would drive up gun sales is that the thought it's like you know i i will say it's one of the most depressing things you'll read about in capitalism is how the gun market functions in response to a mass shooting because like so like all private equity they have

like heavy investment from teachers pensions you know so these teachers pensions were like uh yeah could you stop investing in uh the tools being used to murder us and they're like yeah totally but then they have a massive sales spike after sandy hook so it was a huge financial boon for them that some guy walked in and started killing 20 children and a few teachers so you know he wasn't an employee that's what you're saying it was a private contractor they had him on they had adam lanza on a temp worker contract to keep him from unionizing i remember there's so many conspiracies when that happened i think i was like i think i was in uh oregon doing shows and so i just had time on my hand and i remember like when the news reports first came out it was

like there's a guy in camouflage running through the woods and then there's three other shooters there's just so many like and i'm not talking about like like deep internet conspiracy i mean like literally cnn is saying like we're we've got reports of these eight different individuals that have taken out and then it you know whittles down to what it what actually was but um yeah the thought that those other shooters could be connected to this that would be nuts yeah well fortunately massad tied up those loose ends burn the bodies baby what would you guys do well we take care of it but there's like this narrative of um like all the gun manufacturers uh collectively shitter break when trump won right yeah basically though i mean like cerberus will kind of get into

or steven feinberg specifically donated like i think 1.5 million to trump's super pack and in 2018 he's been named uh the chairman of trump's intelligence advisory board. And that's just kind of weird because he didn't have to divest. So we mentioned he owns DynCorp as a major private military contractor. So, of course, he's like advising the president and getting access to all these intelligence reports on like what he should do with his spy agencies while, of course, owning a business that can profit from that. Right, right. So, yeah, like it wasn't great for his gun business, but the fact that he has, like, all these ends with the White House

has been good for some other stuff. So what's Feinberg's net worth? What's his total? So Forbes says as of July 2019, he's worth about $1.6 billion. And it is just, like, one more thing. So DynCorp has been implicated multiple times in like actual human trafficking, overbilling the government,

murder in Iraq in particular. Paying way too much for this trafficking. We've got to cut down on costs and trafficking. What class they're flying? But if you dig into like the QAnon conspiracies, there was like a strain of that where they would talk about like DynCorp was like hired by the UN to work in Haiti. So they were saying DynCorp

was doing like organ trafficking for Hillary Clinton and shit. Oh, really? And then, you know, it was just kind of interesting where you have to see the QAnon world wrecking with Trump naming this guy the head

of his intelligence advisory board. And everybody always says, keep your friends close, keep your enemies close. Right, right. That's how you explain away any inconsistency in the story. The DynCorp thing has this sort of deeper event, both capitalized, sort of thing with the conspiracies. Because the gun manufacturers were definitely all in for Hillary.

Oh, really? Yeah. They wanted to have eight years of paranoia about him taking the guns. gun manufacturers were definitely all in for Hillary. Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah. They wanted to have eight years of, like, paranoia about him taking the guns. There's, like, a common quote that I'll... So, like, I think DynCorp and other, like, Remington and all of them do happen to come up in these, like, right-wing conspiracies just because they did have a vested interest in, like, Democratic party winning.

Yeah, there's like a common quote like Obama was the greatest gun salesman of all time. Something like that. But it is just interesting with regards to Steven Feinberg. He was born in 1960. We mentioned 1.6 billion net worth. But it's like he is incredibly secretive. Like apparently the year he starts Cerberus Capital Management in 1992, 2007 is the first time he granted an interview or agreed to be photographed for a publication.

Oh, wow. So this is a real low-key billionaire. Right, right. And that was for Upstart Business Magazine. This is because he was buying Chrysler at the time. So, you know, it's kind of a heavy publicity thing. Right. And just from the new york time feinberg is reported to have joked to a private meeting of his investors in 2007 that

quote if anyone at cerberus has his picture in the paper and a picture of his apartment we will do more than fire that person we will kill him the jail sentence will be worth it unquote and uh that is exactly how you dispel rumors that you are involved in organ trafficking wait he just straight up said we'll kill you yeah i mean there was like nervous laughter in the room yeah i was nervous but yeah it's like his face is completely serious yeah right we were just nervously hey by the way if anyone fucks me over i will kill you and or jail time the jail time would be worth it anyone not laughing is just immediately seen after the fucking thing just

yeah but i mean it's like something where it's like private equity has such a bad reputation go back to the 80s and they do many shady things that we've we've kind of gone over a lot so it's like something where it's like private equity has such a bad reputation go back to the 80s and they do many shady things that we've we've kind of gone over a lot so it's like it makes sense keep your fucking face out of the paper don't let people see that you live in a fucking mansion because it it makes the peasants resentful you know that you're destroying their livelihoods and you get to live like a king and you're selling the tools that they could use to murder you like that's you know that's like selling I don't have a good analogy for it. You guys got something? It is interesting just how many layoffs they did at, like, Remington and Bushmasters.

Right, right. Like, all of these people who literally know how to make guns. You're like, yeah, we're cutting your severance. Right, right. Sorry, you don't get to keep those vacation days. What are you going to do about it, bitch? I like how it seems like... We're guarded by a dog that sits

outside of hell. You can't touch us. It's right there in the name. Good luck with that. Every crew they hire just murders the previous crew. Their layoffs aren't ever just people leaving the company. It's just people being murdered. pole pot model of private equity um but it is it's something that i've i've realized as the longer i've done this podcast you know besides all pizzagate is real but uh

another thing that i've realized is like private equity a lot of what they do functions is functionally equivalent to a mafia bust out. Like they did an episode of The Sopranos about this. But basically, like if you owe money to the mob and you can't pay them and you have a business, they're going to come in and they're going to run up all your business credit, all your credit cards, just buying shit on credit. Then you declare bankruptcy and they keep all the shit, you know. So it's like private equity legally does a lot of things that are very similar to that. We've mentioned, like, dividend recapitalization.

Private equity will buy a company, then have it put the debt used to buy it on its own books, then have it take on more debt, which they'll use to pay itself a profit, so their profit's locked in. Or another thing they'll do is if they buy a company, say, retail, that has a lot of real estate assets, if it owns those real estate assets, it'll have the company sell the real estate assets to them and then rent it back to the company.

Oh, wow. And it's like just this kind of shit is just sucking money out of a business. It's functionally equivalent to a mafia bust out. But this is like a respectable businessman way to fucking make your bones on Wall Street. And most people have no idea that this shit goes on. Well, at least they're not strippers. You know what I mean? At least they're doing something that hurts society,

but they're not sharing their godly body to strangers that want to come. I just think it's bullshit how we look at strippers, that they're shitty, but it's people like this that exist that are literally making the world terrible. And we're like, no, that's an upstanding human yeah or just like you know what controversial podcasters or whoever you want to be mad at just like podcasters who use ancient racial slurs and do podcasts about

billionaires what don't get mad at us wait so what i mean like all right so sean just uh brilliantly broke down why private equity fucks shit over again. But why do people think it's good? Like, what is the, you know, so the businesses that are now being rented their own retail space, do they think they'll make more money by getting private equity? Or are they usually broke and private equity is buying them out? A lot of times it's a hostile takeover. Or like another thing they'll do

is they'll get management in on the deal. So it's like if they can offer equity stakes to management, management can make like millions of dollars if they agree to be taken over. They don't give a fuck about the workers. Yeah, right, of course. So there's lots of different cases. So wait, greed is not good?

I don't know. You'll have to ask the children at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Well, I can't anymore, Sean. That's the problem. No, really. They're actually hiding out in hate. Nobody died. The most humane false flag in history.

You know, as much as I like that Alex Jones got taken down, I don't like that this was the reason. I wish it was something even stupider. I wish the Sandy Hook him saying was fake wasn't the reason why he got taken down. I wish it was something even dumb like, oh, the products you sell have poison in them, Alex Jones. Yeah, poison to make you stronger.

But I guess I wanted to move into the biography though. Just note two other quick things here. One is like just the straight up blatant corruption with Cerberus Capital. In 1999 they hired former Vice President Dan Quayle as a chairman. You know his

job is to spell potato. He has to keep trying on the whiteboard until he gets it right. You know, and so essentially it's like, okay, you hire a major Republican player, you use that to lobby the government. In 2006, though, and this is the really blatant one,

they hired the outgoing U.S. Secretary of the Treasury under George Bush, Jon Snow. They hired him as another chairman, and then this becomes relevant because in late 2008, they get the Bush administration to give them a massive bailout for their stake in GM Financial, Chrysler, and stuff. And we mentioned, yes, he donated one point—Steven Feinberg donated $1.5 million to pro-Trump super PACs shortly before the 2016 elections. So he's a big kind of player in Republican politics. And then, unsurprisingly, DynCorp gets more than $3 billion in revenue from contracts with the federal government just for doing not only security,

but also other work in Afghanistan and Iraq and such. Is it safe to say every billionaire we've covered has ties in the government to procure the amount of money they make? I would say so. I think, in particular, financial billionaires are incapable of operating without massive assistance from the U.S. federal government. Right, right. There's literally not one that isn't in there. But I guess we'll kind of get back to Dynkorn in a minute here.

We can start with the general biography of Steven Feinberg and, you know, what we do know about him, which is basically just from this one interview he gave to Upstart Business Magazine in 2007. This is like the only actual biographical information that exists on the guy. So basically, from what we know, he was born in the Bronx in 1960. At eight years old, he moved to Spring Valley valley new york about an hour outside manhattan you know kind of upstate right um and according to this profile his father worked as a steel salesman in high school feinberg threw himself into tennis spending late hours cheering on teammates even after his own matches were over. Feinberg's mother, Madeline, died when he was a sophomore at Princeton.

He later named one of Cerberus' leading operations Madeline LLC. They're the ones who carried out the Sandy Hook. One of their black ops operations after his mother. I like that dumb shit like that he would support. They saved the kids. They saved them. It's crazy to me how like dumb shit like he supported

his other tennis player friends is the shit that makes it into articles like that because it's like you mean he was a decent person once? That's literally what we're reporting here?

I do like that he named his firm after the three-headed dog guarding his mother. Oh, and according to allgov.com, he was a nationally ranked chess player in high school and played bridge and tennis. Apparently, so he gets into Princeton,

like 78, I believe. He played tennis in college from the same upstart profile where his intensity only increased. At times, he would come onto the court wearing eye black to the puzzlement of the rest of the players by his senior wearing blackface. Very offensive. What's wrong with this?

It makes me see better in the sun. The entire Princeton auditorium just standing ovation. So brave. That was his strategy is he would wear blackface in the hopes that the other team would resign rather than play somebody wearing blackface. Just be dripping with sweat after like the fucking first 15 minutes.

Dripping black on the fucking court. Oh yeah, by his senior senior year he had become team captain and was named all ivy and doubles um and then basically uh one of his former classmates remembers he could be one of his former tennis partners remembers he could be sick sometimes and not practice well but go out in the court and still be amazing. Everything he did was intense. He also served on the ROTC, the Army Reserve Officer Training Corps. Apparently he did like parachuting school with them, but he didn't go on to the military.

But that's also where he kind of got into like sharpshooting and this kind of stuff. And apparently now he's into like hunting and it's partly why he bought the gun company besides the purely financial reasons do you guys remember rotc kids from college not really i remember like there we had a crew of them at the college i went to and like they were exceedingly intense because like people that move to like a place that's got its own identity the people try to mimic it as much so rotc kids kids were more intense than the people that were actually in the Army sometimes

because they were like, you don't know who the fuck I am. I'm ROTC. They had that chip on their shoulder, that ego type of thing. I don't like that they wore their uniforms into class. Yeah. I don't like that they wore their uniforms

into the classrooms at Sandy Hook. No, isn't that a bit messed up, though? I think so. They're just like combining you know higher education with military yeah it's propaganda and it's got like you know not stolen valor but it's got like that type of like i don't know yeah it's very odd it's just odd that we have that that strain in our schools yeah and feinberg like we'll kind of go into this but part of he it does face a lawsuit from the

sandy hook parents because essentially they take over um remington and these other gun companies and then they start advertising their guns where previously it was like very plain and stripped down but they start like having these magazine brochures of like fucking operators and selling them to military enthusiasts you know where it's like the entire gun business or much of it is selling to people who were not actually in the military but who wish they were in the military or feel like they could be fucking operators or whatever that demographic is the most gung-ho exactly and so he understands that demographic he was in the rotc but never actually deployed or did anything like that you know because i feel like uh and i i could be wrong about this but most military personnel

after military don't seem to be like as hardcore gun enthusiasts as many people that have never entered the military not always obviously there's some formerly people that love i think you're describing ptsd but though, that is actually sadly true. I mean, if you went to war and had PTSD, you don't even want to think about a gun, let alone go shooting from time to time. Aren't there, like, restrictions on if you're recently

decommissioned or you resign, you can't own a gun for a while or something? I'm not sure. That wouldn't surprise me. I mean, it makes sense, but I feel like that law comes in place when they realize, hey, if a person leaves the military, they're probably going to come back

and want to shoot up the spot. Yeah. We should make sure. These people that we train specifically to kill probably, you know, let them cool off for a bit. And also don't pay for their mental health or anything.

Yeah, well, why would we do that? So, 1982, Stephen Feinberg graduates Princeton with a politics degree. According to the New York Times, he went into finance so he could pay off his student loans. So he got a job at Drexel Burnham Lampart, which is why a lot of people get into boiler room operations, is to pay off their student loans by scamming people. But so he works at Drexel from 1982 to 1985. Very little information what he actually did there. I mean, he was trading securities,

but I don't know how involved he was in whatever else was going on with Milken and Leon Black and all that. But he leaves in 1985 for Gruntal & Co., which is kind of funny because we mentioned this on the Stephen A. Cohen episode. Gruntal & Co. is kind of funny because we mentioned this on the steven a cohen episode gruntal and co was like the other uh extremely criminal operation going on in wall street at the time drexel on steroids yeah like gruntal and co we mentioned on the cohen episode essentially um they were the upper management was engaged in a 1414 million embezzlement scheme, stealing money from dead customers' accounts, you know. But so, interestingly enough,

he was at Gruntle & Co. around the time Stephen A. Cohen was. So I don't know how much they crossed paths there. But they also, they both left around... Skip! Skip! I was not here for the Stephen A. Cohen episode. Yeah, I missed that. We weren't able to do our famous Grubsticker Stephen A. impressions.

Anytime there's a Stephen on the show, we seem to go into it. Now, Skip, you know there is nobody who respects the integrity of our financial markets more than I do, Skip. But if my friend happens to work at a Fortune 500 company, why should he not be able to give me the quarter two results, Skip? Why? Steven, I understand what you're saying, but the reality is when you go to Kerberos, you need two coins on your eyes and one underneath your tongue to pay the boat captain, okay? And you can't do that when you're running a Fortune 500 company. And I don't care what you say, Stephen. It's just not going to happen if you ask me. We have a word for that, Skip.

It is called communism. Communism. Listen, I understand you think communism is the reason this is happening. But I'm telling you, Stephen, the reality is people are going to die, and it's going to be on your watch. Our apologies to people that don't know who these people are. We've done these impressions time and time again, but honestly, look them up.

It's fantastic. Now, Skip, you know there is nobody who respects the lives of elementary school children more than I do. But I bought this Remington stock, Skip, and I have to make my investment pay off. Steven, I don't know. Ever since you've been talking about these guns, every time I hear your voice, this is what I hear instead.

That's all I hear in the background. That's all I hear. That's it. Gunshots from your voice. I'm just laughing at fucking Stephen A. Smith doing the Sandy Hook shoot. That'd be a great alternate

timeline. If anyone's got Stephen A.'s information, we want him on the show. I want his take on billionaires. Stephen A. is like a conspiracy nutjob. Regardless, around the same time cohen and steven feinberg leave gruntal and co to set up their own shop 1992 feinberg and his partner william richter found seboras capital management richter i to the best of my knowledge he's not a billionaire

probably a few hundred million i don't know his exact name it works with conan yeah he's recently divorced and uh retweeting a lot of single female comics uh so cerberus capital management is founded in 1992 according to new york times they are initially uh specializing in buying up distressed debt and you know like holding it or selling it to other companies but by the mid 90s they get into essentially the private equity business of buying distressed companies um and then like hiring actual executives to run them and take them over and flip them and you know this kind of shit right so general private equity stuff and i did just want to quote one particular case of this from um josh's book, The Buyout of America. Of course, he was a guest on our podcast.

But he makes the case in or he tells of the incident in 2004. I'm just quoting from The Buyout of America here. Cerberus Capital Management and Sun Capital Partners, along with some other partners, in 2004 led the buyout of the Mervin's discount retail chain for $1.26 billion. And then they did this because they saw value in Mervin's real estate. Essentially, it's retail. The stores it owns, it owns a lot of retail,

but it also has long-term leases. So according to the book, Buyout of America, upon closing the deal, they split Mervin's into two separate companies. One held the real estate assets, the other the actual 257 stores. Then the newly formed company that held the Mervin's real estate borrowed $800 million to fund the leveraged buyout. So that's your dividend recap paying itself back. But then they started to charge the store's market rate rents so it could more easily pay back the loan to finance the buyout. So again, this is like just classic asset stripping or a bust out where essentially

this retail chain owns real estate and has long-term leases. So they just take it over and then have it sell its real estate and then suddenly jack up its rents just to pay themselves back. And what happens is in 2008, July 2008, Mervyn's has to file for bankruptcy. According to Buyout of America, this resulted in 18,000 layoffs with the workers receiving no severance or vacation pay. So this is essentially the kind of thing they were involved in. This is standard practice in the private equity industry where it's like they would prefer to avoid bankruptcy, but even when they hit bankruptcy, they make a profit because that's

the first thing they do. And, you know, like we've talked about a lot of times, the actual sales will be fine. They just have all this extra debt from the takeover, which is what causes them to go into bankruptcy, like what happened with Toys R Us. And I want to mention this. So my family actually shopped at Mervin's a lot. And at one point, Target bought Mervin's and it became Mervin's a lot and at one point Target bought Mervin's and it became Mervin's California and I want the listeners to know that this store was essentially like better than like Marshall's and

like Ross dress for less but then cheaper than like Sears or JCPenney so this store wasn't like a high-end retail place but more importantly the people that shop there were people that could afford Mervin's California and get a slightly better quality, you know, shirt or fucking pot or whatever the fuck, everything Mervin's sold, so it's not like, so it's one of those things where, you know, the business that they're putting out is something that people need to survive with, and so everything from clothing to furniture to jewelry, anything you would need that you couldn't buy from a shopping mall, you could get mervyn's california and so fucking these private equity fucks don't give a shit that they're ripping out a fucking pillar of how people clothe and fucking take care of themselves right and

they've done this with a lot of retail a lot of grocery stores i mean i mean it sucks like i i hate to be this sympathetic about it but like my mom hates it so much because she used to just love going and looking at the deals and because my parents would take a whole bunch of things to india so she would go where they'd have massive sales on shit and then like you know walk around shop and then leave and it was you know a golden age of retail in this country is dead because of private equity not because the businesses were bad but because private equity wanted more money in their fucking bank accounts yeah it is interesting how steve feinberg's businesses have both supplied clothing for yogi's extended family and also

trafficked them into subcontracting jobs in iraq and afghanistan which we'll get to in one second um but i guess before we get to dine, I did want to just kind of quickly go over essentially the auto bailout that both the Bush and Obama administration did around the 2008 financial crisis. According to New York Mag, perhaps no single person benefited more from the auto industry bailout than Steve Feinberg. He got about $30 billion in federal bailout. Because what happens in 2006, Steve Feinberg or Cerberus buys majority share in GMAC. This was GM's financing arm where they would give people the loan to buy cars, but they also got heavily into the mortgage industry.

One of those really well thought out plays. And then in 2007, he buys Chrysler, but they believe he was actually buying Chrysler for the Chrysler financing arm. So his play was merge GMAC and the Chrysler financing arm. But of course, all the bottom fells out in 2008. And so he's left holding the bag. And essentially what happens is we mentioned Jon Snow, who knows nothing. Didn't want it.

In between murdering Khaleesi, he was managing the Treasury Department for the Bush administration. Hey, guys, spoilers. I haven't seen the show. Come on. I'm not white. I'm sorry. It is true. that's true that it is totally fair to call any show where uh one of the shots is ruined by a starbucks cup being left on the table a white person's show i tried watching it because it

was so popular and then like the middle i think it was like season three i was like there's too many white people on this show i just can't do it show's pretty bad and that's like one of the the less bad and it's not even like they're white characters with white names. It's like Khaleesi, fucking Droga. Get out of my face. Donald Rumsfeld. Paul Wolfowitz.

Okay, that show would be incredible with Donald Rumsfeld in there. Oh, yeah. So Jon Snow was the... You go to war against the army of the dead With the army that you have Not the army you want Bunch of wildlings

Forcing prisoners to stand for 10 hours a day Isn't torture I myself stand 10 to 12 hours every day For work Bunch of wildlings Protesting that he like skimped on their armor budget. You are using fake dragon stick glass. All right.

So, Jon Snow, Treasury Secretary in the Bush administration until 2006. 2006, he leaves the Bush administration to join Cerberus Capital Management and basically immediately in 2007 starts lobbying the Bush administration to bail out Cerberus Capital Management stake in both Chrysler and GMAC. And I believe as it went here, just from the buyout of America timeline, in December 2008, this is after Obama's already won, but he hasn't been sworn in yet. December 2008, the Federal Reserve approves GMAC's application to become a bank holding company, is after obama's already won but he hasn't been sworn in yet december 2008 the federal reserve approves gmac's application to become a bank holding company which is you know ridiculous

but essentially what they did during the financial crisis is they give people access to these ultra low loans yeah like goldman sachs became a bank in like two weeks oh really um usually it takes years yeah sure sure but so yes like uh it uh becomes it gets access to the discount window even though at the time it did not meet bank capital reserve requirements because it's like so fucking exposed to toxic mortgages uh december 2008 uh the treasury buys five billion dollars worth of shares which is about a 25 percent stake which is interesting where it's like they also didn't buy enough to give themselves a majority stake at the time and of course uh oh this is a 25 percent stake in chrysler excuse me uh and this would be wiped out in bankruptcy so essentially it's just like five billion to just like let steve feinberg get his money out

essentially is what happened here um and uh chrysler got a four billion dollar loan in december 2008 from the treasury january 2009 they get a 1.5 chrysler financial gets a 1.5 billion dollar loan um april 2009 chrysler goes into bankruptcy um and then uh they allow it to merge with GMAC. But May 2009, the Treasury gives another $7.5 billion to invest another $7.5 billion in GMAC. And they actually finally take it over. But it is interesting where Elizabeth Warren talked about essentially they never let GMAC go into bankruptcy. So Chrysler went into bankruptcy, but people estimate Steve Feinberg got about 90% of his money back. But GMAC was never allowed to go through bankruptcy. Essentially, the Fed just spent like 17 point some billion keeping it afloat.

And so Cerberus maintained, I think, like an 8.5% stake as of 2012. Wow. So they actually made a profit on GMAC just because the fed threw 30 billion dollars at this fucking thing the usual route that private equity takes in like an acquisition deal where you like you buy buy up a distressed right asset or or loans uh based on the balance sheet of a distressed company and then wait for it to flounder and then offload your debt and then try to do some like process triple parentheses process improvements by by firing people yeah cutting corners and then a couple a couple years later he's actually innovating on that and he's taking it to the next level

and waiting for the entire industry to fail right right and then wait for the government to bail it out um and just according to buy out of america uh when obama took over the treasury point man um he was the lead advisor to the presidential task force on the auto industry was a guy named steve ratner who was a former cerberus investor who of course sold his stake tax-free to join the um treasury but he was also a private equity chief himself he was a co-founder of the quadrangle group which is a private equity firm that actually had to pay a fine because it was bribing pension managers in new york state to like direct their funds into private equity so it's like of course

some fucking private equity dick who's like an investor in cerberus is gonna recommend also on the obama turn like economic transition team. Yeah. What was that group called? Quadrangle? Yeah, Quadrangle Group. Oh, that group wasn't corrupt? If I read. The triads? Yeah.

Are you kidding me? We want to be like the triads, but more math and shape related. Quadrangle? Perfect. You know how afraid you were of geometry class in high school well just wait until they wipe out your pension and bankruptcy court we're the rhombus crew i was just i will say yes cerberus much more fair and direct name than quadrangle group right um oh and just one more thing from the new york times about this um the situation

was made worse by the hefty interest payments on more than 10 billion in debt that cerberus arranged for chrysler to take on as part of the takeover so again these people take a company over loaded up with insane amount of debt is the private equity business model but of course the government has to come in and bail them out to the tune of 30 billion dollars wow um yeah and so you know that's that's basically the story of like how he was able to remain a billionaire i mean like i don't know if he would have actually been totally wiped out had everything gone to bankruptcy and it's like yeah of course some jobs were saved but at every point you know the government really did it in a way to protect steve feinberg's investment essentially not in a way to protect Steve Feinberg's investment, essentially.

Not in a way to actually protect the workers. Very few strings attached. Yeah. Essentially. It's like, it's crazy because Feinberg's like walking a tightrope, but then underneath them are like four nets to catch him if he fails. And like, big surprise, this guy is like a radical free market Republican who donates $1.5 million to Trump. And like, he originally donated to jeb bush before he got wiped out but it's like you know these people believe oh the free market when you're getting 30

fucking billion dollars in fed bailout like we've mentioned this every single financial billionaire is directly supported by the federal government but very few to just the insane degree that steven feinberg right right um but i guess we should kind of move on to dine core here because dine core uh they actually made a movie about dine core it's called the whistleblower i recommend it it's uh depressing but it talks about essentially in kosovo after the war there dine core was hired uh for uh peacekeeping operations and uh basically they uh their employees started a massive sex trafficking operation uh where they would move uh girls from serbia um through the checkpoints that they

controlled into these areas and then you know force them into sex slavery uh and then two different employees uh tried to become whistleblowers on this and dyncor fired them so basically to cover up their sex trafficking operation they fired two different employees, one of whom had to like flee the country in fear of her life. And they made a movie about this and

it was just kind of horrifying because it was like upper management was either directly involved or just like they were worried about their contract with the UN so they had to cover it up. I hate to even ask this but so were they running a sex ring as in bringing people from serbia to fuck themselves or was it they're bringing people over uh borderlines to sell to other people to traffic them both wow i mean it was like primarily financial jesus fucking christ but yeah no if you want to be depressed just watch the movie the whistleblower it tells most of the story there um but that is the corporation that in 2010 steven feinberg

decides to buy into um so in 2010 feinberg buys into that um and you know so it's like dinecore has like that reputation it's also like been involved in sex trafficking in afghanistan um in 2009 uh from like wiki leaks revealed basically that uh in 2009 dine core contractors paid a 15 year old afghan boy to perform lap dances and entertain them um and of course uh if you're familiar with the afghan thing there's a tradition uh which uh baka bazi uh often involves rape basically like child rape you know and of course you know dying core contractors were involved in this um i believe hillary clinton was emailed in 2009 allegedly she was warned of an upcoming washington post article about dying core being involved in you know uh at least lap dances, but that's what

we know. You would assume there was also actual sex with children going on there. And this is where, like, a lot of the QAnon stuff comes from, where it's like, you take this thing that's very clearly true, and, you know... And you thought that Jeffrey Epstein opening was a red herring, ladies and gentlemen.

Uh-uh. It all connects, ladies and gentlemen. If the Clintons are involved, guess what? So is sex. was a red herring ladies and gentlemen uh-uh it all connects ladies and gentlemen um if the clintons are involved guess what so is sex yeah uh but you know it's like so of course dine core is like a bunch of contracts in haiti and then like the conspiracy is well we don't know if it's a conspiracy sure sure yeah if you want to get up there and medium.com you can read a lot more detail about how Hillary Clinton's brother was point man for Dyncor's sex trafficking operations in Haiti, which is why he had to be murdered. Oh, my God. It's crazy how my perception of the Clintons has changed as I've grown up. Yeah.

Because it went from like, oh, that dude got a blowjob in the White House to now where it's like, oh, that was that was the tip of the iceberg literally the tip all right steven let's get in here huh high fives all around and then like less uh let's say egregious but um definitely true is that during the time that steven feinberg owned it dinecore has been repeatedly accused excuse me during the time steven feinberg has owned it dyncor has repeatedly been accused of like illegally overbilling the federal government like from the new york post um dyncor allegedly billed uh the government 80 million dollars for damco work through 2011 through 2013 at least 30 million of which was improper cost basically they over bill the government for like fuel surcharges, oversized boxes, et cetera, et cetera,

because they're a military contractor and that's what they do. And they were in Afghanistan. They were heavily in Afghanistan. There was an allegation that in 2007, a DynCorp employee murdered a taxi driver for no reason and was, of course, protected. This is why Uber andber lift had to come in you know they really you can't control these taxi drivers they do these things where they

talk to you and are friendly uh in 2001 defense secretary donald rumsfeld was an investor um though i guess uh at the time dyncor did not was not owned by... Feinberg? Yeah. But just kind of like interesting stuff where it's like they've really leveraged government connections and these kinds of things. And, you know, they were involved in training the Iraqi police. One allegation was a government audit said that they were unable to determine how any of the $1.3 billion DynCorp was given to train Iraqi police officers in 2007 was spent. Or it was an audit from 2007 revealed that $1.3 billion spent training Iraqi police. They had no idea where it went or what it was done. Really?

Yeah. done really you know yeah um hey is one of the reasons why the government isn't like hey what did you do with this money because they're literally talking to people that control military groups like you know if you're at a restaurant and they charge you extra for something you'd be like hey i you know i you know fix this you know because you could relatively probably assume the waitress or a waiter won't beat you up but in this case the government's not going to go up to a fucking military personnel and be like, hey, did you... Never mind. I think we're all right here.

Is that one of the reasons? Or do they just not care? I think you say it. Well, it's less than being directly intimidated by the... They're intimidated by losing contracts with U.S. military companies. Gotcha, gotcha.

So it's a combination of both. Well, it's interesting. But more the other side, yeah. Where it's kind of yeah yeah combination of both well it's interesting other side yeah where it's like there have been a couple like we mentioned these auditor reports where dying core will get like fined a few times for over billing but it's like the reason they keep getting these contracts is because they're leveraging government connections where it's like besides hiring like the former treasury secretary they're hiring all these military people and you know it's just the revolving door where it's like they keep uh the bread buttered for government employees who in turn lobby the government and expect their own little retirement uh job with dine core for making sure they they get a good uh get a good contract yeah like the degree of regulatory capture i guess

for for the weapons industry is just so great that even though there's still one buyer, it's still basically a single payer for military hardware. The prices are still skyrocketing. And other countries have been shown to pay... This is not necessarily

me advocating for military industrial complexes, but other countries do pay a lot less for their weapons from other manufacturers than we do for ours. Not saying that anyone should be paying any amount for any weapons. Kind of like the pharmaceutical industry where

the drugs are cheaper overseas than they are in the area. But one last thing I want to go through with DynCorp is essentially the non-sexual element of human trafficking. There's a New Republic through with DynCorp is essentially the non-sexual element of human trafficking. There's a New Republic story. DynCorp is heavily involved in the other side, which is just from the New Republic. About 80% of human trafficking is not for labor, essentially.

Like only about 20% is the actual sex trafficking thing. So just from the New Republic, since 2007, the Army has given DynCorp and a company named Fluor a combined $16.8 billion. This is from 2007 to 2014. This is a contract called the Logistic Civil Augmentation Program. Basically, the contractors oversee everything from laundry to food prep to construction on a military basis throughout Afghanistan. These companies in turn rely on the subcontractor Ecolog to hire workers in Dubai, many of whom end up. Basically, they talk about how these contractors, these workers have to pay recruitment fees. So, like, you know, they have to pay, like, say, $2,500 U.S. dollars to a recruiter to get to this job at uh at dine core um and uh basically like the new republic kind of goes through often these work

workers will have to take out high interest loans in their home country to pay the recruitment fee the payments can then trap them in their new jobs where it's like the recruiters will tell them hey you're going to be in like a fucking jordanian hotel right and then you're actually like stuck on like a custodial position on u.s military bases in a war zone um and then uh they they interview this guy for the new republic he talks about one case where an indian college graduate named ramesh paid 5 000 up front to an agent who promised an 800 per month salary to work for a U.S. contractor in Iraq. Once in Iraq, he was only offered 150 per month. Again, human trafficking where it's like once you get them there, they're trapped, you know.

Once in Iraq, he was only offered 150 per month but took the job because he felt he had no other choice. When the loan shark became dissatisfied with the repayment rate, he sexually assaulted Ramesh's sister. His sister hung herself and his mother fell into a state of shock when ramesh returned home to india he and his surviving family members poisoned themselves and uh you know this is uh just what happens with human contracting it's a it's a moral tragedy and the thing is the u.s government is giving them the 16 billion dollars in contracts they've repeatedly said these recruitment fees are illegal but they never stop renewing this contract so it's just fucked up and

ridiculous and one thing i've also heard about these these job positions within military groups is that they'll say that these positions are being paid that much to then over inflate how much money they can get from the government later on so they'll be like uh this person that does our laundry makes you know they that we need to pay them you know seven or eight hundred dollars but then actually pay them less but then charge the government that much for the actual jobs that they're doing what fucking crooks yeah and the other thing is essentially uh the contractors there is no reason for them to use subcontractors this eco log company they just do it according to one person interviewed for the New Republic, they just do it because they feel they get additional insulation, both from a tax and

liability perspective. And, you know, an ACLU report from 2011 suggests that online recruitment advertisements from this subcontractor Ecolog, found on an Indian jobs website, requires a $2,000 recruitment fee. Because basically Ecolog, of course, denied charging illegal recruitment fees, but it's like the ACLU found actual advertisements demanding this recruitment fee.

And of course, DynCorp pockets these recruitment fees. So you get however many billions from the feds, and then you get, you know, say you have 8,000 workers paying $2,500 each. That's $20 million. Right. Just untaxed black money.

And, you know. A similar thing happens with non-military civilian contractors. Oh, really? Temp agencies for the government. Yeah. Stateside. One thing I want to mention is that, like, you know, the reason why, you know, in this specific case with Ramesh and this Indian family, the middle class population of India is roughly the population of the United States.

And so a lot of kids, if they can't go into the traditional fields of success, being a doctor or an engineer, sometimes in school will just kill themselves. Like recently there was like an issue with like the test machines that was grading them and kids that were like top A students got lower marks and then they just committed suicide. Oh my god. Yeah, because like that's the level of pressure to succeed in the Indian society is so high because you're... Whoever's maintaining those testing machines has this power.

Yeah, of course, of course. And with situations... Yogi, have I told you how much i respect you for resisting the pressure to succeed from indian society i am a true anomaly but um you know so with this case of like a job being overseas and with upward mobility most of the jobs people in india will take outside of the country will be so that they can send money back home. So with Ramesh effing this up, I mean, I bet that the daughter hanging herself, like, you know, it crippled the family and so made them all want to. It's a terrible situation that is directly caused by a billionaire who has the power

and the luxury, not the tenacity, but the luxury to not be committed for those crimes. And I think when people hear the phrase human trafficking they only think about someone who is just like living in literate physically imprisoned right and is being flown all around the world like just trapped physically all the time and no it's like every you're you can be like financially imprisoned as well. Yeah. There's just no foreseeable way back to your home country after you realize you're screwed out of $650 a month, I guess. Right, right.

Going from $800 to $150 a month to pay back, what was it? $5,000. $5,000. It's going to take years and years to recoup your... Right, but pennies compared to what the fucking billionaire class is dealing with. I mean, it's lunacy that the amount of corruption that is riddled in these things are as hidden as they are, but no wonder fucking Feinberg doesn't do a goddamn interview

until he's trying to merge companies. For another perspective, let's go to a New York Magazine interview with Lindsay, Steven feidberg's oldest daughter she's entering her junior year at college at the time she recently asked her father to buy her a car but says she knew better than to ask for a foreign model quote i was lucky to get him to agree to any car because he was like and here she drops her voice an octave in playful imitation the first car that any teenager gets has to be a broken down piece of trash that cost them $500 that you got used

from a crackhead dealer. Oh my god. She says that her father constantly drills her and her sisters on the importance of hard work. What? This guy that made a dickload of money from not working nearly that hard and screwing people over

is now fucking yelling at his kids to work harder? What? What kind of car did she get though? Something from a crackhead deal. A Prius. Listen, Jessica's Feinberg bought a crackhead a fucking new car and then she negotiated to buy that car for crack money. Doesn't mean it's a crackhead car.

This satisfies my contract that I laid out. Alright, listen daughter. I bought this crackhead a 2017 Ford Focus. So if you can get them to talk it down, I think you can pick it up for a couple hundred dollars because they're really addicted to crack. I do like how he created so many new crackheads by killing their children at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

Well, all I know personally is that there's only one quote that I think exemplifies all of this. man these real white motherfuckers that invented this shit i don't know none of that one other thing uh in 2012 the same daughter lindsey posted a picture of her father's t-shirt to instagram it featured images of a sniper rifle trailing smoke a mounted machine gun and a row of bullets emblazoned with the tagline, IT'S TIME TO WORK, in all caps. In the comments, she posed the question,

WHO IS MY DAD? Dot, dot, dot, dot, dot. Question, question, question, question. What? And the answer is a mass murderer. A welfare sponge and mass murderer and human trafficker uh i like how that instagram post is like when the robots get sentience like they're like oh shit i figured out who my maker truly is um but so before we run out of time here there is like one more case i wanted to go through

first i just really quickly to roll up the remington freedom group all that nonsense basically um uh the new york times kind of goes through what they did with remington they bought in bought in 2006 we mentioned they're merging all these different gun companies trying to to um make one super site like they set up a factory in huntsville alabama with about 40 million in state subsidies They do this there because they had a unionized upstate New York plant, and they go to a right-to-work state where they can bust the union. They start laying off a bunch of people, basically. But they're doing great during the Obama admin, but then Trump gets elected,

and kind of the bill comes due. But the New York Times did a very good job essentially finding how they did this dividend recap with remington um so essentially they created a new holding company um and then they put money into the holding company then they had the holding company um bought remington uh but according to new york times in 2010 servers had the holding company borrow 225 million from an undisclosed group of lenders um and then uh basically essentially why remington went bankrupt was because they had this giant 225 million uh loan which they spent buying back its own stock essentially transferring all of the borrowed cash back to cerberus so they did this dividend recap bullshit with with remington as well right and then in 2018 remington has to go into chapter 11 bankruptcy

and according to uh naked capitalism among the largest unsecured creditors listed in the petition are the pension benefit guarantee corp which is the u.s government's insurer for failed private sector pensions and the marlin firearms company employees pension plan remington had acquired marlin firearms in 2008 so the idea is that the restructured company will walk away from its pension obligations. So, you know, just this kind of bullshit. But the last thing that I wanted to do here is mention one of the biggest bugaboos to me

is the mortgage fraud financial crisis. Because, believe it or not, like many other private equity firms cerberus is involved there um we've we've kind of mentioned you know in the uh aftermath of the financial crisis there's approximately about 10 million foreclosures many of them done fraudulently um with you know robo signed fake documents all that bullshit right they threw 10 million people out of their homes onto the streets and then the federal government set up a policy to turn these into single-family rentals where

you know they sell them in bulk like if fannie mae did a bunch of foreclosures and then in 2012 they started selling them in bulk to like blackstone group and some other private equities who turned them into um uh single-family rentals uh controlled by this uh this this private equity firm who really just don't give a fuck about the people who live in there and you know the kind of horrifying thing is a lot of people who were foreclosed on end up being permanent renters in the same houses they used to live or they used to own right you know and this was entirely the result of government policy you know another Another way he benefits here is he benefits from the government creating a permanent renter class by foreclosing on 10 million

people. And so basically Cerberus manages a company called First Key Homes. And if you want to see what half-star reviews look like go ahead and google the reviews for first key homes but first key was like cerberus bought up a bunch of properties and distressed mortgages in the aftermath of the financial crisis after the government bailed them out of course because they had the capital to actually be buyers in this downturn. First Key Homes was set up to manage their real estate rental properties. And it says as of December 2018, it manages about 21,000 homes.

And then there's a Washington Post story, but I did just want to quote quickly from a March 2019 Yelp review from a Georgia tenant. If I could give this place a zero, I would. Which is commonly used uh by either people getting screwed by their landlord or white girls at tapas bars uh but basically i'm renting a property here and have had hell since day one they are slow to fix things i waited over a month and a half for a new dishwasher the air filters weren't clean rendering me unable to breathe i've

had to act an ass just to get these people to fix basic things clogged sink for over a month you'll have people on yelp talking about months waiting for security deposits damages that existed when they rented the place being charged to their security deposits black mold rats like some guy discovered rats under his sink, cockroaches, all that bullshit. But the last thing I wanted to mention here is we mentioned this 21,000 rental home empire. Cerberus is the largest landlord in a town near Memphis, in essentially Memphis, Tennessee. According to the Washington Post, it uses unusually aggressive tactics to recover late rent. First Key Homes files for eviction at twice the rate of other rental property managers in the Memphis area and threatens renters with removal at the highest rate among the area's largest management firm, in 2018 going to court more than 400 times and um it is just kind of horrifying where essentially what they do is they use eviction court to intimidate tenants into shutting the fuck up

yeah of course where it's like you know if you have we mentioned you know black mold or rats in the sink or some shit if you complain to them they're like okay we're just gonna throw you the fuck out right right you know it's part of a plea deal. You have to give it a five-star rating. Just going on from this Washington Post article, the company has filed for eviction at an annual rate of 21 times for 100 homes since 2015, the highest rate among the region's large property managers and above the overall average in the Memphis area of 11 evictions per 100 rental homes.

And the discrepancy can't be explained where First Key has property. Its rates of filing for eviction is far above the average in 17 out of the 18 zip codes where it has at least 20 homes, according to the Washington Post. And so basically, you know, it kind of just goes on from here. It tells this story, really heartbreaking, about this family in Memphis who uh who essentially like i said they owned their homes uh they got a predatory adjustable rate mortgage from bank of america which bank of america would later pay a settlement for giving them uh they own their home and then they were

actually paying less on this mortgage than first key now charges them in rent on the same house because you know they got a predatory loan to buy this house then the government didn't help them keep it at all even though they were the victims of predatory lending and then the government or whoever ended up with it sold it off to first key homes and now they're the victims of a predatory rental company and they make the point where um the washington post like shows a map of where predatory lending took place in the financial crisis in the memphis area and it about lines up perfectly where first key is doing the most evictions and uh has the most rent of course right

you know so it's just like fucking the robin people yeah and you know it is just one of those things where it's like so much of what billionaires say, you know, I built is just the result of often absolutely horrific government policy. Yeah. That, you know, just traps people in a cycle of poverty. Yeah, man. These some real white motherfuckers that invented this shit, dog. I don't know none of that. One last thing for the Washington Post. Most of Cerberus' houses are in medium-sized cities hit hard by foreclosures,

such as St. Louis, Indianapolis, and Memphis, the last of which saw a drop in the percentage of homes that are owner-occupied from 82% to 73% between 2008 and 2016. The Midwest is its bread and butter, somebody said at a conference quoted by the Washington Post. And so essentially, the thing is Cerberus manages, we mentioned, more than 20,000 properties scattered across 23 different markets. And there's no landlord-tenant relationship with these financials. They're just numbers on a spreadsheet.

But another thing is the Washington Post tallies up horrific code violations. We mentioned the rats, or there was a property that burned down that Cerberus did nothing about for a year. Essentially until the Washington Post contacted them for the story. And then they sent someone up to board it up. That almost makes you miss the flesh and blood Memphis landlord. Now there's just straight up no one there.

They might hire someone every year or something. Yeah. And there was a study from like the Fed in Atlanta that essentially said that these large corporate landlords are 8% more likely to file for eviction than small landlords. But essentially like, you know, and they talk about these people, Cerberus will own these homes

and then they just won't even have any contact information. Sure, sure. You know, because it's like totally impossible to get in touch with them so a home can fucking burn down and become like a haven for pests and rats and like blight the whole neighborhood and they don't know what's going on they don't give a fuck and you know and why should they they're getting away with yeah you try to call them up there's like okay why are you so loud but you know i mean it is just something where it's like look steven feinberg is a free market republican guy who believes in a market for organs of human children that he killed at sandy hook and then harvested but you know it's like look what has

he done he's been bailed out of his disastrous investment in mortgage-backed securities through gm's financial arm for two and a thirty billion dollars and then because he was bailed out he had the cash on hand when shit hit the fan and the government decided we're not going to protect anybody who was the victim of predatory lending or would just through circumstances no fault of their own were not able to pay their mortgage when the economy collapses it's not the individual's fault if they can't pay their fucking mortgage. And the government had an obligation to help people stay in their homes. But instead, we foreclosed on 10 million people and created a class of permanent renters that now Cerberus and billionaires like Steve Feinberg benefit from. Well, harassing these people,

you know, destroying their lives and threatening them to just shut the fuck up about the rats in their house and shit. And it's horrifying. You know, these people are just pieces of garbage. And, you know, hopefully he gets implicated in the Epstein thing. Yeah, I completely agree. Yeah. But, I mean, that's about it. Maybe we'll return to Cerberus later. If we missed anything, you know, hit us up at GrubstakersPod on Twitter, GrubstakersPodcast at gmail.com. Anything else on Steven Feinberg before we get out of here? I don't believe

so. Alright, well, give us five stars on iTunes. Andy Palmer will be back next week, we promise. Unless he gets named in the Epstein documents. And with that, I'm Yogi Paiwal. Steve Jeffries. I'm Sean McCarthy. Thanks for listening.

Bye-bye. Hey, welcome to a bit of bonus Grubstakers. We're just talking a bit more about Steven Feinberg because we just did this episode about Steven Feinberg, the founder of Cerberus Capital, a private equity firm, and a listener alerted us to something we missed, and I thought it would be worth talking about. So we're just going to do that really quickly,

is that Cerberus Capital, in addition to being the private equity firm I thought it would be worth talking about. So we're just going to do that really quickly. Is that Cerberus Capital, in addition to being the private equity firm that got $30 billion for the federal government for the auto bailout, that manufactured the gun used in Sandy Hook. Among other things, but yes. Harvested organs through DynCorp. Trained the crisis actors. Yeah, killed Hillary Clinton's brother to cover up the organ harvesting in Haiti. All those other real scandals that you can look up

that Steven Feinberg is linked to. He also did something wrong. In addition to all that, something we missed on this episode is essentially a listener point this out to us is that just from the Exiled Online, Mark Ames wrote in 2010 about how essentially Cerberus Capital has made money on blood sucking.

Literally. Yes. Not metaphorical blood sucking, actual blood sucking. Yeah, so basically just from this article on the Exiled Online from 2010. In 2010, Cerberus sold their stake in Talcris. It's a company. T-A-L-E-C-R-I-S.

They bought it for $82.5 million. They sold it for $1.8 billion. Like, that's a huge return. Right. And so, essentially, just quoting from the exiled, they did it by the most savage, heartless means possible by paying peanuts to their impoverished human plasma donors who increasingly come from Mexican border towns to blood pumping stations, savage heartless means possible by paying peanuts to their impoverished human plasma donors who

increasingly come from Mexican border towns to blood pumping stations set up on the American side. And then they jack up the price of the plasma by restricting the supply. The FTC, the Federal Trade Commission actually sued them for setting up an oligarchy in this respect. And it is just something where, I don't know, it's extremely horrifying where you'll have the literally bus people across the border from Mexico. Because in Mexico, the United States is one of the few countries where it's actually legal to sell plasma for money. In Mexico, it is illegal. And most of the world. Yes. So they will bus these poor, impoverished people who are, of course, decimated by the very capitalist, neoliberal policies that they promote so much.

They'll bust them across the border, pay them $30 for an hour of having their plasma sucked out, and then sell it for a huge markup. See, this is why I'm taking the side of the leftist case for closed borders because it used to be just a hard-working hard-working american right right could sell his blood for a fair price that's right to pay his rent uh but now they're just with open borders this is just a look into the future you know you can just bus um people over from me. They sell their blood. It's undermining the American worker. And that's why I, as a leftist, am advocating closed borders.

You're tired of these Mexicans taking our blood money. This would be one of the most innovative reactionary leftist takes for closed borders that I've heard. It's like Mexico has more progressive laws against the plasma market. So that's why we should close up the border. Sorry, you were saying something? Well, all I was saying

is that I shouldn't have to press 1 for English blood. That should be, English blood should be the default option. Our blood used to be unionized. The blood plasma market is forecast to grow to $44 billion in 4 four years so invest now

is that what you're saying get on best brokers and get into the blood market yeah but um i mean with regard to steven feinberg as of right now he's out of the market like they dumped their stake in 2010 but just continuing from this exiled article they sell this you know plasma to people suffering from hemophilia severe burns multiple sc multiple sclerosis, autoimmune deficiencies, and from the exiles. The products cost so much. Basically, one transmission of these intravenous hemoglobin, they cost, I think I got it right.

Hemoglobin. Hemoglobin, yeah. Hemoglobin. Not feeling so well. Emo Globin came out with Coheed and Cambria and a couple of those bands. I love the soundtrack they did for the Tim Burton movies

in 2005. We said we'd do five minutes bonus on this, but we didn't count on the time it takes me to pronounce things. Regardless, one of these transfusions, according to the exiles, cost twice the price of gold as of summer 2009. And the American health insurance companies

have been dropping or denying policyholders. And this essentially kills people. So it's like, on the one hand, you're sucking blood out of poor, desperate immigrants for vastly below market prices. Then you're using your oligopoly to jack up the price that the American consumers actually pay for it. So it's like that's why he gets such a crazy return buying this company for $82.5 million, selling it for $1.8 billion. So, I mean, he's making money sucking blood out of people and also killing people who need that blood.

And that's why we need stronger regulations to make sure that the people who give the blood are paid market prices for their blood. Yeah, and, you know, it just kind of goes on this article in The Exiled. I recommend checking it out. Did you intend that to be a joke, but actually we took it seriously? Yes. But basically they just have all these plasma stations right along the u.s mexico border and you know we mentioned like essentially within like 30 feet you get off the border you see a ton of plasma stations because again you know these are

desperately many of them desperately poor people and they can't sell their plasma in mexico so of course they come to the united states where we're one of the few countries that has this really literally vampiric market for this shit. This is one of the sketchiest TaskRabbits ever. I want to sell your blood. But it is just something to kind of like put on the ledger with regard to Steven Feinberg is like, you know, how did you make your money?

It's like, okay, well, I got a bunch of money from running a scam with Michael Milken and working at Gruntal & Co. with Stephen A. Cohen, who was later convicted, pled guilty to insider trading violations or failure to supervise, whatever the case may be. in a shady way and then you leverage it where essentially you're getting desperately poor people to literally sell you their blood and then you're using your market position to jack up the price that blood will uh will fetch on the american market where you know you give somebody 30 for an hour of their time we pay guests on the podcast more than he was paying for an hour's worth of blood being sucked out of them and making such an insane return on that. So it is, and we take our guests plasma, but I guess,

uh, you know, so that's just something else to add to the ledger and on Steven Feinberg. And, um, if we do an episode on a billionaire and there's some stuff we don't get to, please just shoot us an email. Please just do our work for us.

Exactly. That's the other thing is we've studied these billionaires so that we can replicate their models of exploitation. Right. So, you know, like Amazon will have you do reviews for free. That's free labor for Amazon. So if you're listening to our podcast and you notice some good stories about how they are actual imperial vampires sucking the blood out of Mexican immigrants, feel free to just email us and maybe we'll do a little addition to an episode we've already done. Thank you to our listener that emailed us this information. Thank you for our listener to bringing this to our attention. And thank you for helping us make the case against open borders again you can

always email us grubstakerspodcast at gmail.com or tweet at us at grubstakerspod on twitter um you know and so we'll keep an eye on what steven feinberg does in the future hopefully he will finally pay those students at sandy hook for all that blood he took from them jesus christ i just think you know he had a free source of domestic American blood and he had to outsource it. Wait, he exploited those false flag actors? All right, thanks for listening and thanks to our listener

who brought that to our attention. And keep us posted about what you find out about billionaires that we miss. Chicka-chicka. Uh...