The Ben and Emil Show - BAES 77: How Enron fell and why we learned NOTHING

Episode Date: December 5, 2024

So this week we learned that Enron is back...sort of. That prompted us to finally do an episode on the rise and fall of the once massive company that became the poster child for corporate greed and co...rruption. Is Enron actually back or is this some kind of elaborate hoax for...something? We'll dive in sweeties. This week's bonus episode is a fuckin' gem, by the way. Sign up LINK TO OUR DISCORD: https://discord.gg/CjujBt8g CHECK OUT OUR BONUS EPISODES: https://benandemilshow.com Subscribe to Emil's Substack: https://substack.com/@emilderosa Leave a comment to be featured as the comment of the week next week! And also, like this video, please! Thank you! __ MIRACLE: Upgrade your sleep with Miracle Made! Go to https://trymiracle.com/BAES and use the code BAES to claim your FREE 3 PIECE TOWEL SET and SAVE over 40% OFF. Again, that’s TryMiracle dot COM slash BAES to treat yourself. Thank you Miracle Made for sponsoring this episode! AURA FRAMES: For a limited time, visit https://auraframes.com and get $45 off Aura's best-selling Carver Mat frames by using promo code BAES at checkout! It's their best Black Friday Cyber Monday deal of the year so don't miss it! MOOMOO: Important: The creator is a paid influencer and not affiliated with Moomoo Financial Inc. ("MFI") or its affiliates. Content outside of the moomoo ad has not been reviewed by MFI and reflects the influencer's own views. MFI does not endorse any strategies mentioned and is not responsible for the influencer's services. Click this link https://j.moomoo.com/BAES to get up to 15 free stocks from moomoo U.S when you make a qualified deposit + earn 8.1% on uninvested cash for a limited time for new users!! Terms & Conditions Apply SHOPIFY: Upgrade your business and get the same checkout we use! Sign up for your one dollar per month trial period at https://shopify.com/baes to upgrade your selling today. __ Latest MEATBALL SPECIAL HERE: https://youtu.be/Euyfzwmq8WY Last week's episode HERE: https://youtu.be/tBvALmluvl8 We bought suits HERE: https://youtu.be/_cM1XqA9n2U This episode was shot and edited by Connor Rousseau / @ conrad_roussrad Follow us on instagram! @ benandemilshow @ bencahn @ emilderosa Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 Money is actually inherently gay. There's, you bet your bottom dollar, and then, like, I paid top dollar for this. What an interesting way your brain works. So you think everything could be gay because there's a top of the mug and a bottom of the mug. No, well, it's because there's no phrases for that. Take my unlimited soda from some restaurant chain of mat and I say, hey, would you mind topping me off? Sure, that's okay. That's an homosexual activity to you.
Starting point is 00:00:20 Well, no. No. Because there's no second half to. The minute a detective says, let's try to get to the bottom of this. Ben goes, whoa, didn't know we had a gay mystery on her hand. You might be on to something. Maybe mysteries are also inherently gay. Was I high? I'll let you answer that question. What do you think the answer is?
Starting point is 00:00:41 Yes. That's correct. That's a great answer. I'm looking down to town with bed in me. Tell me what's going on. Tell me what's going on. So isn't you up to baby on? Tell me what's going on.
Starting point is 00:01:00 Tell me what's gone on. Oh, boy, let's get into the thing. Let's get into the thing. First of all, we're going to be doing a, we're going to be doing our very first mail opening. We've got some packages here. I wonder what's in this. That's probably the smallest one we got, okay?
Starting point is 00:01:17 So if that's not exciting to you... No, that's not true. The smallest one we got is like a letter. So he's wrong right there, folks. I try to get him pumped up. There are some big packages, though. Yeah. If you want to see that.
Starting point is 00:01:30 Whoa, big packages. That sounds pretty. Oh, brother. But, uh, yeah. You know, I sent him a gay thing on Instagram. It was this gay model, uh, doing a really sexy pose for Christmas to promote his only fans. And Emil just wrote back, what is this?
Starting point is 00:01:47 And I was like, well, I mean, what do you think it is? Anyway, I'm not, I'm not here to judge. I was trying to get to the bottom of it. Yeah. Wow. Anyway, we're doing our first mail opening. It's going to be exclusively on the Ben and Emile show.com. So get up there and sign up.
Starting point is 00:02:03 And now the real thing is, look, it's... Well, and we also... I want to remind everybody to go to the Stock Twits YouTube because we do our live show there. Every Friday, we do a great market recap. It's very, very fun. It's very stock market focused. Beyond that.
Starting point is 00:02:19 We are... What are we looking at here? December 3rd, it's finally upon us. It's the jolly season. It's the holly season. It's Christmas is here. And that means it's been... almost a year.
Starting point is 00:02:30 A year since we did that fateful trip to the grove. Yeah, and did a little... I was putting a small strip of paper on my tongue there. And we wanted to do a little fun... It took us a long time, but we finally made a t-shirt for it because people kept asking for a Vibri-I license plate t-shirt. So... You got your Ben and Emile show in the corner here,
Starting point is 00:02:55 and we got a very fun little Vibrinkie license plate. on the back. Yeah. So for those it, the brinkie? And we put it on a mug too, just because you guys we're not one to judge. It took us a year. We're not trying to capitalize off this thing, but enough people were like, I want a Vrinky shirt or a mug or some shit. So we went ahead and did it. Just for you.
Starting point is 00:03:21 And we really enjoy the fact that some guys' license plate is now on the merch. It was really hard to explain to some of the merch people and go, They're like, are you going to get in trouble for putting a guy's license to pay on a t-shirt? Let them sue us. No, it's made up. It's not real. It's fake. Oh, yeah, yeah.
Starting point is 00:03:35 Go get yourself a t-shirt or a mug. Yeah, yeah. Get your whole family a Christmas present. Guaranteed this thing stinks. We guarantee that every t-shirt arrives, P.U. Stinky Winky. That's also for everyone's requests. Okay. So, this episode is going to be very fun and informational.
Starting point is 00:03:56 and it's a very cozy episode. So saddle up, get those coffee mugs ready. Pour yourself some tea. Pour yourself some... Oh, pour yourself some... Yeah, tea, because we're going to spill it. Pour yourself some tea, because we're going to... I'm going to come over and I'm just going to...
Starting point is 00:04:12 Like a cat. Like a dickhead little cat. I'm just going to knock it over. You better have that squirt gun ready to squirt me in the snout. Because, yeah, we're talking about Enron, of course. Because it's back, baby. It's back. It's back.
Starting point is 00:04:25 we're just going to keep repeating all of our mistakes Let's bring back WorldCom Let's bring back 9-11 9-11 I don't think we want Osama bin Laden
Starting point is 00:04:44 You have an opportunity to do the funniest thing Let's get some Wiccans in here And resurrect and communicate with his fucking dead body or his soul or something. We really are, it really, we are stuck in the cycle, though. It's very funny because we've probably been doing obviously different iterations of the show
Starting point is 00:05:06 for about like three years. And it's, it really felt like when we started, it was that everything was popping off. Everything was going crazy. Everyone was on Robin Hood trading options. It was the hangover from the pandemic. crypto was going crazy I mean we got to laugh our way through all the NFT
Starting point is 00:05:27 NFT bullshit all of it and then it seemed like all of the air came out of that and we've got our very own Foley artist in the studio today which is nice that's us walking our way out of that market it feels so crazy
Starting point is 00:05:47 that it came back around again I really thought I really thought we were moving forward. Depends who you're talking to. I think people thought when the crypto stuff started, all the air started coming out of that market that we were moving backward. I think there's probably a good amount of people who think we're moving forward right now.
Starting point is 00:06:05 And, you know, as I was refreshing my memory on Enron and all the things that happened with it, there are a lot of connections to be drawn between then and now. And this happened over 25 years ago. It started in the 90s and ultimately crashed and burned in the early 2000s. 2001 was really by December 2001 this whole thing was I mean it was a it was a 2001 was a rough year well I mean we'll get into it but I genuinely think some of the timing of this is there's a reason why you did not see a larger push into white collar financial crimes a lot of this culminated in the fall of 2001 yeah do you know what happened later that you year in the fall of 2001 yeah yeah and so if if the FBI is going to be switching their focus from yeah these guys white collar crimes to terrorism everything the entire was that there was that one senator who had the the missing he had like a missing intern um and oh god and they were really
Starting point is 00:07:16 they were really grilling him uh yeah Gary Condit Gary Condit and Chandra Levy remember that No. You don't remember that? In 2001, Gary Condit was the subject of national news coverage after the disappearance of Shandra Levy, a young woman working as a Washington, D.C., intern originally from Condez's District. I will never forget being at my great-uncle's house in, oh, wow, she was a... Bend, holster that thing. My goodness. She was a very... She was a beautiful woman. Good for her.
Starting point is 00:07:48 You're looking... Oh, that's her high school senior portrait. Give me a break. Bring them in. Bring them in, boys. We got them. That is insane. This sucks. This sucks. Holy shit. This fucking sucks. I hate this, man. Oh, they discovered her body? I didn't know that. No, don't try to change the subject. That is Levy in her high school senior portrait in 1994. Everybody looked older back then. This fucking stinks. The picture flashed across the screen. And he went, I remember, I remember being at my great Ann and Uncle house in a city called Cambria. I'm seeing a picture of a high school-aged woman.
Starting point is 00:08:26 In 2001, I was like 14, 13. I remember we were watching, what's the Asian woman, Connie, Connie Chung. Connie Chung was interviewing Gary Condit, and I remember she was asking him some hard-hitting questions. And my uncle Don, who reminded me a lot of the grandpa on Hey Arnold, said, way to go. Way to go, Connie Chung. You fucking tell him. And, yeah, and then 9-11 happened.
Starting point is 00:08:55 And I remember specifically being in high school thinking, boy, I bet that guy Gary Condit is really pumped that this happened because nobody cares about his shit anymore. You were going, who's going to help find that pretty lady? She got found in 2002. What a bummer. Anyway. Oh, geez. What a fucker. All right.
Starting point is 00:09:15 So, so Enron, right? Yeah. Right, folks? And take that. Fucking, golly. you good you need a second yeah i'm fine i just hate that i was like well she's a good looking babe and then it was like it or whatever i said yeah no we all hate it everyone who experienced it hated it every you were just just shut up okay everybody shut up lay off me like kenneth lay
Starting point is 00:09:39 who was the founder and CEO of enron hey there everybody you know i don't know about you but sometimes when i'm asleep sleeping in bed. It gets all wonky with the bedroom temperature. You know, it's got a big impact on my sleep quality. This is true. Sometimes, you know, you wake up, sometimes you're too hot or you're too cold. Well, you know what? I got the perfect thing to recommend for you called Miracle Made. And they got some bed sheets that are inspired by NASA. That's how you know it's good. That's how you know it's good. They're using silver infused fabrics that are temperature regulating. So you can sleep at the perfect temperature all night long. Doesn't that sound cozy?
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Starting point is 00:12:00 bays to claim your free three-piece towel set and save over 40% off. Again, that's try miracle.com slash bays to treat yourself. Thank you, Miracle Maid, for sponsoring this episode. So this week, there was the at Enron on Twitter and on Instagram was back. And they basically, they put out like a, they put out an official press release out of Houston. Why don't we watch the, why don't we watch the video? Yes. Well, I don't know if it'll be copyrighted. Do you think it will be?
Starting point is 00:12:33 Do you think it will be? I don't think so. They just popped up with a, we're back. Can we talk? And everyone collectively rolled their eyes. guys. I feel like everybody collectively was pumped on it. There was a person on our subreddit. People are pumped on this? Yes, there was a person on our subreddit who even said, I'm so excited to like buy, where can I buy stock in this? Where can I buy? Yeah, but
Starting point is 00:12:56 didn't he pull it back. I have no idea. I didn't read that. I believe. Well, I think they might have commented thereafter. Go ahead and hit play. Let's watch it. He said, I was about to invest in Enron again. I was about to go full nut nut mode for Enron as they're back. But then I realized, I don't even know how to go about investing in them, and it's more than likely just a crypto scam that will be a big reveal, pumpy-dumpy in like six days. We'll talk about that. I don't think that that's what's going to happen. But, um, go and I, you know, okay, go ahead and hit play.
Starting point is 00:13:26 The world is changing faster than ever. Hmm. Can you feel it? Growth. Transformation. Rebirth. In the modern world, you must accept change is the only constant. learn how to adapt, forgive, to allow change to happen in the world and within ourselves.
Starting point is 00:13:54 We understand this better than anyone and be here to lead by example. Enron. I am Enron. I am Enron. We are Enron. Wow. Very, very, very good stuff. It feels very, you know, on the heels of the news about the onion buying Info Wars, it feels very, feels like it's in a very similar vein.
Starting point is 00:14:38 Yeah. That feels like a parody. Yeah. Well, and then when you. go to their website, you don't need to. It's too hard to dig into. But when you go to their website and you look through all their various disclaimers and stuff, it specifically points out parody. Yes. There's, that it is a parody. So, and they're not exactly hiding it either. But again, we'll, we'll get to that. But what we really want to talk about is there's a line and there's
Starting point is 00:15:05 their disclosure and stuff that says the information on the website is first amendment protected Parity represents performance art and is for entertainment purposes only. Yeah. So Enron, what was it? What happened there? You might have heard about it. Maybe it didn't. Enron, as a little teaser here, it was one of the biggest companies in stock market history.
Starting point is 00:15:30 The seventh biggest. At one point, it was the seventh biggest publicly traded company. it peaked on August 23rd of 2000. Which is so insane. Is there a way to look up what the seventh biggest company right now is? Of course. I'm going to take a guess that it is... Just do largest companies by market cap.
Starting point is 00:15:52 I'm going to guess... Let's see. Meta Apple, Google. I'm going to guess Google. Netflix or something. No. Oh, what did I say? I said Google. Google's number five. Meta's number seven.
Starting point is 00:16:05 Damn. Which is crazy. That's just for context. That's just for context. All of this would be like if meta all of a sudden. Fully collapsed. Came out that they were fully cooking their books, all this shit. Well, actually, I would compare it more to Tesla.
Starting point is 00:16:23 And I'll get to why that's the case. Well, I'm just going by the rank of the thing. And so keep in mind, that was back in 2000, the seventh largest company at the time, Enron. was valued at $70 billion. The seventh largest company today is valued at $1.5 trillion. Yeah. That is over 20 times bigger.
Starting point is 00:16:46 So, yeah, things have gotten a lot bigger. But so let's see. Where do we start with this? So Enron started basically in the late... 1985. It started in 1985 through a merger of two companies. One was an energy company called InterNorth. The other one was a utility company, Houston Natural Gas.
Starting point is 00:17:04 And it was Kenneth Lay. This guy, Kenneth Lay, no relation to the chip, the potato chip company. This guy, Kenneth Lay, he merges these two gas companies, calls it Enron, and he was a big deal because he did something that until he came along, nobody had ever thought to do, which was deregulate the electricity market and then natural gas, too. Wait, wait, we can pause it. Are you sure he's deregulating it? He was a big part of it, yeah. Yeah, yeah, okay. We don't need to pause it, yeah. he was a big he was a big proponent for it yes but yeah i don't think he's deregulating i think
Starting point is 00:17:41 that's no he helped lobby to get it deregulated yes i think the 80s and 90s are rife with this i think starting under even carter but obviously the reagan years all of this uh just amplified you know they're deregulating every industry and it is leading to a lot of bull runs and things people are like okay business is good and i think it's important to note that's a huge i think it's often left out that deregulating all the stuff directly led to. Yeah, it's the, it's the smaller domino that led to the bigger dominoes for sure. I would say it's like the biggest domino, but people don't focus on that. They never do when all this stuff goes wrong. They talk about like, oh, like corporate greed. Like, why do these people have to be like this? And it's like, why can't you
Starting point is 00:18:27 guys rein in? Like, this is what happens. Yeah. You guys remove all the guardrails and they go, oh, great, we can just turn our fucking company into casino. Let's let this fuck and shit roll, baby. And at the heart of all of this is... Without doing this, all of these things, all of these tricks they want to pull just would not work. The entire thing hinges on them deregulating this stuff and letting them play with the futures market and all this thing. So you might be asking, what is the big deal about deregulating the electricity market and just the natural gas market. Well, up until this point, it was a pretty stable thing. You had it, it was verticalized. You had the energy or the electricity suppliers, distributors, all that stuff under like one central
Starting point is 00:19:14 thing. Electricity prices were, for the most part, very stable, very reliable. There were no issues with like rolling blackouts, especially here in a place like California. And then Enron comes along and goes, whoa, whoa, whoa, this is anti-competitive. We should deregulate the shit out of this so that there can be a competitive marketplace for energy, right? And with that, created this entire new business that until that point had not existed, wherein Enron can create a marketplace. Become the market for trading utilities. For trading utilities.
Starting point is 00:19:52 So, like, as prices fluctuate, they can capitalize on it, but also, as we would later find out, they can kind of put their... manipulate it. Yeah, put their thumbs on the scales. Big time. So much so that they're telling states that do have enough energy that they actually don't and they have to buy it from out of state
Starting point is 00:20:10 and if you want to buy it from out of state, we're going to charge you five times as much. It's fucking crazy. It's bananas. So up until about 1998, the company was pretty solid, doing pretty well. They outperformed slightly.
Starting point is 00:20:22 They were, for all intents and purposes, a legitimate enterprise. But then from about 1998 to 2000, Enron starts showing absolutely insane growth in their finances with like revenues more than doubled from 40 billion in 1999 to 100 billion in 2000. And at the time it was touted as this new business model, right? It was just like, oh my God, Enron is, if you think about today how Tesla is seen as on the bleeding edge, creating these new things, these entire new, entirely new things with robots. and AI and robotaxies. It was essentially the same thing with Enron.
Starting point is 00:21:03 They had a lot of, they had a lot of like cutting edge ideas. Yes. Enron online. Did you see that? Have you ever seen the Enron online commercial? I don't think I saw that one. See if you can bring up the Enron online commercial. But I mean, yeah, you're talking, they're developing online trading platforms.
Starting point is 00:21:18 They had Enron broadband systems. Right. Oh, yeah. We'll cover that. So one of the biggest things is Kenneth Lay, as they're, they're starting this new venture with, um, trading, uh, energy prices. He hires this guy called, uh, was it Jeff Skilling? Yeah. Jeff Skilling. And, um, who's the other guy? Jeff Skilling and Andrew Fastow, excuse me. So Jeff Skilling gets, uh, Enron approved for what's called Mark to Market
Starting point is 00:21:52 accounting. And that's huge for them because Mark to Market accounting enabled them to do what they would go on to do, which is flub and bullshit their finances. Yeah, this was approved by the SEC. Yeah. So mark-to-market accounting just means like, hey, if I'm up, just to make it a corollary to the stock market, if I'm up today on paper, like $50,000, I can mark that as like, hey, I made $50,000. Even if tomorrow that stock that I still hold drops,
Starting point is 00:22:24 I still have it in my books that I made $50,000 that day. Yeah, it's a legitimate It's a legitimate system, but it's much more confusing And if you're not careful, it can lead to someone like Enron basically saying, hey, we basically decide what our profits are. It meant they were able to do insane things. If they would get a, someone came to them, they had a contract for $200 million over a decade, they'd be like, well, we got, we made $200 million this month. Yeah. And they were just breaking all the fucking rules.
Starting point is 00:23:00 And even if that contract got canceled, they'd say, well, we still made $200 million this month. Yeah. It's just, this entire thing is like the just insane accounting practice. Hey, guys. Isn't it funny how the people we love are often the hardest to shop for during the holidays? Raise your hand if you're having trouble finding stuff to get your family members. And we both have our hands up. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:23:27 Well, luckily, there's one gift that everyone on your list is sure to enjoy. An aura digital picture frame is named the number one by wirecutter. ORA frames make it incredibly easy to share unlimited photos and videos directly from your phone to the frame. It's a great little digital frame, right? Instead of just relegating yourself to one picture, like the old days, no. With ORA frames, you can have it show all. kinds. It's so cool. It feels like the future. We've both given them out to people. They love them. It's exactly right. It makes the incredible gift. Yeah. Incredible gift for mom,
Starting point is 00:24:04 grandma, grandpa, dad, brother, sister, aunt, uncle, cousin, son, daughter. Step family, entire step family. Entire step families. You know, uh, yeah, with my moms, you know, we programmed it with all kinds of cute, good, wholesome pictures of me and my brothers. And then you got to throw in a couple silly goofy ones in there for when she's there and all of a sudden. it pops up on there, and I can control it remotely. Yeah, that's the nice thing. Mix the classics. You got your graduation, you got your, you get your birthdays, you got, but then you do your goofy ones. Yeah, that's exactly right. So save on the perfect gift by visitingoraframes.com to get $35 off ORA's best
Starting point is 00:24:43 selling Carver Matt Frames by using our promo code Bayes at checkout. That's A-U-R-A-Frames.com. promo code Bayes, B-A-E-S. This deal is exclusive to our. listeners. So get yours now in time for the holidays. Terms and conditions apply. Yes. And one of my favorites was this guy. He was probably the one who made out the best. His name is Lou Pie. Oh, dude, he made out like a fucking bandit. And him and just like hanging out with strippers just going to strip clubs literally every night. And he, he ran one of the trading parts of the company. And so the story goes, he loves strippers. Right, because they spin off their own trading firm. They're not just Enron anymore. They're Enron capital and trade or
Starting point is 00:25:27 Enron finance. Yeah. And to be clear, they had all sorts of different little subsidiaries. And this guy, Lou Pye, was one of them. Just as a quick aside for how fucking crazy some of these people. I mean, these guys who were running the company, all these executives, were degenerates and gamblers. Well, I think that's the sad. Like, there was a real legitimate business here. Sure. You know, they, but they, It just, it's hard to even fathom. Like, all they wanted to do was just juice their revenue numbers, make it, make the stock go higher and higher higher.
Starting point is 00:26:03 There was other companies similar to them who are like, great, we're getting like two to three percent growth here, year over year. This is pretty good. We're growing. Yeah. They're trying to, like, go 200 percent, 300 percent. It's insane. And that's because most of the executives, most of their compensation was in the form
Starting point is 00:26:19 of stocks. And stock packages, stock. stock rewards. And sometimes that's, a lot of the times, that's tied to the performance of the stock. So if you can get the stock up, then you get that big fat package. It's, it just becomes this self-suck circle. And so, yeah, my favorite is this Lou Pie guy because he, uh, he, uh, he ran one of the trading parts and he loved strippers so much.
Starting point is 00:26:46 He ended up getting one pregnant and divorcing his wife. You actually don't have to love strippers that much. to get them pregnant. That's very true. That's very true. But he loves strippers. He made the most money out of everybody. I think he ended up cashing out.
Starting point is 00:27:00 His trading arm of the company ended up failing, and he just said, fuck it, I'm out. He sold like $350 million worth of stock or something. Moved to Colorado. Moved to Colorado. Peaceed out. Yeah, pieced out, divorced his wife, married his stripper girlfriend, who had his child. And yeah, like we said, all these guys had tons of stock. They would do everything they could to juice the numbers every quarter of.
Starting point is 00:27:22 to pump the stock so that they can just make themselves richer and richer. And they had, throughout all of this, they had incredibly good PR. They were all about being on the cutting, bleeding edge, having new ideas and being innovators and taking risks. Even though all of those ideas were failures. Yes. There was like, even the PR, they would do these articles that would be like, it's the most innovative company in the world.
Starting point is 00:27:48 And they point to all these things they're trying that were completely. Duds, like moving into India and trying to... Nobody had ever touched India before. It was too risky, not for Enron. But they failed. It was a complete fucking failure. Yeah, they did this India Dobhole power plant. They lost a billion dollars on it because, as it turns out, India at the time, couldn't
Starting point is 00:28:11 pay for the power. But the executives who were behind this India power plant, they got huge bonuses on it because the projected income for this power plant. plant was on the books at the time and it was like hey good job you guys did the thing that you set out to do we're going to reward you uh handsomely even though the project got abandoned and it lost a billion dollars yeah but because of tricky accounting perfect exactly that's exactly right man you do whatever you want you can do whatever the we made a 120 million dollars that day yeah yeah uh easy money easy come easy go so they would this culture within the company
Starting point is 00:28:45 made it so that it was not only encouraged but like in you were almost incentivized to outdo yourself and come up with new and exciting ideas. They even bet on the weather. They created, do you remember reading about that? They created a weather, that was that commercial, if you want to pull that up. They put out a fucking commercial for it. For the company, due to unpredictable weather,
Starting point is 00:29:18 earnings are down. Oh, man. But as everyone knows, you can't predict the weather. There's nothing you can do about it. Enron created a new market to protect revenue against unfavorable weather. Jesus Christ. So they literally created a market where you could bet on the weather. That just speaks to how totally unhinged, totally out of control it got.
Starting point is 00:29:51 They were pretty early on. on with the video on demand stuff though. Yes, that is one thing. Andron broadband systems worked with Blockbuster Video. Yeah, let's watch that commercial. They tried their hand. To develop the first video on demand. Yes. So they partnered with Blockbuster
Starting point is 00:30:06 to do streaming. But it went beyond that because, well, let's let the commercial speak for itself. From 7 p.m. to 7 a.m., we're paying for bandwidth that we are not using. Why? Why?
Starting point is 00:30:23 We're being for something we're not using? Why do we accept things the way they are? If we have a problem other people do too, there's our market. Why can't we sell the bandwidth to other companies? Make it a commodity. Like a pork belly. Enron has created the market to buy and sell bandwidth like a commodity. So at the time, in the late 90s, that was probably so fucking awesome.
Starting point is 00:30:48 Like, oh, shit, yeah, that does make sense. When everybody in America is asleep, we've got all this unused internet. Why don't we sell it like a fucking commodity? Which I do believe they lost like a hundred million dollars on this whole thing. It fucking flounder. Their partnership with Blockbuster to do a video on demand failed. The deal collapsed. But they booked $53 million in earnings.
Starting point is 00:31:12 Of course, baby. On it because of their account. It became like a cult. Like within the company, you should see some of these intercompany videos. they're out there. You don't have to just take my word for it or go watch some of them. But it's a lot like Scientology
Starting point is 00:31:27 where they've got the leaders of the company at the podium talking about how innovative they're being, talking about bragging about the share price. And it reminds me of like things today like Polymarket, where you can just bet on the outcome of anything. It wouldn't surprise me, actually,
Starting point is 00:31:46 if Polymarket within a year started making it so that you could bet on the weather. if not already I'm sure that anyone can actually create a wager for what they I hope so brother I'd bet on
Starting point is 00:31:59 I bet on this California just being fucking 72 degrees consistently through this winter what a lovely time okay all right sure laugh at me for that no fuck you
Starting point is 00:32:15 so then this also all the while I do want to point out I don't know maybe you're going to get to it, but the, you know, they're also using all these special purpose vehicles, these separate legal entities they're creating, which again, I've got that. A lot of companies are using in the right way. It's a completely normal practice, but they're just transferring all kinds of debt. Oh, yeah. I mean, every time they have debt, they're like,
Starting point is 00:32:40 I don't know, that's part of some entity that, sure, we're legally on the hook for, but it's not necessarily ours. That was Andy Fastow, who was the CFO. The issue with Enron was that they were losing money year after year after year, but somehow they would always show profits. And part of the way that they did that was Andy Fastow would set up companies, just dummy little companies, to offload toxic assets. So he sets up, he sets them, like, and he gave them all sorts of cute names. Jedi was one. Oh, my God. I like Chukho.
Starting point is 00:33:14 So he would set up these companies. they would buy the toxic assets from Enron, thereby booking Enron some revenues and profits. And then the assets are hidden and off the books. And then for himself, he skims a little bit off the top. Of course you got it. To the tune of it ended up being like $40 million. But he set up this big one called LJM and LJM. I think it was LGM one and two.
Starting point is 00:33:41 He set it up as a fund that would do business with Enron exclusively. He goes out. He pitches it to a ton of banks, dozens of banks. They all invested. I think they each invested like $2 million or something like that. Hey, everybody. It's time to thank one of our favorite sponsors of the show. It's Moomu.
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Starting point is 00:35:58 this whole thing, a lot of the banks are juicing this. Oh, everybody's taking a cut. It's hard to tell when you say, like, from 98 to 2001, I think it's even way before that. I think even in, you know, maybe 93, 94, it's basically insolvent and just getting pumped up with weird loans from bank
Starting point is 00:36:14 you can look back at all the stuff. J.P. Morgan's all over at City Bank. Everyone is just like... Everybody. Just, you know, the getting was so good when they fucking removed all the guardrails. It was a failure. That's what's...
Starting point is 00:36:27 It's so interesting because... And again, it's like a cult because everybody played their role in it. Everybody was either willfully ignorant or just didn't understand. But it's so much easier to understand than a cult. Why is everyone buying in? Because we're getting fucking rich as hell.
Starting point is 00:36:40 We're getting paid. The lawyers were collecting their fees. The bankers were collecting their fees. collecting their, uh, we're making money. The accounting firm, it was at the time, the oldest, most reputable accounting firm in the country, they ended up going under because of this, because everybody's getting their piece. Nobody wants to spoil. He's talking about Arthur Anderson. Yeah, nobody, that's the accounting firm. Nobody wanted to spoil it. Everybody wanted to just, hey, you know, as long as the music is still going, who am I to get up from? Why would you? There were a
Starting point is 00:37:07 couple of, there were a couple of whistleblowers, but the stories are so, nothing comes of it because they go, hey, you know, I kind of looked into the books and it's like, this shit does not make any fucking sense. And they'll go, oh, you know what? We're going to, we'll have the lawyers take a look at it. And then the lawyers just send an email and be like, oh, no, we looked into it. It's all fine. And then they go, oh, okay, you know, I'm still getting paid. Everything's good. And also, to be fair, like, just in the case of Andy Fasto doing this accounting trick of offloading toxic assets into these like just unrelated companies, the board of directors approved these things,
Starting point is 00:37:44 but it would later come out that the board of directors just didn't understand exactly what was going on here. So there was not only... It is very difficult. Yeah, there was a lot of negligence involved as well as greed.
Starting point is 00:37:57 It's purposefully confusing. Yes. I remember when I first started trying to understand and run, I was like, what actually happened? You're like, oh, it's so fucking boring. Yes. I think it's fascinating. But you're like, I'm learning about accounting
Starting point is 00:38:12 principles just to understand what the fuck is going on. Yeah. It's most white collar crime is very boring, but it's they're, they're doing legal and accounting tricks and they're just, you know. Just moving things around. Yeah. Moving things around, shuffling things on and off the books, booking
Starting point is 00:38:28 profits in questionable ways. And then while they're, and they're making so much money that people are asking legitimate questions and everyone's going, shut the fuck up. Yeah. And actually, so it all kind of, they they point out to this one conference call in April of 2001 when the CEO, Jeff Skilling, called an analyst an asshole.
Starting point is 00:38:49 Because that's how these conference calls work, right? Oh, dude, this is so funny. Yeah. Company reports their quarterly earnings, and then usually they do a conference call where analysts who are employed by investment banks get to ask questions of the CEO, of the CFO, about details regarding the quarter that they just posted.
Starting point is 00:39:07 and this one analyst asked Jeff Skilling, hey, can you give us a little bit more color on your income statement because it's very vague and opaque and hard to kind of discern how exactly are you guys making money because it's just, it doesn't make sense that you guys can just
Starting point is 00:39:23 keep fucking beating every single time to the extent that you're beating and Jeff Skilling calls him an asshole. You're the only financial institution that can't produce a balance sheet or a cash flow statement with their earnings. Well, you, you, you, well, thank you very much. We appreciate it.
Starting point is 00:39:42 Cattle. And it fully shakes up Wall Street. And again, it's really funny because nowadays, Elon Musk does this kind of shit fucking daily. He trashes people who doubt Tesla, be it analysts or other billionaires, whoever. And it doesn't, nobody fucking... There was another, there was an article, too, that in early 2001 that helped lead to the demise. because it was called, is Enron overpriced? Yes, Bethany McLean.
Starting point is 00:40:10 Yes, and it was this whole thing about how does it actually make money? No one knows. And there was some analysts who made a joke when she called. He said, well, let me know if you can figure it out because we don't know either, but why are we going to ask questions? Everything is good, right? Yes. It just has this, like describing what Enron does isn't easy because what it does is mind-numbingly complex.
Starting point is 00:40:30 CEO Jeff Skilling calls Enron a logistics company that ties together supply and demand for a given commodity and figures out what the most cost-effective way to transport that commodity to its destination. And Ron also uses derivatives. And it just goes into how, like, no one actually knows how it's making any money. Just this big, it turns out to be a Ponzi scheme. Toward the end, one of the things that they, one of the many tricks that they magically pulled out of their hat was the California energy market. And I remember living through this and not understanding what was going on because we had what we're called rolling blackout. back then. But they were
Starting point is 00:41:06 occurring in winter. And to be fair, I don't think they figured, I don't think at the time they knew what was going on outside of Enron. I think it wasn't until all this stuff came out that they were like, that's what was fucking happening. Yes. The governor at the time, Gray Davis, got blamed for it. And they ended up
Starting point is 00:41:23 actually recalling him. And that's when Arnold Schwarzenegger became the governor. But what they did in a nutshell was they turned the California energy market into a casino. They had these energy traders at Enron who could see the map of the power grid in the southwest, and they would just freely move around, export some power here, import it here, just shuffling the cards around, moving it all around, and manipulating the price of electricity,
Starting point is 00:41:59 manipulating the price of energy as they did it. So they would fuck with the energy prices by just moving it in and out of different points along the grid. They would even call power plants and be like, hey, we need you to shut down for a day, come up with whatever excuse you need, and the power plants would just be like, okay, sure, we'll call it routine. Yeah, because California was producing a surplus. They had way more energy than they needed. Exactly.
Starting point is 00:42:24 It was by a lot, by quite a bit. So not only were they doing this, but then because they knew that, hey, we're going to be manipulating these prices, we know then that the price of electricity for whatever time period is going to skyrocket because energy was a tradable market. They were then able to, if they were able to predict the future, essentially, of the price of electricity and capitalize on it because they could bet on it. So if they knew, oh, if we make this phone call of this power company, it's going to make power prices skyrocket 400%. Well, if you know that something's going to skyrocket 400% and you can place some trades before that happens, you can literally print money, and that is exactly what
Starting point is 00:43:08 they did. They made billions of dollars doing exactly that. And of course, when they got confronted with it, they were like, what? Hey, what? What are you talking about? We didn't do that? That's crazy. That would be unethical. No, no, no, no, no. Us and Ron, we, no, we did not. I did not hit her. It's not true. It's bullshit. I did not hit her. I did not. so yeah they they made huge money betting on the very movements that they were causing in the electricity market and it's just so fucking evil because these power outages these rolling blackouts caused car accidents that caused people to get stuck in elevators uh there were wildfires that have it was just a it led to a uh it led to a deficit in the california budget oh yeah we were over
Starting point is 00:43:59 by like getting overcharged for energy that's exactly right it's So insane. I got to go with an ababoo with that because, Jesus, H. So things start to collapse when more and more people start to sniff. They start to stink. Hey, this is a poopy diaper. No, Enron, imagine, is a toddler wearing a diaper. And everybody's talking about, man, your baby never poops.
Starting point is 00:44:26 It's just got this clean diaper. Well, you have to also picture this baby's making you a lot of money. This baby's making you a ton of money. And you never have to change his diaper. It's a baby model. It's on the, it's on all the, um... All the pamper's. All the pamper's.
Starting point is 00:44:39 Yeah. Things. It's doing commercials. And you go, this is the perfect baby. It literally never poops. It's the Gerber baby. It prints money. But importantly, it never shits its diaper.
Starting point is 00:44:49 And people are writing articles like, why does the baby's butt never stink? Yeah. This baby's butt never stinks. And everyone's like, shut the fuck up. Yeah. Shut the fuck up. Stop asking those questions. Especially Enron.
Starting point is 00:44:58 They're like, don't ask about our dipey. The baby is like, leave my diaper alone. Yeah. But little. do we know, that thing is filling up with poop. It is to the brim with poop and pee. The baby's ass is just covered in shit. Oh, the baby's
Starting point is 00:45:11 ass is raw. I mean, I feel bad for the mommy or daddy who's got to open that thing and change. It's not going to be your regular diaper change. This is going to be a full. But people start to smell that diaper from a distance. They're like, something's going on. There's no way this is too good to be true. One of them is this guy
Starting point is 00:45:27 named Jim Chanos. He actually was probably the first person to look at their annual their annual filings and start to realize okay something fucking this dipeat is really actually stinky and not so clean
Starting point is 00:45:41 funny enough Jim Chanos has been ringing the bell on Tesla for a long time he's been one of their biggest haters because he sees a lot of corollaries to Tesla
Starting point is 00:45:53 where it's like quarter after quarter they somehow pull the rabbit out of their hat with these... Come on you saw those robots well it's with because Tesla
Starting point is 00:46:02 and it's going to be cool It's kind of an open secret now that they do all kinds of accounting tricks. And then you've got the other red flags of multiple CFOs coming and going, all sorts of issues. And yet, and it's just like they can do no wrong. And the stock is at all time highs. And the CEO is bragging about how they just, it just something stinks. Hey, everybody. We want to share a little bit of an insight into what it's like to run and operate, start a small business.
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Starting point is 00:48:18 I mean, we've been talking about that forever. Yeah. And then so you have abruptly Jeff Skilling, the CEO, retires. So he wants to spend more time with his family. I can't spend more time with my kids. I mean, just get out of here. Yeah, which is very unusual because normally when a CEO retires
Starting point is 00:48:38 it is way, way planned out in advance. You've got a whole PR campaign lined up, ready to go. You've got a successor. He resigns. It shakes things up. Everybody's like, whoa, what the fuck is going on there? I want to go to more of my son's ball games.
Starting point is 00:48:51 Yeah, yeah, fucking right, dude. Nobody wants to do that. Especially if your kid sucks at baseball. And Kenneth Lay, the founder, takes over his CEO. And around that time, this woman, Sharon Watkins, she's an executive at Enron. She starts to realize, she works for this Fastow guy who's been doing all this, the CFO doing all this accounting tricks. She realizes that Fastow has been guaranteeing all of this sketchy shit that he's doing
Starting point is 00:49:23 with Enron stuff. So he's basically got all this toxic shit that he's backing up with the good, full faith, in credit of Enron's stock. But guess what happens when Enron stock starts to fail? Well, all that toxic shit that they're holding that's being backed up by Enron stock, it starts to become more and more susceptible to big stinky diaper. And that's exactly what happens. So Sharon recognizing this is like, oh my God, we are leveraged to the tits with our own
Starting point is 00:49:52 stock as collateral. The stock is failing. We're fucked. She sends an anonymous letter to Kenneth Lay. reporters, investors, analysts, everybody starts to catch on, and then the House of Cards is all but collapsed. And within months, they're filing for bankruptcy. And I think just a year, maybe a year, I can't remember, it's either a year or two after the stock peaked at a little over $90 a share who was trading for $0.12. They fucked so many people. And meanwhile, executives are cashing out.
Starting point is 00:50:25 Jeff Skilling is cashing out. Ken Lay is cashing out. They make taxing. Tens of millions, in some cases, hundreds of millions of dollars. Dude, Ken Lay is complaining about how much money he lost. Oh, my net worth actually dropped because it is. Yeah, it's just fucking insane. The workers were encouraged to max out their 401Ks. They were encouraged to buy as much stock as they could. There was a case, I remember, about a...
Starting point is 00:50:53 One of the energy companies that they absorbed was like Portland Energy Company or something. and they talked to this one lineman at the time at its peak he had like $380,000 worth of Enron stock in his 401k and by the time everything was over he held it to the very bottom $1,200.
Starting point is 00:51:13 Yeah, those people sued and I think they won a settlement but it was like, I think it ended up amounting to like $3,000 per person. Yeah. Oh yeah, well shareholders filed a $40 billion lawsuit for which they were eventually partially compensated $7.2 billion.
Starting point is 00:51:31 But that's what always happens in all these things. It's always shareholders who have rights and not the people that get. Like nothing comes of the California thing. Nothing comes of people who get their retirement savings wiped out who, you know, we're working for this company. It's always about shareholder protections. My favorite, all these things shake out.
Starting point is 00:51:48 My favorite quote from Jeff Skilling. There was an interview he did, I think, with PBS or someone in the early 90s, talking specifically about deregulating the energy market, he said, quote, we are the good guys, we are on the side of angels. And I just love that. Because these guys, I mean, that's the thing, is with these things, they were drinking their own Kool-Aid. And they really, it's like you start cheating and then it just becomes unstoppable. You have to just keep cheating and maintaining the illusion. And you just start to believe, I think these guys really did believe their own And they thought that they were doing good by their shareholders and by, you know, their employees by trying to keep it propped up for as long as possible.
Starting point is 00:52:36 But no, I think they're literal demons. And when we took the guardrails off, they just, they can't help themselves. They really can't help themselves. It's, um, it's such a shame. These things, these things are in place. Everything's humming along. But always there's this chatter of people being like, what's remove these regulations. you're making it so we can't all get rich.
Starting point is 00:52:57 Yeah. The marketplace. Why are you doing this? Yeah. And then they get it taken out and it just always leads to a fucking meltdown. Yeah. Greed. At its core.
Starting point is 00:53:09 I mean, you look at these guys and you go, if you were to go back into the 90s, you would think, oh, man, these are really smart businessmen. These are really reputable people. They are doing right by their shareholders, by their customers, by everybody. They know what they're doing. these were fucking gambling addict degenerates. And what scares me is that that's not something that just went away with the downfall of a company like this. It still persists today. These same kind of psychopaths are running other companies.
Starting point is 00:53:44 Michael Saylor might be, I mean, the way that he talks about micro strategy and just, oh, it's the same kind of financial engineering that you're like, okay, I guess I'm just too stupid to understand it. But I can just see it being the case where in a couple years, if that were to collapse, we'd be going, in hindsight, yeah, it was just one big Ponzi scheme. He's selling shares of his company to buy more Bitcoin. Well, what happens when Bitcoin drops, the whole thing drops out from underneath him? Or Tesla.
Starting point is 00:54:14 I mean, also, Bitcoin is, from people I respect very much, say it's just the world's biggest Ponzi scheme. Yes. There's nothing there. Yeah, it's, it is held up by the belief that everybody should own it, I guess. It's just a. It's held up by the belief that it's only going to go up. Yes.
Starting point is 00:54:34 You're only going to make money. Yeah. It's bananas. And it's really, yeah, it's really sad. It's really wild. I mean, and while all of this is unfolding, you know, they're repealing the Glass-Steagel Act leading to the financial meltdown of 2008. Yeah. They, it's, they're never going to learn.
Starting point is 00:54:53 It's not like that's been reinstated or anything. It's all just going to be, we're just going to keep doing this. And part of the reason why Enron was such a big deal is so many things failed. The lawyers failed their obligations. The accounting firm failed their obligations. The SEC failed their obligations. The analysts at these big banks failed because they were just believing everything that the company was saying. They were issuing strong buy ratings and giving the price.
Starting point is 00:55:23 ever higher target prices, it just was, it was just a colossal pool of greed that everybody was crazy. They're like, they're manic. And when, you know, it happened in the lead up to 2008, too, people trying to sound the alarm and people going, shut the fuck up. We're making money. What are you doing? So what if we're packaging shit and then repackaging it, sprinkling a little diary on top,
Starting point is 00:55:49 farting on it, selling that, and then selling a bunch of those? packaging that altogether into a diaper and sprinkling a little bit of poop on that and selling that. Just don't get left holding the bag. Yeah, just don't get left holding that bag of poop. Highly recommend that everybody go watch Margin Call. It is such a good movie. It's not about Enron. It's about, it's like the Lehman Brothers.
Starting point is 00:56:13 Yeah. Have you seen it? It's so good. It's a comfort movie of mine. A comfort movie. It's so stressful. It doesn't stress me out. Literally guys, like, locked in an office.
Starting point is 00:56:23 building going like, Jesus Christ, what the fuck are we going to do? It's so stressful. It's a comfort movie for me because I understand it. So, so, I mean, it's not that hard to understand. But I just, I like the dialogue. I like that's a good movie. It's the slow escalation of like, oh my God, what's going to happen? It's like, ugh, I don't know.
Starting point is 00:56:41 I really like it. I like it. Yeah. But comfort movie and liking it. Yeah. It's different. I guess it's because it's, the bad guys win. It's comforting.
Starting point is 00:56:50 They just completely. fuck the world over it's comforting in that uh i i i i'm like damn i'm so glad that ain't me at least i don't have to do that oh that's what we have different definitions of comfort movies well i mean i've got my my definition of comfort movie is all encompassing there's other movies that are like paddington too so been watched 12 years of slave and was like damn this is comforting thank god that is not me haven't seen it haven't seen it um But, Jesus Christ. So anyway, all that's to say is, we got a new Enron, right?
Starting point is 00:57:32 They're back. They are saying that they are going to, they've got a vision to save the global energy crisis, to solve the global energy crisis and that they are going, they are acknowledging and writing the company's wrongs. But so here's the thing. It's all these two guys, Connor, Gatos, and Peter. Mac and Doe, and they are the kids behind birds aren't real, if you guys know that. And I'm just going off of public information here.
Starting point is 00:58:02 If anybody remembers birds aren't real, it was this whole... Annoying thing from like 2017. Yeah. It was to play on the whole misinformation thing of like, they're not real, their surveillance thing. It went from like a fun infographic to a full-blown... Them getting interviewed on 60 minutes. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:58:23 So, like, wow, isn't that so clever? So all that's to say, they are the guys behind this, but it remains to be seen exactly what's going to happen with this. And if you click that, yeah, let's, but they've done a ton of trademarks, including, let's scroll down. They've done some crypto trademarks. Yeah. So there is probably going to be some crypto. They've got Enron the game. Enron, we're back, Ask Why, Enron Power, Mobile.
Starting point is 00:58:50 Enron cares. Enron nuclear. Nuclear we can trust. Nuclear you can trust. Fusion, energy, mining. I am Enron. Enron. I like this. Women of Enron. Men of Enron. Love that. Enron for everyone. Currently, all the website is, is they've just got a shop where you can buy like a $120 hoodie and like a, which I think is great.
Starting point is 00:59:13 Because I mean, hey, buddy, do in the spirit of the original. It is very much in the spirit of the original Enron. It could, it's, it's already got people asking, what does Enron do? Yeah. How does Enron make money? Yeah. So I really hope that this was informative for you guys there so that you can impress your friends with your thorough and comprehensive knowledge of what Enron was, the people behind it, and why it collapsed. And just, yeah.
Starting point is 00:59:45 Did you, I want to point out the, uh, What? The, oh, God, I love all their old commercials where the, the song was this, why, why? Because they're like, their theme was ask why. Why aren't we making money off of broadband we don't use? Why aren't we gambling on the fucking weather? Why aren't we milking every last dollar we can out of this system by creating and exploiting our very own shitty loopholes? I'm just waiting for my esteemed colleague.
Starting point is 01:00:21 I can't. I can't find it. But basically people pointed out that, I mean, of course, it feels silly to even do, but that they're using on their, they have quotes from employees. And they're like, well, these are obviously stock images. Oh, yeah, yeah. And then. On the new Enron site?
Starting point is 01:00:38 Yeah. And the Enron account got cheeky and replied to it of like, well, our sales manager is also a model. And we support his, we support his career outside of Enron. It's just like, oh, here it is. Someone wrote, can we talk about how you're straight up lying on your website and they've got... Are these comments on their Instagram? No, this is someone retweeted the, we're back, can we talk?
Starting point is 01:00:59 Oh, oh, oh, oh. And said, can we talk about how you're straight up lying on your website? And they've got Malik, director of sales. Like many of my peers in the Enron family, I was skeptical at first now, not only do it, whatever. But then they've got the results from Shuttershock.com of who Malik actually is. And then Enron shows up and says, Malik is a valued member of the Enron team and also has a successful modeling career which we support yeah it's uh i mean at the very least this is going to be entertaining i hope um with with what happens here but all that's to say i don't think
Starting point is 01:01:33 nron is actually back i think that um of course it's probably it's probably just a fun thing obviously because these guys are are behind it but speaking of um scammy things i wanted to share let's Let's talk a little bit about crypto. Real fast, this guy thinks that... Which Enron might be. I'm sure that they come out with a coin. By the way, quick prediction. I mean, they'd be stupid not to.
Starting point is 01:01:59 Why wouldn't you fucking rip everyone up? Yeah, quick prediction is... Who will be happy to get ripped off by Enron. That's the thing. Everybody... The biggest, one of the biggest scams of our lifetime, and people are, like, falling over themselves to invest in it because they think that before it falls, it'll first go up again.
Starting point is 01:02:16 hilarious yeah the we should restart leman brothers we should start uh just oh that'd be a great idea yeah it's bare sterns sure and we'll give everyone uh cheap shitty mortgages and we'll just we'll just run it all fucking back yeah let's run it all back baby but this time it'll all be oh it'll all be on the blockchain yeah and your mortgage is now a smart contract yeah dickhead coin it'll all be traded under dickhead coin uh speaking of coins though who really created bitcoin huh uh this this gentleman has a theory for who created Bitcoin? This is cool to find they find out. You know who's behind Bitcoin?
Starting point is 01:02:53 Putin. Holy shit. It's a Ruski conspiracy to fuck up the American economy in the world. It's a long-range plan. He started seven, eight years ago. He's going to see the demise of the Western financial world while he's still the head of Russia. And he's already hacked into the brains of all the morons.
Starting point is 01:03:12 You. I love that he's saying all this while wearing a glowy Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer sweater. This guy's a moron. No, absolutely did not. Putin did not create it. Did you remember the viral tweet about like the CIA creating Bitcoin and what Satoshi Nakamoto meant?
Starting point is 01:03:33 Oh, yeah. Because if you translated it or something, what was it? I don't know. Do you remember? It was like digital. It just reminded me because of that. Uh, uh, uh, well, it's really funny since we mentioned dog with ski mask coin. I know.
Starting point is 01:03:47 We've, so we mentioned this one coin called dog with ski mask. And I don't know how the hell the, the, the people behind the current. I guess they're saying that Satoshi Nakamoto means CIA. Satoshi knowledge, wisdom, intelligent, Nakamoto, central origin. It's like central intelligence. That's funny. Well, if the CIA created it, I mean, I don't know. what the goal was to I really don't but the the dog with ski mask people absolutely flooded our
Starting point is 01:04:18 shit um on on uh Twitter our mentions and I was like if you guys are gonna because they were like even the even the Ben and Emile show were talking about dog with ski mask and I'm like hey if you guys are going to shill for your thing at least you know give us some money give us well I said watch our shit but I'll take money uh I don't need a bunch of dog with A dog with ski mask. Dog with ski mask people. I think, oh, we didn't even talk about
Starting point is 01:04:50 Joe Biden pardoning Hunter Biden. That's funny. Is it crazy? I don't give a shit. Yeah, I kind of don't care either. I think there's people, it's annoying seeing people who were very upset about, like, Trump?
Starting point is 01:05:06 Yeah, being, you know, being like, this is actually cool because, like, Trump, blah, blah, blah. And he's just like, shut the fuck up. But I hope he celebrates with some crack. The whole Hunter thing seemed like, number one, I don't think Joe Biden should be doing this. He should be pardoning other people.
Starting point is 01:05:23 But the whole charges that he got caught on are things that no other person besides the president's son would be even hauled into lying on a gun application. It's just like, I just don't. Yeah, give me a fucking break, dude. uh let that man do crack with hookers i think he deserves and listen to fleet foxes i mean that's his thing he's been through a lot i would be charmed as hell by him i just i don't i won't smoke and i don't even know how to smoke crack man i bet you can figure it out i guess you like put it into the thing and hold it up and light the thing and smoke the crack wow i figured it out oh shit um i i wanted to make a prediction because hawk toa coin comes out on i think the tomorrow right
Starting point is 01:06:08 I think it's going to mark a temporary top Tomorrow for us yesterday for you As I was reading about this It's going to what? Mark a top You don't make it gay? No Things have tops, things have bottoms
Starting point is 01:06:24 That's just the way the world works That is true What goes down must come up That's true What's got a bottom Usually has a top Unless it's a coffee mug Any hoomst
Starting point is 01:06:38 I think that as I was reading about all this Enron shit, it just made me feel like, wow, this is really, this is really relevant to a lot of things today, like micro strategy, like Tesla, a lot of questionable financial engineering things going on that's too complicated to really understand. But, dude, of course, this feels like the great realization of deregulation. You have, it's do whatever you want. It feels like history is definitely rhyming. Not necessarily repeating, but rhyming for sure. And I do think, though, that as Bitcoin continues to struggle with breaking $100,000 per Bitcoin, this Hocktua thing might, it just feels like topping action, you know? Like, and also, plus you bought it. I mean, that's got to.
Starting point is 01:07:29 I did my duty. That's got to count for something. Bitcoin will never hit $100,000. Yeah. I bought it 98. It's never going to touch it. Uh, yeah, I don't think that that's, I don't think that that's going to happen, uh, anytime soon, especially with how much Michael Saylor is buying and it still isn't doing anything.
Starting point is 01:07:46 Because who's got more power? My rotten luck or Michael Saylor? There might be someone out there who is actively selling into him, thereby giving him a much bigger bag that he might end up having to hold for quite a while because, uh, yeah, I don't know. Sometimes when it peaks, it takes a long time for it to come back to that previous high. But that might not stop him from continuing to sell micro-strategy shares and buy more Bitcoin. I also would say, just wait until Donald Trump enters the White House and starts shaking stuff up. We'll see. We'll see. Crypto likes everything they're talking about. That is true.
Starting point is 01:08:30 Well, speaking of that, guys, we're going to have a lot to talk about tomorrow. there's a couple of companies that I'm going to cover on the weekend rip. So again, go to StockTwits on YouTube. We really appreciate your support there because it is our other show and we really like doing it for you. And anyway, what do you think about it, Ron? Do you like it? Do you want it? Oh, wait, we got to do a quick comment of the week.
Starting point is 01:08:55 Oh, almost forgot about the comment of the week. All right. What have we got here? We just got one. This is a good one. And it's a good question. I'm surprised it's taken this long to ask. This is from A-Dum 7-8-9.
Starting point is 01:09:10 Well, it says A-Dum to me. Yeah. 7-8-9. Do you think they wear pants under those tables? What do you think? What do you think? What do you think? Whatever, it's Schrodinger's table.
Starting point is 01:09:21 Whatever it is, but also isn't. We are and also aren't depending on whether or not you see it or something. Right? we're wearing pants or are we are we no no we're not how do you how do you picture it let us know how you picture it let us know how you picture it
Starting point is 01:09:42 thanks for tuning in this week guys we're heading over to the bonus and that's at benno meal show.com we got a lot of talk oh I got a really cute story about the dog we got a whole bunch of shit we're going to talk about the PhD lady who everybody's I got to talk about the PhD lady I'm so pissed
Starting point is 01:09:58 threatening her with things let's see what else is there Brad Pitt being an abusive man Kanye West's kids made a shitty music video And I'm real pissed off It really does It did piss me off I gotta not get pissed off All right we'll see you in there
Starting point is 01:10:13 We'll see in the bonus All right thanks for it's very bye bye

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