The Ben and Emil Show - PP Episode 10: The Weird Ways Foreign Money is Buying America

Episode Date: August 24, 2023

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I'm going to be honest with you. I'm going to tell you to just let it go. But my, you've noticed before, it's when there's AC going and fans blowing and stuff. My eyes water. You're not sleepy cry or you got to cry? Yeah, so that's what I'm saying. Don't tell me I'm crying. I'm not crying.

I mean, if it's wintertime. Why are you winking at me as you say this? For the audio listener, he's winking at me. If it's not wintertime, no. Like, you mean like right now? If it's wintertime in a cold locale. Uh-huh. It's just, I just stopped wiping tears away. You just let it flow.

The wind's blowing. There's no reason. You just let people know that you are a man who's comfortable in his emotions, in his own skin. No, if they ask, I say, it's the wind. I'm, I don't cry. That's what I say whenever I cry. It's the wind. I'm not crying. Actually, that's not true. I just let it flow. Do you? Yeah, of course. I'd tell you about that time that I was crying on the street in New York and I asked a lady for a hug and she

did not. She just ignored me. Why did you? Because I was just in a bad place and I was, I was like, damn, I need a fucking hug from anyone. And there was like nobody around. And I was just crying. And she, this woman walked, she looked like she was in her 50s. And I thought, okay, surely this lady

will give me a hug. And I just was like, hey, excuse me. I don't know this is really weird. I would never touch you. I got it. I need a, I just need a hug. She just looked at me and just kept on walking. I was like, okay. And I mean, that's what you do in New York.

If someone says, you say, I'm okay. Yeah, but then this fucking black guy, also probably in his 50s is walking by. And I did it to him and he goes, sure, young man. And he gave me a hug. And it was great. And I was laughing with him. I was like, thanks, dude. I just needed some human connection.

And it was awesome. Yeah. And then we kissed. And then I went on my merry way. I was healed. I was healed. Were you really? No.

But then I was, you know, I was. I was better, it was, it was great. Can you give me a neighborhood on this? Yeah, it was Williamsburg, man. Williamsburg, yeah. Circular like 2016. It was a little later than that, but yeah. 2017.

Trump's America. What the difference does it make? It's the same Williamsburg. I'm trying to think of, I'm trying to have context for the crying. That's what it's called when I send a text message. It's a context. Because my last name is Conch. Anyway, we got a banger of an episode for you guys today.

We have a very special episode. Why don't you tell them why we're covering this? People have probably been seeing sovereign wealth funds in the news all the time. They are snatching up all your favorite sports stars. They're trying to buy into your leagues. They might have bought your favorite league. And so we've been covering some of it. And we're like, what the fuck even is a sovereign wealth fund?

I think a lot of people don't even know. They probably hear about it in the news. they don't actually know what it is. We wanted to talk about what it is, but then we kept pulling on the thread and... Boy, did that sweater unravel. Truly. I kind of became the Charlie from It's Always Sunny meme, just with the fucking different threads leading to things on the cork board. Yeah.

It's all connected to... It's all connected, man. To Biden and Ukraine. No, it's not. No, what? I'm just... I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, cosplaying as a... as a Fox News correspondent.

But so it goes much deeper than just possibly ruining your favorite sports team. It's, um, it could be making your life a whole lot worse. Yeah, that's true. So I, contributing to just the financialization of everything. Right.

It's, it's, it's wild. Yeah, we got to subscribe to every fucking thing, including, and especially this YouTube channel, you haven't already.

You got to hit that button. Oh, hit the button. You got to hit that, that notification bell so that you get interrupted with whatever it is you're doing, it'll give you the signal to drop whatever that might be,

whether it's driving an ambulance. We want you to get a notification while you're in a meeting with your boss. And you say, shut the fuck up. I got to go. I got to watch the new episode. But so... Oh, and if you're on Spotify, please rate us five stars.

Yeah, all that. Of course, trying to juice those numbers. So you might be sitting there asking yourself, Ben, Emil, Ben. Yeah. Oh. What is? a sovereign wealth fund well let's pick it apart shall we sovereign sovereignty you're you're a nation you've got a bunch of money and so you're going to put that wealth to work right

right it's a it's a way for countries to invest their excess capital into uh into other investments right it's a state-owned pool of money invested into financial assets makes sense right But how is this different from a, you know, just a principal investor, regular private equity? Well, I think your quote from Matt Taibi pretty good here. Right, right. So, well, there was also two very good. If you want to check them out, there are two very good books that I was reading that touched on some of these things. One was Matt Taibi's book, Griftopia.

He's got a whole chapter on sovereign wealth funds. And then another one was the privatization of everything. If you guys want to check those out. But in Matt Taibi's Gryftopia, he had a, he did. described them as a giant state-owned pile of money that swims around the world in search of things to buy. But imagine the biggest and most aggressive hedge fund on Wall Street, then imagine that that same fund is 50 or 60 times bigger and outside the reach of the SEC or any other major regulatory authority. And you've got a pretty good idea of what a sovereign wealth fund is.

Oh, Babu. Yeah. Currently, the assets under management of the largest funds represent as much as twice the GDP of their respective countries. That's effing huge. And then do you know who the, you probably know, the biggest sovereign wealth fund? That would be Norway. That would be Norway. The Norges Bank Investment Management firm, which is currently just above $1.3 trillion in size. The next China Investment Corporation at 1.2.

And then you've got the Kuwait Investment Authority, the Abu Dhabi, investment authority, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, the government of Singapore, Temasek, National Council for Security, Social Security Fund, the public investment fund, which is a big one that we'll be talking about, Qatar, and it rounds it out with Dubai, Turkey, more China. So a lot of... Right, a lot of people... Middle East and Asian countries. A lot of people associated with Middle East, and so it's surprising Norway's is the biggest fund. You know, these funds started, the first one was it was in the 50s and it was the sovereign wealth fund um Kuwait

Kuwait yes the Kuwait Investment Authority authority using um it to invest excess oil revenues and then after that it was Kiribati Kiribati which is what because when I when I saw that I went what the fuck is Kiribati I was a bit surprised they got in the game so early as well a small island nation of Kiribati which is what do they What do they have to invest? It is, yeah, I'm a bit curious what kind of moves they're making. Yeah, if we got any listeners or viewers from the island nation of Kiribati, please. Please let us know if we should be looking deeper into Kiribati.

Sound off in the comments. But then, starting in the 70s, you started to see some of these really big players. Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, that popped up in 1976, Singapore's government investment corporation, 1981, and then Norway's government pension fund in 1990. And these things, they've been growing exponentially, right? So two decades ago, sovereign wealth funds, they held barely $1 trillion in assets. But that has grown more than $11.36 trillion at year end, 2022. That's from the Journal of International Business Policy.

And they really started taking off in 2004, 2005, when the price of oil started to push about $40 a barrel. Right. So there's a recurring theme here. Skyrocketed it after that. There's a connection to be drawn between natural resources and the skyrocketing, like, oil. And it's no coincidence that some of the top 10 funds are Middle East, countries in the Middle East that benefit from having a ton. And you don't want to just sit on all that excess revenue, right? What are you going to do with just a bunch of cash?

Right. So it's also important to note that sovereign wealth funds are, you know, unlike banks, They're not subject to any supernational regulations. They're merely required to follow the laws and regulations of their respective countries of origin. And these can vary greatly in terms of their depth and rigor. Okay? So they're not following the same standards as whatever countries they're operating and they're, you know, following them in their home countries. How else are they different?

So there's, I mean, we touched on how they're bigger orders of magnitude. bigger in some cases than your standard hedge fund or pension fund. And by the way, so like the United States doesn't have a sovereign wealth fund. There's been talks about creating one because we also have, I mean, we're a totally indebted nation, but we also do produce a ton of oil, for example, and there are natural resources that we exploit that the country could profit from and then invest the profits of. that's not to say that each individual state cannot and does not have sovereign wealth funds. For example, Alaska has its own sort of sovereign wealth fund that it puts to use.

But anyway... Yeah, we should get Alaska to start buying up some maybe English soccer teams. I'm talking... Like an Italian basketball team. No, no, no, no. You're thinking too far, my man. I'm thinking we've got to convince one of these oil barons that podcasts and media or the way to go. I would suck off Muhammad bin Salmon or whatever his name is to get some of that sweet, sweet oil money.

Look, this is specifically to MBS's nephew who may be watching. So hot. So hot, this guy. Please, if you're interested, maybe tell your uncle, you know, we need an injection of cash. I don't even think he needs to consult with the uncle. I think he's, we don't need that much. We need like $100 million. Yeah, don't even consult with the uncle.

You probably got some walking around money. yeah so they differ in in basically four key ways from from other investors in other funds first of all obviously their government backed um they typically don't because they're government backed secondly they don't need a lot of liquidity they don't need a lot of cash because they've got some pretty stable sources of funding they're coming from the coffers of of whether it's the natural resources or whatever industry the country is working with. So they can obviously put together a huge pool of that liquidity to have stable capital at the ready to deploy whatever they want. So third and kind of relating to that is they have way longer investment horizons than your typical hedge fund,

whose time horizon is somewhere around like five to seven years on average. Right, Norway, for example. 30-year investment window. Right. And fourth, their risk tolerance is typically a lot higher in kind because their investment horizon is so broad and long. Their risk tolerance is a lot higher, so they're going to probably be able to withstand market fluctuations more than your average hedge funds. So because of that, they've got these, they typically, they have mandates. these wealth funds. They have their individual goals, whether it can be to stabilize the domestic economy, it can be used to plug funding gaps for infrastructure, things like that, and also just

to kind of buttress the country of origin's investment capital from cyclical things that might affect the way that they make money. For example, that would be like oil-producing countries investing in electric vehicles. Right. Right. So there's a kind of symbiotic relationship between the country of origin where the money is originating from, obviously with these sovereign wealth funds, and then the country where those funds are deployed.

So we've already touched on how the country of origin benefits by diversifying their massive swaths of wealth because they're diversifying. Right. You're not just making your money on oil anymore. Now you've got investments in all different types of assets, all different types of industries. Yeah, it's beneficial to the society, to your culture, to the people, to everything. And some of these investments could pay off hugely. That's right. As it has. I mean, Oman is a great example. They established their portfolio and they've been, I think, just in the last, yeah, three years ago after it was launched. They reported last year over $5 billion of in their currency in dividends to state coffers,

which they then deployed into new investments. So it's beneficial to them, but it's also beneficial to the country that receives it. And the most obvious one is access to capital, access to liquidity that otherwise you might not be able to get, whether you're a company, whether you're a sports team, there's an argument to be made for it improving price efficiency too because you're adding that liquidity and you're increasing kind of competition between the sovereign wealth funds and the other funds that might be investing.

So as we've dove in more, we learned that it ain't all just sunshine and rainbows. There is a lot of money sloshing around and benefits It benefits some of the countries, whether they're receiving or giving the money. But we learned that these funds aren't just buying stakes in public companies, right, Amil? Why are these foreign countries buying up athletes and sports teams? What are they building an army? I hope so.

An army of Rinaldos to kick soccer balls at our heads? What are they up to? What else are they buying? and why are they going to make our shitty lives even shittier? I'd like to try to sell something to you. The world is the same, college of corporations. The world is a business. I have seen the face of God.

Oh, man. So, whoof, I think that if we're going to start diving into this, we should probably talk about the most controversial of all these sovereign wealth funds. The one people have probably been hearing about it the most is Saudi Arabia's public investment fund. What the fuck is Saudi Arabia's public investment fund, right? They got more than $700 billion in Saudi government money. I'm pretty sure $700 billion American is a lot of money. That's close to the entire defense budget.

Right up there, man. Sounds pretty good. God bless. God bless the Saudi public investment fund. That's right. So they've got, they're spread out all over the place. They were established in 1971, as we said, by Royal Decree. They're headquartered in Riyadh.

They've got offices in Hong Kong, London, New York, and they've been growing rapidly in recent years. That's exactly right. Trying to fund ambitious tourism, commercial undertakings. It calls gigaprojects. Okay. These gigaprojects are fucking insane. You love gigaproject.

I actually really, I go Gaga. You're trying to get your own giga project. No, I'm saying I go Gaga for Gigaproism. Gaga for Gigga. Yeah. I would like, they're insane. They're basically, think of, think of what a 10-year-old with a great imagination would invent for like, hey, 10-year-old, come up with a super city in the desert. Okay, I want to have a water slide.

And it's all one line. Yeah. It's mirrored. Yeah. No, no, that's just one of them. You're talking about the line city. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I'm talking about so much more than that.

They've got, they've got this one called Kedia, which is a multi-billion dollar just. It's just like an entertainment city. They want it to be bigger than Walt Disney World. And so do we, honestly. They want theme parks, water parks. My favorite one, though, is called The Rig, where they just, it's an oil rig theme park. Fuck, yes. Where they take.

Can we invest in the Saudi, the public investment fund? Because I want this thing. I want to fuck around with the rig. And, I mean, this is the only photo we've got of it. Just imagine if you took. a giant oil rig and like built a swimming pool on top of it and like water slides

that's the rig. Is there a Boston cop barreling down the water slide too fast? So these gigaprojects are very ambitious ways for Saudi Arabia to just piss away money and build giant super cities

in the middle of the most inhospitable climate on the planet increasingly in hospitable climate on the planet, the fucking desert. Right, but it's not, they're not pissing this way. They've got a vision, right? So this fund is led by,

its governor is called, excuse the pronunciations on some of these names. I'm sorry, I'm doing my best. Inshallah, we will pronounce these names. Yes, you're all Rumajan. He was a, you think that was good? That was good. Okay, he's a banker,

former chairman of Saudi Aramco. But people are saying the real power house behind this fund, none other than Mohammed bin Salman, MBS. But he's got, he's got a vision, Vision 2030, right? They're trying to wean Saudi Arabia off its dependency on its petro wealth and expand its economy into technology, health care, and other areas. I think they can do it. You think they can do it? Yeah. And so to do that, they want to do the power of golf. They want to create private sector jobs for the kingdom's large youth population while allowing new liberties for women. And so he set a goal of growing the public investment funds assets to

$3 trillion by 2030. Man, I got to get some of that oil money. You know, I got a buddy who's an architect. I would do anything for some oil money. True story. Did you hear about that house here in Los Angeles and Beverly Hills that that kid who just won the mega millions billion dollars or whatever bought? No.

It's like a $50 million home. My friend helped design it. It was the house that came with like 10 cars. You could get like 10 cars with it. The house that came with 10 cars. but it was funded by this ira i believe he was iraqi and he used to fuck with which rocky iraqi no yeah i know what you're thinking no not not that rocky you know me i think of a small italian man from philadelphia putting the whole city on his back no no no no this is iraqi like

saddam hussein oh okay i believe he used to be saddam hussein's bodyguard or something and long story short the man has so much money he doesn't know what to do with it so he literally just kind of gets bored and I think I'll hire an architect and build a mansion in Los Angeles because I think it's fun. It's fun for him. Hey, God bless you, buddy. I think they listed it for like $60 million and nobody was biting. So then instead of lowering it to like 50 or 40, they just cut it in half. Actually, instead of 60, we'll do 30.

And then this kid bought it. And good for him. But so what has the PIF invested in? They've got. Right. How are they accomplishing these laws? Uber. They bought into black stuff.

They bought into SoftBank. They bought into the English Premier League and Newcastle United. Right. So that's the one that people are really hearing about is the sports, all right? They have a big appetite for sports here. Their first investment was WWE. That's right. It's pretty cool if you ask me.

2018, when the Saudi Sports Ministry signed a 10-year contract to host world wrestling entertainment events, a deal worth a reported $100 million per year. That's right. 10% of the WWE's annual revenue. Yeah. And they gave. Oh, sorry. Go ahead.

Oh, they've been, they've been just on a tear. They gave a three-year, $25 million contract to MESC. They, they, they, no, they offered him one. They offered him one. Excuse me. But. Rinaldo, 600 million? Huge.

The, and most recently, as we know, the, the PGA tour merging with LIV, which is mired in controversy because it was all of a sudden. Which that started with, you know, they launched their own. right this so these were investments into existing things such as you know horse racing boxing tennis formula one events was there some sort of catalyst that kicked all this off this investing in sports what did something happen in 2018 was someone assassinated her chance was a journalist killed and dismembered right so ben is alluding to the fact that uh Saudi Arabia has been accused of maybe using

using their vision 2030 to have a vision for sports washing the Saudi Arabia's... Yeah, so people would take their vision off of their myriad human rights violations. Hey, why don't you try these glasses? Ooh, sports. Well, I almost forgot about what you guys did

to that journalist and also 9-11. Yes. Because they are... But Ben is talking about Jamal Khashoggi, journalist who a lot of people allege that MBS himself approved of dismembering and dis-authorizing it. Yeah.

They said it was rogue government agents who did it, but... Right. So they ramped up these investments, and it's not just that, right? There's, they have a history of human rights violations. Look, as do we... Women couldn't drive until very recently. Yes. What did Hillary Clinton say? Ladies, start your engines?

Remember she tweeted that? Did she really? I think she did. when Saudi Arabia just gave women the right to drive, Hillary Clinton said, ladies, start your engines. I love her. Yeah. Just the beautiful.

I think she tweeted it. She didn't say it, but in my head she said it. But you can picture her saying it. And that's all that matters. But yeah, and look, the sports thing is not limited to Saudi. That's, you know, in the past decade, smaller Gulf states have also made big sports investments drawing controversy. Right.

China hosting the Olympics was something to... Russia hosting the Winter Olympics after Emirati and Qatari royal families buying up professional soccer teams. Qatar hosted FIFA World Cup in 2010. I believe it's pronounced Cutter. Is it really? I think. Okay, Cutter.

Come to correct me, I think. It's fine. This episode will be mired in mispronunciations. Yeah, because it's hard. It is hard, and we are stupid. So yeah, they're seeking to, you know, they're trying to change the conversation about about what people are saying when you, when you think about these countries, right? What you want to be thinking, hey, look, it's a very similar playbook to, you know,

what do all these, what do all these big companies and families do in the U.S., right? It's, remember what Sackler was doing? Hey, we don't want to be, we don't want to be remembered for people dying on their own puke because they took too much oxycontin. Jesus Christ. We want to be the art family. We want to be the fucking... Or Leon Black, the Epstein guy

who was fucking diddling kids. Oh, don't worry about it. I'm going to donate, I'm going to have a wing at the MoMA. Sure, but I think that... Yeah, yeah. But yeah, so these people are all trying to change the conversation around themselves

and these Middle Eastern countries are no different. And it freaks out a lot of... It freaks out a lot of senators and people in the government. So when... It also freaks. out. Some people, they've tried to invest with people and it's been given back. I think

WM.E was given $400 million. His brother is William Morrison Devere. Yeah, but I can't. His brother's the mayor of Chicago. Emmanuel. Ram Emanuel? Yeah, Rahm Emanuel.

Well, you know who didn't have a problem taking Saudi Arabian money? A lot of people. Stephen Mnuchin, former United States treasurer, Secretary of the Treasury. and Jared Kushner, one Jared Kushner, had no problem taking a few billion dollars or a few hundred million. Basically, both Mnuchin and Kushner, right after the Trump administration ended, took on some money for their own private equity firms. Good for them. WME returned 400 million dollars.

That's right, right after Kishogi. And so there's not a whole lot that can be done, right? Because they're not really breaking any laws by investing in these things. So Senator Richard Blumenthal, who was leading a probe on the PGA tour and LIV golf merger, he basically was just saying that the hearings were just about how, quote, a brutal repressing regime, repressive regime can buy influence, indeed even take over a cherished American institution simply to cleanse its public image. Bitch, that's your capitalism at work.

You don't want it to happen? Put some laws on the books. I don't know what to tell you, man. Yeah, it's fucked up. It's actually a cosmic joke that the same, it would only be more sweet if Saudi Arabia, the country that famously now funded the 9-11 attackers, if they bought a stake in Major League Baseball or Apple Pie or something like that. Or if they bought a stake in the Freedom Tower. Oh, yes, some shit like that. One world.

Oh, my God. It's basically akin to that. Jesus, H. Christ. Which honestly, do it. It would be funny. So there's all sorts of problems, right? Because they're accused of sport washing, but also at the same time, we're a progressive society. We believe that these people can change.

Countries can change. And if you're, Muhammad, if you're MBS, you're thinking, can you guys just, like, forget about it? And can we move on? Can we get past it? Look, we know we gave women the right to drive. We fucked up killing Jamal Khashoggi. We fucked up with 9-11. Some of the protesters who were protesting to get the ability to drive.

But that's behind us now. Yeah. Well, you know what's in front of us? Vision 2030. And that includes a fucking brand new golf tour, baby. Yeah, we love the golf tour. That's probably the biggest one that people have been hearing about right now, right? It started previously when first it was just live and they were luring all of our biggest stars away.

most notably, Phil Mickelson, with a $200 million payout become the frontmen of this this new league. And people were, people were like, they were pissed at people who were taking these payouts, right? Bigger stars like Tiger Woods had harsh words for the new league and for Greg Norman, who became the Western face of Liv as its commissioner. With Liv poaching some of its most widely known players from the established PGA tour, the PGA banished them. And then I love this.

We don't know exactly how the merger happened in a hush, hush, in hush-hush meetings, presumably sweetened by promised riches. That's right. God, I love those promised riches. Oh, man, I would kill for some promised riches. But then these people in Saudi Arabia were stoked. There's this guy, Prince Talal al-Faisal, said, I'm not going to lie. This is a moment that a lot of us are relishing.

And I can't blame them. I mean, and also, it's funny because this whole thing, being so soaked steeped in controversy really gives sovereign wealth funds a bad name when as we're looking it's like yeah there's there's benefits to be had but as we will see there are some major major pitfalls and again it's kind of america uh shooting ourselves in the foot when we we fuck around and we do indeed find out yeah well it's also making a lot of people look bad so for example the the pGA tour's commissioner was previously saying that it's you know it's never going to happen. No fucking way, he said. These people are, they're, they're scumbags. I can't

believe they would leave for money, right? And then just, you know, promised riches, that whole thing. And then he, so he just said, I recognize that people are going to call me a hypocrite, but circumstances do change. He said, as he was falling over to, to carry his bags of money. Yeah. Look, circumstances change. Circumstances change, folks. Do you think that that's what happened? You think that they just offered him insane amounts of money? Yes, dude. I mean, I mean, as we'll get to some of these other sports stars. I mean, you're like, okay, and so look, that's the thing, right? A lot of these sports had rules in place that made sure these things didn't happen, right? But now those are changing. The NBA, for one, it wasn't, you weren't allowed to have

foreign governments, foreign funds buying into the league. Now, why did they, why did they not want that? Why did they not want that? I don't know. I mean, I would imagine that like sports fans have very, I'm not, like, a huge sports fan. So I'm the, I'm the worst person to comment on this, but I would imagine people feel very connected to their sports teams, whether it's like geographically and just, it's like an emotional thing for people. And I think it sucks when your sports team just becomes, you know, an asset on a balance sheet for people. And there are people who don't care about the thing. People want, um, people want owners of teams who they can trust. And they're like, they're going to lead us into a new era. George Steinberg. Remember

Everyone loved George Steinbrenner, the Yankees, he was the boss. We could trust George Steinbrenner to do the right thing for the team. Yeah, so perhaps it was something, it was a sort of fail-safe against turning sports teams, transforming them from things that are beloved institutions and making them into something that's just another ass, like you said at the top, it's just another way of financial, financialization of fucking everything. Right. Nothing is holy anymore.

Nothing is sacred. Not even our precious golden state warriors. Right. And you're seeing that, I mean, well, so, okay, so just not to get ahead of ourselves. So this was in December of 2022, the board of governors of the MBA basically made a rule change that allowed for sovereign wealth funds and other institutional funds to buy stakes in teams. Awesome. Which is great for pretty much just the owners and the athletes.

because now you're probably going to see the value of your team rise huge. Right, probably bad for fans. But so it's still limited under the new policy a foreign fund can buy up to 20% of a team. They can't just, they can't just come in. And this first started when, remember when the Brooklyn Nets was owned by that Russian man? Mikhail. Mikhail Prokulov. Yes.

I want to buy Brooklyn Nets. You sell me, yes? Okay. We make deal. So they are allowing it, but they want to make sure they are restricted to, like, passive ownership. They can't just come in and, like, buy up the whole team, make all these changes, that kind of thing. Right. And, but yeah, you're seeing, you know, these teams and stuff are so astronomically priced that you're limiting the amount of buyers.

If you want to change hands with these things, I mean, when you're talking about- They're a very illiquid asset. When you're talking about something that's worth $6 billion, $7 billion, you know, there's not a ton of of people who are going to be able to buy it. I mean, you're saying it with, what is the new name of the Washington Redskins? The Washington generals. I think Jeff Bezos is looking into buying up the team. It's a very small pool of people who can handle buying one of these teams. And so it's already happening, right? So you had Cutter's sovereign wealth fund purchased the 5% stake in monumental sports and entertainment, giving it stakes in the NBA's

Washington Wizards, WMBA's Washington Mystics, and the NHL's Washington Capitals. That's surprising that they would buy into a WNBA team. Why? Because there's no, I mean, they've tried and tried and tried and tried. Oh, well, so, no, no, no. They didn't buy into these things individual. They bought into monumental sports entertainment, which is, it's like a conglomerate that owns these.

Right. I can't imagine that they think. So it's already going to get confusing, right? One conglomerates owns it. another giant fund is buying into that. Right. There are funds on top of funds. Right. It's funds all the way down.

And it's not just golf. It's not just Formula One. It's not just the NBA. It's tennis now, too. Don't say it. I know. It's probably the best candidate for a rival tour. I know.

That's what they're saying. It's got LIV. It's very similar. It's going to happen. You don't have to deal with a bunch of teams and you can just entice players. Individuals. You can offer them massive amounts. you know, Greek, Greek player, Stephanos, Tizi Paz, already been playing in Saudi Arabia.

We'll, uh, we'll see. I mean, how do you fucking turn? That's the thing. They make these deals where it's like, why the fuck not? Yeah, Rinaldo. That I got a fucking, $200, $200 million a year. They offered Mbopi. Is that how you say it?

Mbapa. I'm glad you said it. Mbapa. Mbapap. Someone is screaming at us. This is one of like the most famous. Saudi Arabia. The Saudi club Al-Hilal proposed a world record 332 million transfer fee to bring over Mbapi from Paris Saint-Germain, plus they pay him a one-year salary worth $776 million.

These guys, this is what's funny about these guys. They seem to have so much money. They don't have a concept of how much money is worth anymore. Well, that's the thing is no one going like, well, surely we could entice him with, I don't know, 400 million. Let's start at a hundred. Let's start at 20% more than what he made last year. They're naming numbers. How about $776 million, sir, to start?

They're doing numbers that if they were to just go to him and be like, we'll pay you whatever you want. He'd be like, oh, my God, I'm going to make like a crazy. Yeah, 200 million dollars. And they're like, oh. You can you rip up the check for three times as much? Jesus, H. God. Right. And someone had from front office sports, like, people,

have been breaking down how ridiculous these offers are, right? So for this one year, one year's salary, that's more than LeBron James's all-time NBA earnings, which is $531 million. It's more than Patrick Mahomes' deal through 30. Wait, what did you call him? Mahomas? I don't think it's Mahomas, dude. I think it's Mahomes. I'll take it from here. The entire value of the Arizona coyotes, the entire value of the New York Mets's entire payroll. You guys get the gist. Tom Brady's entire NFL earnings. Entire NFL earnings. These are just insane, copious amounts of oil money.

But so, okay, enough about sports. We get it. You guys did 9-11. You guys, you cut up Jamal Khashoggi, you didn't let women drive. You've got a bad record on human rights. And what's the best way to probably get rid of it to paint yourselves in a new light? Show up and go, hey, buddy, hello, I'm a fellow sports lover. I would like to invest in some sports.

and bring us into the national stage and fund these ambitious projects. We've got to invest our money somewhere. We've got a plan for the future. You're getting people's eyeballs. You're boosting tourism. Yeah, you're doing everything. And it's like, okay, I get it. You're not going to just be isolated from the world.

But surely. In preparation for this? What? Decks in the city, too. Oh, yeah, how they went to Dubai? They go to Abu Dhabi. Abu Dhabi. Damn, dude.

It is very funny. It feels like a commercial. They probably took a payout for sure. I honestly think it might have been some investment. Of course it was. Absolutely it was. It's like the whole. They could throw $100 million at that and be like, bring me the sex in the city women.

Bring them to me. And they were there. Sarah Jessica Parker in her horse face shows up and goes, yeah. It's like a whole. Listen, you put a sugar cube in front of me. I'm going to lap it up. Yeah, just a complete ad for Abu Dhabi tourism. But so it's one of those things where on the face of it, it feels nefarious.

But then you're like, well, I guess they're not really doing anything wrong. Wrong. They also do some sketchy things. They do some really sketchy things, in fact. And we can point to the city of Chicago. So this is the one that really fucked me up. Yeah. Because you love Chicago.

You famously, you love Chicago's parking meters. No, no, no. What do I really love? I love public goods. Yes. I'm an absolute freak for this stuff. He is an absolute freak. That's kind of how a lot of this started was.

I was reading the book, the privatization of everything, and they tell this story about how the Chicago parking meters got sold off private equity, which eventually ended up with an ownership stake from a sovereign wealth fund. And I honestly could not believe it.

I was like, why have I not fucking heard of this? started looking into other things. That's when someone recommended me, Matt Taibi's book, because they were like, oh, there's a chapter in it about that. Right. The story's fucking wild. So basically it starts around the housing crisis. You got energy prices skyrocketing.

You got people tightening their belts. State municipal executives start to put their infrastructure assets up for sale because everything is for sale these days. Well, they're up to lease, but it essentially ends up becoming like a sale because they're proposing these things for 75 years. years, 99 years. Standard issue stuff. Standard contracts. You want to buy in 75 years because we'll all be dead and won't have to answer for anything in that time anyway. And so the Chicago parking meter is not the only one of these that happens. It's just the most insidgregious

example of something like this. Right. And it's it's best if we just go through a timeline of just how fucked up this has happened. Right. So in 2008, we all remember what a glorious time that was. It was awesome. I mean, that's what it's, it's funny. bad happened. There's a very funny line in Sex and the City. They all, it's 2010. They're all complaining at some, you know, lovely restaurant and Samantha gets this opportunity

to go to Abu Dhabi and she wants to bring the girls and they're all like Abu Dhabi, are we going to find it? Abidobie. And she's like, enough. You're coming. I'm sick of this shitty economy and this shitty blah blah. And they're like, we're fleeing this for it to be around wealth again. Anyway, so we're all having

a tough time. Yes. But Not the gals. But not as hard as those gals who really deserved a vacation in Abu Dhabi. All right. So they've got plummeting revenues throughout the city, no end in sight. And then a group of private investors led by Morgan Stanley came in with $1.16 billion. And all Chicago had to do was give up control to its 36,000 parking meters. And look, they.

were in need of modernization anyway, right? So for 75 years, they get a huge cash injection, right? And so it seemed like a decision was made without public involvement or much scrutiny of this contract, this major contract, right? It's like all of a sudden, cool. Now Morgan Stanley's taken over for 75 years, all 36,000 of these parking meters. Surely there's going to be no strings attached. Right. And so Matt Taibi ends up talking to some of these aldermans who voted no on this. What is an alderman? It's a city council member. Right.

So Chicago's city council members were aldermans had to vote on this proposal to make it go through. And so one of them, Ray Colon, from the 35th, was in, he says, I was in my office. Wait, wait, wait. I got to do his voice. Because we got to put color on this man oh you got a chicago stank for me i was in my office on a wait how does it a fucking chicago chicago oh yeah there was in my office on a monday when i got a call that there

was going to be a special meeting of the finance committee i didn't know what it was about this happened oh wait that's not part of it so this is on this is just this is just this happened what it was about this happened on december 1st 2000 yeah okay so if you're keeping track you get a call and this this becomes the first time that the city council was even notified from Mayor Richard Daly. December 1st. That they were in, they were, they were doing this deal with Morgan Stanley to at least the Chicago. Yeah.

Okay. And basically by December 4th, three days later, the finance committee meets, they review the deal. And 10 minutes into the meeting, some of the aldermen begin to protest. They're going, hey, we haven't seen copies of this agreement. What are you guys thinking? What's going on here? So they put together a bunch of copies really fast, a short, a little document giving like no details. and so here's Alderman Robert Fioretti for rushing.

I'm just going to do the same fucking voice. Should I? Sure. Hey, we're rushing through this thing. Why? We've been working on this for the better part of a year. So we haven't been hasty. You had a year, but you're giving us two days, says Alderman, Ike Carruthers.

His name is Ike Carruthers. They've basically, they've been talking about this deal for like a, year, but then they're just pushing it through. This is from the Chicago Reader. Inexplicably. They've been watching, you know, reporting on this deal going through. Yes. And so now, yeah, they're pissed because these guys who were part of the deal was saying,

well, no, we've been putting this together for a deal. We know what we're doing. Get out of our way. And so the chief financial officer, Paul Volpe, says that the reason the deal has to be rushed is that a sudden change in interest. rates could cost the city later on. Oh, that makes sense. We got to rush this fucking thing. But a lot of people are wondering if maybe has no business being a chief financial officer because at this time, you know, we're in the wake of a financial crash, right? Interest rates

are at rock bottom, meaning the city stood only to lose money by hurrying. Higher interest rates would have allowed them to use the interest on the lump payment to fill their budget gaps rather than the principle of the payment itself. Okay? What ends up happening? The measure passes. 40 to 5. Interesting. And none of the aldermen who voted yes on the deal responded to Matt Taibi when he reached out to try to speak to them.

Interesting. Because it all got bucked. Right. And so, again, what does this have to do with sovereign wealth funds, right? Because all we know at this point is Morgan Stanley's Infrastructure Desk. Morgan Stanley's Infrastructure Fund put this all together, right? They were the face of the deal. They were raising a ton of money to get this deal done.

and they're going around asking people with buttloads of money to invest. Yeah. And who has buttloads of money? Abu Dhabi does. The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority specifically has buttloads of money. So they put their presentation up to... So let's recap. Morgan Stanley now owns for $1.16 billion, a 75-year contract to own 36,000 parking meters in Chicago.

They now got it. And now they're going around and trying to pimpe it up. They're trying to flip it. Before they even do that, they're trying to put the funds together. They're not funding this whole thing, right? So they're getting people, they're trying to get investors in the original deal. All right? So at first, it's Morgan Stanley Infrastructure Partners.

They've got, they've got teacher retirement system of Texas, another fund. They've got Victorian funds management corporation of Australia. They got Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group. So they got all kinds of funds helping to put this deal. together, right? They put together the $1.6 billion needed to win the bid. All right. And so, and at that point they did. They took the pitch to the Abu Dhabi investment authority. They owned about 6%. Right. They were like, we're good for a 6% stake. We like this whole parking meter scheme you got going in. We love it. People got to park somewhere. They got to park

somewhere, right? So they put, go ahead. That's the most embarrassing thing that's ever happened. You keep that. That's funny. So everything's looking all good, sort of, when two months later, Morgan Stanley wants to reduce their exposure. They want to divest a little bit. And they seek out a minority investor, D-Side investments to accept 49.9% stake ownership. Sounds good to me, right? Why not?

Yeah, but who owns D-Side investments? Tannadise investments. Okay, that sounds fine. Who owns Tandadise investments, you ask? Oh, the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority. So basically, they found a, Morgan Stanley found of a bunch of investors, including themselves. Then they bailed out to make way for foreign-owned investments groups. So now Chicago just got screwed.

Their parking meters take in $138.7 million a year. In 2019, that's how much they took in. So all told, private investors have earned $1.6 billion so far. That's $500 million more than their initial $1.16 billion investment. So they got absolutely fucked. Yeah. With 60 years worth of parking meter revenue. They've already made back their investment.

Yes. And they've got 60 more fucking years. Oh my God. So then Chicago's Inspector General later finds out that the city stood to lose nearly a billion dollars over the course of the contract by taking a billion dollars up front. But that massive revenue shortfall was only part of what Chicago lost because when investors got control over the meters, they also gained control over public space and even future development. Who the fuck put this deal together? Morgan Stanley, baby. Oh, baby.

Morgan Stanley Infrastructure Fund. Oh, my God bless. So when the investors put the contract together, they insisted that Chicago, quote, true up any loss caused by the cities changing with the times. So basically, hey, also, we're not only fucking you here, but if anything changes, you're going to have to fucking pay up, which is, because things change, right? You got if a bus lane or a bike lane or a housing development or a street fair or tree planning or any other initiative is perceived,

is even just perceived to reduce parking revenue, the city must pay. Right. So these are called compensation events, right? So anytime one of these happens, it kicks in, okay? So events include street fairs, removals for improvements, temporary closures for parking lanes, road work. Morgan Stanley has been merciless in squeezing the city for alleged loss of revenue.

They won $60 million in a court battle over closed streets. It didn't end there. Compensation events total $21.7 million in 2017 and $20 million in 2018. Concerns over triggering a compensation event now factor into every effort to alleviate traffic or introduce new and cleaner modes of transit. The contract has an outside role in driving policy to reduce pollution and greenhouse gases, among other things. Oh, my God.

Often at odds with what is best for the city. So Chicago apparently had a vision for, they had their own kind of 2030 thing, but it was way more modest, right? It was, it was for 20 bus rapid transit lines. They're attractive and expensive options for congested streets, but they involve closing the curb lane. And after the parking meter deal went into effect, the city had to either provide Morgan Stanley with new meters in a new location when it introduced to BRT or pay for lost revenue for the last. life of the least. So basically, the city of Chicago fucked themselves for all sorts of long-term plans. They had plans for 645 bike lanes and cycle tracks by 2020, but these didn't involve moving

parking meters, removing parking spaces at the end of the block for a longer turn lane, and taking some parking offline for construction. So now they're tied up in red tape. It's just... I mean, even, and just so small things, too, right? They talk about even just like changing schedules of parking. You know, so for example, when the new ownership told Alderman Scott Wagesback that it wanted to change the meter schedule from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Saturday to 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. 7 days a week. The alderman balked and said he'd rather keep the old schedule, at least for 270 of his meters. Chicago parking meters then informed him that if he wanted to do that, he would have to pay the company $608,000 over three years. Really beautiful stuff. so obviously who's at fault here a lot of people right you got morgan stanley offering them a

criminally bad deal and then chicago for green lighting and approving and signing a criminally bad deal which is like criminally negligent it's unclear what happened exactly right when when we were talking about this you were like why would chicago ever agree to this right and and they pretty overwhelmingly agree to it right right and they pretty overwhelmingly agree to it right We're talking about 40 to 5 vote. And, I mean, they didn't want to, the aldermen who voted yes did not want to talk about why they voted yes. Right. And so I was saying we're left to speculate on why someone would vote that way.

But it does seem like these funds were willing to throw around pretty large amounts of money. I actually don't even think it's that in a fair. I don't think that these aldermen took bribes is what you're saying. Because if they knew the extent to how much they'd be fucking over the city of Chicago, they would, I mean, if I, if you were to offer me a bribe to fuck over the city of Los Angeles, first of all, I would do it because fuck the city of Los Angeles for so many reasons. It's also hard to fuck this city over. Oh, yeah.

They, they, this city is so fucked that they would make it difficult even for you to fuck it over. Right. Like, it would somehow end up improving it. Yes. No, and not even improving it. It would somehow benefit them. They'd be like, well, you tried to fuck us, but we got more revenue somehow that we're going to fucking waste on other shit.

but like what if you knew that you were going to be costing the city of chicago billions of dollars how much would it take to buy your soul i mean we've talked about this before it's it's always laughably they're laughably low numbers when you look at the reasons senators vote the the funds they're taking from and stuff like that you're like jesus christ to took 20 000 from gm to make it so you know kids are allowed to buy guns or something uh but but again you're Right. It doesn't have to be that nefarious. For some of these people, it could be as simple as, as Morgan Stanley Infrastructure Fund coming in and saying, look, we're the grownups in the room. You guys have a serious cash flow problem. Your revenues are fucking bottoming out.

What are you going to do? It needs to be, it needs to be updated. We're the pros. Listen to us. And we'll get you guys out of this fucking jam. And everyone's going, yeah, what the fuck we're going to get $1.16 billion. Let's just listen to them. Somebody should kneecap these people. Someone should go Nancy Kerrigan style. So I, you know, but it doesn't have to be. But they're not the only ones, right? There's, there's this Brisa Auto Estrada, which is a Portuguese-based company, owns a contract to operate the Northwest Parkway in Denver, meaning they contend to the road and profit to its terms for a term of nearly 99 years on their terms.

And when residents wanted to improve a local road nearby, one that was still in public hands, the company objected. They pointed to contract language that barred localities from competing with the total. road and it demanded compensation. They just said, hey, you want to fix your road? You can't do it. And you got to compensate us. You want to fix your road? Pay us, bitch. And it's so, yeah, it goes on and on. Missoula, Montana. The Carlisle group got in there, buying up, carving up and resailing small town municipal waterworks, burnhard capital partners, went into Fayetteville, Louisiana with a deal to take over their water and power utilities. Look, $750 million. That's it. They requested

a contract. We get to keep the profits. Yeah, we, they requested a contract to operate the city's water and power utilities for the next 30 years. Chicago, it was, and before all the Chicago parking meter stuff happened in 2004, the Chicago Parkway became the first major U.S. toll road to be privatized when Richard Daly again signed a $1.8 billion agreement for 99 year operational lease on the bridge. And so on and on, Bayonne, New Jersey, Middletown, Pennsylvania for water and wastewater system selling off to Suez and private equity, Colberg, Kravice Roberts. And look, this stuff,

this has a huge impact on people uh you know studies show that customers of investor owned utilities pay 11% more on average than those served by public power according to the american public power association uh so you know we're in a place now where not only is it private equity i mean this has been going on forever this you know people trying to privatize public goods if you want to there's a buck who is it oh my god it's dennis kucinich did the division of light and power he went to war in Ohio with trying to keep utilities public. Well, speaking of public utilities, a glaring example of how this shit can really just screw everything up and can, in many cases, cost lives is the Pacific Gas and Electrocom,

PG&E in California. PG&E, baby. Made it a for-profit entity that was publicly traded. And what happened? Well, when you got to worry about costs and you got to worry about costs and you got to got to worry about margins, you're not going to invest in things that you might consider superfluous. Like, for example, I don't know, updating woefully dangerous and outdated power lines that ended up being the cause of wildfires that ended up in 28 and 2019, 2018 and 2019, when the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection Cal Fire blamed PG&E. for these major wildfires that claim the lives of tons of people.

Right. Because their shitty old power lines couldn't even withstand wind, and then they fell down and caused fires. People died. So now when you have, you know, it's not just Wall Street, who has forever been allergic to the bottom line and is not going to make the investments they need to. This is all just another asset for them.

You now have this new player in sovereign wealth funds. And oftentimes it's hard to even, it's hard to even understand or know when they're even getting in on this action, right? You have to dig so deep to even find out what they've done to the Chicago parking meters, right? And so you can complain about like private equity, but now you have all these sovereign wealth funds who are going to be buying up. Because look, the getting's good, right? Sign a fucking 75 year lease, make your money back in a few years and then enjoy 60 years of just profits flowing in. Free money. People park in their cars.

Fund your insane city in the desert. I want to, I mean, if it's, if it gets us the oil rig theme park, fuck it. Yeah. I want to jump off a, I want to jump off of decommission. If you're going to make it so I can't have a, if I can't have a street fair without paying hundreds of millions of dollars to a, to a foreign fund, at least, at least build us some kind of water park or something. Yeah. But build it some kind of. Build it far away. Well, no, it's going to be offshore. It's going to be about 60 miles offshore. Yeah. In fucking Abu Dhabi.

No, it'll be offshore in the Pacific. Ocean. Oh, Jesus Christ. So that brings us to, why is this a problem? And I think at this point, it's probably glaringly obvious, right? We shouldn't have companies. We shouldn't have, first of all, we shouldn't have entertainment companies partnering with Saudi Arabia to wash away their controversies. We shouldn't have foreign countries owning huge parts of American infrastructure. We shouldn't have private equity owning public utilities and infrastructure. right yeah and i think that well that's the funny part about it is that the sports thing has become so front facing for everyone yeah and again i'm not a huge sports person so for me that

doesn't uh well you're only what you're six feet tall you're not a great joke every time he does it we we can't get enough of it um but but so like i don't i don't get all i don't get all wepy-eyed about the the integrity of our our team and what it means to the the city. Steinbrenner putting our city on his back. But to some people that might feel shitty, right? It might feel shitty to have people getting shipped overseas and playing in these weird exhibition matches because they've been offered hundreds of millions of dollars. But there seems to be a much more nefarious plot underneath all this where you're like, Christ, these people will never have who are not, who have to adhere to none of our regulations, answer to none of our

regulators are going to be able to just affect our lives massively in ways which we'll never be able to fight back against. So obviously there's there's a lot here. There's a lot that we've unpacked and there's there's you might be wondering, well, what's, what are we supposed to think about this? Well, that's, that's for you to decide first. But there is like a lot of things involving huge, massive swaths of money, there's probably something to be said. There is, something to be said for how regulation can help mitigate some of the riskier, more dangerous things that we've obviously seen. So there's that can happen. Because, look, sovereign wealth funds aren't going to go

anywhere. There's no, there's no ability for the United States in particular to put an end to these things. And it wouldn't be in our best interest to just shut ourselves off from that kind of foreign investment because it would put us in a place where it's alienating, right? And also, it's not really, in some cases, it's not that much different from just like private equity in, because there's nothing to stop foreign business people from investing. We're not doing a great job of curbing private equity from taking over all these aspects of our life. And it's, it wouldn't do us any good to just say these things are all inherently bad. There are, that being said, there exists a current sort of

international agreement between over 30 of these funds have gotten together and they, they all kind of agreed to, it's voluntary. They put together these guidelines. They call them the Santiago principle. Those will save us. Those will save us. But they're kind of, they're not a joke, but they're basically, they're kind of a joke in that there's no governing body that there's no penalization if you don't follow these principles. There's no enforcement. There's no enforcement mechanism. Because it's all just like every two years you're voluntarily, you're, you're meant to these countries are meant to voluntarily submit their own kind of self audit. Like, hey, look, we took a look at what we were doing and we are following these rules that we've all.

We want you to know we've been good this year. We've been good this year. But so regulations are important not only for protecting the, the, the, countries that receive the nations, the corporations, and in some cases the municipalities who receive these funds, but they can also benefit the country of origin, too. In particular, the people who are meant to share in the profits from their nation's wealth. So there's a couple good examples I've got here. First of all, Libya, Muammar Gaddafi, the RIP to a real one. No, absolutely not.

RIP to a real one. You know how many subsidiaries the Libyan Sovereign Wealth Fund had? Tell me. Over 550. 550 different subsidiary. Basically, everybody in that corrupt government was getting in and making sure that they had a way to just fucking milk the company or milk the country. I don't know if that's that out of the ordinary. I mean, I don't know how many subsidiaries there are of these other companies. But, I mean, just looking at the way, you know, the Chicago.

parking meter deal is stacked. It's like, and the way, the way Morgan Stanley Infrastructure Fund chose to spin off a new LLC, Chicago Parking Meter's LLC, and then be using LAZ parking to manage. It's all a fucking, we love it. It's all a horrible puzzle of maze finance that they hope you don't dig into. You also had, uh, there was, um, there was a growth fund for Malaysia. that was rife with corruption. It was meant to engage, their stated purpose was to engage in a variety of energy and real estate projects,

often serving as a catalyst and partner for foreign investment. But, surprise, the funds flowed in a personal accounts controlled by, controlled by Najib Razak, who was the financing prime minister. And according to the Wall Street Journal, the fund received a loan from Petro-Saudi as part of a joint venture arrangement and then set up a loan repayment program for the fund to pay back the loan, but payments of $700 million, $160 million, and

$300 million were made to a company called Good Star Limited, controlled by an associate of the prime minister so not good shit another use case of of uh of this kind of governance and rules and stuff is one that i didn't really think of but it's to protect countries and the people from when they get too much cash when things work too well so like hate when things are working too well hate when i have too much cash we got this right here equator equator equatorial guinea uh what'd you call me no say it say it again So Equatorial Guinea started large-scale production of its hydrocarbon resources in 1996, and a large majority of the government's revenues are derived from these resources.

But their governance structures were not equipped to handle the flow of these huge amounts of new wealth into its governmental finance structure. So it was like they liken it in this article to attaching a garden hose to a fire hydrant. Just all this money coming in and they did not know they were advised. They ended up finally in 2002 creating the fund for future generations, the FFG to handle all these huge swaths of money. It's just, it's a fucking mess, man. But a good example of one that does it well is the fund that Norway's got, the biggest one. Not only because they have the structure and they have the wherewithal to do. it, like, seamlessly and successfully, but they also, they do a bit of, like, quote-unquote, good

with it. They have, for example, you know, one company they won't invest in as a rule? Tesla. Walmart. Yeah, that's what I meant. Walmart. Yeah. Because they disagree.

They don't invest in things like tobacco or I believe their exclusions. Where's their exclusions list? Yeah. So they've got four dozen companies that they won't invest in. Airbus, Walmart, Rio Tinto. Airbus. Yeah. Why?

I don't know. Maybe because it has something to do with global warming. Oh, okay, for sure. Climate change. Yeah, they've been excluded. Give me again. Airbus, what? Walmart Rio Tinto, which is an oil and gas operations company.

Textron, which I believe is also. Damn, I am shocked that they are staying out of something. They are a, I mean, woke mind virus, am I right? I bet if you dig deeper, there's some nasty little things in there fucked up. Yeah. So what? have we learned, Emil? Probably that the financialization of everything won't stop, and there's going to be new players

entering every day. Things you take for granted will probably be bought up and sold. The investment doesn't pan out. I do still. Split up and sold or used as a tax loss, cut it loose. What does it matter? Fuck you. You want to have a street fair?

loser Stupid bitch Dipshit bitch You want a bike lane Go fuck yourself That's gonna impede with our 75 year contract Don't you know Sorry pal

I I just want to take one of these guys for a ride I want to scam one of these Oil Barrens Because they're not going to miss I really would love that I mean truly it's It'd be like Spotify's investment

Into Prince Harry and Megan Markle's podcast Yeah Or 30 million dollars. There's $30 million for nine fucking episodes. Do something. We don't care. Or what about who is the one who, the girl who took J.P. Morgan for a ride? Oh, Charlie Javis?

Yeah. Javis. I don't think it's Javits. I think that's the Javits Center. Yeah, but, oh, yeah. But, yeah, her whole thing where she just faked a bunch of numbers. Yes. You know, I'm obsessed with Charlie Javis.

Let's do that. We're obsessed with her. Teach us, Queen. Teach us from prison. We will follow your ways. Or speaking of Queens in prison, Elizabeth Holmes, he could teach us a thing or two about running these guys for their money.

There you go. But yeah, I mean, honestly, it makes me, when we're looking into this kind of stuff, it really makes me just, you know, when you're like walking around and, I mean, post-COVID is a perfect example of like when, I mean, L.A. never did it right, but a lot of cities did the outdoor spaces thing.

Yeah. We're going to take over these streets. We're going to take over these plazas, whatever. And a lot of them stayed, a lot of them went away and had like, it had people questioning, where the fuck did that thing go? That thing people liked where people would congregate and be outside and be in communal spaces. And I'm like, how much of this is because there's just, you know, look, sorry, COVID's over. We're taking our fucking money back. Yeah.

You guys were blocking parking meters. Yeah. I mean, we own that road. I talk about it all the time privately, but how the city of Los Angeles loves to tax poor people in the form of street. sweeping street cleaning oh street cleaning comes twice a week so not only do we know that you're not going to have anywhere else to park your car yeah but to add insult to injury we're not even going to clean the fucking street that the guy's just going to come by write your car ticket you're you might not even see the street cleaner because it doesn't even show up at the time

and when it does come it literally it's like it's like someone just took some water in their mouths and just kind of went all over the street and then they took these shitty metal wire brushes and just kind of sloshed it around great thanks for cleaning the street it's a fucking useless racket everything's a racket so what i take away from all this emil what do you take not that you asked what i think did you go for it good yeah it's uh it's something that like everything it's it's not a necessary evil but it's something that's here to stay that we can that we are powerless to to fight so we've we've just got to accept and hope that the powers that be

won't fall to the same won't succumb to the same fate as the dipshits who run Chicago did and at least put in some have some have some smarts to make it work for us. If we're going to be taking money from sovereign wealth funds. Don't end on a, we just have to accept it.

No, no, no. Well, we. I mean, I mean, I mean, we have to accept it in the sense that with acceptance comes, we need to be smart about setting up rules and regulations to make sure that it sounded very uh just like these are the powers that be we can't do anything no no no yeah no i didn't mean it like that i think the we need international guidelines hold people accountable

who are trying to you know sell your fucking city for right we need parts international cooperation america seems to be for sale and uh oh it's yeah oh baby yeah we need international cooperation we need rules we need regulations we need guidelines we need safeguards guards, guard rails. Okay, should we let these fine folks get back to their lives? I don't know. I think we should. If you have any connections to the Saudi investment fund,

please hit us up. It doesn't have to just be the Saudi investment fund. We're looking to talk to Abu Dhabi. China. China, we will work with Kiribati. The island nation of Kiribati. Not top of our list, but we're open to working with Kiribati. I do not know.

Nobody knows what the Kiribati. But I do know they're looking to invest. Yeah, they're probably looking to invest. Imagine us, Kiribati's soccer jerseys every week? Oh, dude, I would sport that. I would wave there. We should pursue, we should try to lure them by just starting to. I don't even think they have a Twitter.

I don't know if they exist. Surely is Kiribati still exists. All right, folks. If you truly want more after this, you can go to Paypigs. Patreon.com. Patreon.com slash pay pigs. We'd love to see you. Fucking around on the bonus episode.

not we totally understand yeah we love you good night and god bless america