PBD Podcast - David Rubenstein | PBD Podcast | Ep. 217

Episode Date: December 20, 2022

In this episode, Patrick Bet-David is joined by the financial genius David Rubenstein, Matt Sapaula and Tom Ellsworth to discuss, how to become successful, raising kids, Americas worsening economy and much more.. TOPICS David Rubenstein explains how he got successful   David Rubenstein on why raising children is so hard David Rubenstein on the paradigm shifts of life  Is it ethical to support political parties with money? Dave Rubenstein on the recession Why Americans lost trust in the government & the media America is expecting a worsening economy in 2023 David Rubenstein on how to invest David Rubenstein on how to lead a successful company David Rubenstein critizising Elon Musk David Rubenstein praises Tim Cook David Rubenstein on his top 5 books David Rubenstein on who could be a great president Can the USA pay back its debt? As a special offer our PBD listeners receive a $500 discount on Fund and Grow's 12 - month funding program.  Click on the link https://www.fundandgrow.com/pbd for this amazing opportunity today! FaceTime or Ask Patrick any questions on https://minnect.com/ Want to get clear on your next 5 business moves? https://valuetainment.com/academy/ PBD Podcast Episode 217. In this episode, Patrick Bet-David is joined by David Rubenstein, Matt Sapaula and Tom Ellsworth.  Purchase David's new book How To Invest: Masters on the Craft: https://amzn.to/3je6o9c Follow David on Twitter: https://bit.ly/3WevG5B For all things David Rubenstein: https://bit.ly/3WzsVeP Join the channel to get exclusive access to perks: https://bit.ly/3Q9rSQL Download the podcasts on all your favorite platforms https://bit.ly/3sFAW4N Text: PODCAST to 310.340.1132 to get added to the distribution list Patrick Bet-David is the founder and CEO of Valuetainment Media. He is the author of the #1 Wall Street Journal bestseller Your Next Five Moves (Simon & Schuster) and a father of 2 boys and 2 girls. He currently resides in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/pbdpodcast/support

I know this life meant for me. Yeah, why would you plan on the life when we got that day? Value payment, giving values, contagiousness, world, entrepreneur, as we can't no value the haters. I didn't run home, you look what I've become. I'm the entrepreneur. what I've become. I'm the entrepreneur. I'm the entrepreneur. I'm the entrepreneur.

I'm the entrepreneur. I'm the entrepreneur. Okay, so today's outcome of the podcast is to help you become a better investor and hopefully become wealthier because the guests that we have today super qualified to do that, it's a guest I've been looking forward to for a while. He ran, he runs carlal group he is a billionaire

i was telling them earlier five region terriby it's going to take me five minutes to read through it they manage carlal now manages roughly four hundred billion dollars from twenty nine states across five different continents is the chairman of the board of the john f kennedy center for the performing arts the council on foreign relations the national gallery of art he said as the chairman

of the board for Duke University, Smithsonian. I mean, I can keep going on and on and on. I told him prior to getting started is he's one of the best interviewers I know. When you listen to him interview, folks like Bill Gates, Larry Fink, Schwartzman, I want to say one of them is Bezos, Bill Clinton, President Clinton, and President Bush. I can't go on and on and on with the amount of people that you've interviewed. You have a very unique, funny, creative, you know, you have a sense to humor style of interview and then you push back in a very unique way and you know, let them do their part but it's an honor to have you on the podcast today. I'm honored to be here. Thank you for having me. Yes, and I had a chance to read your book, How to Invest.

I thought it was great. Obviously, it's a lot of the interviews that you did, but I told that I just came out with a video yesterday to top five books you should read during the holiday season. One of them was how to invest. You're going to get to heaven for saying that. I think because of all the other reasons why I wouldn't be able to go, but it's good to have you on. We got a lot of topics. I want to go through. Obviously, some of it is your success story, how you became, who you became, because that's inspirational for a lot of people to learn about. But then also, we got topics with today's economy, inflation,

whether it's FTX, I forgot to even say you interviewed, Sam Bankman, freed a few months ago, three months ago. It's very interesting him telling you, I got three 11 text messages in my phone, half of them would be people asking me for money. Just very casually, he says that to you in the interview. But we got a lot of things to talk about. I was with David Solomon two weeks ago

on Miami at dinner, and we talked about unemployment. I think the way you're explaining unemployment is slightly different than the way they see it. And then I talked to my guys from Morgan Stanley Dean Wooder, they have a different position. Bloomberg has a different position. BFA has a different position to be interesting to see what you think's gonna be happening.

ESG and some other topics we'll get into as well. But, you know, I know your story, but some of the audience may not know your story. Prior to you becoming who you are today, tell us a little bit about how you came about becoming who you are today. I'm an only child born in Baltimore. My parents did not graduate from college or high school. My father worked in the post office and made maybe $10,000 a year.

When they retired, he retired at the age of 55 and moved to a suburb of Baltimore called West Palm Beach, Florida. And I grew up going to, you know, public schools. I did get a scholarship, go to Duke University, and I got a scholarship, go to the University of Chicago. I did service chairman of the board of University of Duke University for a while, and now I'm chair of the University of Chicago board. And I have, I got very lucky in my business career. I started car law when I was 37. It became one of the larger private equity firms in the world. And now I committed the giving away all my money, I was an original sign of the giving pledge and I've made large gifts to lots of different places around the country.

And I have three children, they are all MBAs, they're all in private equity, pursuing what I call mankind's highest calling. And they're doing okay. And so I think they're safely launched and they don't need me to give them billions of dollars to be successful. David, who were you in high school? If we're in 10th grade, who were you in high school?

I was a nerdy little kid. If you asked my high school class who would be the most successful person in class, most people wouldn't know. I was in the class. I was a large public high school, 1,500 people in my class. In your class?

Well, class. So it was big. We had one guidance counselor for 1,500 people in my class. In your class? Well, class. So it was big. We had one guidance counselor for 1,500 people. It was, I would say, a big public high school, melting pot, public high school. But I was, I skipped the year of junior high school. So I was only, you know, a 16 when I graduated high school. I was only 14 when I entered it.

So I was, you know, probably young. My voice probably hadn't changed very much. And, you know, I was not a great athlete. I wasn't a great scholar. I wasn't a great anything. So the same was true in law school and in college. I wasn't great at anything. I got lucky later in life. I determined in parts of life, you divide life into thirds. The first third, you often find the people of the superstars, the Rhodes scholars, the Supreme Court clerks, the people that are the student body presidents. Sometimes they make it later on in life, but mostly they don't. And then the people in the second third and third third, they're the ones who kept working

hard like the tortoise versus the hare. They kind of passed everybody else. So think about your high school class. Who was a superstar in that class? The person you said might be President of the United States. He or she may not be that famous now. All the people who became presidents of the United States in the last 100 years, only one of them

was probably seen as a good student or a star at that time. That was probably Bill Clinton. He was a pretty good student and was a later became a Rhodes scholar. Most of the people who become presidents of the United States are not people that were that famous or that well-known. Our current president for an ice person, I know him quite well, but he was a football player in high school, not considered to be likely president of the United States. His predecessor, Donald Trump probably wasn't thought to be potential president of the United

States when he was younger and so on. So it's just the life evolves that way, and you can't tell who's going to be coming at the next president of the United States just by looking at their resumes when they were in high school. You know, I don't know your background that well, but were you a superstar in high school? Now you're very well known. It's crushing it. I had a 1.8 GPA. Literally, I had a 1.8 GPA. I fell by all the way and I was good in math. That was it. All right. So now you're very well known, you're prominent. So forth. In your high school class, who would have predicted that you would become this successful? Zero. Right. I went to the army right after high school. Well, I didn't go

in the army. My father was in the Marines. I didn't go and I was too skinny. I didn't think I'd pass the physical. Nice father was a devil dog. Where you a superstar in high school? I was not 2.2 GPA. So over here, commonality 1.8, 2.2 GPA, no cause agree, but you went to the audience. You guys are 4.0 between the two of you. It's correct, I love your addition. It's Marine Corps math. You go. So David, you have three kids, but you were the only child. And then your kids went to private equity,

but that was in the postal service and your mom was a homemaker. So what was the advantages of being a single child was this advantages to make you wanna have three kids, because you don't only want kids. When you were an only child, at times you might say,

what it's like, wouldn't it be great to have a sibling? But most of my friends who have siblings were fighting with them all the time. And now I noticed that most of my friends who have siblings probably don't spend that much time with them as adults. So there's pluses and minuses like everything in life.

I don't regret it. If you look back and regret things that happen in your life much time with them as adults. So there's plus and minus like everything in life. I don't regret it. If you look back and regret things that happen in your life, you'll be very miserable. The hardest thing in life to do is to be happy. That's the most elusive thing in life, achieving personal happiness. And I'm pretty happy. I got lucky in life and I'm reasonably happy with where I am now. I wish I was younger looking. I wish I didn't have all this gray hair.

I wish I could lose more weight. I wish I was in greater shape. But generally, I wish I was younger looking, I wish I didn't have all this gray hair, I wish I could lose more weight, I wish I was in greater shape, but generally I'm reasonably happy. And if you're Jewish, that's hard to do. So I'm reasonably happy. But I recognize that happiness is difficult to achieve and many people in life go through life, not being very happy, they're sad that they're not

wealthier, or handsome, or whatever it is, and they never achieve personal happiness. You have to accept where you are and try to make the best of it within reason. You can obviously try to do better. But, you know, and having children, you have children, I assume. I do for them.

Okay, so that's, I have three. Your children are much younger, obviously. The 10, 9, 6, and 17 months. Okay, so you're young, Chaudy. Right now, they're not fully formed. You can't tell whether they're going to be superstar athletes or whatever. And right now you have them under your control more or less.

When they get to be teenagers, a little more challenging, when they're young adults, you know, they may call you back, they may not call you back. So raising children is the most difficult thing to do in life. Interesting. More than marriage, tough of them marriage. Yes, because you're dealing with more than one person,

typically, you're dealing with three or four different children, or if you have four children. And it's very difficult. Also, marriage is complicated, but children is the hardest thing to do is raising children who are happy and successful. And that's very hard to do. Now, when you're wealthy and reasonably prosperous,

it's even harder, because I had no money growing up, and I realized I'm gonna get anywhere I gotta work hard. You have money, the tendency is to give your kids money, make it easy for them, and in the end, you're probably hurting them. So it's not easy to raise kids when you have a lot of money or your promenade or your success. We're very difficult to do that, I think.

So there's a lot of questions right there. So one, I've heard a lot of money or your promise or your success, we're very difficult to do that, I think. So there's a lot of questions right there. So one, I've heard a lot of different formulas about happiness, what's yours? And two, how do you do it with the kids when you do have money? What point is it important to manage expectations with them? Well, with my children, they're well educated. They went to Harvard, Stanford, and Duke,

and so forth, so they got a good education, but they all had challenges. Every child has challenges, no perfect child. So you always have challenges, and so forth. So they got a good education, but they all had challenges. Every child has challenges. No perfect child. So you always have challenges, and a parent has to figure out how to deal with child health challenges or whatever they might be. I would say, if I said to my children, I'm giving you each a billion dollars, and they got a billion dollars, would they make them a better person?

I don't know. Very rarely do you inherit a billion dollars in all of a sudden you win a Nobel Peace Prize or something like that. People that change the world often come from blue collar backgrounds or middle class backgrounds. The people that change the world and the ones you really want to admire are people that really came from backgrounds probably like yours and mine. So give me the formula for happiness. Formula for happiness. Well my formula for happiness is basically, of course, being reasonably healthy. That's good because you don't want to have health problems. But,

basically, having a relationship with other people that you find satisfying, particularly your children, secondly, it's giving back to other people. Generally, when people help other people, they feel better about themselves. People who don't help anybody else probably don't feel that great about themselves. There are many people who are very wealthy, extremely wealthy, they don't give away very much, and I don't think they're very happy people. Generally, giving away money or your time, your time is more valuable than your money. You can make more money, you can't make more time.

I think people that do that feel happier about themselves. And as a general rule of thumb, I encourage people to do philanthropic things, which I include meaning giving your time and your volunteering things, not just money. People that I isolated that sit in their house and just count their money and build big houses and count how big their boat is, I'm not sure they're that happy. The most tortured souls I know are extremely wealthy people. The happiest people I know are often people who have no money. Now, that doesn't mean you don't want to have any money,

but you have to make sure you understand what money's all about. It's designed to make you, I think, have a better life, but you're gonna have a better life if you help other people. Now, I tell people all the time when I'm making philanthropic arpages, when you're trying to give away money, give away time, help other people. Now I tell people all the time when I'm making philanthropic our pitches, when you're trying to give away money, give away time help other

people, you'll feel happier about yourself, happier people live longer, grumpy people don't live as long. Also, there's a special place in having reserved for people that do this. Now people laugh when I say that, but I say, why would you want to take a chance that I'm wrong? I could be right. You don't know. You sound like a pastor saying that. That's the pastor's clothes. Right. So, you know, in life, as you get older, I'm obviously older than you. You know, what you do worry about as you get older is your health, because we all know,

you know, that people don't have the same lifespan. When I was younger, I used to ask my parents, why do you read the obituary pages? And they say, well, I want to see who I knew that died. I read the obituary pages now because my friends are dying. People younger than me are dying. I'm saying, how come I'm lucky that I'm not dead and my friends are gone in some cases. So when you read the obituary pages and you see somebody 45, 55, 65 dying, what do they do wrong?

That's bad fortune. So every day is a blessing in a sense that you're trying to do something useful with your life. And hopefully, you know, you have a long time to go to make your kids, you know, appreciate what you've built. But in the end, raising four children is not easy. Yeah, I got some questions for you because I'm wondering, before I want to go to the sponsor, but I'm wondering if you think it's easier to, if we live in a different country where you can have four wives or four kids, which one would be easier? That's a technical question to ask,

as a Middle Eastern man here. Secondly, I've only been 44 once, and I wanna know what it's like to go into 50s, 60s, 70s, wealth creation, compounding, all that stuff, but let me first go to the sponsor, and you can think about some of those questions, because you said raising kids is harder than marriage. I actually wanna know a little bit more about that. So quick shout out to our sponsor, right? You can think about some of those questions because you said raising kids is harder than marriage. I actually want to know a little bit more about that.

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Go learn more about fund and grow. I think that's the second time we're doing this with these guys. We look them up a lot and we're happy to share what they do for the folks that follow P.B.D. podcast. Okay, so let's go back into it. You said marriage is easier than kids. Okay, for me, I'm gonna make it clear. Marriage, half the people that get married are divorced. So, it obviously isn't that easy. I don't want to make it sound like it's easy. But I guess the question I want to ask is the following, did your wife help you, like,

did you and your wife build a business together? Was it always separate? No, I guess it is. I guess it is. But people who build business with their partner, their spouse, I think that can be done. But sometimes when you're working together with somebody 24 hours a day, it's a little challenging because you have, you know,

there's always tensions and sometimes I've noticed that husband and wife businesses don't work as well. So, okay, so for you, you've seen and not work if they're working together, but you've also seen and not work if it's separate. Because to me, the way I would see it isn't push back and, you know, say, not, I don't agree with you. If your wife working in this business, well, in Shorn's business, we did everything together. She's got an office upstairs. And first time we shared an office together,

she said, babe, we can't be in the same office. You're too loud. So we put, and we literally had an office complete opposite ends. And then I saw a lot of my friends who made money and they built a business separately. It's as if the more time was going by, interest was separating,

and there were no running for the same cause, except for the kids. The only thing that was in common was kids. And then eventually it went from being a wife to being a roommate. That's what I saw a lot of times with people who were doing two different businesses. Now, you have more wisdom than I do.

That's why I'm asking you. I have gray hair, you don't have any gray hair. I have some of it. My wife, I was standing there you to get this well Jimmy Carter from I work in the White House he's been married 75 years the only time he came close to getting divorced was when he and his wife agreed to write a book together they found out they couldn't they couldn't they couldn't do it. They ultimately gave the publisher the money back

and they didn't do it. Or at least they write the book together. That was the only time he said he ever got close to getting the war. Working together with a partner and a spouse can be wonderful at times when things work out but when there are problems who gets blamed. I don't want to get into whether it's easy to raise children or be married.

Yeah, but raising children, my point is, it's very difficult. You've got four children, you're gonna be with them, they're father their whole life. And I ask people, when do you stop worrying about your children? I think when they turn 60 or 70, you probably stop worrying about them. But the rest of your life, every time you get a call late at night,

you're gonna from a child, you're gonna wonder what's wrong. And if they're out later than you, one of the be out, what are you gonna do? You know, when they're one and two and three years old, they look angelic. When they're 15 and 16 and 17 and they're trying to do something you don't want to do, not so angelic. David, why do so many billionaires? Marriage is not end up working out. I talk to one of my pastors, he says, look, I just want to tell you this. Why do so many billionaires? Marriage is not end up working out.

I talk to one of my pastors, he says, look, I just want to tell you this. I don't know what it is, but when you become a billionaire, things change, kids change, not kids change. Relationships change, family looks at you differently, friends look at you differently. You have to be kind of careful on how to maneuver through those things when you're making that kind of money.

Is it the fact that more billionaires are getting divorces or is it the fact that billionaires are more known and people know them and we notice more when they get the divorces than the average person gets to do. It's a ladder, actually. Okay, there's a higher divorce rate among people who are blue collar workers. Really, a higher divorce rate.

Very interesting for higher divorce rate. Wow, they have more challenges as well, but billionaires, when they make a lot of money, how do you make a lot of money? It's not just sitting around. You're tough, you're driven, and when you take those qualities and you bring it to your marriage,

it's a little more challenging. You say to your wife, look, I'm a brilliant person, I made a billion dollars. What did you contribute today to the marriage? And I'll be off setting. That can tend to be offsetting. Sometimes there are billionaires that have reasonably good marriages,

my observation, but as we've known, some of the wealthiest men inaires that have recently good marriages. My observation, but as we've known, some of the wealthiest men in our country have recently gotten divorced. So it's not that easy to be married when you're that rich. Yeah, I'm sure, let's imagine, marriage is already hard. Later on adding all the other components to it, but maybe there's an element, and again, I don't know where you go outside where you know the whole scene where Everybody's oh my god. It's this look who it is. Oh my god. I can't believe any you come home Hey babe, can you take out the trash? You know I'm saying like do you know who I am? Like do you mother is that element? Yeah, you know for example when you're in your office

You're treated like a god. You're everybody works for you when you come home You're not a god you got gotta go take out the garbage, you're deal with the kids, change the diaper, whatever it might be. You know, people say, I don't have to do this. I'm a billionaire, I'm a multi-billionaire. But sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Question another question here before we go into the topics. And then we'll just do a lot of current events.

I'm trying to learn as much from you as possible. So the only age, just the first time I've been 44 years old, it's kind of telling you this earlier. So, you know, what's the difference like for you? I can tell the difference of what happened from the 20s to 30s to 40s. That's what I can talk, speak on. Like in my teens, in the army, energy,

going, eating pizza, you don't worry about it, nothing happens. I can eat two large pizzas in a night. Next day, I still have my six pack. It doesn't matter, right? You know, energy into 20s, back. It doesn't matter, right? You know, energy into 20s and then 30s, flexibility, 40s, you know, bones, back.

What do you notice? But also I notice with experience of negotiation, leverage, you know, how to go into different boardrooms, how to read different personalities on the business end. But what was the biggest difference going from 20s, 30 80's for was there something that you can point to? Well, when you're in your 20's, you think you're gonna live

forever and you just, you know, you can do anything you want. But by the time you're in your 40's, your life pattern is largely set. In other words, if you're 44 years old, you're probably gonna be on a path towards success or not success. Generally entrepreneurs at 55 don't start new companies and they change their life. It happens, but generally not.

So, I read, the reason I started Carlaw was I read that an entrepreneur will start his or her company between the age of 28 and 37. Obviously, they're Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates' exceptions, but 28 and 37. I read that when I was 37. So, I said, I better start something. I'll never be an entrepreneur. Interesting. So you're now 44.

You're on a path towards a certain level of success. And you continue this path. Know down your 50s, you'll be even more successful. Had you not started what you're doing now, and you try to do this when you're 50, it might be harder to get it started, because by then you've got kids or older, you've got to deal with, you've got more financial challenges, all kinds of other things. Now you can get this going, and you're on a path towards success. When you hit 50, you know that most likely you've lived more than you're going to live. And you have to look at things a little bit differently. When you're 44, you can say,

well, maybe I'll make it to 88, so maybe I'm only halfway through it. But people have 40th birthday parties, that's when they kind of say, I'm really moved into adulthood. I'm really a real adult now. I can't pretend I'm a kid anymore. So when you're 44, you know, you're a young, on the other hand, if you were a professional athlete at 44, you would be, you know, you'd be gone. I mean, how many professional athletes other than Tom Brady? I'm ready. Are they playing at any sport at the age of 44? So while you're a young looking now, if you were a professional athlete, you would be seen as a two-old. Yeah, that'd be an ass to be in a head coach or assistant coach or something like that.

Hopefully, if that's what you want to do, what to expect in 50, 60, 70s? Well, as you get older and you're successful, people will, I treat you more with more respect presumably if your success continues. Also, you have more of a responsibility to give back. You're going to mentor people more and more. And ultimately, you've got to figure out what you're going to do with your wealth. You can build a pyramid to how great you are. You can buy yachts and so forth, or you can give some of it away. And you have to figure out how do you want to use that wealth in an intelligent way and

be a good role model for your children. Any, any blind spots to look out for? Any blind spots to be careful with this, be careful with that, be careful with this. Hubert's, when people tell you how great you are, you gotta be discounting that, because very few people are that great. They're very few real geniuses that are floating out there,

or people that really change the world. So, I mean, Darwin may have changed the world, Einstein changed the world, but we shouldn't think that we're gonna be Darwin or Einstein just because we made a lot of money. Got it, hubris. I just read this book by Jim Collins. How the mighty, how the mighty fault.

And what was the first step? Was it hubris number one? The hubris is what causes people to fall. So compounding, the other thing I wanna talk about is compounding. You know when you're really working hard, you're doing your part, oh my God, I'm so good, like, putting so much effort on the front.

And go, first time I've ever made $100,000. Six-figure, oh my God, like this is amazing. Well, I ever make a million. And then you know, I'm going to grind you and make a million. I'm like, that's amazing. I'm making a million bucks. I'm going to top, you know, half a percent of America.

This is sick. But I don't know if I'll ever get to 10. You know, well, my business ever get them. So I don't know if I'm going to get to 10 million, dude. But there's no way I'm going to get to'll ever get to 10. You know, well, my business ever get them, so I don't know if I'm saying we got to 10 million, dude, but there's no way I'm gonna get to the heck to the side. When did you know, like, listen, the likelihood of me being a billionaire in the next 13 years is very high.

You're a math guy, so far you've done a bunch of different things that's math. I said 1.8, 2.2, you said combined, we had 4.0. You said 44 years old, 88, 50, you're not thinking, so everything in your mind, and I know you're a math guy yourself as well. But at You said 44 years old, 88, 50, you're not thinking, so everything in your mind, and I know your math guy yourself as well. But at what point did you say,

I think I'm gonna be this with him, because you're numbers, guys. So I know the typical, the humbles, I never thought about being a billionaire, that was never part of the goal. I totally get that, I understand that's not part of the goal. But it is a milestone. When did you say, at this point,

if I go at this rate, we're probably gonna reach that number. Probably when I was maybe 15 years in a starting car like I started when it's 37 so probably when I was early 50s I said okay this is going to be one of the larger private equity firms in the world and as an owner of it I'll probably do well but I didn't obsess over it and you know when Forbes puts out these lists then people pay attention to you so my children didn't really know the level of my wealth until Forbes comes out and publishes a thing. And that's true with your neighbors. My neighbors, I'm going to, I'm living the same house now for 35 years or so. And people, they don't really

know what I do that much. They may be a little bit. But, you know, one day they, they may read the Forbes and say, Hey, this guy is worth an extra billion dollars. He's living on, taking out his garbage, less like us. So, you know, but in the end, it's like anything in life when you pass it through, you go on that next thing. If you obsess over being it, now there are a couple people who obsess over being on that list. You know, I won't mention them, but there are people who have sued Forbes for not being on the list or not being high enough on the list.

But if you obsess over your numbers, you know, it's a mistake. You can't confuse your net worth with your self worth. If you basically just say, I'm worth X dollars and therefore I'm really great, that's a mistake. Don't worry about your net worth. worry about what you're really doing with your life. That's much more important. Very interesting.

And yeah, I've heard the stories about people soon forbs for either being too low or too high, or you know, not on the list, not through that. And not on the list, but interesting. And not on the list. But interesting. Let me see if any other thing here. No, aside from this, I think we can get into a current event. So you said geniuses. You mentioned Darwin and you mentioned Einstein.

Who would you say is a genius today? Like if you were to give a couple names, who would you put in that genius level today? Well, people that are well known, I would say, Elon Musk is a very smart person. I've interviewed him. He obviously like, all really brilliant people has eccentricities. I mean Einstein was eccentric. He didn't wear socks ever. He couldn't comb his hair ever. He got lost walking to home. A brilliant people often are eccentric in some ways. Now, some people say that everybody's eccentric

is just the brilliant people and the famous people are the ones that get away with it. But I think Elon Musk is a really, really smart person. I think Bill Gates is very, very smart. Mark Zuckerberg very, very smart, but the more geniuses overused. How many real geniuses are there, and what does it really mean to be a genius? So there's some math professors somewhere

that are probably geniuses, but I don't really know them that well. There are very few people that you would say, when they walk in the room, you say, this is Albert Einstein updated. It's very few people I said. You put Musk there. It seemed like there's only one name. Musk is very, very smart and maybe a genius, but how do you measure genius? I think Bill Gates, what he did, he built a great company, and he's done great things in philanthropy. Is he a genius? I don't know how do you measure genius. Clearly, Mark Zuckerberg, I think, built a great company. It's obviously how it's challenged us lightly. The Google guys that built Google have really,

really smart people. But what does it really mean to be a genius? I mean, it's hard to know. Interesting to say that with Elon Musk. We're going to get into Elon Musk as well. By the way, a carl-out. Your clients, your clients, some of them are Republicans, some of them are Democrats, some of them are independent, some of them are, you know, politically they're all over the place, right? You're not going to, and probably, maybe even more of your clients are Republican than Democrats, possibly. I don't know if they are or not, but you don't do a survey and say, so who did you vote for? You can't do that. That's not something that you do. But you know where they lean. It's like, you know when they're given money to one side or it like, do you know Schwartzman where he leans?

You know where, you know, a JP Morgan leans. You know where Larry Finke leans. You know where a lot of these guys lean. It's not hard to kind of figure out what these guys lean. How do you, I run an insurance company. We've licensed nearly 40,000 people. You know, we have, I don't know, I'm 15,000 agents nationwide,

few hundred offices, nationwide. We just sold the company to IMG, who the money came from Silver Lake, you know, these companies, you know, these names. So, you know, but some of the guys that you have, they're Democrats, some of them are Republican, and you know, you're spending, you're Thanksgiving. I mean, the president was with you during Thanksgiving. No, no, no, no, no, no, let me be honest. Yeah. I lent him the house. I wasn't Thanksgiving. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, free, and he said, yeah, I don't know who I'm going to give the money to. I'm going to give, I'm going to give the money to both people on both sides of the aisle. I'm going to give it to some Republican, some Democrats, you know, but then some of the guys at the top,

you notice they're typically on one side who they're giving the money to. How do you manage the relationships where they say, let me describe. Yeah, I'm curious. I worked in the White House for President Carter. We lost the election in Toronto Reagan. So an election changed my future. I thought I would stay in the White House for President Carter. We lost the election in Toronto Reagan. So an election changed my future.

I thought I would stay in the White House another four years. I decided to get out of politics and do something different with my life. I don't give money to any politician and zero. I'd not involve... Never. No, zero. None. What's your philosophy for that?

I'm curious. Well, my view is I'd like to be friendly with people in the Democratic Party and people in the Republican Party. And I don't want people to judge me by who I made a campaign contribution to. And also when you're giving gigantic sums of money to people, you have to wonder, is that a really great thing for democracy? So I, I, I, I don't want to criticize other people, do it. I stay out of that.

What I try to do is bring people together in this way. I host a lunch, a dinner for members of Congress, only members of Congress once a month. I try to, I bring in a great historian and I will interview that person in front of only members of Congress. I yes, the Democrats are Republicans to sit with people from the opposite party, people from the opposite house, sitting there for seven years. People love it. They say it's one of the most interesting things they're doing in Congress is going to this

dinner because there's no press there. They can sit and talk with people from the opposite party, which they rarely are allowed to do in today's environment in Washington DC. But if I was known as a big Democrat or a big Republican, it'd be harder to do that. I'm chairman of the Kennedy Center. I've been chairman for 13 years. If I was an active Democrat or actually an active Republican, I think it'd be harder to do what I do, which is to bring Democrats or Republicans to the Kennedy Center.

The same is true with the Smithsonian. When I was chair of the Smithsonian, I didn't want to be seen as an active Democrat or active Republican. Some people are, but I just thought it was better for me to be able to bring people together from both sides. So that's the way I look at it. David, just out of curiosity,

because the fact that you've never given money to... Why not? I didn't say never. I did years, many more decades ago, but not in recent 25 years. Since you made your money, let's just listen to really when you haven't given money out. Do you think if you were in charge of policies,

it would be better if none of us could to find out who's the real candidate versus constantly going out the campaigning? Because a lot of this is now about campaigning who can raise the most money can become president. Well, it's a general rule of thumb. The person who has the most money will probably win and allow rule. It's a general rule of thumb. The person who has the most money will probably win an election. It's a general rule of thumb, not always.

And so clearly, if this was a different country, we'd be called it legalized bribery. You're basically getting, you know, if somebody gives you $5 million or $10 million, what do you think that person wants for that? They want something. I don't know what it would be. And I'm not saying it's necessarily illegal. We've sanctioned it. But somebody is giving 5, 10, 15, 20 million dollars. They want something, and you have to wonder whether that's a good thing. Now, unfortunately, members of Congress spend so much of their time

raising money now that they can't spend as much time as they want on the legislative matters. 40% of the time of House members is often spent raising money. Oh, it's a lot. And the reason is the more money you raise, the more like you're going to win. And if you have money left over, you can keep it now, more or less for a political purpose of the rest of your life. Yeah, I'm not a fan of that because that's, that's, you owe too many favors, you know, it's kind of like, I will favor to this guy today. I got to, hey, remember that I one time I gave you this, it's like, you know, you're in

debt to the people that are giving you money. I don't know if it makes the relationship more straight up. But, but I, I mean, look money i don't know if it makes the relationship more straight up but they'd be honest i mean look i don't have a better system uh... i don't know what but better government we we we can have we can have and as church will set uh... democracy is the worst form of government except all the others so our government has lots of challenges are political system has lots of

challenges but i'm not seeing people leave this country to go to another political system we have fifty million people in this country who are immigrants, 50 million people, many of them are citizens, 50 million. How many people have leaving this country every year to go elsewhere? Maybe a small percentage, very few people leave because the country's got all its challenges but still the best country in the world. I don't think we're confused, though.

Why do you think we're confused? I turn on the TV sometimes as a guy that was born and around lived there 10 years, I lived two years in a refugee camp, came to the States, and I hear so many people that were born, you're bitching about America. Like, how did Americans not be proud of being Americans? Like, it became cool for the last few years to hear people bitching about the country that gave them the life that they gave them.

Well, 50 million people wouldn't have immigrated here if it was such a terrible place. I think no other country in the world is even close. The only other country even close in terms of immigrants is Germany. Germany. About 10 to 15 million people. But people aren't rushing to China. People aren't rushing to go to live in Russia. The Philippines.

People are rushing to live here. And obviously now people are coming across the border illegally and that's because they're so interested in coming this country It's not because people aren't leaving this country to rush to the Mexico, right? That's right. Well, it's good to hear the by the way. How do you think of the president's doing? I know you've commented on Trump on his policies economy in the past before how do you think the president Biden's doing specifically Economic policies. Well, obviously inflation got out of control. It wasn't transitory. I think the Federal Reserve,

J. Powell used to work at our firm. I know him quite well. I used to work at Carla. He worked at Carla for seven or eight years. He's done a very good job. The biggest problem we had is that when COVID came, we didn't know what to do with it. So the Trump administration, the Biden administration,

put $5 trillion into the economy, which had an inflationary impact. And the Trump administration, the Biden administration put $5 trillion into the economy, which had an inflationary impact. And the Federal Reserve kept interest rates at zero that had inflationary impact. We didn't realize how serious it was going to be. But now we're playing catch up. I think inflation is coming down. The economy is in a reasonable shape. And as the Biden, I think he's done a pretty good job given the circumstances he inherited. Got it. Okay. So let's go, so let's go into some topics here. Let's go into some topics here.

First topic is insider. This is just a few days ago. Paid $7 billion, David Rubenstein said a recession is coming. Tech valuations are set to fall further. This is what December 13th, go to this here, Paid $7. Let me read this article to article to not the whole thing just highlights of it

uh... pop up of our sessions on the topic of the i suspect the fed is determined to not make another mistake on inflation rubsan said i think the fed generally would say that the miss they miss read how much inflation was going to be caused by the five trillion dollar injecting to the economy by congress to deal with covid which is what you just said right and also the current to a quantitative easing impact as well. Inflation was transitory, they said, but it turned out it wasn't.

Along with a recession and a rise of unemployment, Rubensstein says tech company valuations are expected to fall further on harsh economic conditions into next year. I think some of the tech companies that have changed our lives for the better are very good and maybe their valuations will be coming down a bit. But I think a lot of valuations for fewer tech companies that don't have revenues, let alone

earnings probably are going to come down more than a bit. So the question about recession next year, what's the recession going to be? The phrase everyone's using is, it's going to be a soft landing, we're going to have a soft landing, what do you think is going to happen next year with recession? What you're reminding everybody, a recession is to find many different ways, but the shorthand is two consecutive quarters where the GDP growth rate is negative. And there are other factors beyond that, but let's say it's two consecutive quarters. No one really knows whether we're going to go recession or not.

Everybody, when we go into recession, if we do, will come out with their memo saying, see, I told you so I have my memo. It's in their files now without, don't drag it out. And if they actually go into recession, it's in their files now without don't drag it out and if they if actually go into recession it's easy to predict a recession because if you predict that you're not right people are probably going to call you uh... six months later and say you were wrong

uh... right now the federal reserve is trying to get the inflation rate down to two percent i think that's too low probably three percent is more realistic but if it can get it down to three percent on a consistent basis and we've had three percent for the last couple months so that they can consistently get down 3%, I think we could avoid a recession, but the Fed may be more worried about inflation than it is about unemployment and therefore they may increase interest rates a little bit more than maybe necessary and as a result it could go into a recession, probably a temporary or short term recession.

That would be my view, nothing like the great recession we had in 2008, 2009. Nobody really, there's no magic formula to know whether you can jack up interest rates of certain amount and it's produced inflation. One of the problems we've had is typically when you increase interest rates, unemployment goes up as well, because interest rates go up, people fire people, things change, but it's been a very big mystery to the federal government of how the unemployment rate is staying so low. And that's in part because we haven't figured out the post-COVID impact of employment.

For example, historically in this country, 66% of all the adult males and females are in the workforce, 66%. Now it's 62%. Where do those people go? Well, older people retired after the great recession. Younger people don't want these entry-level jobs and not working anymore. They went back to school.

And a lot of people just aren't working. They just figure they don't need to work anymore. They made some money in COVID. So when you don't have that many people in the workforce, the result is you've got to pay higher prices to get people to work because you need to get filled with these places. So it's not like you can lay people off so easily these days.

It's just not happening. And as a result, unemployment is not going up. So the participation rate is really what was in there. Yeah. People don't talk enough about to understand. Participation rate goes down, supply goes down, price goes up very simply. Right. I mean, to get employees, if you want to get entry level employees to work for you,

how are you going to get them? Well, you're not going gonna get them by minimum wage uh... minimum wage in this country legally is like seven half thousand hour now nobody's paying that because you can't get nobody's no way out nobody spend seven twenty and and and they're always talking about raising is like if anybody paid seven twenty right now you would have any employees right but you said something to things you said the finish of recession is back to back quarters negative right so if that's the case were you saying that because you're trying to say we've,

you know, technically been in a recession since July 1st, is that kind of what you were alluding to? Or no. No, last year, earlier this year, in the first and second quarters of this year, we had two consecutive quarters of negative growth. It wasn't caught in a recession by anybody because other things were happening. Sales growth were still going on.

Sales and recession going down. Sales growth were still going on. Sales and the recession going down. Retail sales were going up. Exports were going up. So it was a technical recession. And the reason was technical is the reason the supply, the reason GDP went down is we were basically filling up our supplies from the COVID situation. In other words, manufacturers weren't making a lot of stuff

and selling all of this stuff because they had a lot of excess supplies left over from the COVID situation, in other words, manufacturers weren't making a lot of stuff and selling all of this stuff because they had a lot of excess supplies left over from the recession, from the COVID period of time. So it wasn't considered a recession, but if we go into a recession in the future, two consecutive quarters, almost certainly will be considered a recession.

But, you know, a recession is, you know, it defined by economists different ways. I would say if we go into a recession, it will almost certainly be very brief. Because right now we don't have the problems we had in 2008 and 2009 where the banks are in financial trouble. We don't have a lot of people in financial trouble right now. I think the biggest challenge we have is that inflation is still high. Now it's coming down because, you know, the most recent numbers show they're coming down.

But if the Fed feels it has to increase interest rates further to get inflation down, that could produce a recession. We just don't know, and the Fed doesn't know. Is Jerome Powell, does he have a board that he calls on? Do you guys, you, Jamie, Stephen, Fink? Is there, does he call, say, guys, what do you think about this? Here's what we're thinking about. Because it's got to be a very tough place for him to be if he can't lean on some of the free market guys to talk to

that he does talk to them from time to time they go to see him he asked to see them he's he meets with them from time to time sure but he also has an incredibly good economist who work at the Fed and they have pretty good data and they kind of know what the economy is doing but nobody's perfect in this business and lots of times, you know, you make mistakes and the Fed has admitted that made a mistake on inflation earlier. Janet Yellen said that they made a mistake. Yeah, she did. Have we ever been in a time that David where

the amount of things experts are getting wrong right now has been higher than today. And the reason why I'm saying this is the following reason. So for example, hey, you know, if you keep printing money, gold's gonna go to 5,000. Nope. Hey, if you keep printing money, you know, Bitcoin's gonna go to 100,000. Nope. Hey, guys, if we keep printing money, you know, we're gonna get the money to go to the port.

Nope, the money went to the port and poor spending and the billionaires became richer and the kind of favor them because anytime you give the money to the poor, the poor is gonna spend the money and it goes into private economy. They don't save money because they don't have the habits of saving money. Hey, anytime we, hey, this inflation is gonna be transitory. Hey, recession is gonna be soft landing.

Like, the level of trust, the average consumer today has an expert saying what they think is gonna happen to the economy. I saw scored the other day. It's a very interesting score. I don't know if you've seen this or not. The score was the correlation between the trust the American voter has in the government

in the last since 1970 I think it was. How infant from 74% we trusted the US government like 25 right now. And then the score you put it right next to a trust and mainstream media from where it was in 1970s to today David you got to take a look at this. It's literally identical. Here's one of them. This is what trust in public In a government from 58 till today from 75% all the way down to less than 20% if you do the same thing with mainstream media It's down as well. I would say if we put it

with experts today would be the same. Why are experts getting so many things wrong today? Well first maybe they're not experts but secondly the trust in federal government has gone down from the time of the Vietnam War. One of the Vietnam War was being waged, many people lost confidence in government, watergate compounded that. And then since that time we've had a lot of government officials say a lot of things that just not true. And I think the Trump Europe also had some impact on that as well. But also remember, in the old days, when I was young, you weren't even probably born, we had situation where you had three news shows in the evening. That's where people got their news, CBS, NBC, ABC, no cable, everybody, the newspapers are very,

only a couple newspapers that were really national newspapers. That's what you got your news from. Now, everybody's got a podcast, everybody's got a TV show, everybody's an interviewer, everybody watches things, you know, they should be a bumper sticker, say, honk if you don't have your own podcast. It's a good bumper sticker.

Everybody's got a podcast, Everybody's an interviewer. So there's so much information coming into people. They're bound to be wrong and you're bound to disappoint people. So I don't know that the experts are less good than they used to be, but they're willing as a people to accept authority, accept the government as knowing what it's doing. For example, take the most recent elections. Everybody said it was going to be a red wave. The House was going to be overwhelmingly Republican, and the Senate would go Republican.

People were wrong. People were wrong. Yeah, but then also when you were given the stories of the time when I was in Iran, and there was only three shows, you know how right now, Tucker Carlson's number one at 2.7 million, at the time number one was 33 million. Yeah, right.

33 million. Can you imagine like you're the number one guy, 33 million, but to say the thing about podcasts, which what did Jamie Dimes say to you in an interview? I love what he said to you. He says, he said, David, this is the interview. When did you do the interview with Jamie? I've done several of them over the years,

but the one what he talked about, his relationship with Sandy, how hey, I ascended, go to lunch after a year, and I sat down, I said, let me tell you, this is where you were wrong. Here's areas. I was wrong I thought it was a fascinating interview. Yes, it was in five years, but that was in 2017 when he did the interview I mean, that's right and if there was an audience when you were doing that I never read with him He said something he says he said David We got a hundred and forty five million people that are working today give or take he says only 20 million

They're working for the government only Only 125 million are working for, what do you call it, free enterprise, free market, right? And whatever that number is, 120 or 125, 20, but the number was, and he says the only thing I think they get right in the government is what, military. That's Jamie's words, what he said to you. You've done many interviews, you may not remember that,

but he said that in 2017. So for me, when I hear that, I'm like, okay, free enterprise gets things right, more than the government gets things right. They're not operators, they don't know how to build. You give them money, they screw it up, you give them money to you. I would trust giving you a billion dollars

and giving anybody at the White House a billion dollars, right? So I think the one thing that has happened in which the honking part about the podcast, I'm loving that because we thought all these years the best people on podcasts and news, were the loving that because we thought all these years the best people on podcasts and the news were the guys that we were supposed to admire. And we're like, no, a guy that's tatted who smokes weed and likes UFC and was on fear fact, a former actor who can beat up 99.9% of men in the streets.

He's embarrassing everybody. The guys name is Joseph Rogan. This guy's kicking everyone's tail combined. So I think that whole concept about podcasts, what it did do is it got the rest of us to kind of say, listen, this doctor Fauci think got a lot of things wrong. That other expert guy on finance got a lot of things. All these people we were supposed to trust men.

Some of them are full of shit because there's marketing dollars and they got exposed. And I think that made a lot of people uncomfortable because the club behind closed doors, but we were all supposed to be like, look, I understand, we're gonna kind of respect what you're doing because I know we're doing business, and we won't say anything about it,

but you owe us a favor. Some of that stuff, I think now people are like, holy moly, these guys are exposed to the rest of us. I think it is a progress type of a direction we're going in where people can no longer be as I kind of like experts being held accountable. I like it. Well, there's no doubt that sometimes there are no right answers. So for example, let's suppose you had been Dr. Fauci at the beginning of COVID. What could you have said or what would you have done that would have made the world better? We didn't have a vaccine at the beginning,

so we didn't really have a lot of knowledge about what we could do. Obviously, the mask were one thing that we're done, that's not a perfect solution. I think the government lost a lot of trust when we didn't really solve the COVID problem as quickly as maybe we should have. And we did a lot of million Americans died.

We could have done a better job. I think everybody would agree on that. What do you think we could have done differently, though? I mean, I know you and I are not doctors, but like, okay, let's just, let's process that and say, what could we have done a better job. I think everybody would agree on that. What do you think we could have done differently though? I mean, I know you and I are not doctors, but like, okay, let's just, let's process that and say what could we have done differently? You know, never in the history of mankind have we made a vaccine faster.

Okay, I go, it's the fastest ever. Yeah, never have we, like, can you imagine like to tell people, I'm in a military, like, you would just talk about a Marines, you know, guys, I mean, you know, 60,000 soldiers and a little over 3,000 Marines kicked out And discharge with other than honorable discharge. It's a general discharge for what reason for not taking the vaccine

Okay, I mean that that that that part for me. It wasn't necessarily, you know Fouch had been through the Yades pandemic, you know epidemic, right? You know, he had gone through a lot of these things and he saw what happened with AIDS, he saw what happened with a lot of these other things. And the weirdest thing for me was when we went from a country of choice, like you know how progressive say, pro-choice, pro-choice, like the pro, this election's midterms, you know what it came down to,

you know that, I know that, I mean, we read it everywhere. Oh, it's gonna be this, it's gonna be that, it's gonna be economy's bad's gonna be that. It's gonna be economy is bad. No, it came down to row V-weight. And, you know, if the Republican strategically would have done it later, some are saying McConnell intentionally forced it to happen before because he wanted Trump to get a black guy

so the Republicans would realize, hey, it's us really that are running it. Not Trump, you guys got to get away from Trump. So a little bit of strategy credit, maybe the McConnell, if it was intentional to get Roe Veebate before who knows. But it was choice. Even some people on the other side wanted the choice.

The part that made Americans a little bit uncomfortable, which was like, dude, like, listen, I'll take the vaccine. God, I've taken 30 vaccines in my life. Just don't force it down my throat. Let me have the choice to take it. I don't think there's anything else that could have been different because, you know, how long does it take to do research on a vaccine? You mean to tell me after nine months of you doing testing on who, on animals maybe, you want to now test it on me and

we've never done anything where we need a three, we've always had three years of testing for vaccines and let me want to expedite now. You want me to trust it 100%. That just a little bit on come before the Americans say yes to it. Did you take the vaccine? I did not, but everybody in my family did. Meaning my dad did, he's 80, my nanny did. You know, my dad took five boosters, he lives with me. Did you get COVID?

Of course I got COVID. Yeah, of course I got COVID. I got the first COVID. I got COVID COVID, I didn't get Delta, I didn't get, that was the more serious one. Yeah, I got the real COVID and I lost 21 pounds. Yeah, I lost 21 pounds in four weeks. We moved our entire office.

We had 80% of our office, I won't point get COVID. It's sucked. I'm not sitting and telling you was a, you know, euphoric experience and everybody should try it. But I think the biggest thing is to get people to be forced to do something they didn't want to do. I think certain situations in the military, we did it wrong. I think New York certain things was wrong.

I was living in LA for 24 years. I left LA because they were trying to control every decision I was making. I moved to Dallas. So I left my insurance headquarters in Dallas. I was just there yesterday. We got back last night at 830, Addison Private. Our office is in Addison. We like Addison. Two years ago, we moved here from Addison to

Florida, they'll right here because I was watching everybody. I'm like, dude, what is, so the best case studies was Disneyland, Disney World, Perfee Case Study, California, Florida, Florida one. The Perfee Case Study, all the people that were complaining in the NBA about Black Lives Matter, they chose to do playoffs in Florida. I'm sorry, the aren't you supposed to hate the state? All the people that politically hated what the Sanctis was doing in LA or New York or Chicago, for Christmas, they were clubbing here in Miami.

They all came vacation in Miami. So you watch some of this stuff and they are like, I don't know, man. And I know, you know, it's made me feel very uncomfortable that they were forcing. That's the only thing I thought was uncomfortable. Why did you have your children get it? No, my parents got it.

My kids didn't get the vaccine. My kids, you know, I'm a guy that went to the military. When you go into the military first week, we took you lemon shots, they give it with air guns and all this stuff, and if you go, you military first week. We took you lemon shots They give it with air guns and all the stuff and if you go you Just a simple line. Yeah, somebody I just showed no joke and if you touch you and our kids got the vaccines got the vaccines But for me and the reason why even some of the vaccines are litter but you know the whole story with autism and How Robert Deneer was at that one? I don't know if you've seen this interview where

There was a video that was done Vaxed and he was talking to the reporter that they removed him and he was upset because he didn't want to talk about it because he's got a 22 year old son that has autism and he thinks it's linked to vaccine and you know, Robert Daniel or cannot stand Trump, but he just want to learn a little bit more about that. But for us, like even that has decades of research. We don't have decades of research on this. For everybody to just make you feel guilty

if you don't wanna get a shot, it's a little bit uncomfortable. Well, I don't think vaccines cause autism, but there was a report by a British doctor at one point that's since been discredited, who was alleging that. I don't think any scientists that are reputable believe that autism is caused by vaccines, in my view. But you didn't say that.

I know it's the one I was saying. I know, but I just deal with that. In terms of vaccines, about a third of Americans have not been vaccinated against COVID. So it shows you, and it's the same percentage of the true in Europe too, about a third of people in Europe as well have not been vaccinated. There's a certain percentage of people just either don't want to be told what to do or just don't feel comfortable with it and you're not going to change them. But did you see the data that's coming up that some of the guys now that are vaccinated

are getting sicker or they're getting COVID more often than the ones that they, and by the way, this is not a bribe art article or a box article. I was vaccinated all the time. You could be vaccinated. I did get COVID subsequent to that, but maybe it was more model case, a model decase, I don't know. So vaccines are not perfect solutions

to dealing with these problems. They can mitigate the problem, but they're not perfect. But for example, you're vaccinated against polio. So that one you're comfortable with, because it's been tested for a year. They did a research. Okay. Yeah, they did a research.

My only thing was that. So if for me, you know, you kind of are able to say, let me see what's going on. How much research do we have in us? How many years? Okay, great. Perfect. Then let's go do this.

Rather than like, can you guys give us some natural maybe Eastern medicine without having to put something on my body that's a different way that's, can we get some of those solutions? Why does that have to be immediately this? And then the average person who's a little bit skeptic is gonna sit there and say, let me get this straight.

So you're sponsoring the guy that is giving you millions of dollars of sponsorship and you're saying we should take that product. Well, why would you tell us not to take that product? Big farmers advertising, but that makes sense for you to support them. Because if you don't, you're not going to get that $52 million or $10 million dollar budget per year. Okay, I get your loyalty to the money that you're getting. It doesn't make sense for

me to do the sponsorship about this company and afterwards, I say, by the way, they suck. I just want to let you know this. These guys are not good, but they gave us money. So here's a sponsorship. So those are some of the levels where I think the level of trust in mainstream media went down because they stopped doing one thing You know why I love watching the interviews have a friend of mine very successful Armenians in LA very and They've made very good money guy, huh? They made very good money and they will say Pat. There's a lot of guys on YouTube You can name them all I only watch one guy Who's the one guy.

Who's the one guy? He's the best. Who? David Rubenstein. I don't want you anybody else, but David, tell me why. Because David asked the questions I'm thinking about. That's great. So then I'm like, I know David, but I didn't know David had a YouTube.

This is five years ago. We're not talking about like this is when you just had started. You got a couple hundred thousand subs right now, but at that time you're just getting something like, let me say, damn, this is sick. just had started you got a couple hundred thousand subs right now but at that time you're just getting some like let me say damn this is sick. This guy keeps doing more interviews that he's gonna have ten million subs. He's freaking legit.

And what are the moral authority does somebody give you to be sitting on all these boards and these people you've dealt with like you've met presidents all of them probably you've met billionaires probably all the fortune 500 guys you probably met most of the CEOs your clients some of them are some of the most powerful people in the world that you're dining, your president stays at one of your places, you've met all these guys, Jimmy Carter, so you've worked in all these different spaces, fantastic.

The one thing that I got uncomfortable with was the following. At the beginning of COVID, I've no idea what's going on. We're in LA, we have a board meeting. It's March 12th or 13th, that's the day when NHL shut down, MBA shut down, Disneyland shut, I'm in LA with three of my kids, and I'm getting ready to take my Kishti Universal Studios. We love going to Universal Studios, and we have a board meeting with Gabriel Brander

and Greg Sharon, Oscar de la Hoya in LA. I'm gonna do the board meeting, then we're gonna go to whatever, Universal Studios. So we're staying at Beverly Hills Hotel, Beverly Hills, whatever, universal studios. So we're staying at Beverly Hills, so it's in Beverly Hills, whatever the hotel is. And then, first person cancels, second person cancels, but I'm like, what are you guys doing? Hey, it's because of COVID.

COVID? Yeah, seriously, yeah. Let's turn on the news. Let me read it. Listen, babe, we gotta go back, because everybody's afraid right now. Let's see what's going on. So I go back and I go into research mode.

First thing I do, I got a podcast with a few million subscribers. Let me call people from both sides to come and discuss this solution, vaccine, all this stuff. At this point, I have no clue what's going on. I got to make the right decision for my field. I got to make the right decision for my executives, for my family, do I take the vaccine, do I not take the vaccine? You know what was one of the biggest reasons why I didn't take the vaccine? Here's what I'll tell you. The guys who were skeptical about not taking it

like RFK, Robert Kennedy, Jr., you know who he is and others, they were willing to debate anybody. But when I called doctor Paul Offit, or when I called all these other doctors, 100 and I told them I'll give you 10 grand, then I went to 20 grand, any charity 50 grand, 100 grand, they would not take the debate to meet Robert Kennedy Jr. to discuss this. That's when I said, something's off. And then there was a guy named Dr. Mike who's got a YouTube channel, I think he can pull him up, seven or eight million subscribers. So he calls me out and calls out an interview.

I do what a lady named Dr. Judy Mike of it, which I don't know who she is. But I interview her because I'm interviewing all the doctors at the time. That interview gets taken out real quickly, gets a million views, gets taken down. He's texting me and he says, yeah, absolutely. I'll do debate or any time, any day are bookers like he spoke he's coming three times he confirms all of a sudden last minute. No, I don't want to talk to her Why I'm too busy really while he was busy He took 20 different interviews from other people We have a hard time interviewing here and I've found you went on his show God knows how many times right on his YouTube channel

And I'm a street guy, you know, I'm a guy that came from the streets, divorce family. My parents got divorced twice. I've seen drugs. I've seen everything. I've seen gangs. I've been around all these different gangs. I'm like, man, that's a anytime you don't want to face off somebody. There's a little bit of fear or concern that you got. And who's RFK, like a gangster, is he a mobster? Is he going to come after your family? Shit, everybody went after his family. Now, your family, sit down with the guy. That's when I said, I don't know what's going on. I'm not an expert in this space. I'm not a doctor. I'm not a scientist. But anytime you're not willing to sit with some other debate topic, like a qualified person like this or other doctors that I even invited, they lost a lot of trust with me because

all these experts ever wanted to talk to was people that agreed with them. And that made me very uncomfortable. Well, I can understand that, but sometimes people don't want to debate people because they don't want to give them an audience that they wouldn't otherwise wouldn't have. And for example, if somebody says, I'm at a virulent anti-Semite, I hate Jews, should you debate them about why Jews are not so bad if they're reasonable? Well, but you're when you when you give an audience to people who do otherwise wouldn't have it You're really helping some people get a message to people that I think is a damaging message sometimes

So you wouldn't probably presumably invite on to the show some people who say things that are let's say virilely Anisemitic you wouldn't do that with- I agree, I agree, but RFK? RFK? Like, really? By the way, and it's such a great point you're making because some of them are like that, and I filter those guys out very quickly

where they come in and say, let me tell you, guaranteed, you know, it's this, and it's like, I don't know if you know this guy named David Eich, I don't know if you've seen some of his interviews. I brought some of these, I'm like, first of all, let me get this straight, you believe in reptilian people, you believe in this, you believe in this and you believe in this.

Before I ask any questions, I think it's important for the audience to know what you really believe in. Yes, he got upset. What does that have to do with anything? That's it, your credibility has to be stated before we ask any questions. I'm not gonna get a guy like that to debate somebody from the other side.

I look for reasonable people. Not my mother, he's got a big follow. A lot of people follow his stuff and they say half his conspiracy theory is right. But at the beginning, if you remember, it was linked to 5G and these 5G networks and all this stuff, that was a whole thing that was going on that people were worried about. But when two reasonable people are afraid to sit down against each other,

like Thomas Sol against what's the other guy's name that I had an interview with? What's the other socialist economist, slash communist economist who's got a very, very big following, AOC's hero? What's his name? I had him on the podcast. You'd know who he is. Yeah, it's about wolf. Are you? No, I love talking to Richard Wolfe. I don't know if you know who Richard Wolfe is, it's about wolf. Are you? No, I love talking to Richard Wolf. I don't know if you know who Richard Wolf is. He's a socialist professor.

According to Forbes, a number one socialist professor. No, this guy was a pure communist at the UC Riverside. I liked him a lot. Debating him. Astari can play the video because it's ours. It's someone you guys all know. Everybody knows this. No Chomsky.

I'm sorry, no Chomsky. You know who no Chomsky is. Do you know who Thomas Solas? Okay. You know Thomas Solas, who were institutes, coming from the lineage of the great, and it's in Friedman. And I say, no, a lot of people say you're afraid

to debate Thomas Solas, that's true. And his physiology changed. Okay, to me, you lost a fight. Because whose time is so? What is so scary about Thomas Solis and economist? And he's in his 90s. You know, my schedule's very busy. So it's his.

Once you reach a certain level, I think it's fair to say your schedule's very busy. I think it's fair to say that. You have a lot of different options. You take in time to come here, salute, a lot of respect for you. To I always watch, like even boxing, I don't know if you follow boxing or not,

when a guy doesn't want to face another guy to box, why don't you want to face him? So that's deceptive for dad. By the way, this whole thing's coming about the level of trust we have in the US government or mainstream media or experts, that's kind of how this conversation started. I don't know how we got into vaccine.

But my lack of trust came from people not wanting to debate anymore. My entire, my grew up in a family where my mothers were communist. My entire mother's family were communist, 100%. Our Bible growing up was a communist manifesto. And my dad was an imperialist. One loved the Shah, one love Stalin and Lenin. So it was a house filled with debate, and I'm in the middle. So forget Hillary against Trump.

Like this was the best debate I would do every night, my mom and dad debating. So I enjoy good debate. We get closer to the truth. So the last couple of years, what was always America's DNA, we kind of got away from the debate concept. Made me very uncomfortable. All right, well, now you're going to do with that.

What are you going to do now? I'm doing what I'm doing right now with the media side. I'm taking all my money that I'm making. And I'm going to build a media platform where people would courage like you who are willing to ask the questions. We show them respect. And at the same time, have tough conversations

for the audience to get off and say, I agree, I disagree. I'm not born here so I can run for office, but we're going to compete in a media space to make sure the right conversations are held. And hopefully people who also support debate will entertain that idea. Okay. All right. So can we talk about about my book? Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So before we go into how to invest, would you mind if I ask you? Come on, other questions about the economy.

Just pure about the economy before we get into the book. So when we're talking unemployment, we talk unemployment already. We talked what do you call it? Debate already. We talked inflation already. Okay, so here's what to talk about. what do you call it? Debate already. We talked, inflation already. Okay, so here's what I want to talk about. Americans expect worsening in US economy in 2023.

This is Wall Street Journal, okay? Where do the American people are at? What direction the economy is going in? You know, what's going to happen with it? How much of what you think the American people's concerns about what the economy is at matches matches what's actually going to happen next year. Well, I don't think anybody really knows what's going to happen in 2023. There's an old saying in Hollywood. In fact, the man who was the script writer for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,

he wrote a book and the title was, nobody here knows anything, which means you never know when a movie is going to be successful or not. Well the same is true in the economy. Nobody really knows. You can have experts here and there, but nobody really knows. It's a guessing game. We can't determine when the war in Ukraine is going to be over. Who knows when that's going to be over.

That will change the economy. Is China going to invade Taiwan? That will affect the economy. We just don't know. Or the Republicans are going to go and try to impe affect the economy. We just don't know. Or the Republicans are going to go try to impeach Joe Biden. We don't know. That could have an impact on the economy. It delays the Congress and passing all those things.

Who knows? So I would say right now, the conventional wisdom, and the conventional wisdom is often generally wrong in Washington. But the conventional wisdom in Washington is that we'll probably have a recession in 2023, mild recession, unemployment will go up somewhat. Congress won't pass that many bills to do anything that's going to have a recession in 2023, mild recession, unemployment will go up somewhat. Congress won't pass that many bills to do anything that's going to spend a lot more money because we've already spent all the money, we pretty much can afford to spend.

And I would say, I don't, I think the American people, when they read as much as they read about the economy going to recession recession, eventually they kind of reflect that in the public opinion polls. And that's why people are saying they're worried about the economy. But people are always worried about the economy. There's's why people are saying they're worried about the economy. But people are always worried about the economy. There's never a time when people are not worried about the economy. So I don't know that it'll be as bad as we had in 2007, 2008, 2009, but it could go down. But remember, economies always come back.

Recessions always end and the world comes back. And the US economy comes back very, very strong. We still have an incredibly strong economy now compared to Europe and compared to China. Our economy is growing much better than China and Europe is. So I'm not pessimistic about the US economy, and when it goes down, it will rebound in my view. So I'm not that worried about the economy.

There are bigger things to worry about. You had a question, Matt. Both of you guys had a question. I had to wait. So in 2008, certainly it was far far worse than what we've seen here. And we probably haven't even seen the worst of whatever this recession. Nobody can get there because things historically that were constants become variables. And then variables become constants and everybody's algebra falls over.

You had said in 2008, you talked about, hey, when all the banks, when all this debt is with the banks, in other words, it's all becomes organized. All the tarp and everything becomes the finance. We're gonna enter into a platinum age for private equity. You turned out to be very, very quick. Although things are not that way now, what do you see happening after we get through,

call it a blip, call it a mini recession, whatever we think, what is your crystal ball? For what? For where we're gonna go? You talking about the private equity or for the economy generally? Well, you were correct about private equity and you were in that business and you selected it,

but is there anything out there that you're looking at right now that you say, you know what, this is what I see and I'm feeling. Well, I think the economy, if it goes into recession, we'll have them rebound and when we come out I think the economy will continue to grow at a reasonable pace remember we have a twenty two trillion dollar GDP so economy is big hard to grow that at 10 percent a year hard to grow that at even seven percent a year we we briefly grown at six percent a year coming back out of 6% or quarter, coming out of some

parts of COVID. But right now, I think given the economy's size, you've grown 2 or 3% a year, that's pretty good. And I think we can continue to do that. But that happens when people feel like they have an incentive to go to work, they have an incentive to invest, the government doesn't do some things that I think backfire on. Right now, the biggest problem the country has in my view, aside from the racial problems we have and the legacy of slavery and all the other kinds of problems

that exist between certain sectors of the economy, people who are born into poverty and never gonna escape, the biggest problem we have is a dysfunction of the government. Right now, the Democrats and Republicans just cannot agree on almost anything, maybe they'll agree on a spending bill here or there. But generally, it's dysfunctional. When I work on Capitol Hill briefly in the late 70s, a bipartisan bill was considered to

be a good thing. If you were a good legislator, you actually knew how to get Democrats and Republicans come together. If now you're on one party or you're on the other party, you're not supposed to really talk to people from the other party or work with them. And I think that's unfortunate. And that's one of the biggest problems that the country has. It's so acrimonious in Washington DC now that you don't get people even socializing

anymore with people from the opposite party. I wish that would change. In my observation of your book, you've interviewed a lot of people that didn't come from wealth that you included. And when you're looking at the commonalities between all of them, how to invest. And I'm looking at the typical person right now trying to save in the 401k. None of you all in that book really saved.

You guys all invested. Right. Well, they're different things. Now, their book was written for this is a book called How to Invest. And obviously you're not going to read that book and become Warren Buffett. Just like you're not going to read a book

by Tiger Woods and become a great golfer. You can't read a book and all of a sudden change your life that dramatically. But this is designed for young students who want to consider a career in investing or for the average person and not the superstars. For the average person who has a reasonable amount of excess income, they probably shouldn't try to be Warren Buffett by all of a sudden picking stocks themselves, picking bonds themselves. They probably should give their money to a money manager and probably best to put it in an index fund, which will track the market.

Because the average person who makes $50,000, $100,000 here is not going to quadruple their net worth by picking stocks here and there. You're just not going to beat the market averages. So be with the market average and be there go with an index fund that's a low fee. That's what the average person should really do in my view. When you interview Mary, Kalan and Erdoz, she goes on record saying that there's 2200 analysts starting, there's a two to three year training program and if you're going to master something, it takes 10,000 hours.

If you're going to work at typical jobs, it's going to take you five years to master something. She goes on record by saying, in Wall Street, it's 12 hours a day, six days a week, in two to three years of matches, something. She got a lot of pushback because of that. Are we in a generation where people don't want to put into work and put in the effort to start mastering things? I think there are always gonna be people with ambition and always people wanna get ahead in life,

at least in this country. Some people may rebel against that. There are some people in the youngest generation who now say, look, I wanna work 20 hours a week and I work from home and I'm not going to the office. But those people will be left behind in my view. I think there are people who are ambitious who want to get ahead in life.

Mary Eardos, for those who don't know, runs the JP Morgan Private Wealth Business, which is probably a $4 trillion business, and she's managing money for the wealthiest people in the country. She's a heavy witch. She's not just anybody. She's a serious person.

And one of the, I tried to then book to make it clear. You don't have to be an old white man to be an investment Professional who is good. So I had people from minority backgrounds people are women and I think they'll be more of them If I wrote this book 10 years from now, there might not be that many white males in it because the business is changing Did you have a follow up today? Yeah, I was gonna say you probably gonna have an Iranian coming in there, you're gonna interview for that conversation. In your perspectives of investing, I looked at, you had nine of them, you had locked price due diligence,

instant management, et cetera. When you talk about price, you mentioned in an aspect your perspective that you've heard that companies management team prefers you as their investor, you don't choose you. Talk to me about leadership and talk to you about management. Well, the point I was making there is when we're doing a buyout,

you're competing. Everything is an auction pretty much. And when somebody, my team comes to me and says, the management team of the company want to buy, they prefer us. Well, they're often not the people making decisions. The owner. And so when people tell me that the seller

or the management team prefers us, I get skeptical a bit because they're not necessarily the decision maker. So I just think in the end what gets down to when you're trying to buy a company is pretty much the price and the certainty of closing at that price. You know, maybe people like you a little bit more, maybe in some cases it makes a modest difference. But generally, in the buy-out world, whoever pays the highest price with a certainty of closing is almost certainly gonna win that deal.

Just PBI, I experienced that with you. And then this exit we've had, that you prefer to certain investor to purchase PHP. It wasn't just any, because there's a lot of money, there's a lot of offers coming your way. But I saw you, for example, I'm buying a company,

they want you to buy them. Right. Because they feel that you're going to take the business to the next level. And that's kind of the perspective you had. It depends if you're controlling the company. If you're buying 100% of the company, the seller probably doesn't care that much.

If you are, they're going to stay in the deal, then they want somebody they think is going to add value. Then they might look at something other than price because they're still going to ride with the upside. Right. He's right. That's exactly it. Because you have to think about the people that have been running a company who are going to be with the new buyer longer than the founder maybe so it's important for that partnership to make sense.

And then the structure to be set up, you know, sometimes it's set up in a way where the founder doesn't go with the deal. They don't even want the founder to go with the luck. Listen, kind of step out of the way you've been partying too much. You're kind of living a lifestyle, the whole yacht, all this other stuff. You haven't been operating for four years. Let us just take over and we'll do it our part. And then sometimes if the founder is very involved, they kind of want the guy to be locked in a little before a couple of years before they transition them out. That's true.

Sometimes if it's a founder, it's a difference if it's a founder and a CEO. If it's a founder, but he is not really still running the company, they'd probably be happy if he would lend his credibility to the customers, say, I'm still happy with this buyer, I'm still around, but they don't really want to, is advice that much, they don't want to involve that much.

If it's a CEO who's really built the company and is still running it a company and is really valuable, you probably would keep him for a while. But in a buyout, about more than 50% of the time, the person who's running the company in a buyout at the time You do the deal is not running it when you exit that deal. That totally makes sense And and some people would say the biggest mistake that buy out firms make is staying with a CO too long Sometimes a CO was good maybe before maybe wasn't that good

But if you keep riding with him for too long or her too long It generally doesn't work and very often you make changes. Why is that? Why is that? Because operating a buyout company with leverage is different than operating one without leverage. Also people have different philosophies. And if you built this company, this company, you now own, you built it. It's your baby.

And that's supposed to sell it tomorrow. You say, look, I know everything here. Why would you not want to keep me? And they would say, well, you're nice. But now it's our money. At risk, and our money at risk is different, and we have different ways of doing things. Now sometimes they might say,

we want to keep you for a while to keep the customers happy, to make certain that there's no transition. People aren't, employees aren't leaving right away. But after a while, they'll say, you know, you know, you know, you need to come into work 40 hours a week. Maybe, maybe 30 hours a week, or maybe 20 hours a week, maybe 10 hours a week. And by the way, you know,

we're going to call you chairman of the meritus. And by the way, you know, we're going to call you chairman of Emeritus. And by the way, your parking spot's gone. Now, at some point, you know, they don't need you so much. That's what happens in life. What's the difference between a way of founders wired versus a CEO's wired? Like, what do you see to say, I don't think this founder is going to, is a real CEO. Like, what's the difference between those founders?

A founder is willing to take entrepreneurial risks. When you take an entrepreneur risk you're betting a lot on something happening and if it doesn't work out you lose a lot more. The CEO is basically getting a salary and maybe some stock incentives and so forth. But he or she will transition to some other job and they can run another company. The founder has more of his heart and soul as a generally principle. And so when you build something, it's much different than if you're running something. That makes sense. That makes sense. Right now, do you think this whole situation would elambine Twitter? Are you guys optimistic about what's going to happen with the Twitter valuation?

Are you kind of like, yeah, it's not something we're interested in. How are you viewing what Elon's doing with Twitter? I'm not an investor in the company, so I can give you that perspective without being an investor. I think he paid a high price. In other words, what happened is he bought the company at a, agreed to buy the company, and the tech transition occurred and the tech valuations went down.

So he paid probably 25% more than the company was really worth. He knew that, but he thought he could turn around because he's an engineering marvel and so forth. He then made some changes and now I see, oh, that have really taken away a lot of the customers, a lot of the advertisers. I think the company cannot service its debt, normally. It takes about a billion dollars a year to service the debt of the debt

that he borrowed. He borrowed about, I think, $11 billion. He has to take about a billion dollars a year to service that debt. They're not earning a billion dollars a year. So what's going to happen? He'll either have to subsidize it and pay it out of his own proceeds. He could take the company bankrupt. The problem of taking the company bankrupt is this.

In the end, the senior debt will own the company. So he will have lost a lot of money. The 11 billion. Yes, the 11 billion would own the company. But remember, he could go buy that 11 billion at a discount. The banks are carrying that debt at $0.80 cents on a dollar. He could probably buy it at $0.70 cents on a dollar. So he buys the debt, he then owns the company. He could bankrupt the company. He then owns the company because all the equity is wiped out. Of course, his friends are in the equity and he's in the equity. So it's a big loss either way. There's no easy way out of this in my view, other than kind of getting the revenue back up again. It's a tough, tough slog. And I don't envy him trying to run this company. He's also running

two other companies. That's right. That's right. It's tough to run one company at the time. He's running two other big companies and both of those are pretty successful. Billion companies. Yeah. Somebody, the story that came out saying, the third largest Tesla stock owner says, Elon Musk should step down as the CEO. The story just came out because some of these other guys,

they're like, dude, what are you doing? We believe in Tesla with you running it. Right. Indonesia billionaire, Kugan Leo, the third largest individual shareholder of Tesla, accuses Musk of focusing to heavily on Twitter, Ilan, abandoned Tesla, and Tesla has as no working CEO, Tesla needs and deserves to have a fully working CEO,

full-time working CEO. Leo went on to suggest that the Tesla Board of Directors was obligated to look for replacement. The billionaire suggested that Musk be given the opportunity to find and name his successor with the independent supervision of the board, he added, Elon was the proud father, Tesla has grown up

an executioner, Tim Cook-like is needed, not Elon. Yes, now what's happened is the market cap of Tesla was probably at its peak, 1.1 trillion dollars. And that made him the richest man in the world because he was the biggest shareholder of it. Today I think the market cap is maybe closer to 500 billion, so it's lost about half its value. Why?

Well, one thing is that he sold a number of his shares in order to buy Twitter. So whenever you sell shares, it depresses the price. And now people think that he's not focused on it and therefore he's not the genius behind Tesla and a lot of people are selling. So he's lost half of the value of the company and that's why some of the shareholders aren't happy.

So, you think the idea of bringing a Tim Cook is a good idea, like what he's suggesting? Well, I think somebody needs to be running the company, whether Elon Musk is willing to give up running the company, I don't know, I'm not involved in it, but I'd say that somebody should be running the company and somebody should be running SpaceX too. It's hard to run one company once.

How do you do that? How do you run three companies that run? Billion auto companies simultaneously. Well, he put a lot of his personal fortune into Twitter. He wants to turn it around. He realizes now it's tougher to turn around than he thought. So right now the company's in somewhat disarray.

But he's done a really good job of building these companies before. Maybe with enough time he can make Twitter turn around. Takes some time. But by the way, what do you think about what Tim Cook did with Apple? Would you put him at the top as a best CEO in the market today? When Steve Jobs died, the market cap of Apple was roughly $350 billion more or less. Now the market cap is what?

1.1 trillion or 1.2 trillion or something like that at one point. So what he did is staggering. I'd say it's capital reached $3 trillion at one point valuation. What is it right now, by the way? It's probably, oh, there you go. 2.1 trillion as a today. 2.1 trillion. Yeah.

Okay. So the market cap is now about six, seven times more than it was when he inherited the company. He did a spectacular job. I've interviewed him, he's a terrific person. I'd say right now there was a survey done by the Wall Street Journal of who is the best CEO today, and he certainly was one of the top.

I think such an Adele who's run Microsoft, when he took over Microsoft, that company stock hadn't moved in 10 years. 10 years. Now, the stock is up like 10 times. What he did to make Microsoft much more valuable than it ever been is staggering. So he's one of the best CEOs out there, in my view.

And Tim Cook is another one. Tom, you always talk about him. You always give credit to him. Yeah, what's amazing is, whether you look at inflated dollars or not, I mean, Tim Cook has generated more shareholder value than any c-e-o in the history of the american experiment and it's just even if you discounted for inflation and you know the it's phenomenal spectacular job he's done and remember when he took over as

c-e-o people didn't think he could do this because he was not the superstar uh... public figure that's that's the jobs was uh... but he was more mild mannered. He was basically known as a supply chain person, but he's done a spectacular job. And I would say he and Sachin Adelaide both done turnarounds or maybe come to his best. He's much more valuable than they were before. Have you read the book after Steve? No, I have not.

He just came out. It's a very, very interesting book. And most of it is about Tim Cook. Very, very insightful. He's, I know him reason why, when I was chairman of the board of Duke, I put him on the Duke board. And, you know, he was a graduate of the Duke University Business School. Top five books that impacted you the most. Like, what are some books that, when your kids ask you, Dad, give me five books I should read, what would those five books be? They probably wouldn't be my books.

I might get to read any of my books. Look, if you're on a desert island and you only have one book, what book would you take? Probably you take the Bible, because the Bible has so many things about human life and the way humans have gotten together over the years and interacted with everybody. And the Bible is an unusual and book when you think about it,

75% of it is the Old Testament. 25% is the New Testament. But in both the Old and New Testament, there's a lot of wisdom in there. I think that's probably one book you would probably want to have with you. Maybe one of your books, I don't know. Yeah, I want to know what you're going to say. If I'm on an island, I got to Bible, that's pretty good. If I got the business books on an island with no market, no technology, I'm screwed. Like, I probably need a big book that I can make some fire.

Like, give me the biggest book of all time. What else would you say? You've read a lot. I mean, you, I do read a lot of books because I have programs right interview authors and I think to when interview author I'd generally like to read the book so I'm I'm just reading a number of books now for interviews. I'm gonna do I just didn't interview the other day of the man who led the raid on

Bill McRaven bill led the raid to capture some have been law and hit a book called South C stories and led the raid to capture Osama bin Laden. He had a book called South Sea Stories. And interviewing him, it's incredible how we caught Osama bin Laden and how we, and at the time we caught him, he didn't know we actually had him. And so what happened was they had to take him out of his body bag.

Go ahead Admiral. That's him, Bill. Oh, he gave a speech, that was viral. That's University of Texas. Yeah. Make your bed, you were saying. Well, what happened was they captured him they put them in the body bag they bring them back and they unzip the body bag they pull them out and

say oh is this a bit not was beard look shorter than than they thought weren't sure they knew he was six foot four but they didn't so they didn't have a tape measure so they they saw another sailor there he said sailor how tall are you six foot two come over here lie down next to the sky all you look like you're too much a shorter he caught President Obama and said, uh, why we think it's him. We haven't done the DNA test, but I just had a soldier or sailor lie down next to him who was six foot two. This guy looks two inches bigger. So I think it's him. And Obama said, well, wait a second, you had a $90 million helicopter and you didn't take a $10 tape measure

with you. Why didn't you do that? And so when he met with Obama and the office later, he, he, Obama gave him a tape measure. That's what a good story right there. What a good story right there. 90 million here's 10 bucks, go measure it next time instead of putting a guy laying next to him. What else? So we got two books so far.

Give me another one. Give me, give me one that's an evergreen one, not one that was just written. Like something you read where you're like, because look, if there's something that a lot of people want to, first of all, everybody has to read the book how to invest, especially if you want to get into the business because you're learning from 30 different people's philosophies,

it's not like you're learning from one person. By the one thing that was very interesting is how everyone talked about Warren Buffett, like everybody edified him in Game of Ton of Credit. Everybody was, as if they're talking about, would you say he's the Michael Jordan of that industry? Yeah, so the reason is this, he has averaged 20% a year for 60 years.

60 years, not 20% a year for two years, three years. 60 years, I'm not that's incredible what he's done as an investor. Nobody's quite ever done that. And now he's still doing this one. He's in his 90s, early 90s. So that's incredible. If you wanna read a book about him,

there are a lot of great books and more books about it, but Warren Buffett probably than Abraham Lincoln if that's possible. But I would say the book called Snowball is probably the best one on Warren Buffett. It's a really, really good book. Warren Buffett hasn't really written his own book in that sense. Another book I've read recently, there's a man named Sid Mukaji

who wrote a book called The Emperor of All Malady, so about cancer. And it was a really well-written book. It won the Pulitzer Prize, his first book, won the Pulitzer Prize. He has a new book I call The Song of the Cell. He's his third book. The first book was on Cancer, second book is on Gene's third book is on Cell. It's only your time's best cell of us right now. I've just, that's it. Now that's the first one.

That one, that one, one the Pulitzer Prize and his first book, which is pretty good, the ring, your first book to win a Pulitzer Prize. Then one, I just interviewed a moment, it's called the Song of the Cell, which is his latest book. And I've just your first book to win a Pulitzer Prize. I just interviewed a moment, it's called The Song of the Cell, which is his latest book. And I've just interviewed another great author, John Meacham. Meacham has a new book out at the number one best seller

on Abraham Lincoln. And more books have written about Abraham Lincoln and anybody other than Jesus Christ. So it's incredible. But he has a lot of good insights in it. I'm just finishing a book that I'm interviewing the author on Maggie Haberman who wrote a book about Donald Trump. It's a quite interesting book on insights about Donald Trump. There are an infinite number of Trump's books. But this one is she's covered him for the New York Times for four years and it's a pretty interesting book. That's a confidence man.

Yeah, I saw that one. I saw that one. I saw that one. Yeah. Why do you think people are so enamored by this guy? Good, bad and ugly. Is it because you're like a complicated personality? Very unusual person. I do know them. I met with them when he was president a number of times. And I would say unusual. On the usual person. Usually people become president. I say to have some government back when he didn't have any background in government so it was an unusual situation but we'll see what happens there. Out of all the personalities you set down with who is like the one where you would say this guy you know if he wanted to he could be a president. Out of all the per I mean you've

meant with a lot of leaders with strong personalities have to be strong negotiators processors who's that one of the disc i run i think he would win well not not now but in his day uh... i think he would have been a great president he was in my firm for number years gym baker he had been secretary of state secretary of treasury of the staff in a run away again twelve years unblum is record practically and in federal service he's now in ninety three or ninety four obviously going to be run for president, but he was an incredible person, was in our firm for quite some time,

and I really admired him. And did you read his book? Did you read it? There's a book written about him. 1,000 pages. That's it. Book 1100 page book. Well, the book he wrote right after he left, I did read it,

but he wrote a second book, which I found better, which is more about politics and so forth. The second book I enjoyed more. The book that's written about him, the man who ran Washington. The one, that's the one. I couldn't put it down. Peter Baker wrote it down. Yeah, Peter Baker wrote it with his wife. That book is a really good book, and I think it's a really good read on how Washington works, and how one man who didn't have a real history in Washington wasn't really a politician. He came to Washington because his best friend George Bush was helping him get a job there and all of a sudden he became

very prominent in Washington. Did a great job as chief of staff from Ronald Reagan. Consider the gold standard to be chief of staff. You go on Rick and saying that the greatest American is in the greatest president is Abraham Lincoln. There's no doubt about it. What is some of those personality traits you think that could be adaptable in today in 2022?

Abraham Lincoln held the country together. At that time, most people would have said the South, you want to go away, go away. Because it wasn't easy to say we're going to fight a civil war of this. And part because the truth is the civil war was not fought by the north to free the slaves. That wasn't the initial mission. It was to hold the union together. Later, he did the emancipation proclamation, which was done as a war measure to help him win the war because he was going to have 200,000 black soldiers fighting for the union, which he did, and ultimately helped win the war. Abraham Lincoln had a number

of great qualities, but one of them was one we haven't talked about, which is humility. Abraham Lincoln didn't go to Ford's Theater the night before he was asked to say, you know what, I won the Civil War. How did I grade? How great am I? He didn't brag about himself. He had a lot of humility.

I think humility is a great virtue. And he had a lot of self-deprecating humor that he would bring to the case. He would say, people say I'm too face. Well, if I had two faces, why would I wear this one? Because he had a, he was the person who held the country together. There's no doubt that the country would not have stayed together without Lincoln. Most people, politicians would not have done what he did. So I think he was the greatest American. When he became a president, was it a Buchanan,

right? James Buchanan was a big president. he wouldn't say a listen slavery is something i'm going to work with and you can go with you can use kind of like for just a guy with a link attack that yeah see the thirteenth amendment abolished slavery uh... that came about at the end of linkins thermat right he it it was passed by congress a couple days before he was assassinated but in the uh... when james buc, who was, you know, not a great president, maybe one of a week or so, he supported something called the core win amendment, which was the 13th amendment as it was intended to be, that said, slavery is the law of the land and don't, it can't

be changed in the, in the existing states that have it. Lincoln, in his inaugural dress, the first one, he endorsed that because he thought he had to make it clear to people in the south look i'm not trying to get rid of slaves that i i just don't want slavery to be expanded other states the western states but in your states it's in the constitution we're gonna keep that and link and said that and it is an auger dress now obviously evolved over a period of time but linkin was not an abolitionist by far he was not there were many people one of the bottle slavery he was not one of them

in his what's your favorite linkin book i think the probably, well, I think that John Michelin was really good, but Darsk, current's good when the team of rivals, which was made into the Lincoln movie, is a spectacular book. But she, you know, there are 10,000 books on Lincoln. And I asked Darsk, current's good one, why did you think the world need another one? But she came up with a novel concept that Lincoln was so secure that he took people who were his rivals for the, for the president. And he put them in the cabinet. And they ultimately they became people who had initially thought he was nothing, but now they became, they admire him greatly.

Do you think there'll be a time where we'll have a Republican president and a Democratic VP or a Democratic president and a Republican VP? You think because I think it happened one time. What was the year when a candidate had a opposing party VP that they're running with? There was somebody that happened. And this wasn't too long ago. So it was like 50, 60 years ago, 70 years ago.

You think we'll have that ever happen? Hard to see because right in the old days, the rid of the Constitution was originally set up. Whoever had the most votes for president got to be president. Whoever the second most became vice president. We've changed the Constitution, so that probably is harder to do now. But look, maybe to get a unified ticket, somebody, you could do that. But in the other hand, the vice president

would have that much power relative to the president. So I'm not sure the vice president's party would think that's a good consolation, but nothing is impossible. Who could say what's impossible? That would be very, by the libertarian party still runs that way. Guy, they got the most votes becomes a candidate and a second time. I'll give you the last question before we wrap up. Any questions you have?

Yeah, you know, in your book on investing, and I think what you just said about going to the young generation and where it goes and everything. A lot of people, and I was curious about it, is kind of the forecast on you follow government, and this is a nonpartisan thing. Also security, Medicare and the entitlement. How to structurally, we have to change this in nation so that we can serve all that because there's this this mass of

people that are retiring yes that that deserve to get what they paid for literally out of their tax. Well remember we have a pay as you go system which means we have no money. So when you pay your Social Security every week that's going to pay you know you know somebody else's grandmother or something because there's no real money. There's no lock box, there's no trust fund. When people, when Social Security was set up in 1933, the average life expectancy in the United States was 65. When could you collect your Social Security at 65? So not that many people were living,

we live in the Keck Lake. Now it's like 82, 83. So you now get people who are living for a long time and they're collecting their Social Security. We don't have enough money to be able to keep paying it right now of the budget the entitlement part of the budget is with the fence spending entitlements and interest it's roughly eighty percent of the budget eighty eighty five percent of budget so only about fifteen percent is left for everything else so at some point you're

going to have to do one of three things. You either cut the benefits, you increase taxes, or you basically have to increase the amount of money that you're going to borrow. You're going to borrow more money. Or you further extend when they can get this, those career benefits. Yeah, you can do that too. But you're going to have to borrow more money. We have $31 trillion of debt now, $31 trillion. That's not all the commitments, though.

That's just the debt that we have. That's the debt. That's the debt. And that's the money we've already borrowed. The future commitments are staggering, but we have a higher percentage of debt to GDP than any country in the world, practically, except maybe Italy, which is not a great role model. No, it's not. So, so right now, the only way you're going to solve this problem is you've got to cut benefits, or you can extend the age, which is a way of cutting benefits. You have to increase taxes or you just keep borrowing more money. You just know why the way around it.

Do you have a follow-up on that? Because for me, you know what I look at sometimes, I'm like, okay, the American economy is this, it's strong, where this, where that, how do we eventually write off the debt? What happens when we can't? We can't. The interest rates are going up right now, and what if we can make the payments because the, you know, to Japan or China,

one of them, we owe 1.1 trillion, which I think is Japan and China, I think we own a 1 trillion. These are not small interest payments that we have to make. What happens when we default on those things? Well, hopefully we never default, but when the interest rate is essentially zero,

you can borrow a lot of money. And so the federal government was paying maybe 3% of the budget for interest. Now the interest rates are going up. We're paying six and seven percent of the budget for interest because it rates are going up. $31 trillion, that's a lot of money. And we only had 15% to play with of the remaining budget.

That's about it. How long is that sustainable though? There's only one way out of it. You inflate your way out of the economy. That's the only way out. Because we're not going to default. That's unrealistic. We're not going to increase taxes. That's very hard to do.

We can do it occasionally. It's not easy to cut spending. Where are you going to cut it? So you're not going to go to the IMF or a bailout. So in the end, you're going to inflate your way out of it. That's the only way out of it. You're not going to default. I have a follow-up so in the end you're going to flank your way out of it. That's the only way out of it. You're not going to default. I have a follow-up question for the common jaw there.

It's watching this podcast. You know, the Fadehli came out of the report that said the average savings of baby boomers today is $138,000 for retirement. Gen X, $98,000, millennials, $63,000, Gen Z, $37,000. And your opinion is the typical person attempting to save for retirement. Are they getting crushed right now?

Or do they have to do something like you? We have a very low savings rate in this country compared to other countries. Very low savings rate. We have a consumer economy. We encourage people to buy things, help people don't save them much. If you want to reduce our trade deficit, tell people to save more. But we don't do that. It's because it's thought to be difficult to get people to save more.

That's a real problem. And a lot of people in this country are living paycheck to paycheck a very high percentage are increasing a living paycheck to paycheck there are a lot of problems in the lower part of the economic strata for sure and it's not changing overnight which your solution which is suggestion for the demographic that's the demographic we all come from here at the steel I I I had the solution I would be an Iowa New Hampshire I don't I don't have the solution I this table. If I had the solution, I would be an Iowa New Hampshire. I don't have the solution. I don't know.

If I had the solution, I would have done something about it. There's no easy way out of it, no easy way out. And I don't think anybody has an easy way out. That's gonna be tough. I mean, you don't have a choice, but have a side hustle. I mean, you have to make the day. So, when it comes to not gonna make it. Thank you for inviting me.

This is gonna blast. Thank you for coming out. To my pleasure. What we're gonna do is wrap. Let's put the link below. Folks, if you watch this highly recommend you go buy the book, how to invest. We'll put in the chat. We'll put in the description. Get the book. It's one of the books. I recommend you read during this holiday season.

Take everybody. Bye, bye, bye. Okay. you