The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Gonzo Wall Street: RIOTS,RADICALS,RACISM AND REVOLUTION: How the Go-Go Bankers of the 1960s Crashed the Financial System and Bamboozled Washington by Richard E. Farley

Episode Date: October 11, 2022

Gonzo Wall Street: RIOTS,RADICALS,RACISM AND REVOLUTION: How the Go-Go Bankers of the 1960s Crashed the Financial System and Bamboozled Washington by Richard E. Farley The long-hidden history of h...ow the corrupt Wall Street investment banks of the 1960s held Congress over a barrel and got an outrageous taxpayer-funded bailout of what they owed their customers—and how little Congress and the SEC got from Wall Street in return. This set the precedent for the bailouts of the 2008 Financial Crisis—and the next Wall Street bailout. A story of corruption and financial malfeasance, it unfolds throughout the tumultuous 1960s, during the administrations of Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon with a surprising cast of famous and infamous characters playing roles: Abbie Hoffman, Roy Cohn, Ross Perot, Donald Regan, Michael Bloomberg, Felix Rohaytn, Sandy Weill, Ken Langone, and many others. In the 1960s, the fabric of American society was torn apart by deep divisions over the Vietnam War, violence in our cities, and the senseless assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., and Senator Robert Kennedy. Civil rights, as well as women’s and gay liberation movements, were challenging America. Music, literature, fashion, and “substances” were transforming the culture and upending conventional morality and manners. The public, the media, and politicians, preoccupied with these dramatic changes, paid little attention to Wall Street, where a crisis was brewing that would cause more investment banks to fail than during the Great Depression. The year 1968 should have been the best of times on Wall Street. It was the greatest bull market since the Roaring ’20s. The Dow was breaking records. Trading volume was exploding. A hot IPO market for high-flying technology companies was defying gravity. And a swashbuckling mergers and acquisitions wave was generating enormous profits. Despite how flush Wall Street firms looked to outsiders, in truth, they were not a thundering herd but one in need of culling. Hidden from view was the fact that many of the best-known firms on Wall Street were in very precarious financial positions. Rather than investing in desperately needed state-of-the-art computer systems, the executives of these firms overpaid themselves, leaving them overextended and overleveraged. When business exploded in 1968, they were so overwhelmed by the stacks of stock certificates piled from floor to ceiling that their antiquated back offices were unable to process them. The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), under the oversight of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), was the principal regulator of the Wall Street firms at the time. The NYSE still had many of the vestiges of the private club it was prior to the Depression-era laws that created the SEC and brought Wall Street under the control of the federal government. The NYSE even referred to itself as the “Club,” controlled by an old guard of firms that were among the most overleveraged. Through means legal, and likely illegal, this old guard kept many insolvent firms open while keeping the SEC and Congress in the dark until it was too late. With a systemic financial crisis at hand, the boom turned to bust and they went, hat in hand, to Washington for a bailout. This is the long-hidden history of how the Wall Street investment banks held Congress over a barrel and got a taxpayer-funded guarantee of what they owed their customers—and how little Congress and the SEC got from Wall Street in return. More than anything else, this set the precedent for the bailouts of the 2008 Financial Crisis—and the next Wall Street bailout. In a story that unfolds throughout the tumultuous 1960s, during the administrations of Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon, a surprising cast of famous and infamous characters play roles: Abbie Hoffman, Roy Cohn, Ross Perot, Donald Regan, Michael Bloomberg, Felix Rohaytn, Sandy Weill, Ken Langone, and many others.

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Starting point is 00:00:00 You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. Chris Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. Thechrisvossshow.com. Hey, welcome to another podcast. We certainly appreciate you guys being here. And what another lovely day. And we have a mind-blowing author on the show. He's the
Starting point is 00:00:52 author of the newest book, Gonzo Wall Street, Riots, Radicals, Racism, and Revolution, and the Go-Go Bankers of the 1960s who crashed the financial system and bamboozled Washington. It just came out yesterday, October 4th, 2022. Richard E. Farley is going to be on the show with us here in a second. In the meantime, make sure you refer your friends and family to the show. Give us a five-star review on iTunes, if you would. Please go to youtube.com, Fortuness Chris Voss. Go to goodreads.com, Fortuness Chris Voss.
Starting point is 00:01:21 Our big LinkedIn group, the LinkedIn newsletter, all those places we are on the interwebs, et cetera, et cetera. Also, go see what we're doing with the new LinkedIn audio thing. We're playing with the new audio chat rooms and trying to hold daily hangouts over there, if you will. It's kind of what used to be the old clubhouse app. So check us out on what we're doing over there. It's going to be fun, and you can talk to me in the show.
Starting point is 00:01:42 He's the author, like I mentioned, of the newest book. I want to make sure I get this title straight. Gonzo Wall Street, Riots, Radicals, Racism, and Revolution, How the Go-Go Bankers of the 1960s Crashed the Financial System in Bamboozled, Washington. Welcome to the show, Richard. How are you? You got it. Perfect.
Starting point is 00:02:03 Awesome sauce. Awesome sauce. Awesome sauce. I noticed there was a word I added in the title, so I wanted to make sure and reiterate that so people search for it. If you search for Gonzo Wall Street, it's a pretty unique thing. So welcome to the show. Give us your plug. Thank you for having me. Thank you.
Starting point is 00:02:18 Give us your plugs, your dot coms, where people can find you on the interwebs, please. I am actually not very present on the internet. I don't really like the whole sort of social media madness. You can Google Gonzo Wall Street and go to Amazon. There you go. So you're on the internet now. You're on the Amazon. I am.
Starting point is 00:02:38 Yeah, no, I don't mind being on the internet. I just don't. You know, it's interesting. I think over the past few years, it's gone from ballroom dancing to the mosh pit. That's quite the dirty mosh pit, actually. Yeah. So I selectively decide when I want to jump into the mosh pit. There you go. There you go.
Starting point is 00:02:58 That's probably the safe thing to do and wear like a hazmat suit. That's probably good. Exactly. Monkey pox on you. So what motivated you on to write this book? Well, I was wondering when did the government get in the business of bailing out investment banks, right? I'm a finance attorney by trade.
Starting point is 00:03:20 Obviously, after the financial crisis, a slew of regulations came in. There was discussion about too big to fail and moral hazard and who should the government bail out when. And, you know, should we reinstitute Glass-Steagall? Of course, people who talk about that usually have no idea what that actually means or meant but it's like when did all this start because in in in my simple-minded way of looking at the world you have good old traditional banks where you know widows and orphans come put their savings and we decided back in 1933 that that ought to be a safe place. We came up with deposit insurance. We came up with the FDIC. And we said, you know, the payment system where you write your check for your bills, where you put your savings, the government's going to step in and protect that.
Starting point is 00:04:19 OK, unless you are a sort of radical free market type, you can sort of see the wisdom of that. Very few people today question whether that's a good idea or not. But at the time, it was very clear that it's not the government's problem if you go down and open up a brokerage account and start trading stocks. And if you lose your money because the stocks are worthless or the investment banks worthless, that's your problem and not the taxpayers. Right. So when was the first instance when that view of the world the taxpayers of America are protecting constituents who are involved in risk taking through Wall Street and the securities market? And this is when it really happened, when that seal was broken, when that boundary was no longer respected,, you know, it was very clear if you are involved in this sort of economic activity, you're on your own and the government's not going to be there to help you. And you outlined several different people that were some of the crazy stories, Roy Cohn, Salad Oil, Swindler, and some other interesting people. Talk to us about that.
Starting point is 00:05:41 You know, the real question, okay, how did this happen? Right. How do we get to a position where there were certain things that were, you know, for the for the free market to worry about and you're on your own to a situation where the government is guaranteeing that investment banks, one of the largest sources of funding are going to be taxpayer backstops. Okay. When the securities laws were first passed in the 1930s, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the SEC, was empowered to regulate them. And they had a rule that required these investment banks to maintain a certain amount of capital so that they're solvent. Basically, a solvency rule called the net capital rule. And that was the rule through which failures of investment banks like Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, others, not supposed to happen. OK, but something very interesting happened on the way to the bailout. And that was the SEC in Washington created an exemption in 1941 where the New York Stock Exchange regulates investment banks or any investment banks of any significance, because you have to be a member of the New York Stock
Starting point is 00:06:53 Exchange to have any, you know, with relatively few exceptions, any significance. They delegated to the New York Stock Exchange the power to enforce that rule. So what they say, well, gee, isn't that putting the fox in charge of the penthouse? And at the time, there were very good reasons, you know, why it wasn't. You know, one being the rule was stricter than what the law required, right? The New York Stock Exchange had a rule that was stricter. Number two, the New York Stock Exchange deals day to day with these firms and had a much larger staff than the SEC. But in truth, it happened because there was a very strong supporter of Franklin Roosevelt, who was about to become chairman of the New York Stock Exchange and impressed upon the SEC that maybe this wasn't such a bad idea. So they created an exception
Starting point is 00:07:41 that said, if you're a member of the New York Stock Exchange, the New York Stock Exchange determines whether you're solvent. Okay. And over time, how they enforced that became more and more crooked. So the New York Stock Exchange back then, which was kind of a club, it took care of its own. And it allowed the favored to operate despite being quite demonstrably bankrupt wow so it's what do you do when you're in a position where you've carried people and allow them to operate even though they're insolvent you know you you hope you can manage it. You try to convince the insolvent to sell to the solvent. You patch things up.
Starting point is 00:08:30 You have shotgun mergers. You try to contain it. And then at the last minute, when it's clear it's out of control, you go to Washington and say, if you don't fix this boy, the economy is just going to blow up. Oh, yeah. And that's exactly what they did. Isn't it nice to just be always bailed out for all your bad things?
Starting point is 00:08:51 I mean, 2008 was crazy and stuff. But this all started in the 60s, huh? Correct. Did Nixon have anything to do with this? Well, he did, but let's back up. Okay. You talked about the salad oil scandal, the infamous Tino DeAngelo, which is an interesting story in and of itself.
Starting point is 00:09:08 Tino was rumored to have mob connections in both New York and Chicago. He had a very checkered business history. He sold tainted beef to the Food for Peace program and engaged in other shenanigans. So he was unbankable in the ordinary sense of the word. And what he was involved in was the vegetable oil business, which is a big business, corn oil, other things that are shipped overseas. And he had a tank farm in Bayonne, New Jersey. The problem he had was he couldn't borrow money from banks because, you know, he was who he was. But American Express, the traveler's check and credit card company, was looking to get into asset-based lending.
Starting point is 00:09:54 So they overlooked Tino's criminal past and present and got involved in what was called warehouse receipts business. And people would loan against the American Express certification that Tino had a certain amount of vegetable oil there. So you have an American Express official on site who is supposed to measure the amount of oil that you have and write a certificate, you take that to a bank and a bank will lend you money because you've got a third party that's reputable, verifying that the asset that you're lending against actually exists. Okay. Good so far. Hi, folks. Chris Voss here with a little station break. Hope you're enjoying the show so far. We'll resume here in a second. I'd like to invite you to come to my coaching, speaking, and training courses website. You can also see our new podcast over there at chrisvossleadershipinstitute.com. Over there, you can find all the different stuff that we do for speaking engagements
Starting point is 00:10:56 if you'd like to hire me, training courses that we offer, and coaching for leadership, management, entrepreneurism, podcasting, corporate stuff. With over 35 years of experience in business and running companies as a CEO, I think I can offer a wonderful breadth of information and knowledge to you or anyone that you want to invite me to for your company. Thanks for tuning in. We certainly appreciate you listening to the show and be sure to check out chrisossLeadershipInstitute.com. Now back to the show. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Tino's guys climb up and tell him what the level of the oil is. And Tino recognized this.
Starting point is 00:11:45 So Tino had a system where he would have a false container with a very limited amount of oil. And the rest of it was seawater. And then he would move tank oil from one tank to another. So on Monday, we'll certify how much is in this tank. Overnight, he would move it to another tank. So eventually, he had more oil vegetable oil certified than he had tank space and then when that wasn't enough because he had a scheme he did have a scheme he had a plan when that wasn't enough he stole a stack of the warehouse certificates
Starting point is 00:12:17 forged and then what what tino's idea was it was a classic pump and dump scheme. Wow. He took these warehouse receipts, went to brokerage firms, and placed commodity bets, right? Because the price of his oil was determined upon the spot market for that type of oil traded on the commodities exchange. So he would create trading activity to drive up the price, and then when he sold he would, you know, sell it at a much higher price. That's crazy. Well, he did what's called painting the tape, right? You get a few trades at a high level and ultimately, you know, you can manipulate the price. And since it wasn't really, you know, the money he got from selling the oil was very real. The warehouse receipts that were collateral for these commodities bets was very unreal. But it all came crashing down because at the time, there was no CFTC, Commodities Future Trading Commission, that regulated commodities trading.
Starting point is 00:13:16 It was the Department of Agriculture. So the Department of Agriculture got wind of this wild trading activity, and they figured out it was one guy doing it, Tino. And they said, oh, Jesus, Tino, the guy who sold us the fake beef. OK, we got a problem. So they sent agents out to Bayonne and FBI and local and they started to unravel what was going on. OK. And it turned out that one brokerage firm in particular had essentially allowed Tino unlimited margin on the promise that he would deliver warehouse certificates that were supposed to be money good. And that was a bad call. See, in those days, it's different than now. You could open up a trading account for commodities and you didn't have to put down any initial money. You just had to put up margin if your position started to lose money.
Starting point is 00:14:13 And he satisfied the margin calls with these phony warehouse receipts. So the bank, the investment bank that's clearing his trades has to pay real money. And then they got to look to Tino and his warehouse receipts. And of course, they were all phony. So all of this unraveled in the days preceding the assassination of President Kennedy. So the morning of his assassination was basically unveiled that one investment bank was going to go bankrupt because they had so much exposure to patino that they were insolvent okay and there was another investment bank too that they were very worried about so the market was already jittery okay and 11 o'clock in the morning whenever it it was, the bells ring out. President's assassinated.
Starting point is 00:15:05 And the stock market crashed. And they closed early. And there were certain firms in particular who continued to make markets in the stock on the exchange, who, because of the crash in prices, were now very much exposed. And if you had to balance the books on that day, would have been bankrupted. Wow. So the president of the New York Stock Exchange, Keith Funston, had a big problem on his hands. Now, luckily, there was a federal holiday. Kennedy was assassinated on a Friday. Monday was the national holiday for the funeral. That gave them a very long weekend to arrange a bailout. So they went to the banks that were funding this investment bank. Ira luckily, the market traded up on Tuesday.
Starting point is 00:16:05 So the specialists that were going to lose money if they had to clear trades at a higher price than what the stock was actually trading for, who also probably would have been in solvent, were all able to sort of loop through. And the market recovered by the end of the year and everything was held together. But what that episode revealed was how over levered the investment banks were. Wow. And how little real capital they had in times of stress. Wow. So this was 1963.
Starting point is 00:16:42 Okay. Now, you know, in the book that the bailout came seven years later. So what happened between that moment where it really was existential on the cusp and 1970? Well, the answer is nothing. reform. The exchange didn't say, hey, we really need to bolster capital requirements because the next time something happens, we may not be so lucky. No, what you had was the biggest bull market in history up to that point. You had the go-go era, they called it, of the 1960s. You had hot technology companies going public. You had a merger wave of conglomerate mergers that created more M&A fees. You had stock trading volumes that by 1965 were at levels they didn't think would happen until 1975. So you had the greatest environment on Wall Street since the roaring 20s. So good, in fact, that they couldn't keep up with the paperwork. There were some firms like Merrill Lynch, which invested in computer systems, good back office operations and were fine.
Starting point is 00:17:52 And then you had MonPas operations, although handling huge amounts of securities in terms of value, but were operating in a green eye shade and pen and ink, you know, a back office system. Why? Because why invest in that when we can just pay ourselves, right? That's true. You can spend the money on yachts. Right. Exactly. Precisely.
Starting point is 00:18:13 So there were a lot of yachts and not a lot of new computer systems. And then the system in 1968 became overwhelmed. So what happens when you say overwhelmed? Well, when in those days, stocks traded by physical delivery of certificates. Okay. I sell the stock. I call my brother, please sell a hundred shares of IBM. The broker goes to the bank where the share certificates are stored. They got to go find them. They've got to, you know, reduce it by a hundred, get a new stock certificate from the transfer agent. And if all goes well, deliver that five days after I make
Starting point is 00:18:53 the trade. Okay. Now, if you're a well-oiled machine, that's very easy to do. But when you've got a terrible back office and you can't locate your certificates, it can take 30 days, 60 days, 90 days to actually do that. And when you're in a period of high trading volume, that same stock certificate can trade five times and it's still at its original vault. So people are running around trying to figure out, you know, and if you have bad accounting systems, you know, I've then sold, let's say I'm the purchaser of that first trade, and then I sell it. Okay. Your computer system may say, I've sold that stock short and charge me a borrowing fee. And it's like, no, no, no, I didn't sell it short. I bought it. You guys just weren't able to track down the certificate. Okay. And then you'd have certificates that were lost.
Starting point is 00:19:44 And then you'd have certificates that were stolen. Organized crime figured out pretty early on, probably by about, the problems really started 64, 65, became a crisis by 68. By about 66, the mafia understood that these banks had no control over their inventory so they sent people in and stole millions and millions of dollars of these certificates you can't keep dropping them okay holy crap that's where i want to be if a gangster okay so you had these massive problems and firms finally because the sec woke up in 68 and said, we got to fix your back offices, guys, because we're starting to get complaints and this is a problem. Then the banks, the investment banks started to invest in the back offices. Okay. And the large amounts that were necessary,
Starting point is 00:20:40 a lot of them borrowed to buy those computer systems. And what happened in 1969? You had a bear market and a recession. So right when they borrowed the money to build out the computers that they needed to stop the back't in, you know, U.S. Treasury securities, gold, cash. It was in equities that were losing their value in a breathtakingly fast fashion. Wow. Rendering them, you know, more debt for the computers, less value because what I borrowed against has now lost 25% of its market value.
Starting point is 00:21:26 Wow. That's crazy, man. Now it's time to go to Washington, right? But we can't go to Washington and tell the truth, right? Because then somebody is going to go to jail. So we're going to go to Washington and say, look, you know, there's no big problem now, guys. But if you don't fix this, it's obviously going to be catastrophic and we don't want to pay for it. Okay. And we don't really want more regulation to really prevent this sort of thing from happening. So if you, you know, if you do for investment banking customers, what you did for, you know, Mrs. O'Leary and the widow and the orphan with their banking account, that will prevent any sort of systemic problems. Now, what you didn't, most people didn't know was the cash you leave at your investment bank, at your brokerage, that money doesn't go into like an escrow account.
Starting point is 00:22:22 They use that money for their working capital. So your cash is spent right so if if if the government is standing behind my obligation to pay you back i've just gotten effectively you know a government-backed loan of a significant portion of my capital requirements it's crazy so what they didn't want was to fully disclose how bad things were because then the government's going to say well we're going to have to really highly regulate this so it doesn't happen again and we're going to make you pay more than you would like as you know the insurance premium effectively for us to insure all this. So you had over the course of about six months in 1970s, here is where, you know, slowly
Starting point is 00:23:13 but surely the truth came out. But by the time the truth had ultimately come out, you really were at a situation where if the insolvent investment banks all failed, the commercial banking system was at risk. Wow. And it's the commercial banking system that we know after 2008 what that looks like. It's crazy how everything, you know, these bailouts go on, and it seems like we just bail out the rich people from the mistakes they make, and then, you know, everybody else has to deal with it.
Starting point is 00:23:42 Is that a good perception of everything? Well, yes and no. Yes, that that is in a in a sort of first phase. Absolutely correct. But the question is, who gets hurt if you don't take a particular action? Yeah, OK. All right. You know, if if if if if the children are playing with matches, the time to deal with it is to take the matches away. After the house is on fire, you know, you can say, well, okay, it's just your house that's going to burn.
Starting point is 00:24:16 Shame on your parents. Shame on the leadership of the stock exchange for not taking away the matches. But when it's going to burn down the whole block, you're facing a different choice, right? You still got to put the fire out, basically. Right. But when you put the fire out, you're supposed to make sure they can't get any more matches.
Starting point is 00:24:41 Definitely, definitely. When we talked about how the SEC gave the New York Stock Exchange the right to determine which firms were solvent or not, Definitely, definitely. And when Roosevelt passed the FDIC Act, Glass-Steagall, he required every bank to be examined before you could become an insured bank. They didn't do that. Every broker-dealer was insured, the good and the bad, the ugly. And when you insured bank accounts, you forced the banks to get rid of their securities operations, separation of commercial banking and investment bank. So the cost of the government coming in and protecting the widows and orphans bank accounts, came with a very steep price and a lot of regulation. And this was done with practically zero additional regulation. Wow. And they let in the good, bad, and the ugly.
Starting point is 00:25:55 Wow. What do you feel about Twitter and the Elon Musk buyout? He just said yesterday that I think he suddenly wants to go ahead and do it. So this is that. So what do you think about that? Well, you got to remember, there was litigation involved. And that litigation was fastly approaching the trial date. And I understand it to be the case that Mr. Musk's deposition was fastly approaching.
Starting point is 00:26:29 And when you're under oath, it has a tendency to focus the mind. It does. And you can tweet and you can even things that may be subject to SEC sanction you know sec sanction if you were misleading or private lawsuits because again it's a public company right i mean yeah you know he's got a public comp twitter's a public company you're looking to buy it it isn't like you can say whatever you want you know there are still consequences but that's nothing compared to the consequence of being under oath, not telling the truth, and then facing, you know, a real risk of perjury. That's a more immediate sense of consequence. So if there was to be a settlement, it appears there has been, it would happen before the trial and before you're going to face a under oath deposition, if you're so inclined to to settle.
Starting point is 00:27:26 Now, one would think you don't do that unless you're being told that perhaps your case is not a good and that the court is going to find you in breach of the merger agreement if you don't go ahead and consummate the merger. So if if if you're a lawyer and these are the best lawyers around, both sides have hired here. So they're getting very solid advice for the amount of money at stake. It's not a surprise that that would be the case. But, you know, I suspect that the decision was made that, you know, we don't have a very strong case. And therefore, it's probably
Starting point is 00:28:05 best to settle this and you know probably not a lot of leverage to get a price reduction so it looks like you took your shot and you know you you didn't have much so you might as well close it right because you're you Because the measure of damages is likely to be determined to be the difference between the stock price that you agreed to pay and where that stock trades after you've killed the deal. And that's a big number, right? Given what happened in the stock market over the past six, nine months. So is it better to own Twitter and at least have an asset that might make a profit and you might make a profit on your investment
Starting point is 00:28:55 or the certainty of writing a check for damages that's money gone? So that may vary. I don't know anything other than what I read in the papers, but that sounds to me like that might be the analysis that brought us to yesterday. Yeah, it's pretty interesting. Well, hopefully some of these things, you know, people read the book and learn, you know, what's going on in the stock market and how it goes. Anything more you want to tease out in the book before we go out? Well, look, it is sort of a cast of amazing characters.
Starting point is 00:29:23 There was a lot going on in the characters. There was a lot going on in the country. There was a lot going on in the stock exchange. As you mentioned before, you know, the SEC thought it might be a good idea to bring a high profile case against Roy Cohn, which was interesting. And of course, Roy beat the government in a criminal trial twice. He's a fascinating, if diabolical figure who had a role in all this. And he was, you know, he raised money for President Nixon under the quid pro quo that the head of the SEC get fired. Wow. Which the head of the SEC was. And the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York was also fired, despite the objections of the Republican governor and two Republican
Starting point is 00:30:04 senators who told Nixon not to. So Roy Cohen had some influence. Don't don't kid yourself. They also Ross Perot played a very big role in all this. Really? Oh, yeah. He was born. He ran the computer systems for Medicare in Texas.
Starting point is 00:30:26 You know, big, complex computer, you know, what's his business? Running those systems. And he said, Wall Street's a disaster, right? The computers are all screwed up, the stock certificates are lost. I can come in and
Starting point is 00:30:42 do for Wall Street what I did for Medicare and I'll be, you know and I'll make a gazillion dollars. But like a lot of people think they can go to Wall Street and make a gazillion dollars, it was Wall Street that hoodwinked him at the end of the day. And he ended up losing a significant amount of money in his misadventure owning a Wall Street investment bank. Wow. his misadventure owning a wall street investment bank wow he was he was one of the people that the exchange brought in to bail out an insolvent bank sort of a sucker with the money there you go there you go well it's been wonderful to have on the show uh uh richard we don't have a dot com for
Starting point is 00:31:21 you right so just pick it correct wherever fine books are sold there then? Correct. There you go. Guys, order of the book, it just came out yesterday, Gonzo Wall Street, Riots, Radicals, Racism, and Revolution, How the Go-Go Bankers of the 1960s Crashed the Financial System, and Bamboozled Washington. The more you know, the more hopefully we can prevent some of this craziness from happening. Well, there will be another one. I mean, if you look at the markets that we just are sort of on the downslope on now, you had a SPAC craze.
Starting point is 00:31:53 You had enormous debt for leveraged buyouts. You had enormous trading and speculation. Now you've got the reverse of it, which is obviously Fed raising interest rates, inflation, stock markets, and a significant bear market. There will be similar stresses in the system. You just don't know where. And if those stresses are bad enough, I can promise you they'll be back looking for another bailout. Great. Great. I need to get my job on Wall Street back. Anyway, guys, thanks for tuning in. Thanks, Richard, for being on the show. My pleasure. Be sure to go to youtube.com for justchrisvoss Goodreads.com for justchrisvoss
Starting point is 00:32:28 All the groups on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram And all those crazy places the kids are playing these days Thanks for tuning in, be good to each other Stay safe, and we'll see you guys next time And that should have us out, Richard

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