The Trillionaire Mindset - 15: Hacking Student Loans

Episode Date: January 10, 2022

This is it. The best episode of the year if you have student debt. Ben and Emil are back to discuss the pitfalls of student loans, analyze the best and worst stocks of 2021, and joke about running for President. Listen on Apple Podcasts: http://apple.co/trillionaire Just go to https://Stamps.com, click the microphone at the top of the page, and enter code TRILL.  Head to http://www.NetSuite.com/TRILL for this special one-of-a-kind financing offer on the number one Financial System for growing businesses.  Want to get started? Head over to https://Wix.com and create your website today. Trillionaire IG: https://www.instagram.com/trillionairepod/ Trillionaire Twitter: https://twitter.com/trillionairepod TMG Studios YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/tinymeatgang TMG Studios IG: https://www.instagram.com/realtmgstudios/ TMG Studios Twitter: https://twitter.com/realtmgstudios BEN https://www.instagram.com/bencahn/ https://twitter.com/Buncahn EMIL https://www.instagram.com/emilderosa/ https://twitter.com/emilderosa  *DISCLOSURE: THE OPINIONS EXPRESSED IN THIS VIDEO ARE SOLELY THOSE OF THE PARTICIPANTS INVOLVED. THESE OPINIONS DO NOT REFLECT THE OPINIONS OF ANYONE ELSE. THIS IS NOT INVESTMENT ADVICE. THE VIEWER OF THE VIDEO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR CONSIDERING ANY INFORMATION CAREFULLY AND MAKING THEIR OWN DECISIONS TO BUY OR SELL OR HOLD ANY INVESTMENT. SOME OF THE CONTENT OF THIS VIDEO IS CONSIDERED TO BE SATIRE AND MAY NOT BE CONSIDERED FACTUAL AND SHOULD BE TAKEN IN SUCH LIGHT.* Friedman Forbes article: https://www.forbes.com/sites/zackfriedman/2022/01/05/biden-hasnt-cancelled-all-student-loans-but-that-doesnt-make-him-the-bad-guy/?sh=7e9d84d72058 Debt Chart: https://fortune.com/education/business/articles/2021/08/25/this-one-chart-puts-bidens-student-loan-cancellation-into-perspective/ Biden’s Memo: https://twitter.com/StrikeDebt/status/1454229838097784832 Borrowers with No Degree: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/23/millions-of-student-loan-borrowers-dont-have-a-diploma-to-show-for-it.html Larry Summers Thread: https://twitter.com/LHSummers/status/1474369232406200326 Price of College: https://www.forbes.com/sites/camilomaldonado/2018/07/24/price-of-college-increasing-almost-8-times-faster-than-wages/?sh=1a1f51d366c1 Excerpt on Americans: https://twitter.com/thefarmerjones/status/1232413802349637632?s=11 Nikola Truck Rolling: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/video/news/video-2246772/Video-Watch-Nikola-One-promo-features-motorless-truck-motion.html Top Gainers: https://twitter.com/unusual_whales/status/1477460133114376193?s=21 Ford Truck: https://performance.ford.com/enthusiasts/media-room/2021/11/f100-eluminator-.html Top Losers: https://twitter.com/unusual_whales/status/1477535630498353152?s=21 Ape Returned: https://twitter.com/edzitron/status/1477696884969852928?s=21 Fart in Jar Girl: https://screenrant.com/90-day-fiance-stephanie-matto-hospitalized-fart-business/

It is crazy how much I can hear you now. I can hear you before obviously, but this is wild. It's a whole new world. Also, I can hear how bad, I'm really bad singer. A whole new world, I'm placing this just for you and me. You're pretty good. I hear you going, Pete. You guys don't like you're doing like an emo, um, little Adam.

We need for you. It's a whole new world. Like newfound glory. I fucking hate this. Oh, you were a whole new world. Jasmine. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH I do like that we can now do our, we could do the kind of, this kind of thing, this just in, this just in. I was thinking more of the like rap thing where you're like, I need more in the, or I need

more bass. Yeah, yeah, yeah, bump up the bass. Yeah, yeah, like, I need more in the, or we're like, I need more bass. Bump up the bass. We should just make it all. We should make these hearing things just full of bass. We are trying, what are these called, In-ear monitors for the first time? Yeah, In-ear monitors.

And we're feeling a little insane. Yeah, because I can hear everything. I can hear everything I'm saying. I can hear every little movement of my shitty mouth. I'll tell you you what I feel bad. This is my first time experiencing being a listener. It's this is what they got It's what it's like. Yeah, but it sounds great. Listen to these smooth buttery voices. Oh, yeah, it's better than if we sound like this Or if we I think I kind of understand the whole thing about them saying I speak in lowercase now They say that you speak in lowercase. Yeah, remember after the first episode we talked about it on the show Huh, man. I got a stop smoke and we do.

Jesus. Everyone wants to know what movie we were watching. Oh, Speederman. Speederman, Speederman 3. Gotta go home. Is it the third one? Yeah, it's the third one. I think I saw the first two. Oh, you didn't need one. Yeah, I did the third one. I think that's all the first two.

Yeah, you know, you won. I did lean over to you at one point and go, who's Mysterio? Mysterio was Jake German, German girl. I know, they kept talking about him beginning. I did see a great thing. Spider-Man spoilers ahead. Skimp.

Yeah, go ahead and skip to 408. I whispered it to you in the theater, but Toby McGuire is the only spider-man who has an actual, someone called it a Russi, a wrist pussy. And he showed a little diagram of a little slit right there because that's what happened. He shoots it out of his actual body and they kind of do a nod to it

because they go, wait, you don't have a web singer and he goes, web singer? Yeah, he comes out of his little, I feel like this boy like that detail. Yeah, but it doesn't matter. You know, if you have for a while, and it's not that good, it's, yeah. So, also people who would care enough about spoilers will have already gone out to see it,

would have made an effort. Plus, I mean, if you're a human being living in the world, you've seen through meme osmosis that the other two Spider-Man's are in it and that they die. Right. I felt bad for our theater. We were laughing a lot at the parts we weren't supposed to do. Yeah, we were laughing a lot.

I'll tell you what though. What? Tom Holland's, another spoiler. He's shirtless at one point. He's got a great body. I did not expect that. Yeah, the dude is jack. It's insane.

It's those British jeans. I don't know about that. It's all those beans they eat in the morning. It's all the beans I get. Yeah, beans and toast. They should have had them shirtless more. Yeah. I'm pro.

Did you see Dune? Yes. Okay, because he's not in it. No, but Timothy Schalmer takes a shirt off at one point. And he's a little twig boy. He looks like, he looks sick a little bit. Doesn't eat beans. He's got to eat beans and toast.

Check the disclaimer in the box before we get, before I forget, gotta get that detail out there. Yeah, Timothy needs more beans. But that's like, I've been seeing guys upset about Pete Davidson and Timothy Shalamey being like the hottest dudes in the world. Oh, because they're twig boys.

Who cares? Pete Davidson, especially. He also looks a little unwell. Emaciated would be the word I would say. Yeah, but there's like a meme like, bro, you go into the gym at six in the morning. Pete Davidson's the hottest dude on the planet. He's sleeping till 10 and then smoking a cigarette. Right.

Maybe we've been going about this. Keep going to the gym. You guys will be fine. I think it just goes to show that women don't care about your body. Or this is a fad. I lived through dad bod. Remember dad bod? Yeah, I got one.

I own one of those. That was like right after, not right after, but I had just gotten a really good shape. You're still in good shape, but. No, I after, but I had just gotten in really good shape. You're still in good shape, but. No, I know, but I had just been like, you know what, I gotta cut the bullshit and start actually exercising. Yeah. And then I was like, I feel like I hit all my goals

and then all of a sudden they were like, Everyone wants a dad bod man. And I was like, you gotta be shitting me. You are in good shape. At least you're not like me, shape like a damn rhombus. You're not a rhomboid or something. I don't even know what the hell a rhombus is.

You play it up too. You like to pop that belly? I like to pop that belly out, but. Hey, I wanted to give a quick shout out to Anna. Hey, Anna, congratulations on your first credit card. I heard about this through Cam. Hey, Cam. Also, hi, Dolly. Dolly is a, Dolly is a friend of mine.

She's two and we watched a hoop frame, D'Araja Rabbit together, at least part of it. Because... Hi to all of our toddler audience out there. Well, Dolly's out there. She's a fin. And then I wanted to also give a special shout out to Rob. Hey, Rob, we had a nice conversation over Twitter to the him and he informed me that he consolidated a good amount of his credit card debt because of this show. So that felt nice. Anyway, also, hey, while you're at it, why don't you go ahead and take your finger like this or this finger or any one of your fingers. If you don't have a finger, make a fist. I don't know what your situation is, but either way, what you're gonna wanna do is smash the like button.

Also, make sure to wipe it off before you do. I don't know where that finger is. Whoa, two fingers there you just did. So smash that like button with clean fingers. Leave a comment because we do read them. And, hey, we also wanna give a heads up that we're gonna try, I think next week I think next week, we're going to, we're going to try posting on Friday. Oh, right. We're going to be dropping the show because we record on Thursdays and then drop on Mondays and sometimes, you know, news can be a little bit stale. The cat's out of the bag.

We don't actually wake up early and record on Mondays. Yeah, but that would be sick though if we did. It would be, but we'd be peat Davidson Davidson style smoking cigarettes getting out of rolling out of bed It's heavy. Hey times We're going to show that's me. I guess I was kind of Be my big lips gotta go record the show Because I know I think I'm gonna get a tattoo before I go to the show you guys both have dead dads. That's true Yeah, but his is way more dead and longer cooler

Well, yeah, firemen are inherently more cool. I mean you get to be like to die on a national holiday like 9-11 That's pretty wild My dad just died on like a regular ass Friday. Yeah, you. Yeah, he got lucky. Yeah. Some might call that luck. Okay. So speaking of comments. Speaking of comments. So you know of luck. Yeah, we had a lot of, we're pissed.

We're pissed off it, you guys. We're about to engage in a little bit of healthy gas lighting because I think we got gas lit. Yeah, we got gas lit by you guys. So we're gonna go ahead and serve it back to you. We last have been trying to do a nice thing. Yeah. We asked our audience who they would like to have on. Yes. We said, this will be fun. Yeah. Overwhelming. Overwhelmingly. They say Graham Stefan. Yeah. They won't stop. They're just, please get them on. Yeah, Graham Stefan.

Graham Stefan. Graham Stefan. And we wanted these nuts, because that's what the number two was. I also wanted your mom. Yeah, your mom would have been a great guest, but everybody was like, get the landlord. Get the landlord on the show.

We want this guy. But so not only that, it wasn't easy to get him. This guy's got 3.5 million followers on YouTube. We pulled strings to make this happen. Yeah, we paid him, we had to pay rent to get him on. Yeah, we had to pay. We had to pay above market value to get him on. We had to pay the tax on all of his properties.

Yeah. And then he comes on and it's like they played a big damn joke on us. Yeah, because then we were, you know, we're not gonna alienate anyone. Well, I thought it was their fucking, I thought he was their favorite guy. Yeah, I'm not gonna be like, hey, who's your favorite guy? I mean, I'm on him and we've been working on speaking to the dead. We've been trying to get Ben's dad, because that was also another guess they wanted to do.

That would be sick. I would be like, what is up? Oh, it's the first thing. What's the first thing? Yo! I would be like, Hey, do you recognize me with my shitty mustache? Remember, I couldn't grow one.

Now I did. By the way, I have a mustache right now. Can you see it all the way over there? Yeah, it's okay. I was shaving the other day and I just get fuller. No, it doesn't. As far as it goes, I was shaving all this and I was like, you know, I'm going to be, I'm going to be fun. I'm going to give one of the other mustache. It's fun. And it's not very good. But then can I tell you what? What? We're all having fun over the mustache. Thank you. Hey, who wants to go on

mustache ride? I don't know what that means. It's kind of over my head. It sounds naughty, but anyway. What my point is, is it's your fault. It's our fault. Our point is, we're done asking you what you want. We're just doing what we want. Okay, two.

I think we are, I think we might have just been the butt of an internet joke. Yeah, maybe it was all, yeah, maybe it was all joke. I don't know, I mean, well look, the top two were jokes, right? These nuts and your mom were a joke. Yeah, so maybe the top third one was a joke too. Who can tell what these crazy teens,

crazy teens, our audience is older than that, I think. I think it ranges. Yeah, it probably does. But I think the ones like spamming our inbox. Yeah. Might be 18-haters. Man, this is gonna be a hell of a transition from this to the getting right into the stage.

Well, just before you get into everything, we wanted to, yeah, a lot happened over the break. Yeah, you got homey-crown. I wanted to talk about the student debt crisis before. I was working on getting someone on who could talk to us about what's going to happen because originally the student loan repayments were supposed to start back up again on February 1st. So we were working on getting someone in January. And so I'm going to actually, since I know very little about student loans, since I had a,

since I went to a state school in state, it was already relatively inexpensive in my grandma paid for it because I'm a good boy. Right, but so. So I don't have student loans, so I know fuck all about them. I mean, I know that you get money. So let's start from the beginning. No, no, no, no, okay. You, you, you, You, you, you, you

guide. I was talking. Yeah, sorry. Go ahead. So the good news is while we were on break, because yeah, we recorded a few, they, and then we went to go see our family and stuff. While we were on break, Joe Biden kicked the can down the road a little bit. He said, I think it's a 90 day extension in May 1st. Now the repayment will start. So the good news is people are still getting relief. They don't have to pay their loans right now. And the interest is paused. The bad news is he stills in cancel up. He should cancel the debt, which is something he said he would do as a campaign promise. He said he would cancel up to $10,000 per person, Which I don't think would even be that helpful.

I think the average amount is over $30,000. It's like $35,000. The average amount people are holding. I think, you know, there are a lot of people with a lot more. I don't think 10,000 will do that much, especially because these interest rates are so high. How high are the interest rates? It depends, but I think the standard is like 6% or something like that. Jesus. And if you, like some people are locked into private loans that are way higher,

9%, 10%, you can find, I'm sure people will write in with horror stories. And private loans are a mess. Yeah. And the problem, so just so I understand, the problem that most people face is making much like a credit card because that's the way that I would understand it. Making the minimum payment is only enough to basically tread water. And even then, you're probably still getting fucked by interest even more so. Yeah, a lot of your monthly payments are just going to interest. Right. You, I'm right in if you want.

I'm sure people, I'm sure people in our audience are dealing with it. It's like 45 million Americans. And people have stories about what their original loans were, how much they've paid already and how the principal is now even bigger. I've seen those. So it's well, well to get out of. But the reason I wanted to talk about it was,

because when they pushed the date back, I was like, all right, well, we'll wait. We don't have to have the student loan person on now. But then I started, you know, going on the internet and it's just all of these, you know, creeps are just pushing out the propaganda on how we cannot have Joe Biden, cancel student debt, how it's going to be horrible, how it's the worst thing you do, how he doesn't have the authority to do it, right? And so I just wanted to get in front.

So Larry Summers, our favorite guy, he released this whole tweet thread about how it's the worst idea. Matthew Eglaceus, I mean, he used to be, I think when there was less of a chance of it happening, he, you know, who's Matthew Eglaceys? He used to work for Fox.

Now he's this big, he's got a sub stack, like everyone else, he makes tons of money and he just gets paid to write like horrible takes. But now he's, he just put out an article about how it's actually, he's changed his mind. It's a bad idea to cancel debt. And interesting. So he was for it before and now he's against it. Yeah.

Maddie, maddie, my man. And that's the thing. One of his big reasons is like, well now the economy's too good to cancel the debt. But, you know, and then I wanted to look at this one article from Forbes because Forbes like pumps out a fucking student loan article every fucking day and this guy's Zach Friedman. I think he does all of them. Our producer like pointed out that it's all the same guy. It's this guy's Zach Friedman. He went to Harvard. Best selling author of the lemonade life. He got his, he got his MBA at Wharton. He says, Biden hasn't canceled student loans, but that doesn't make him the bad guy. This is his latest piece on student loans. And so this is the kind of stuff they're putting out. Also, you would have

think fucking Joe Biden wrote this article. Also, just look at that photo of Joe Biden. I think, get like the man is just one foot in the grave. Oh, he got it. It's great. So do one good thing before you go, Joe. Well, you know, my dog, how does he do alone? Sorry, I'm not going gonna do a Biden bit.

Go ahead. So I wanted to, like, he puts together these articles if he can start. And I just wanna go through some of the things he's talking about. So he gives a little brief explanation of student loans here, but if he scrolled down, his first reason is that Biden has canceled more student loans than any other president.

Really? It's true. He's canceled billions of dollars if student loan debt. 12.7 billion. Yeah, 12.7 billion. But that's a drop in the bucket. Like, there's a chart somewhere I have.

It's this fucking minuscule amount. Also, like, that little red is the amount of student loan. It's a pie graph and it's literally like a joke amount of a slice. So, also I would say so cancel more. What do I give a fuck if he's canceled more than any other president? That's a pretty low bar. Less than 1% of all student loan debt he canceled. I wonder why he canceled that.

Like who were the people that meant to criteria? Uh, so that was for different things. I think the big one was people with disabilities who can't work. Which, I mean, and that gives you a fucking idea of how fucked up this is. Like you had people who literally couldn't, couldn't work being, uh, how did by student loan collectors. Trump used it too.

I think he did it for veterans and one of them did it for for profit colleges that were defrauding people. So yeah, first point, who gives a shit? Can't sell more. This other one, Congress can pass a law on student loan cancellation. That's why Joe Biden is not the bad guy. Yeah, he says Congress not the president has the power to make laws. Well, duh. Yeah, we know that. But so I don't understand. Congress has the power to do a lot of things and they don't fucking do it. Congress could have passed bill back better. Congress can pass, you know, free higher education. Congress can pass Medicare for all, but they don't. They don't do any of these things. So Joe Biden is the bad guy. I mean, he's... Hmm. So, what is... You mentioned Larry Summers.

What's... Who's Larry Summers? What's his thing? You put in... You put Larry Summers being an asshole. What? What are Larry Summers doing? No, this is the same.

No, no, I know. This is... So, and this is the big one, because he's got one more after this, but no Biden doesn't have the executive authority to cancel all student loans. The thing is, he does. All right? Everyone, the reason everyone's screaming at him to do it is because there's a thing called the Compromise and Settlements Clause in the Higher Education Act of 1965.

And that allows the Department of Education to make decisions on pausing loans for giving loans doing all these things. And it was actually figured out by, I think it was a non-profit who wrote a legal memo about the president's power to do this. Are these don't, but does that only pertain to laws that are given by the federal government? It doesn't include like private loans. Yeah, private loans would be excluded from all this, but it's the, it's, I think 95% student loans are publicly held federal loans. Huh, that's a lot.

95%. That's almost a hundred. That's almost a hundred. Sorry, that 5% you fucked up by getting a private loan. That pisses me off in this. He barely, he just says that it's not popular legal opinion. He doesn't even have, he doesn't even have a good reason for it. And the, I don't know if you remember, everyone was giving him shit about,

everyone was yelling at Joe Biden and Jen Sackie because they said they were gonna put together a memo on whether Joe Biden had this authority to do it. Right. Now, I pulled up the memo because they finally released it because it had been months and months and can we find the memo real quick? It's quite funny to look at.

They kept going, where's the memo? So one was in all these press conferences, someone was asking Jen Sackie, where's the memo? And she was like, oh, they're still working on it. And so I think another, I think another organization foiled them to get them to release it. And if you scroll down, you could see they finally released the memo and they just redacted the whole thing. You fucking kid. I thought that this was like it wasn't loading wait that's what they released Where's the memo on Joe Biden's authority just to Cancel why why is it all redacted because I don't I would imagine that under that redaction It says that Joe Biden indeed does have the authority to cancel student debt Jesus Christ and the best part is he's saying that

pages long and it's all redacted right six pages long it's all redacted and the best part is he's saying that- Six pages long and it's all redacted. Right, it's six pages long, it's all redacted. And the best part is this guy in his own fucking article is saying that Joe Biden doesn't have the authority to do this, but if you, he said, Joe Biden does not have the authority to cancel student debt, right? But if you scroll up a little bit to his first fucking point,

what does it say? Joe Biden has canceled more student loans than any other president. So if he doesn't have the fucking authority, dude How did he do that? What's this guy's name? What's this guy's name again? That freed me. Zach, you piece of shit. You dumb. Oh, best selling author the lemonade life. This is his little byline. I write and speak about leadership and greatness.

What? What? What did this guy fucking major in at Harvard being an idiot? Askissing. As kissing asking kissing and suckling So that I don't even I it's I feel crazy That's why I just wanted to talk about it for a little because it's making me feel fucking insane reading this shit Yeah In the article where he says he doesn't have the authority He says that he's already used it and it's the same authority. He's using to pause it. Yeah

This is yeah, this is uh that's I that's insane. I didn't know that. There's one more point. He says that it's like, you know, it's that student loan borrowers are small percentage of the pop. He says that it's only 20% of adult Americans have student loans, which I don't quite understand what he's getting at there. Just, just because it doesn't affect the majority of Americans, we shouldn't do anything. I mean, there's $1.7 trillion. Right. And it's millions of people. I mean, like, does he think that, you know, just because not that many people have diabetes,

we shouldn't work to lower the prices of insulin for people. I don't understand. No, so I've been going crazy for the past. Like ever since he, ever since he pushed the date back, I've been going crazy for the past, like ever since he, ever since he pushed the date back, I've been going crazy. But yeah, and also, I don't, there are some people who do argue that this is not

a progressive thing to do, it's regressive because you're helping. They're like, oh, you're just gonna give a gift to doctors and lawyers, which is not the case at all. Even if it was the case, like, leave doctors out of it, I think they had a heart enough two years. Like, I don't think we need, I think we can let, Oh, sure, because of the whole pandemic thing, right?

Sure. Don't forgive the debt of lawyers. And I say that as one, they all deserve to burn. But no. I mean, no. No, but the truth is, that's, that's, it's a bad argument. A lot of people don't know this. 40% of people who hold student debt right now

don't even have a degree. They don't earn one. So they like start college. They trick out loans to start college. Don't fail. Right. And so they don't even have a degree to show for it. Interesting. A lot of this is, a lot of, there's a lot of parents,

and look at this, millions of student loan bars don't have a diploma to show for their debt. Interesting. Brutal. What was the Larry Summers thing? You touched on Larry Summers being an asshole. He did this long thread about how it's judged purely in terms of economic impacts. The administration's decision to extend student loans more, student loan more, Torium is highly problematic. At a time when unemployment, this is a Twitter thread. At a time, at a time when unemployment, this is a Twitter thread, at a time, at a time when unemployment is unusually low and household balance sheets are very strong

for all income quintiles. I could barely read that. There is no special case for across the board relief now unlike when it was put in place two years ago. It's a really long thread, don't you? Yeah, okay. So what's his point? His point is that the economy is strong now and to advocate for. It's a really long threat, don't we? Yeah, okay. So what's his point? His point is that the economy is strong now

and to advocate for this is actually a bad idea. You're gonna over, he's always talking about how giving any kind of gift to low income people or people who need help is gonna overheat the economy. So it'd be great if we could. So that's his whole thing. Judge purely in terms of economic impacts. I'd love to help him.

Meanwhile, he used to be the Dean of Harvard. Oh, okay. And he also took out interest free loans for his kids to go to school, even though he surely could have paid for it. God, these fucking people, man. Okay, so there was, when we were going over the outline for today's show, you were educating me on a lot, but one of the big things that I found interest, wait, first of all, is there anything that you want to... Oh, well, the only thing, so I just hate the arguments that people are making too, especially

we talked about it being regressive, that's just a bad argument. Like anyone who could have paid for their school, like these are not rich people. There's this weird argument that you're giving a gift to these rich people to get out of their loans for free. It's just not the case. And then there's also this argument that people are lazy and they're stupid and they didn't, you know, they should have just, they shouldn't know what they were doing when they were getting into these loans. And the thing we were talking about is I think it's horrible, because this is a policy failure of decades of just an awful way to extend higher education to more Americans. Right, because to go on what I was saying, one of the things that I didn't know is just

a few decades ago, high school education was not something that was readily available for all Americans. Yeah, I didn't know. I think when I graduated high school, my, you know, I just figured everyone went to high school and I remember my grandmother told me that she was the first one in her family to graduate from high school.

And I was like, what do you talk about? She had like nine brothers and sisters. Mm-hmm. And then when you look into, you know, in the early 19th century, no one was going to high school. I mean, not no one, but there was a push for to expand high school towards people. And I mean, look, this was a problematic way of doing it too.

We all know about the inequity among education in this country at the lower level too, but they decided to fund it through property taxes. So it stands to reason that the higher income neighborhoods are gonna have more property taxes to afford better facilities, et cetera. Right, and there's a whole host of problems there, but you also don't have people leaving high school in debt. We thought it was a valuable thing to do

to give people a high school education, so we started doing it for free. valuable thing to do to give people a high school education. So we started doing it for free. Yeah. And in as we started to value higher education more, we had to figure out a way to get Americans enrolled in college more. And with the high education act, we made it so that banks could give out federally secured student loans to people. So they were the middle man. Banks would give out the loans.

They were backed by the federal government. They were guaranteed. And colleges took advantage of that, right? Well, there are a lot of reasons why the price of college has ballooned. But I think one of them for sure, and other people have said that, I think there's something called the Bennett theory. I think it's the Bennett hypothesis.

I think it was like Reagan's, who was it? Oh yeah, Reagan's education secretary, talking about how, I think he was doing it in a bad faith way, saying that we need to cut off financial aid to people because what's happening is colleges are realizing that they're going to get their money no matter what, right? This, this tuition is guaranteed by the federal government. So if we raise it, people are still going to be able to get those loans and we're still going to get paid.

I mean, it makes sense. Right. But I don't think that's a reason not to offer financial aid. I think we need to figure out. Stop the college. Put a cap on how much I'm talking to. Right. So we're not just getting gouged by these institutions. Yeah. There's no more middleman, really.

You have these loan services, but I think in 2010, Obama basically bought up all those loans. That's why that's why 95% of them are now just federally held. And all those loans come directly from the Department of Education now. Okay. You're not going through a bank or a middleman. But you do kind of have a middleman

because everyone, there's Naviant and Great Lakes and all of these Fed loans servicing, all these horrible companies that call you and tell you you got to pay. Jesus. I didn't even know the names of any of these things. Oh, it's a horrible amount. So why did the Obama administration buy up all these student loans?

So they bought the Obama administration bought them from private banks and whatnot? Yeah, so the loans weren't actually held by the federal government. So I mean, there was a whole host of reasons to do it, so they could offer more programs. It was an effort to give people relief without canceling the debt. So now these are all held by the federal government. You can offer these programs. Like one of the big ones everyone talks about is the income-based repayment plan. There's also the public service loan forgiveness if you work at a nonprofit or something like that,

for a certain amount of time, you can get your loans forgiven, so all these new programs were instituted to help people. The problem was, they've been a mess for people. The servicers still ran all this. The servicers cost a lot of people money. They weren't, they were offering things like, rather than if you called them and told them you were having trouble with payments, a lot of times they were not getting

people into income-based repayments, which if you make below a certain amount, you'll often have zero dollars to pay. And that will still count towards, because I think it's after 20 or 25 years, your loan is forgiven. And so instead of getting people into those programs, they were getting, and it helps with interest. They were getting people into deferments. They were going, oh, you can't pay, defer it.

You won't be paying, but your interest rates are still hitting, you're like accruing. The principal is going up, and those are not going towards forgiveness. Jesus. Yeah, so. Not only that, but correct me if I'm wrong here, if you were to file for bankruptcy,

personal bankruptcy, student loans do not get. That is true. That's insane. So if you're $200,000 in credit card debt and you file for bankruptcy, I mean, I'm really, really oversimplifying here, but that gets for not forgiven, but that gets sort of eradicated. But if you have 50 grand in student loan, that just stays on the books. That's right. And that's because federal loans are so tricky, right? They do a lot of things that other creditors can't do. It's very easy for them to garnish wages.

I don't even think they have to see you. They can just start garnishing your wages if you don't pay. They can take money out of your tax returns. They can, you know, there's always a way. There's always a way. They can reach. The worst thing about the bankruptcy is,

so private loans are a bitch. Federal loans do, there are a lot of programs available now for some kind of relief. Private loans, there are some extremely predatory, it goes state by state, there are some extremely predatory private loans out there. And you used to be able to discharge private student loan debt. And you know, who is part of the move to not allow that anymore? Joe Biden. Yeah. Ah, I guess you're right. The Senator from MBNA.

Wow. Who would have thought that in America, they care more about businesses. So you can no longer, you can no longer discharge private student loan debt. Thanks a lot, Joe Biden. Paying a freaking $18,000 a for gas and now this now I learned this Yeah, and so I mean we're talking about how much this is ballooning and I think I get so frustrated you have like You have a lot of older people who don't understand it too, right? I think because the price of college was so different Way back in the day. Yeah, we had this article, the price of college is increasing eight times faster than wages

right now. Jesus Christ. This is from Forbes. It's fucking insane. But you have boomers who have no idea and they're going, well, I don't understand what you guys are so pissed about. I flipped burgers over the summer. I paid for my college.

Yeah, I'm sure you fucking did. Yeah, back when tuition costs $200 of semester. Student loans make up the largest chunk of US non-housing debt. You got student loan credit card and auto loan debt. Interesting. I, I, to, to, to again, go back on, on what you said about like high school education, it's, it's interesting in frustrating because way back in the day, America kind of collectively, well not collectively, but the government decided, okay, high school education is important

and it should be kind of a standardized thing that's available to all Americans. And then when higher education became a thing, college, they didn't just do the same thing. But most other countries did, like in Europe, they're just, they, they kind of said, hey, higher education is something that we value as a society. And so let's make it readily available and accessible and affordable because it doesn't even cost them money over there, right? Yeah, but we were like, how can we make? How can we make? How can we make some fun? High interest loans. We've got to make some money off of this. And it's just, it's, it's one of so many things that makes a, I think a big push came from, I think it was a cold war thing. I

think I wanted to push for, I think in the wake of Sputnik, wanted to push for people to go to college. We got to compete with those risky because I think the first Program was in like 1958 and but I think it was a big push on STEM stuff like science. Yeah, math So and now look at us now look at us now we got Just we're just that we're just an attention focused economy Shopping economy we don't manufacture shit. I mean we do but we're we're mainly just a a consumption based entertainment based economy That's what we got that's what we that's what we manufacture and we're damn good at it

We're we are Man, there's so many there's so many things to be frustrated about. I wanted to get, I wanted to do a bigger thing on this on where like the future of this is going to go, like there's a lot of time between now and May 1st, and I'm very curious what's going to happen. People are going to pay off their loans, man. They're gonna be responsible and pay them off. But this has been driving me crazy. I mean, and this could help a lot of people. People who never thought they could afford homes

could start trying to do that. I mean, a lot of people are in default just having their credit scores fucking destroyed. You can start paying off credit card debt. People can use this, because the average payment is like $400 a month. You can use this money to get child care, to get back into work.

I mean, it's fucking crazy. I mean, okay, so there's two things. What is this? There's this first Twitter link, this Dave New World. Oh yeah, this is just, I didn't put this in here. I did, but I don't think it's, there's this other thing. Okay, so this paragraph, I wanted to read this because it's pertinent to this conversation.

Read to me, Ben. This is such a great, it's an excerpt from an article whose name I won't even say because I think just the mention of the word would upset too many people because naturally that's just what people do. But this juicy meaty paragraph really sums up the zeitgeist, the attitude of Americans, most Americans.

Okay, excuse me. Americans are, of course, the most thoroughly and passively indoctrinated people on earth. They know next to nothing as a rule about their own history, or the histories of other nations, or the histories of the various social movements that have risen and fallen in the past, and they certainly know little or nothing of the complexities and contradictions comprised within words like socialism and capitalism. Chiefly, what they have been trained not to know or even suspect is that, in many ways, they enjoy far fewer freedoms and suffer under a more intrusive centralized state than

do the citizens of countries with more vigorous social democratic institutions. This is at once the most comic and most tragic aspect of the excitable alarm that talk of social democracy or democratic socialism can elicit on these shores. An enormous number of Americans have been persuaded to believe that they are freer in the abstract than say Germans or Danes precisely because they possess far fewer freedoms in the concrete. They are far more vulnerable to medical and financial crisis, far more likely to receive inadequate health coverage, far more prone to irreparable insolvency, far more likely to receive inadequate health coverage, far more prone to irreparable insolvency, far more unprotected against predatory creditors, sound familiar,

far more subject to income inequality and so forth while effectively paying more in tax when one figures in federal, state, local and sales tax and then compounds those by all the expenditures that in this country, as almost nowhere else, their taxes do not cover. One might think that a people who once rebelled against the mightiest empire on earth on the principle of no taxation without representation would not meekly accept taxation

without adequate government services. But we accept what we have become used to, I suppose. Even so, one has to ask, what state apparatus in the free world could be more powerful and tyrannical than the one that taxes citizens while providing no substantial civic benefits in return solely in order to enrich a paratically overinflated military industrial complex and to ease the tax burdens of the immensely wealthy boy fucking howdy but you have to tell me where it's from okay that is from mine Comfy Hitler but

Look when a what a good point is made you got it It's such a great point. I mean it's not it's not it's not from my calm. It's not it's not his it's from his from his follow-up hit mine Comf to the Confening No, but really it is from, it's from, it's from Commonwealth magazine.org. Three cheers for socialism is the name of the article. No, I mean, you're preaching to the choir. I didn't, I've never seen this article, but the, I mean, it's funny.

He, he hits so many points here, but he's talking about, you know, socialism, capitalism, people not even know the difference. There's a professor Richard Wolff. He teaches set like Harvard and Yale. And he said it's stark the difference when he teaches courses in Europe. And he can talk about difference between different types of socialism, communism, Maoism, Leninism, all these different things. And, you know, then he comes back to Ivy League schools in America. And he's like, oh, wow, I have to explain them to the difference between communism and socialism.

And then I mean, another, the way he talks about freedom, there's this great book called the Nordic Theory of Everything. And it really, damn, my boy reads. Open my eyes to this thing about, because everyone pushes this freedom in America. Will you have the freedom to do all these things? But because the Nordic theory of everything, it's basically this woman she moves,

I think from Finland to America, and she is shocked at how... how different life is. And she said, you know, the real freedom was having these support systems in place to do the things you want. Sure. In Finland. In Finland.

The real freedom was, you know, because freedom is not being, you know, a person who maybe stays in a relationship because they know that if they leave, they'll lose out on healthcare benefits that they get through their spouse. So they stay in an abusive relationship with someone because they don't wanna lose their health insurance

or their kids. It's like psychotic, the way we think we're so free because we have the freedom to not be able to afford to get sick. Right, I think the freedom that gets tossed around so much is actually just super, oh god, I'm really sucking at words today, but rugged individualism. Oh yeah. Just like you've got to fend for yourself and you've got to

you've got to plant the seeds, sow the seeds, do the whole, you got to do it all yourself and that's freedom. I mean, sure, you can, that is a form of freedom that you are free to you can make it for yourself But it's also you're just you can also break it for yourself. Yeah, you sure can I mean just what What it what he just just the way the guy covers all the different ways in which Just the way the guy covers all the different ways in which we are taxed. We pay more than anybody in taxes and we get so fucking little for it. Oh, that's every social program we have. That's what's mind blowing. We spend more on healthcare.

We spend more on fucking everything. Well because everything we view, everything the American apparatus views everything through a business lens and how to like make profit from it student loans the healthcare system like You know insulin costing however many pennies to manufacture, but then getting sold for hundreds of dollars despite people needing it Just to survive no children You have people going over the Canadian border just to get insulin to come back We got a run for president man. Ah fuck that. No, no not fuck that. It is our duty

Do a president we get killed by the CIA. I don't care. I don't care. You got to die somehow If you okay if I were to get how do you imagine me getting assassinated by the CIA is it like poison is it a bullet. Picture me as president. Hey guys let's be a little president what's what's going on I think I'm gonna take a cruise through Dallas today it's a nice day honestly one of their most famous assassinations they might just try that again what the JF the JFK one? Yeah. Yeah, man, they really, they really shot. We should do an episode on the, I'm actually, I don't know if I want to out myself as a full blown CIA killed the JFK truth or? He, they totally did.

Yeah. They killed, they killed him. Because he wanted to like dismantle the CIA, right? He wanted to dismantle the like rogue intelligence and defense state. They, they can, they lost complete control of it. I mean, oh man, don't even get me started on fucking bloody. I'm not gonna even Truman wrote a huge long article

about his regrets in killing JFK. No, because Truman established the CIA out of the OSS. And let's not get into the way it was Truman beforeK? yeah Truman was after FDR oh yeah Truman dropped the bomb Truman dropped the bomb then Ike and then um JFK yeah man Ike what a name you don't get at names like that anymore do you? there's real names really there's Dwight Dwight? oh yeah Dwight but how do you get Ike from Dwight? I don't know how do you get fucking Dick from Richard? yeah yeah I guess it true. We don't know what your name is short for we're gonna eventually get to more of your backstory

Okay Anyway, all right we should move on. Yeah, we got it. I got to take a quick P break I'm so sorry. It's because I didn't eat anything this morning except for a little Lara bar or whatever. We got to move off a student. I didn't mean to talk for that long, but I'm just just. No, it's great. It's fascinating. There's a lot. There's a lot to it. There is. And I think we'll probably get back to it. I would love there are some people I would love to get on to go deeper into our way out of this, but we'll get to that as time goes on. The summary, I would say, is that student loans are bad, they're predatory. They are...

So horrible policy decisions have led us to, you know, not only the rapidly unchecked inflated costs of tuition, but just the fact that college college should be fucking free. Where the wealthy one talk about the destination in the world. They want to talk about what? There are no. No, no. FOMC? Yeah, I just want to touch on it briefly, I guess, because the market is having an adverse

reaction to the Fed minutes, which means the details of the last Fed meeting, I mean, it comes out a month after. So this is the details of the meeting that they had in December, December 15th that just came out this week. Well, by the time you guys hear this, it'll be last week. And the stock market reacted negatively because a rise in interest rates to combat inflation, which is what the Fed is doing, and a reduction in their balance sheet is historically bad for growth stocks.

And this market is mostly driven by growth stocks. So things are kind of getting a little shaky. What does that mean? I don't have a no. Oh, the line. Yeah, who knows? Which is frustrating because, you know, the market has gone up so fucking much. It's like, is it going to pull back? But the fact that everybody now thinks and is ready for it to pull back might mean that it won't and it might just go sideways

for the whole damn year. So your guess is as good as mine. I'm sorry, I can't be of more help, but that's just, that's what happened. And then, uh, oh, we did another thing that happened over the break. Yeah. I'm sorry. I say we did bad news. We did lose to absolute girl bosses, uh, going down. I did want to say, uh, just real quick, shout out to Glean Maxwell and Elizabeth Holmes of Theronauts. Be strong girls, do look out for my letters. I will be writing. That is bad news. I don't have to cover the Galein Maxwell trial.

She's going to jail. Do Bill Clinton next, I would say. Him go to jail? He go to jail? Well, he's always on that goddamn plane. I mean, well, maybe he had miles. Yeah. Yeah, he had Epstein miles. Yeah. He had Epstein miles. Yeah.

Epstein miles. You know the weirdest thing about, like the worst, actually not the worst thing. The worst thing about it was a lot of worst thing. The worst thing was the child trafficking and the rape and everything. The weirdest thing is the, why did Epstein need to get massage so much? Every time I hear him,, I feel good, dude. I know, but it's too fucking much. It's like, also, yeah,

cause you're getting it by like an inexperienced child. Not like that, I just, getting, I can't imagine getting a massage that much. Yeah, yeah. You'd be just a walkin' freakin' noodle, is love, man, I'm so relaxed. Lock up anyone who gets massages that much. Yeah, I know a guy who would go get a hand job massages.

Oh, I'm just talking about regular massages. Yeah, I know. I'm just sharing. You know a guy who did it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hey, there's a website for it. He was like, you gotta try one and I was like, nah, that's not for me.

That's not for me. I'll take a regular massage. Even then, I don't, I can't handle nah, that's not for me. That's not for me. I'll take a regular massage. Even then, I don't, I can't handle getting massage. I've got one. I go, ooh, ooh. Two more. I've gotten one massage. Just one?

And it was a gift. It's expensive. Yeah, it's like 200 bucks or 100 bucks. Yeah. 50 bucks. I remember my friend. It's like 20 bucks. No.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You go on. Nothing, I remember my friend told me he started dating someone and he was like, she gets a lot of massages. Like, huh? One a week and I was like, this person spending like $800 a month on massages.

She budgeted for it. Lock her up. Yeah. That's what you want. What's wrong with, at that point, just get a Theragun. Seriously. Yeah. Theragun Theranos. Theranos. We did want to talk about Theranos a little bit. She she going to jail What so probably for not that long the so I think that's what pissed me off the most about it is Like half the counts she didn't even get she wasn't found guilty. And the weirdest one to me is she's found guilty

of defrauding investors. That's the big one. But she wasn't guilty of defrauding the patients. Interesting. Yeah. So she lied to the investors. And I just, I mean, I, it just signals to me that, you know.

The technology works. They're just trying to, they're just trying to, to big, big blood, big blood is trying to silence this new technology. So for those of you who don't know, a Theranos was this private company, headed, spearheaded by this woman named Elizabeth Holmes, who claimed that her technology enabled you to do blood

panels from a sink like just drops a blood just a few drops of blood versus, you know, a vial of blood. And it was, it was, she was the darling of venture capitalists everywhere because it was touted as like this breakthrough technology that was gonna Make them all billions of dollars and at its peak it was worth billions dollars the company was worth billions and Everybody that every every venture capitalist and every fucking billionaire had a stake in this company and then some whistleblower Blue the whistle and Revealed that it yeah, it was all bullshit, which is, it's fascinating. And it's kind of cool. Like to me, she's kind of a little bit of a hero.

But she, right, the whistleblower, the John Kerry you, John Kerry, right? I don't know his name. Okay. Keep going. No, he cares about him. Everybody cares about Elizabeth because she's a psycho. She's a total psycho. Google filters of Psycho. She's a total psycho. Google photos of this woman, she's a fucking nut.

Because she took a page out of Steve Jobs's book. She would wear black turtleneck, she wouldn't blink, she would keep her eyes open. Yeah, oh boy. And she also did this weird thing with her voice. People thought she was lowering her voice. She did. She says it thing with her voice. People thought she was lowering her voice. She did. She says it's her normal voice.

This was actually just my normal voice. But the thing that drove me nuts was that it felt like a very clear indication that the American justice system is much more interested in protecting investors. And they were like, oh God, yes, we cannot have this happen to our investors. They relied to and then, but I mean, thousands of patients used this machine

and made decisions about their health on it. Oh boy, I didn't even know that. It was in Walgreens. They had it in Walgreens. There it was? Yes, holy shit. I think it's almost, I think it's like over 100,000 people have used

these machines. Wow. Yeah, that's substantial. I wonder if there was just some kind of you signed away any and all legal rights when you asked it. Like, hey, this is actually for entertainment purposes. I think the investigation from the get-go was much, I think it started with the SEC.

So I think it was always much more interested in the way they were Attracting investors and lying to people naturally. I also I also Think that the trial just wasn't that focused on the patients. I mean the patients were there, but there wasn't that much testimony from them Yeah, we love a good fraud though. There's a we we'd love a good fraud. Every few years there's a big fraud. There was another one a few years ago, I think a couple of years ago now, there was a hydrogen truck company called Nikola

because they couldn't, they couldn't obviously call themselves Tesla and they were kind of borrowing some of Tesla's heat by calling themselves Nikola, which was headed by this scammer named Trevor Milton. Literally billions of dollars this guy made just, I mean, on paper. I know he did sell like a billion dollars worth of stock, but it was a spec.

So it was a company whose, a special purpose acquisition company who bought Nikola and then thus taking Nikola public. And it totally, it fuck, the stock went from like, I don't know, 10 bucks to over $70. Damn. On all this hype that it was, these hydrogen trucks were a legitimate viable competitor to Tesla, to electric trucks, because the problem with electric trucks is you need a battery that's so big

that it makes the truck too heavy. And it can't go, the distance is too short. Like you could only get 120 miles or whatever it was out of a battery. Whereas these hydrogen trucks could go, you know, a thousand miles per tank. And so obviously the problem is, okay, there's no infrastructure,

but their whole PR campaign machine was predicated upon, oh, we've got partnerships with, I think Bud Weiser and like freight liner and- That's who you want to partner with when you're driving a big truck. You want to actually partner with a beer company. Yeah, man. They got to haul that beer, man. I got to get that shit going. They got to get thirsty people. They're beer. So the whole thing was, okay, we've partnered with these this truck company and and a couple big names to build out an infrastructure.

I believe in California or like the, you know, the Southwest region so that we can have a viable little self-sustaining network. But in the fine print was basically these companies were, they were partnered with Nicola, but it was at no risk to them. They didn't put up any capital. It was just kind of like, yeah, sure. If you guys can figure it out, we'll make it work. Like, yeah, why not? And then the biggest, the pinnacle of all this was Nicola put out a video of the truck in motion, quote unquote.

It was like, it was driving? Yes, but it wasn't. So the big thing that then was revealed because they put out the video and it blew investors away It was like well there it is the truck is driving. It's it's in motion It was in motion because it was rolling down a hill wow. Yes That was the big reveal why did this happen? I've never even heard this company this is 2020 I believe I believe it happened just in 2020. Yeah. So what happened to the guy? So, well, he resigned in disgrace and is like getting to see you.

We love someone resigning in disgrace. Oh, yes. And he was posting videos, photos of him like vacationing in Barbados, but like in the Caribbean. Well, you got to take a victory lap. Yeah. Because he had just sold like $900 million worth of stock. Jesus.

And meanwhile, yeah, then it came out that the truck was rolling and not actually being, it was in motion, but it wasn't under its own power. It didn't work. Astoundingly, the company is still around. It's still publicly traded. And I think it's got a valuation of like one or two billion dollars. But.

What, they're just still working on the hydrogen trucks. I guess they do have it is on paper scientifically, somewhat still viable, but it's just, damn. It was very entertaining. I'd love to be in the meeting for the guy who was like, because they're like, we're fucked, we gotta do a demonstration. And one guy was just like, I got an idea.

What if we put it on the hell? And everyone was like, yeah! It worked and it looked cool. And I even thought, damn, I got an idea. What if we put it on the hill? And everyone was like, yeah! It worked and it looked cool and I even thought, damn, they really did it. Everybody was, everybody was fooled. I'm just waiting for, wait, is it, did you just pull it up? Oh, no way it is. There it is, baby. That's rolling downhill.

Look at it go! It works! It works! See, it goes. It works. It works. See it goes. Oh my God. What we need to do is make every road in America downhill. This is how we saw the climate crisis.

That is a great idea. Okay, what was the headline there? Trevor Milton pleads guilty. I just want to, I guess he is going to scroll down just a little. Trevor Milton pleads not guilty to three counts of fraud. Prosecutors say his vehicles were powered by wall sockets and towed into position. Uh, it's funny. Anyway, so the truck still works.

It's just got to be downhill. Yeah, yeah. I mean, legally, what does a truck need to work? It needs to roll. It has wheels and rolls. They did their job. They did their job. They did their job. I'm still waiting.

I still, I think that one of these days, the Tesla, the Tesla similar kind of level of, it's weird because it's known that there are certain, well, they're working on the freighter, right? Yeah, they are. They're working on a lot of things. The cyber truck just disappeared. I don't care.

Yes, it's you boy buddy. I know a lot of things disappear. On that note, we wanted to touch on a couple interesting thing. The top gainers, the top stocks of 2021 and the top losers. Let's go over the gainers first real fast. Number one, I was gonna have you guess, but now since it's pulled up, we can, we can do that. But AMC was the number one stock gainer of 2021 at a whopping 1,239.8%.

Number two was game stuff. How are they measuring this? Is this like from January 1 to 1231? Yep. I believe so. That's a hell of an investment. I know for a fucking joke. I know. I know. And Game joke. I know I know and GameStop We came in at 706 and a half percent car which is a this heartbreaking for me. Yeah, 445% upstart which is a It's like an AI loan. Yeah thing where you can they go off of like unconventional metrics bullshit. It's all just the same shit that bank does that they just took out the middle man. 300% Oh, I do want to say one thing to anyone considering I meant to say this anyone considering trying to use one of those

loan companies like SoFi or something like that. Sure. Do not do that because sometimes you can get a lower interest rate. Those will become private student loans and be left out of any of the federal student loan cancellation that comes around the pike. And a lot of those people who have already transferred are going to be locked out. Who have transferred too so far to consolidate? Gotcha. Well, there you have it, folks. So be really careful with that kind of stuff.

Yeah. Number five, I don't know why this list is only six. Okay, number five is Lucid, which is the Tesla... Dude, I just saw a Lucid... In person? Well, I've been seeing them, but then I saw a Lucid... TV commercial. No.

You know how they have all the Tesla stores? Yeah. I've seen... There's a Lucid one in the Westfield Mall. Huh, crazy. It is crazy. I didn't think they were like at that. You know what I wanna get? I wanna get one of the Ford F-150 electric trucks.

The lightning? Yes, that is when my Volvo dies, and I go drive it out to the, you know what I'm gonna do? What are you gonna do? I'm gonna get, so when my Volvo dies, my 1989 Volvo. We'll have a funeral.

I want it to get 300,000 miles, if it doesn't get 300,000 miles, because it's got like 24,000 to go. If it doesn't get there and it dies, I'm going to get a Ford F-150 electric car and using its tow package, I'm going to tow my Volvo out to the desert and I'm gonna blow it up. That's cool, isn't that cool? I like that. I'm gonna to tow my Volvo out to the desert and I'm going to blow it up.

That's cool. Isn't that cool? I like that. I'm going to take the vid number off the engine block and so they can't trace it back to me. Have you seen the concept Ford pickup truck? No. They basically took an old... It's like an old F-150 or a Ranger or something like that. Because the new trucks have gotten so big, I don't want to truck them. I don't like it either. It's like an old F-150 or a Ranger or something like that. Because the new trucks have gotten so big. I don't like it either. It's fucking gigantic, but they took one of these old ones from the 50s or 60s. Time.

It looks so cool. Hell yeah, can we electrify it? It's so sick. That's the one I would want. What would you type in for it? Oh, oh. Oh, yes, it's that. It's the old electric F-100.

No, the one right to the left. That is it. See, now this is such an obvious idea. Why the fuck aren't they doing that? Probably aerodynamics. And materials, like. That's what they make. Some of these electric cars look so stupid.

I know. I think they did. You know, you can just make a cool looking electric car, right? I think Mercury, if you Google like Mercury electric concept car, Mercury. Yeah, I don't think not even existing. I don't know. But there was one I saw on the internet,

not fuck, dammit. Not fuck, dammit. There was some, it was some, it wasn't Mercury then, it was, oh man, I don't know, but they made it, it was a sedan, it looked purple, and it looked like something out of Blade Runner, or like, it looked like a taxi cab in Tokyo. All the, like all the taxis in Tokyo

are this certain kind of boxy looking sedan, and it looked like that, and it just, it looked fucking killer. Anyway. Even when they just look normal, I've been seeing poll stars actually on the road road and they look normal, which is great. Yeah, I don't yeah, electric cars they intentionally make them look like dumb little pieces of shit nerd. And this might be an unpopular thing. You want to drive off the road. But I do not want a huge

sideways TV in my fucking car. Yeah, I don't like that. It's fucking confusing. That's what I love about my Volvo. It's all analog. Maybe it's all dials, physical dials. Give me a little screen so I could see what I'm gonna hit if I'm reversing. Sure. You know, give me a map. My car is so fucked now that when I turn on the air conditioning

and have the radio on at the same time, there's interference. Yeah, there's a big hole. So it just go, and then when I turn off the air conditioning, it goes, and then I can hear the radio just fine. Okay, let's see, what were the losers? Wait, close your eyes, Emil, close your eyes.

I want you to guess, even though you're probably not gonna guess, and even. Okay, so the first one I'm gonna give you a hint, exercise. I mean, I think I know because of what happened. What is it? Is it the peloton? Yeah, it is peloton. That's the number one.

Yep, it was down 76.2%. That one's cheap because it just happened and we talked about it. Yeah, okay, number two, you are not gonna get. It is a Chinese company. Alibaba. No, it is, it's like, I believe it's like the Twitter of, well, it's one of, it's like a social media company.

It starts with a P. Yeah, I don't know. You're not gonna get it. Pin duo duo. But never get it. PDD, that's, it was down 66.8%. You're not gonna get these other ones. B-E-K-E, I don't know what the hell that is.

Down 67%. Oh, Alibaba is on there, though. Alibaba is on there along with Teladoc. Robin Hood. Coupang, which is, I believe, a... Kupang is a e-commerce one that's in South East Asia. You know, you won't see on there. What? Pinterest, baby.

Pint, Jesus Christ. Yeah, Robin Hood's down big, almost halved, and I think it's down more to start the year robin hood down bad We still got some time. We still got time. Let's do crypto corner, baby There's some big news in the dipshit dipshit dumb fuck and we have something to come clean about what We're the apethes. Yeah, we're the apethes. We did it. We thought you guys I took a stupid I took a stupid ape. I took it. I took the ape picture I'm the guy who took the ape picture now. I have the ape picture now

I'm gonna pay for my kid college at the ape picture. Look at me. I'm a big I got the one that's smoking a cigar and has a dumb fucking expression on his face. That's me, I took it. Fucking Christ. What's the first, what, so some bonafide dipshit who spent, you know, $400,000 on... So this guy, here's his tweet, been trying to put on a good face since I lost my ape, but I gotta be honest, this was my kid's college, my mortgage, just absolute shit that some of you out there think it's okay

that I got ripped off. Fuck you if you think theft is okay because I wasn't smart enough. And then this person... Well, so just to explain real quick to anyone who doesn't know what's going on, there's basically a fishing scam and people were getting emails and when they... That would happen. Yeah, honestly, there's a lot of things that were happening.

People can lose them to scams. Also, I think there were accidental things that happened too, where sites like OpenC and whatever, other sites that sell, and if T's were actually selling ones that had already sold by accident. Okay. But, man, decentralization really solves this. I know, that's kind of the fucking Bitcoin would solve that. There's like multiple ways to fucking get fucked,

but I just wanted to explain. So there was a fishing scam and people are losing their pictures of their monkey pictures They're losing these investments. No, no, yeah, they're their investments of monkey pictures Right, and so that's why this guy's fucking screaming honestly my favorite reaction was the person someone responded to him and and wrote Change a profile picture. You don't own that ape anymore. That's great. That's great. This person's reaction was great. If you bet your kids future on a picture of an ape, I not only will laugh at you when you lose it, I will also think you should lose custody of your kid. Because then this dumb, this dumb shlub, I don't know, I don't know the details of it,

but he had to pay 38,000 dollars to get the picture back. Oh yeah, this guy Ed Zittron sums it up. The system works. He just had to pay 38,000 dollars for the thing he previously owned that he gave away due to quote, an issue with how his wallet interacted with the site. I mean, it all just makes my head hurt seems like a solution was found that please never run i yes i love i love what i pay thirty eight thousand

dollars to get back my stuff yeah glad to see some form of self-regulation in this space okay there's so they're asking for regulation there's so much going on here okay so just preemptively to the crypto guys. We get it. You won. You made a ton of money. I'm genuinely happy for you. But this NFT shit is nothing. It is so fucking assinine.

If you say that you're in it for the art, you're so disingenuous because there's 10th every day. There's thousands of these fucking things that come out. You are so disingenuous because there's 10th everyday. There's thousands of these fucking things that come out. We're making 10,000 NFTs. Yeah, there's no art to this. This is a dumb fucking cartoon monkey. It's a cartoon fucking monkey and it is not worth $350,000.

I don't care if Eminem bought one. I don't care if whoever the fuck else bought one and made their profile picture. Oh,'t care if Eminem bought one. I don't care if whoever the fuck else bought one and made it their profile picture Oh, it gets you into a special club. Yeah, get you into a special club where you get to go I don't know to a fucking a restaurant or a bar where a hundred other dipshit who spent you don't I don't want to hang out with these sweaty idiots. It's show me your monkey. Oh, this is my monkey This is my monkey. Well, you got the monkey with the laser eyes. Yeah, I got the monkey with the teeth.

I got the monkey with wearing a tank top. I got the monkey who eaten up an anna. Full disclaimer, Ben is a no coin pussy. And it's just, look, I constantly waver on this. And it's annoying because right before this happened, I started playing around with, have you heard of that? I don't know if it's new but it's a wallet and just app called rainbow.me or something. No. I basically heard one of the founders talking about it. I think his name is Mike Demmery or something. And he made it sound very cool and how they're very focused on

you know the usability of the app and, and one of his things was like, yes, the stuff is very confusing. One of the best things you can do is put in a little money and start playing with it. And I was kind of getting excited about it there. It is kind of, and then this fucking happened. And I was just like, also, this is just completely fucked. And I don't know if I want to be a part of this.

But, so it was shitty timing for me because I thought I was going to, thought it was finally going to be a fucking NFT bro. A millionaire? So that's not a millionaire. That's the thing, I wasn't doing it for, I don't think it's worthwhile for me to like spend my time and money trying to get rich off of NFTs and stuff,

but I do think, I've said it on the show before, I do think there's utility in some of these things. Say. And so I was interested in that. But I feel so silly when these things start to happen. Yeah, because these are nothing more than a money grab. Like in my mind, the reason that these things cost so much is because the people who already had immense

monetary success in crypto, like the guy, there's a guy who co-founded Ethereum. And he just bought a fucking, oh God, he bought like a toxic sludge ape or something. For three and a half million dollars. You'll see, that's worth it, Ben. You just don't understand why. Okay, so when you're talking about a toxic sludge, that's only going to grow, my man.

When you're talking about a cartoon picture of like a... You own that picture. That's a picture you own, no one else does. And that gets you certain... No, it is very silly. It's fucking stupid. And well, so I just gotta finish this. These people are, in a way, gatekeepers to this thing

that only, that just through their own little community of the top 1% of crypto wealth is Is inflating in price and making the rest of us feel like oh my god I got to get one of these just because they're they have so much money that of course that guy can throw away Three and a half million dollars on a fucking JPEG. Like, let's not dilute ourselves. Like that guy that I played the Australian guy from a few weeks ago said, all going crazy. I'm about to bet you a scissors. There's a picture of scissors.

And I'm about to spend 40 grand on this picture of fucking scissors. And I'm going fucking insane. Like, yeah, because it's 40 grand on a picture of scissors. Yeah, I don't give a sh- The utility is there, I get it, I understand. But for right now, this being so early, this is nothing more than a money grab for these,

I'm screwed. You're right about street police individuals. The exclusivity of it too. Do you know about the white lists? It's like you can get on these white lists and you get early access to things. Sure. And it's, you know, and so it's these special people who get, I mean, we were talking about, we're complaining about the regular financial system and Nancy Pelosi getting early access to IPOs. I mean, they have white

lists for these things where you're often buying them at half the price. You're saving money on gas fees because, you know, things shoot up as everyone's trying to run to get the same NFT on the release date. And then I think it was something like 76% of people who buy off of white lists, turn a profit on there. Sure. Thanks. And it's like, if you look at regular investors

who are not using white lists, it goes down to like 20%. Yeah. Turning a profit on these things. And that's my fault. Like I just can't. That's your fault, you do the white lists? I don't have the emotional capital to spend

on putting enough time and energy into these things that where other people not only have enough money to afford it, but they've got the time and the interest to like really dive into this shit. Cause I've tried buying and I bought a couple NFTs before and I fucking lost money on them. Cause they had just as much hype and I thought, okay, yeah, this must be a thing.

There's so many of these fucking projects. There are dime a dozen. So I just have given up on it. Okay, I really can't tell one apart from the other. Why is this pixelated picture of a dog taking a shit gonna be successful while this one of a rat eating its own ass? Is the rat eating its own ass to take off? Yeah, there's 10,000.

I bought a bunch. What can I say one thing that I've been thinking about with the web three thing that's- Please. So we're both around the same age. We had an experience where we kind of like, the internet kind of took off around us as we grew up, right? And when the whole push around getting on the internet

was always to me, and maybe I'm wrong, it was always this thing about connecting with people. It was always like connectivity, you can email, you can connect with anyone around the world. I remember if you go back and watch cable guy, there's a point where he's on the big satellite and he's like, it's the future. It's the information super highway. You could play moral combat with a friend in Vietnam.

You can talk to, you know, it was this whole thing. And as we got older, that's everything about it for me was connected with people. It was AOL sending emails to people. I spent all my time on AOL instant messenger. Tat rooms. My friends chat rooms. People were starting blogs and talking about things. Web 3 is so much the whole point of it seems to be financial, financialization of everything, right? The only thing they can seem to come up with anything is like,

you could turn that into an NFT. Right. And even when I'm looking at like metaverse stuff, like that video just came out of the Walmart thing. I'm sure you saw it where they're shopping in Walmart. And it looks like dog shit. You guys can't come up. It looks horrible. It's like, oh, you can actually shop.

Yeah, you can, the thing that made the internet easy and convenient, we're now gonna revert back to the actual inconvenience of shopping, but at like haptic sensors to it, so you can actually feel the milk in your hand. But it's just such an odd, every step of the, like up until this point that has happened very recently, every step of the way they were kind of selling me

on this thing of connecting with people. Facebook, you can keep up with all your friends. Instagram, you can see what they're up to. But now they're just like, you can fucking buy weird shit. And it's like, okay, I don't. Just it's all a mistake. Wait, I did, I did want to, I don't know if you've seen this story, but I did want to, I did want to tell you one funny NFT story.

You might have seen it already. Tell me, one a little, this could be the last thing. Yeah, do you know, seen it already. Tell me, this could be the last thing. Tell me. Do you know who, Stepanca? Stepanca is something. Oh yeah, no Stepanca, yeah. So she was a 90 day fiance person. Her name is Stephanie, that's Stepanca.

It's Stepanca. It is? She said, yeah, I think she goes by Stephanie too. But, okay, Stephanie Maddo, all right? So she was a 90 day fiance contestant and then she started selling jars of her farts. For a thousand dollars of pop, I think. You paid her a thousand dollars

and she would mill you a jar of her fart. But- I wonder if it holds. Well, apparently she was selling so many farts. She was making a lot of money. She was selling so many farts and she had to keep farting so she was eating these crazy, like she was eating like just black bean soup

constantly. She's a 2D girl. They go 2D girl. Sure she was trying to make sure she could fill all these fart orders and she thought she was having a heart attack. She presented with heart attack symptoms and went to the hospital. Turned out it was bad gas. And so they had to put her on gas suppressants.

And that fucked her fart jar business, right? Oh, yeah. But Stephanka is an enterprising young woman. And she is now selling fart jar NFTs, baby. Oh, Christ. What? 5,000 fart jar. Oh, they're all, oh my gosh.

Look at all these fart jars. Look at, you got one with lipstick and you got one with sunglasses. And I'll tell you what, they're not that pricey. Look at that. 0.05. 0.05, Ethan. Oh wow.

I don't know what the exchange rate is right now, but it's probably like a 150 bucks or something. Yeah. And for the low price of 150 bucks and you know that's going up, you can get one of these stinky bad boys. Imagine the smell is the copy. That's the line on the imaginal smell.

Imagine the smell. God damn. This is what we get. This is what it's $170 right now. Fucking God damn it. It's already going up baby. Invest. Quit being a no coin pussy like Ben.

Can't buy the actual fart in the jar? Well neither can we because the lady thought she was having a heart attack. But now you can actually buy a cartoon fucking jar of a piece of a fart air, ass air in a jar, but a digital one. Only you own the unique digital signature.

And you can guess what? In the future, when you have your house in the metaverse, when you have your house and your crypto house in the crypto land, you can display this image and people who come over to your crypto house will know that you are the one who owns this fucking dipshit crypto jar. Right, and you can display it next year, $400,000,

fucking cartoon monkey so that everybody knows that you're better than them And then you have more money to blow on stupid shit like this. Whoa. I hope I hope all these people get robbed I don't I hope I Hope far jar goes to the moon. Oh, it's a good investment You used to have you used to have to pay a thousand dollars to even get a whiff of her fart But now it's a hundred seventy bucks and you get a fucking fart jar. Hey, Amille This gives a whole new meaning to gas fees, doesn't it? Oh Man how long before Elon Musk coops this and says it's gonna be the fucking currency of Mars or some

This one's already got up to point one God damn man. Oh, well that that one's rare because it's got a, it's got, I don't know, it's got a, I don't know, I don't know what the hell's going on. I would buy a jar of Elon Musk's fart. No, you wouldn't. I would, I would never have. Oh, this one's point 25, ETH,

because it's got a donut in it. Holy shit, dude, that's $1,000 for a fucking fart jar. We don't, does there, this is, This is, I didn't know it was this bad. I thought they were all about 170 bucks. This is holy shit, that one's 1700 bucks. Oh, cause it's got a dog in it, man. You know, I really, man, I really wish that they didn't shoot

the Archduke Ferdinand. It's crazy too, you know what? Cause they just launched. When I found this, it was like yesterday, the day before when I found this story, and they were like literally just launched so they're already going up. Good for her, man. I'm proud of her.

I'm proud of my car. I wanna drive my car into a wall after this. Not me, baby. I'm going home and getting on open sea and getting some fart charge. I don't even know. I don't wanna talk anymore. I'm so pissed off.

Sorry, guys. I broke Ben with that story. I thought he was going to enjoy it. I mean, good for her because honestly, there's a market out there. There's freaks out there who want to suck on a fart in a jar that got mailed to them. And can you imagine being, because you know, we've all been horny.

We've all been horny. We've all been there. And you'll do some things when you're horny. You'll like buy someone here? No, well, yeah. here? No, oh yeah. Yeah, yeah, you will. And then you know what happens? When you get that moment of clarity,

you go, oh shit, I just spent a couple hundred bucks. Can you imagine the clarity that you get after you, you're just waiting for it. You're just, oh my God, I can't wait to get my hands on that fucking fart jar. I can't wait to open up that fart jar and smell that fart from that girl. That lady has spent a thousand dollars. It's sexy because I gave her a thousand dollars and she don't fart it in a jar for me And then you you got your you got your big heart on and you're waiting to

Just you can't wait to get your hands on that jar and you open it and you get just maybe Maybe the slightest hint of shit smell touches in nostrils. And then afterward you're like, man, I gotta talk, I gotta, I gotta see somebody. I gotta get help, because I just spent a thousand dollars on a jar of some woman's. It probably happens much earlier. I imagine you're very horny, you order the thing

and you go, and this is gonna be great. And you're like, you know what, I am horny. And so you take care of it. And then you have post-com clarity and you go, geez, I have a fucking jar of farts coming. Yeah. But then, you know, you get the refractory period and then you're like, hell yeah, I can't wait

for that jar to get here. I gotta explain to my wife what this is. People don't have a war. No, these people don't have a war. I bet some of them have a war. Actually, I bet a lot of them have wives. Alright, we gotta go. This is getting too dark.

Man, okay, I gotta think about my life choices because we should start selling our farts. Let us know in the comments if you buy a jar of fart. I would probably find a way to mess up and get broken glass in my ass, or I... I just can't fart that much. That's the thing. Like I don't want to be like this girl, you know, going to the hospital with gaspane. She's just going to Ralph's. She's using coupons to buy, you know, double

coupons to load up on beans and check out guys like the fuck's going on with this lady. Hey, are you the fart queen? Are you fucking farting fart queen? Oh my God, no. Are you recognizing me really? Go to my website if you want a fart. I did look at her like socials a little bit and she, there was some funny old ones where she was still selling them and she was like, a lot of people want to mock me

but like look at this beautiful home, my farts have fought me. I mean, seriously, that's, I'm not hating on her. I'm hating on the NFT thing. The fart thing, I think, is remarkable. And I think that that she is in her power. What? Look, she's earning a hefty $200,000 up to this date.

Yeah, well, yeah, so good for her. I mean, God bless. Listen, we all do it. She found a way to make money from it. Don't act like you don't fart and wouldn't fart and jar. Honestly, if you want to make fun of her, every time you fart, it's free. And everyone hates it.

She farts, it's a thousand dollars, and this one loves it. People pay her for it. All right. Well, go ahead and leave a comment and all that good stuff and follow us on everything. You can follow us on everything. Oh, but no, seriously, leave us a review on itunes and Spotify.

Please, please like the video. It does help comment, share it with anyone you know. Yeah, that's the other thing that I meant to bring up earlier with the guests. You know what, you guys? This is your fault. You gotta, we need you. You need you to share the video with, you know, I don't know, a hundred of your closest friends. That would actually help.

We are like a fucking, we're like dog coin. The more people, dog coin, doge coin. Yeah, get it right. The more people you get to buy into Trillion Hermine set, the more you make. Us. No. Yes. Yeah, and we like to be happy. All right. Bye. Bye.

Bye. Bye.