Open Book with Anthony Scaramucci - How Wall Street’s Billionaires Became Untouchable - William D. Cohan

Episode Date: September 10, 2026

What happens when you accumulate so much money and power that the normal rules no longer seem to apply? William Cohan joins me to unpack the extraordinary rise of Leon Black and Apollo, and a story of ambition, rivalry, Jeffrey Epstein, and the hubris that can turn unimaginable success into a cautionary tale. William D. Cohan is the New York Times bestselling author of Power Failure, which was named Best Book of 2022 by The New Yorker, Financial Times, and The Economist. He has written seven nonfiction narratives, including Money and Power, House of Cards, and The Last Tycoons. He was a longtime special correspondent at Vanity Fair and is a founding partner of and Wall Street correspondent for Puck. He writes often for the opinion pages of The New York Times and Financial Times and appears regularly on CNN, MSNOW, and BBC. This book is Bill Cohan at his very best: Money to Burn: The Unvarnished Truth About Leon Black, Apollo, and the Rise of a New Wall Street. Get it today! Anthony Scaramucci is the founder and managing partner of SkyBridge, a global alternative investment firm, and founder and chairman of SALT, a global thought leadership forum and venture studio. Pre-order my next book, All the Wrong Moves: How Three Catastrophic Decisions Led to the Rise of Trump, out on the 17th of September in the UK and the 22nd of September in the US: ⁠https://www.scaramucci.net/allthewrongmoves Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We've created this class, a hubristic class of people. They're able to have anything they want in the world and will forever. I mean, they've created generational wealth. They are untouchable in that regard. It seems that you as the gold rules. There probably needs to be a more accountability generally. This is undermining our society when we create the class of oligarchs who seem to have no carburetor on their behavior or on their mouths

or any accountability for their actions. And I think that's debilitating to our society. And unfortunately, it's starting at the top of our society, too. Welcome to Open Book. I am your host, Anthony Scaramucci. Joining us is a dear friend, Bill Cohen. Bill, what a book this is. Okay, I'm going to make the argument here that this is your best book,

and I've read every one of your books. But the title of the book is Money to Burn, the Unvarnished Truth about Leon Black, Apollo, and the rise of a new Wall Street. So one of your reviewers said it was like five different books in one, But the reason I love the book, and I appreciate you give me an advanced copy, which I read over the summer, is this is an unusual group of people. I mean, this is, and these are contemporaries of yours and mine, and we know these people. And so the research that you did on these people, I think, was legendary.

But let's start with the title. Why money to burn? What is the point that you're trying to make with that? that title. Well, first, Anthony, thank you for having me. It's always great to see you. You know, you yourself have a new book coming out, which I wish you all the best with. And I can't wait to, I've read most of it, and I can't wait to see how well it does. Well, credit first to my wife, your former teacher's daughter or librarian's daughter out where you all grew up. What a kismet sort of story.

So I'm going to interrupt you for a second. So the former librarian of the Port Washington Middle School is your wife's mom, Mrs. Futter. And I'm going to tell this is a tale out of school, but it's just it'll, I think everyone will appreciate this. I had a great relationship with her, and she used to save for me the Sports Illustrated bathing suit additions in the archive. How much do you love that?

This is a legendary story in our family. How much do you love a 13-year-old Anthony Scaramucci going into the middle school library and saying, Mrs. Futter, do you have my stash? She says, yes, Anthony. And I would go back at that little study cubicle. You love that story? Totally believe it. I feel like it's completely accurate.

I can see you with your ghost motorcycle jacket on going back in the cubbyhole. I mean, that's how we grew up. But she was awesome, you know. And by the way, and you have a, I think your sister-in-law was the president of Barnard there for a while, right? And she went out of the Museum of Natural History, I believe, as well, right? Correct. That's true. So she had to raise people, that's for sure.

All right, but go ahead, Bill. Why money to birth? Well, my wife, who's very good at coming up with these titles because she has been in the publishing. She's the runs two publishing companies as part of McMillan and has for a long time. So we were sort of struggling. I was sort of, you know, something to do with Apollo, Apollo Rising, you know, the whole Greek God angle of this. And then she just came up with that. And I think it really summarizes sort of what's going on here.

I mean, these, and again, you alluded to this. I mean, we all started, you know, with these people and the private equity business, you know, on Wall Street in the mid to late 80s. And this could have been us. I mean, if we had been fortunate enough to go in the private equity direction or could have had the guts to start a private equity firm ourselves.

Now there are these big behemoths, you know, which everybody on Wall Street wants to go work at. And essentially they've become, you know, immensely rich, immensely rich, immensely rich, fabulously rich. All, you know, pretty much anyone who touches a private equity has become fabulously rich. And certainly that is the case among Leon Black, Josh Harris, and Mark Rowan. And really it comes from, you know, a superb financial engineering, thanks to a benefit in our tax code that allows for the tax deductibility of interest.

and their own intelligence and smarts and savvy and being in the right place at the right time. And so as a result of having all this money, now they have money to burn, in effect. And they're burning it. Well, look, I love the title because you're saying something else in the book, actually, and I'm going to test this on you, and I want you to respond. Okay.

When I hear money to burn, I hear that there's a paradox to wealth. And when I hear money to burn, and sometimes you can become so wealthy that it's almost damaging to your brain. It's like that old commercial. When you and I were kids in the 80s, this is your brain. And they crack two eggs. And they say, well, this is your brain on drugs. And the eggs are frying.

And I sort of feel like there's a paradox to wealth. And you and I have done well. We're not as wealthy as these guys. But sometimes when you get so wealthy, it can cause you to start. thinking about yourself differently than other people. You know, what did Leona Helmsley say? You know, the little people, right? You know, not us, right?

Fitzgerald said the rich think differently than you and I. And I'm just wondering if that's lace in the story. There's a cautionary tale in this story about wealth and almost like psychosis and, you know, sociopathic behavior. Am I missing that, Bill? No, no. That's the threat of the, to me, I will. I want to give this to my children, read the book,

because you've got to be careful in life about excesses and all factors of life. Am I not reading it right? And, Anthony, you had a front row seat and continue to have a front row seat, you know, even, you know, 11 days right in the beating heart of it, of this new class of Uber wealthy people that have been created in this country.

much more than even in like any of the previous gilded ages. I mean, we're talking about unbelievable amounts of wealth. And, you know, Leon, Josh and Mark, you know, they're mere 10 to 15 billionaires. They're not like Elon and Larry Ellison. I mean, and these people, just generally, these people with so much money, they have been able, you know, Tom Wolfe wrote about insulate, insulate, insulate in Bonfire of the Vanity. and that was prescient because, I mean, these people have perfected being insulated, whether it's being surrounded by people who are beholden to them

and therefore may not always tell them, give them the best advice or tell them when they're stepping out and behaving poorly. They obviously have every rich person amenity you could possibly imagine, jets, boats, homes. And I think even more importantly, they seem to be above the law and above any accountability. And again, I'm not suggesting necessarily that any of the people I've written about in this book, although others have, need to be quote unquote held accountable or broken any laws. But we have certainly created a class from the Oval Office down of people who consider themselves now above the law. And there's no accountability for them.

And there's really, we haven't figured out how to hold these people accountable. And it's due to their extreme wealth and therefore the power that derives from that experience. Well, I mean, I don't want to go off topic of the book. But I think this is also related to Citizens United because I give the money to the politician. And the politician will do whatever I want. Let me give more money to the politician. So now no breakup of the monopolies. I get tax breaks.

The big, beautiful spending bill is helping me as a rich guy. hurts the little guy. If you look at the legislative agenda since that decision was rendered, these guys are way more protected, way more insulated, because they're now got the politicians completely in their pockets. But that's a whole other. And of course, and the President of the United States, you know, is now, cannot be held accountable for anything he does while in office. Well, I mean, that's another, there's another big issue for reform. But I also saw the House of Atreus in this book. And so just to remind everybody, who, was in the house of Atreus, this was the son of Zeus who fed his. He cooked his son,

Philops, and he fed it to everybody at the banquet. And Zeus said, okay, your house, the sins of the father will be handed down to the son for eternity. And it was a big message and mythology about your dad and trying to get out of the shadow of your dad if he's not necessarily a good guy. and let's talk a little bit about Eli Black, who was a prominent businessman whose career ended in scandal. And how did that affect Leon Black's ambition, Bill? Well, I love telling you, Anthony, because you're so learned and intellectual and so smart. It's not me. It's you.

Yeah. Well, no. I read the book differently. Everyone's going to read the book and say, oh, this is a Wall Street book, and there's a psycho drama. But I read this as like a cautionary tale about watching your own personal crazy. But go ahead. Go ahead. Tell me about Eli Black.

Well, first of all, Leon Black comes from, you know, 10 generations of Orthodox rabbis. So right there, I mean, that is an incredible fact. And, you know, which no one, I think, really appreciated or had knowledge of. his father was an orthodox rabbi too, practiced, you know, in like the five towns region of Long Island, south of where you grew up, and my wife grew up. And, you know, he did that for like three years. And then at one point he decided, you know, okay, enough, I don't really, I'm not really enjoying being an Orthodox rabbi. I'm going to, you know, somehow pivot to being a businessman. And you do that, of course. like the same way I did it, from being a journalist to being a banker, by getting my MBA.

He went to Columbia, the same place I went to get my MBA. And that allowed him to go to Lehman Brothers, believe it or not, and be a banker. And then from there, he went and worked for one of his clients and running one of the client's portfolio companies, took it over. It was a company called Seal Cap, which made, believe it or not, you might remember, remember this, Anthony, the paper tops that went on glass milk bottles that were delivered on our doorstep when we were kids. I remember those very well. Okay.

And he made those, his company that he ran owned, made those paper tops to the milk glass milk bottles, which of course now, of course, don't even exist, even in fossil form. and he converted that into a conglomerate. You know, conglomerates were really big in the 70s, 60s and 70s, whether it was ITT or GE or any of the other big englomerates. Well, he created one called United Brands, the big centerpiece of which was United Fruit, which was the largest importer of bananas.

You know, we don't grow bananas in this country. Never have. The climate is not right, so we have to import them from Central and South America. So he created, he bought all these companies, the 1.0 in Baskin-Robbins and A&W Root Beer and Foster Grand sunglasses. So his father was like a big deal.

They lived on Park Avenue. They had a weekend home in Westchester County. He worked in the Pan Am building, which is now the MetLife building. And so, long story short, and I want to ruin it for people, there was a scandal involving tariffs, which, you know, is very relevant to our life today. And when Leon was in his second year of Harvard Business School, where he went because his father basically insisted he didn't want to go,

Leon was like a philosophy major at Dartmouth and a very smart guy. But he did so well at Dartmouth that he easily got into Harvard Business School and went, even though he didn't want to, didn't like it. And then when he was the second year at Harvard Business School, his father jumped out of the Pan Am building onto Park Avenue from the 44th floor, somehow broke the panes of glass with his briefcase. I'm not exactly sure how that happened. Committed suicide amid a scandal, which I talk about in the book. And that's the so-called Rosebud chapter, of course. And, you know, Leon, who was thinking about how to use his philosophy. degree from Dartmouth. His father was a big businessman with wealth tied to the stock of United Brands, jumps out of the window of the Pan Am building, and next thing you know, the family is in turmoil. Stock goes down. Money is lost. Wealth is lost. His mother is an artist, his aunt is an artist, is an art dealer, and his sister is a teacher. So guess what? It falls to Leon. in the second year of Harvard Business School

to try to figure out how to resurrect the family not only its reputation but it's how it was going to survive day to day and make a living and of course that became I think his driving force in life and he exceeded it in terms of wealth but then of course had his own scandal

so there you go back to your mythology Well, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, it's obvious that he's haunted. Also, the book, you know, though, among the many things I love about you is that you're an observer of human nature and, but we're also both fallible guys, right? So we both also can own our own fallibility. But in this book, when I read about Leon Black, Josh Harris and Mark Row, and I know both of them, I've not met Leon, but when I read, I read, you about them, it's like a rock and roll band. Now, Keith Richards and Mick Jagger could keep it together. Okay. They punched at each other for 60 years, but they're still making music together.

Okay, Paul, Ringo, George, right? John, they couldn't keep it together, right? They let the egos in. And so these guys built arguably one of the most successful businesses in the world, right? And certainly the best thing that comes out of Drexol, but they can't keep it

together. They are beating the daylights out of each other inside that firm. So tell us a little bit about that. And tell us a little bit about why human nature is like that, because this is a predictable story. It's not, you know, I'm reading the book and I'm like, okay, yeah, that happens. That's not unpredictable. Guys, thank you so much for listening and subscribing to Open Book. You know, we've got 200 authors on this show. It's been a lot of fun for me, but I'm also an author now too. And I've got all the wrong moves available.

Go to scaramucci.net backslash all the wrong moves. You can buy your copy today. It's a lot of fun and lots of commentary about what's gone on in the U.S. over the last three decades. Well, you're right. I am a student of human nature, and I love it, and I love a great narrative. And one of the reasons I wanted to write this book is because it's a fascinating story right from the get-go with Leon's family.

and then Drexel blowing up. I mean, we could talk about that for hours too. But, and then out of that comes this firm Apollo, which of course is the metaphor for rising from the ashes itself. And so it was definitely Leon's firm. He brings together the merry band of people he wants from Drexel. And, you know, off they go, trying to build a different kind of private equity firm.

And they, you know, they did keep it together for, you know, a long-ish time. You know, it was definitely Leon's firm. Eventually, when it came time to go public, Leon wanted to show that it wasn't just Leon's firm and that he had a succession plan sort of in hand, which is why he named Mark and Josh, sort of his co-founders, even though they weren't,

and why he gave them, you know, 58 million Apollo shares, which instantly made them billionaires when Apollo went public. So that was the plan, and two out of the three of them had to agree on things for anything to happen. And of course, Leon basically, you know, used his influence as the largest shareholder and the real founder. He had 93 million shares to, you know, get his way.

And so over time, you know, each of them did their own things. They had some great deals, some deals that stunk. But I think they had an understanding at the firm. that, you know, we're going to do good deals, we're going to do bad deals. It's not going to hurt your career. And so then it'll come, you know, in the 2020 time period, you know, six or so years ago, you know, Leon decides it's time to retire. He's going to be 70 and he wants Mark to succeed him,

even though Mark had been on like a semi-sabatical or, you know, and sort of taking his time away from the firm after he had built a theme. this insurance behemoth, which has been the origin of the private credit market. And anyway, the feud became, you know, who is going to succeed? Leon and Josh, of course, wanted to be his successor. Mark was playing at cool. Leon wanted Mark. And eventually, you know, Leon got his way.

Got to get to Jeff Epstein here. Well, of course. I mean, here we are. Back to Jeff Epstein. You know, I, I. A guy who will not die. I often say to people, I mean, in some ways, thank God I wasn't rich and or famous when Jeff Epstein was in his heyday, right?

Because, you know, I miss Jeff Epstein, thank God. But these guys didn't. They all got ensnared by them. And, I mean, this is an incredible story. Well, Leon especially, obviously. Oh, this is an incredible story. He pays $158 million for tax and estate work to Jeff Epstein. So, yeah, you know, Bill, come on, baby.

When the window's open and you hear clippity clop outside, it's a horse. It's not a zebra. Okay, that's a cover-up right there. Okay. So what happened? Okay, he regrets the relationship that law firm, decor, exonerates him, blah, blah. Right. But this has destroyed the guy, right?

So what happened, Bill? You know, this remains a bit of a mystery. I mean, I think people have been trying to get to the bottom of this for years. I think, you know, the F.T, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, but try to get to the bottom of this for a long time. I, of course, wanted to get to the bottom of it. You know, at least I had Leon talking to me on the record about it, very open and, you know, by and large, I think, honest,

but, you know, we'll never know, Anthony, because, like, the other guy who was involved takes two to tango. in this situation. The other partner in this is dead and isn't speaking. And, you know, if Jelaine knew anything about all this, she's not speaking either. So, you know, I pieced as best together as I could from talking to Leon, from exploring in great depth. The Jeffrey Epstein files, you know, three million of six million. Who would have thought that when I started this book, that would be a source of material? And, you know, talking to the various lawyers, who did Leon's tax and estate work.

The bottom line is, you know, 158, 158 million is an outrageous number for tax and estate advice. And when the Decker report came out, I wrote a piece in Vanity Fair saying, you know, come on, Leon, you don't expect us to actually believe this was for tax and estate advice. And, you know, I'm still somewhat incredulous, but, you know, I also, haven't, as much as I would have liked to have found some sort of smoking gun that refuted everything Leon is saying, because, you know, sometimes investigated journalists like being that guy, who figures that out. You know, I've not been able to find out anything that kind of refutes that. I mean, the 158 went for a lot more than just tax and estate advice, and I'm not, you know, no innuendo in that. I mean, he, you know, he also helped him structure.

the purchase of his airplanes and his boats and his art, you know, buying and selling art collections and attacks efficient manner. So the guy Jeffrey Epstein, obviously, was some sort of Spengali, had a lot on a lot of people and surrounded himself with all these powerful people and somehow they were attracted to him. I mean, that maybe, we'll never understand how that happened. But he also, for some reason, was an autodidact and, you know, didn't graduate college, not that you need to necessarily do that, but it worked for me. You know, he somehow, he wasn't a tax and estate expert, but he did have some insight. He advised a lot of family offices on their tax and estate manners and how to buy and sell

things in a tax-efficient manner, and he had some insight, which I've confirmed into a problem that Leon was having with his gracks, his estate planning for his kids. And if it weren't fixed, it was going to cost him $2 billion in taxes. And so he tried to go to,

you know, the typical places you would go if you were a rich Wall Street guy. You'd go to Solomon and Cromwell and Paul Weiss and, you know, Walgachal and these other places. And they couldn't really help him. And so Jeffrey Epstein was on his board of his family foundation,

which I've asked Leon about and, you know, it's basically just a, you know, there wasn't a whole lot of substance to that position. And he said to him, you know, by the way, I've got this potential problem here. Can you help me? And not knowing whether he could or not. And he sent him the documents and Jeffrey Epstein came up with a solution. Now, you're a lawyer, a Harvard Law School graduate, Anthony, so you know about the concept of consideration. So to get these documents to change, he needed consideration. And he found some what I call the miracle consideration,

which was that Leon was somehow getting, had gotten 400 million of extra dividends from his Apollo stock that he shouldn't have gotten. And so he agreed to give that up. And in exchange for that consideration, he was able to redraft these documents in a way that wouldn't cost him the $2 billion in taxes. And I'm not sure I'm explaining that right.

I'm not sure I fully still understand it. But that is what Jeffrey did for him. Listen, you explained it right. And you also explained it in the book. But, you know, I think there was something more nefarious. And I'm going to test it. A lot of people do. I'm going to test the theory on you, okay?

We're going to see if there's a generation gap because I have young kids. You know what the RIS is, Bill Cohen? What's the RIS? Yeah, I think, you know, like the buzz or whatever. Yeah, the charisma. charisma. Yeah, yeah. So I submit to you, if you had no Riz and you had no swag in high school and you were

nerdatatious, which isn't a word, but what's close enough to a word, you were easy prey for Jeff Epstein. Am I wrong about that? No, you're not wrong. And, you know, back it around to page. That was the honey trap, wasn't it, sir? Yeah, back at around page 575 of this book, I explore that. theory, uh, with somebody who has some, you know, specific ideas about this. You know, uh,

yeah, Leon was not a cool kid in high school. You know, you know, he was not one who I think, uh, you know, got the ladies, so to speak. And, um, but, you know, once you become, neither, you know, no, like Bill Gates, like, whoever it is, uh, I, uh, I, I think, uh, I, think you're right. Jeffrey Epstein prayed on these people and he had a real sense that there was rich people who could use his services, sort of speak. Now, you know, whether Leon availed himself of Jeffrey's services in that way or just, you know, availed himself generally. I mean, he obviously had affairs. We know that. And, you know, I document the one with, you know, Gazelle Gagneva in the book because that became public.

You know, Leon was hoping it wouldn't, but it did. And so, you know, then that was all revealed about Leon's willingness to, you know, step outside of his marriage in that way. So, yeah, I'm not here to attack the guy as much as I am to observe it as the cautionary tale that it actually is. It's fascinating. I think, I think that this book is your best for a number of different. reasons, but the main one, Bill, is the subject material. I mean, you know, I mean, I read your book

on Goldman. I said, okay, that's super accurate. And, you know, you work there. Yeah, work there. It's a great book and I have it right here in my study. I read the book on Bear Stearns and still vividly, remember the CEO's urinary tract infection. Okay. I mean, that's how brilliant your writing was. Okay, so I get the writing. I've read power failure, interviewed you on this program, for power failure, but this, this is about brilliance, ambition, extreme wealth, rivalry, secrecy. But the one I want you to talk about, Bill, is eubris. Okay.

It's about all those things. Okay. Yeah, it is. So when I say the word eubris to you, what do you think? Yeah, I mean, as it gets back to sort of what we were talking about towards the beginning, where we've created this class, a hubristic class of people who are able to do and they're able to have anything they want in the world. I mean, and will forever. I mean, they've created generational wealth.

They are untouchable in that regard, right? And, you know, Leon has had his share of legal challenges, shall we say. He's been able to prevail on all of them, maybe because he can afford the best deterrent. maybe because the facts are with him and not with the plaintiffs. But this is something we see play out all the time every day. It seems that he who has the golden rule, he who has the gold rules. And there probably needs to be a more accountability generally. I mean, we've just, this is undermining our.

our society when we create the class of oligarchs who seem to have no carburetor on their behavior or on their mouths or any accountability for their actions. And I think that's debilitating to our society. And again, unfortunately, it's starting at the top of our society too. Yeah, listen, I'm blown away by the book. I'm down to the five words here. you know, we've got to fix that bill, right? We need a Teddy Roosevelt to come in and try to create some reformer.

Hopefully we'll get that. Let's go to these five words. My producer and I took these out of your book. Okay, you've written six books on Wall Street. So, I mean, one of the reasons... Let's talk about Wall Street. Tell me about Wall Street. One of the reasons, one of the things that's different about this book,

in addition to being sort of, you know, a history of Liam's family and Drexel and Apollo is that Mark Rowan is effectively through creation of Athene and the fact that Athene, this big annuity insurance company is now part of Apollo and creating all this capital that Apollo is then using to lend out and creating what we now are known as the private credit industry. And if you look at Apollo's assets under management, Anthony, they have about a trillion $850 billion of which is private credit, $150 billion of which is private equity, which is, of course, how they all started. Now, you know, private credit just dwarfs the private equity business at Apollo and at other firms too. So they followed Apollo's footsteps.

So I also wanted to explore in the book how Wall Street, how Mark Rowan has changed Wall Street. And it really is sort of a quiet revolution that people I don't fully appreciate yet. but I mean, you know, a lot of the risk that used to be housed in the Wall Street firms and that, you know, resulted in the 2008 financial crisis, which was the result that, you know, and I wrote about in House of Cards and in the Goldman book, because of Dodd-Frank, because of federal reserve regulation of Wall Street banks, a lot of that risk now by definition has moved out of those Wall Street banks. Hasn't stopped them from being incredibly profitable. I mean, I think JPMorgan Chase is going to make $66 billion in net income this year, which is astounding. But has moved into these alternative asset managers like Blackstone, KKR, Apollo, Brookfield,

Aries, you know, et cetera, et cetera. And they're just exploding in terms of their assets under management and the amount of private credit that they, are money that they are lending to all sorts of companies. And the question is, have we, have we in effect slowly but surely created the seas of the next, if we planted the seeds of the next financial crisis through these private equity, explosion of private equity?

And we've seen cracks in this dam in the last six months or so. People get concerned about private credit. It hasn't really blown up yet. and the question is, you know, is this going to be where the next crisis is going to come from? Oh, very well said. Okay. Give me a couple sentences on Drexel. I mean, you know, you remember this, Anthony.

I mean, Drexel was the place everybody who went to Wall Street wanted to be. I mean, it wasn't, you know, like Leon and Mark, you know, turned down Goldman Sachs. Josh Harris left, you know, well, he left Blackstone to go to Apollo. I mean, everybody wanted to be at Drexel because it was the most innovative. It was the sexiest. They were complete and utter disruptors. Not unlike, you know, Apollo, what Apollo has become, although Apollo is in a much quieter way doing it.

But, you know, Mike Milken was clearly a genius. He also, you know, pled guilty to breaking securities laws, went to prison. So he was also a criminal since pardoned. course, because everybody's a criminal, is being pardoned by Trump these days. And so, but, you know, he created the junk bond market. He disrupted Wall Street. He had incredible insight. They made a shitload of money. He was at one point paid, you know, $550 million in one year, which for an investment banker was absolutely unheard of. It was, it was the real powerhouse on Wall Street. And yet, because of Milken's infractions and Wall Street banks being a contra in its game,

and they, again, did what every bank does that gets into trouble. They borrowed short and lent long. You know, they ended up in 1990 filing for bankruptcy and being lipidated. And that's when, of course, Leon, Mark, and Josh and the others left to arm Apollo. When I say the name Mark Rowan, you think of what? Probably the most articulate. I mean, I've known Mark for 30 years because when I started at Lizarre, one of my thankless tasks was to cover the private equity firms as an M&A banker. And of course, they were M&A banker. So the last thing they wanted was some M&A banker coming over to see them and, you know, sharing with them ideas, you know, and then potentially having to pay them fees because that would be like, why should I pay you M&A fees? I'm an M&A guy. So, you know, thank you for your ideas, but, you know, get the heck out of here.

So I've known him since the firm started, and I've watched him evolve and emerge as a powerhouse on Wall Street. Probably the most articulate guy on Wall Street today. I appreciate him. I also appreciate his remarks related to anti-Semitism. I have a lot of respect for him. If I say the words, two words, Leon Black, you think of what? One of the most misunderstood people on Wall Street. Just, you know, everybody ascribes of these sort of nefarious.

I mean, he was once on the cover of Business Week, and the title on the cover was ruthless, one work, ruthless. People think of him as ruthless. I think he's, you know, he sort of cultivated that image, okay. And, you know, he's obviously a tough negotiator. You wouldn't want to be on the other side of a deal with him. But he's also much more, as he likes to say life is complicated. He's complicated. I mean, you know, we talked about his father and the Rosebud moment

and what that, you know, your father commits suicide by jumping out of the Pan Am building. It's on the front page of the New York Times. I mean, what does that do to you? And then he's built this incredibly successful business. He's got, you know, he's got a passion for art that came from both his mother and his aunt, and he's got one of the finest art collections in private hands without question. He's knowledgeable about it, too. I mean, he's really, really wise on this topic. He's also incredibly intellectual. His thesis from Dartmouth is like an astounding piece of work.

And yet, he's totally flawed, totally and utterly flawed and got himself mixed up with Jeffrey Epstein and then got himself mixed up with Gagneva, a Guzel Gagneva, and then got himself essentially, you know, he had to leave his firm that he found it. Yeah. Listen, it gets to me, it's the sins of the father. I think, you know, I'm not a psychologist, but he never worked out all the things and all the trauma. You know, listen, you know, your father's jumping out of a building, the Pan Am building,

one of the most famous buildings in the world. And, you know, we have a tendency to bury our pain as opposed to, you know, get the help that we need to help us get through these things. So, you know, listen, you wrote an amazing book here because the people, the people are well described. I think you're fair and objective about them. And you told this story that I think will stand the test of time. I mean, this is going to be a book. People read 50 years from now. It's going to be like one of those books. You know, there'll be the future Warren Buffett will say, well, what book should you read about Wall Street? Read Money to Burn by Bill Cohen. So I just want to say thank you for joining. us on open book. Congratulations on this book. The title, everybody, is Money to Burn, The Unvarnished Truth about Leon Black Apollo and the Rise of a New Wall Street. Thanks, Bill. Appreciate you. Thank you. Thank you, Anthony. You're a great man.