#1427 Howard Lutnick | Bitcoin & Tariffs Will Save The US Economy

Howard Lutnick is the CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald. Howard is one of the most interesting people in finance, he is a billionaire, and has incredible ideas to improve America. In this conversation, we talk about the national debt, inflation, why he is the co-head of the Trump transition team, what their plan is to balance the budget, how they are going to change things around economically, and a touching story about 9/11. ======================= Buy book: https://www.amazon.com/Live-Extraordinary-Life-Anthony-Pompliano/dp/0857199927/ ======================= Gemini is the safe and secure way to trade crypto. Gemini is offering eligible new users the opportunity to earn $100 in BTC when they trade $1000 in crypto within their first 30 days of signing up. Head over to ⁠https://www.gemini.com/partners/pomp⁠ and start trading crypto to earn $100 in BTC. ======================= The Pomp Podcast is powered by BetOnline.ag, the premier crypto-friendly place to gamble on politics and sports, casino, poker and horse racing. BetOnline.ag gives you the ability to use Bitcoin and more than a dozen altcoins to make deposits and withdraw your winnings. There are no crypto transaction fees, and processing is instantaneous and secure. Visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://promotions.betonline.ag/pomp⁠⁠⁠⁠ and use PROMO CODE: POMP100 to receive a 100% matching bonus on any crypto deposit. BetOnline.ag is available in nearly every country around the world, making it the top global gaming destination for crypto users. ======================= Pomp writes a daily letter to over 265,000+ investors about business, technology, and finance. He breaks down complex topics into easy-to-understand language while sharing opinions on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at https://pomp.substack.com/ ======================= View 10k+ open startup jobs: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://dreamstartupjob.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Enroll in my Crypto Academy: https://www.thecryptoacademy.io/

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Anthony Pompliano?

  What's up everyone? This is Anthony Pompliano. Many of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, which is my effort to find the most interesting people in the world and sit with them for hours while I ask questions in an effort to learn. So it would mean the world to me if you would subscribe to the show on your favorite audio platform, watch episodes on YouTube, and tell your friends and family about the podcast. My goal is to help millions learn from the world's most interesting people. So let's get into today's episode. What's up guys? Today, we've got an incredible episode with Howard Lutnick, the CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald. Howard is one of the most interesting people in finance. He's a billionaire and he has some incredible stories and ideas about what he thinks we can do to improve the state of America. In this conversation, we talk about the national debt,

• 0:46Anthony Pompliano?

  inflation, why he is the co-head of the Trump Transition Team, and what their plan is to balance the budget, and how they actually are going to turn everything around economically for so many millions of Americans. On top of that, Howard also was the CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald during 9/11. They famously lost 658 of their employees, and Howard tells a very moving and inspiring story of what happened that day, where he was, and what they did to rebuild the firm, and how they took so much time, effort, and money to support so many different families who had lost their loved ones during that horrific attack. This conversation will give you lots of ideas about the future. It'll teach you about one side of the political aisle and what their plan is. And then also, at the end, it's pretty heavy stuff,

• 1:30Anthony Pompliano?

  but you're gonna want to listen to Howard's story about 9/11 and how Cantor Fitzgerald went through that time and came back even stronger. Here is my episode with Howard Lutnick.

• 1:41Speaker 01

  Anthony Pompliano runs Pomp Investments. All views of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Pomp Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.

• 2:05Anthony Pompliano?

  Today's episode is brought to you by Gemini. Gemini is a fantastic platform. How do I know? Cause I've used it for years. These guys get it. They right now have a special offer where they are offering all eligible new users, the opportunity to earn a hundred dollars in Bitcoin. That's right, 100 big ones. They're going to get out in Bitcoin. If you go and you trade a thousand dollars in crypto within the first 30 days of signing up. What is Gemini? Gemini builds crypto products that are simple, elegant and secure. Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, the billionaire Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, founded Gemini in 2014 with a security first mentality and ethos of asking for permission, not forgiveness.

• 2:48Anthony Pompliano?

  They've been pioneers for the crypto industry since day one. And unlike many exchanges, they are available in all 50 US states. Gemini has tools for new and advanced traders. They've got an advanced trading platform called Active Trader, which is where crypto traders go for advanced charting tools, access to over 300 crypto trading pairs and multiple order types to trade the way you want. Head over to gemini.com/partners/pomp and start trading with Gemini today to earn a hundred dollars in Bitcoin. That's right, Gemini will give you a hundred dollars in Bitcoin. If you head over to gemini.com/partners/pomp and you trade a thousand dollars in crypto within the first 30 days.

• 3:31Anthony Pompliano?

  This episode is brought to you by BetOnline. Do you like making a profit from sports betting? Well, set yourself up to take home the most profit possible using crypto to fund your sports betting, casino and poker account at betonline.ag. You can avoid costly transaction fees, get your payouts lightning fast, and do it all securely and anonymously with the highest deposit and withdrawal limits in the industry. If you want to get in on the action, do it the smart way with crypto at betonline.ag. Head to the website, sign up with promo code POMP100 to get 100% bonus on your crypto deposit today. If you go and you deposit, they'll give you 100% bonus if you use promo code POMP100. BetOnline, the game starts here. BetOnline.ag, go check them out today.

• 4:17Anthony Pompliano?

  You are the epitome of the American dream. Uh, I think that as the co-head of the Trump transition team, uh, the American dream is the promise of a lot of the policies. What does it mean to have the American dream today? Like, what is that? Is that still alive in America today?

• 4:34Speaker 03

  Well, it gets confused by people because, uh, you see these politicians, they just talk about these platitudes. They don't talk about you. What do you want to own? You want to own a home? You want to have a great life for your kids? You want to have a good education? You want to have your kids live a better life than you had, right? And that's sort of the fundamental American dream of, of our country, right? We have got two thirds of the American workforce does not have, you know, they only have a high school education, right? And one third has a college education. So two thirds high school education, one third college education, and the two thirds live, ready for this, seven years less. How is that possible? It's not

• 5:18Speaker 03

  the air, right? It's not the food, and it's not healthcare. It's despair. You work in an auto factory. They do NAFTA, right? Where they, and they move your auto factory to Mexico. Who came up with this idea? This is like nuts, right? They move it down to Mexico. They gut Michigan. You lose your job. Where do you go? So you're so sad and you're so depressed. You take drugs. Then what do they do? They open the border and they bring fentanyl in, right? And it's despair. So we've got to fix it. And that's, you know, Trump's key mission is let's take care of the

• 5:59Speaker 03

  American workers. Let's take care of America. Let's take care of America first. And people go, oh, that's crazy. Why is that crazy? How about we take care of America? And so that's sort of a key part of his initiative. Now, did I think about this five years ago? Of course not. I was rebuilding after September 11th, but now I am just focused on what's the right move for America? And, and that's why I'm, I'm all in with Donald Trump. His policies, his thinking, his way of just looking at things, his intuition is just right.

• 6:33Anthony Pompliano?

  So one of the things that's been fascinating to me is there's a bunch of groups, uh, there are union groups and various other kind of American worker, you know, type of governance or organizations that, uh, are either supporting Trump or they're absolving themselves from endorsing either candidate.

• 6:47Speaker 04

  Which is basically kind of an implicit endorsement of Trump. Why is it that these organizations, which historically have donated to Democrats? They have supported them, they've endorsed them, they've been very Democrat in their voting kind of penetration. All of a sudden are switching over. Are we seeing the political parties kind of shift? And now the Republican Party is becoming more pro-American worker and where Democrats used to be that way?

• 7:10Speaker 03

  Exactly right. So what happened is the Democrat Party, when I grew up, used to be the the party of the worker and the Republicans were the party of the businesses. Right? And that's completely shifted. Now Donald Trump talks about taking care of the American worker, the union worker, the rank and file. And the and the Democrats talk about the Green New Deal. Right? And so they talk about electric cars. Who who's buying an electric car? You're not buying an electric car if you're a farmer in the middle of the country. Electric cars don't work. Like a friend of mine, they're they're so left, incredibly left, and they live in Chicago. They're incredibly left. And they said they were going to visit their parents.

• 7:55Speaker 03

  But and they have two electric cars, but they had to rent a car because their parents live a couple hundred miles away. And of course, the electric car can't possibly make it there back. So they rent a regular car. I mean, what American worker is going out to buy an electric car? The answer is none of them. This is just coastal elite nonsense has sort of infiltrated the Democrat Party. And now they're just they're just out of touch with the American worker. And Donald Trump has pivoted, literally pivoted the Republican Party to take care of the American worker. And and it's really a fascinating change. So the name on the door is not right. And you've hit the point exactly. It's really what's on the inside.

• 8:38Speaker 03

  And on the inside of Donald Trump is let's go protect the American worker.

• 8:42Speaker 04

  So one of the things that people always point to is the income inequality gap. And it's been widening for years. And it's happened under Republican administrations, happened under Democrat administrations. And my analysis is that it really just comes down to the dollar loses value. The bottom 50% of Americans don't have investments. They just sit paycheck to paycheck. They put 100% of their wealth in dollars in the bank. Those dollars lose value and the top 50% of Americans, they're not holding dollars. They're holding investments. Those investments go up and the cash goes down. Inflation obviously spiked, which made that problem way worse. It accelerated the trends that were already kind of in place.

• 9:22Speaker 04

  How much of the American worker is in the kind of their maybe perception of pain or their dissatisfaction with kind of their, you know, previous political agenda is just like, I can't get ahead. Everything around me is getting more expensive. This inflation thing is eating away and I'm almost a single issue voter because literally I can't figure out how I'm going to put food on the table for my family. I can't figure out how I'm going to pay rent that's exploding around me and it's just an economic story and everything else is just noise.

• 9:54Speaker 03

  You hit it on the head. So inflation, right, changes everything. So when Donald Trump was in office, he had 3% GDP growth, 3% wage growth. So the average wage is in America growing 3%, right? And 2% inflation. So people were getting ahead, right? They were catching up, maybe 1%. But, you know, when you talk about all of America, 1% is a lot because it's everybody, right? Then the Democrats get elected. Now, you know why they did it, right? They they not in power during the pandemic. So they want to help. They want to help. They really, really want to help. But then the economy sort of starts to rock in the end of 2020, 2021, where we're booming.

• 10:36Speaker 03

  And in March of 2021, the Democrats do the American Rescue Plan, a solid 15 months too late. They put 1.9 trillion dollars of new money into the system and create inflation. I go on TV at the time, I said 15 months, the historical norm for over stimulus is 15 months later, get inflation. Okay, June of 22, Fed raises rates first time and here we go. So what inflation does, you're right. If I own a house, it inflates. If I own stocks, their earnings inflate, right? If I'm living paycheck to paycheck, the costs of my eggs go up, the cost of gas goes up,

• 11:18Speaker 03

  the cost of my insurance goes up, I get crushed, right? It crushes the American. And worker. So that's why inflation is the meanest thing you can ever do to your people. Back to the, you're right, the rich people, but it's not the rich people have ducked and avoided it. It's the rich people, they own a house and they own stuff and the stuff that they own goes up in value. But if you're spending your money, you're just getting pulverized, right? Cause it's, so the key is you gotta bring great jobs here. You gotta tariff the rest of the world and keep them the heck out. You gotta bring the manufacturing back here. Sorry, hit your mic. Right? You have to read, I talk with my hands. So this mic's in trouble, you know?

• 12:01Speaker 04

  Watch out, those punch back.

• 12:04Speaker 03

  Well, that would be funny, right? Imagine thinking, boom, so don't hit me again. That would, that would be funny, Mike. You'd be like the greatest podcast ever because you had the funny mic, but um, you know, bring it back. And what happens is if you bring back manufacturing, then this, you'd say, well, how do you know there's so many workers to have all these jobs? There won't be. If you bring back American manufacturing into the great American economy and you protect the American workers, then there's going to be demand, excess demand, too many factories. What's going to happen to the price of their services? Up it goes.

• 12:37Speaker 04

  What's fascinating to me is, I mean, COVID really was a kind of a moment in time that exposed America for this pursuit of lowest cost labor, lowest cost goods. We basically searched the globe to find who was willing to do work for the least amount of money. And what we were willing to give up for it was resilience. And so when the entire world locked down, all of a sudden, America's like, well, what do we make here? And their list wasn't very long. And so it does feel like um, cost is one component of this. But also there's an element of kind of a resilience story. And to me, you know, okay, how many times in our lifetime are we going to have a global lockdown? I'm not sure. Hopefully that was the only one, but then you get into things like national security, right?

• 13:21Speaker 04

  I read a story that um, the ports in America, the cranes are being produced uh, in China. And there is the ability to remotely access them. And of course, the story is probably, hey, we need analytics or we need to be able to, you know, do software updates, blah, blah, blah, whatever. I don't know, maybe we can call China a frenemy. You know, we want to work with them, but also there's some competition that there's maybe some national security stuff. And so to have other countries who have remote access to the cranes that we rely on to get goods into our economy seems kind of like something maybe we should take a look at. And then you go and you look at a bunch of these other technologies that already have been kind of put on a list and America says, hey, we can't have these on our government officials' phones.

• 14:06Speaker 04

  We can't use these in cell towers or whatever. Cost is important, but also it almost feels like people have forgotten how important it is to have kind of a defense shield around technology and goods that protects the country, regardless of the cost, right? It's kind of like you want low cost if everything else is held constant, but actually you should be willing to pay a little bit more as long as you actually are safe as well.

• 14:31Speaker 03

  So you're giving me like the greatest opening ever to talk about this stuff, but power, let's just talk about power. We all need energy. We need power. So national security would say that all of our states and all of our people need domestic power. We, we are a net exporter of power, but what we do is we refuse to build pipelines to get our own energy to ourselves. So while we're net equal, we sell to others and import from others. And by the way, do you think the oil that we buy from Russia? And by the way, if you don't think we buy oil from Russia, you're wrong. Do you think it's clean oil from Russia? No, I don't think so.

• 15:16Speaker 03

  So what happens is we cancel our own pipelines, which really, instead of calling it the Keystone Pipeline, they should have called it the national security deliver gas and oil across the United States of America. Instead, we cancel it because it won't go be green enough. And then what we buy is our ports are full of oil coming in from Venezuela and, and from Russia. And we buy their oil, even though there's sanctions, we still end up buying their oil because they go through here and there and it comes back in anyway. And then we burn dirty oil. So it's illogical. We let all of the pharmaceuticals like penicillin.

• 15:57Speaker 03

  We let the, the things that make it are made in China. And we don't think about the national security that if we had war with China, they just wouldn't give us, you know, penicillin anymore. Um, we buy batteries from where Elon Musk complained to me that he has to buy his lithium to make batteries in Australia. And he says, where's the greatest lithium mines? Nevada. And we just found one, by the way, in Arkansas. Huge lithium mine. Why do we, so we buy it in Australia. And then he puts it and goes through seven time zones on a boat. That's really very, you know, environmentally friendly to have a boat go from seven timeframes and it comes here.

• 16:39Speaker 03

  It's just hypocrisy. The worst part is it's hypocrisy. You really, if you want to be green and you want to be clean, which we all agree, we want clean water and clean air, but don't make believe that you're taking it from Australia and shipping it here and somehow it's green. National security matters. We got to think about manufacturing our stuff here, our pharmaceuticals here. We have to distribute oil and natural gas to ourselves here. So we are independent. Not we're balanced, but half the people are buying it from outside and half buying it from inside. These are fundamental things that we need to think about. And that's the beauty of working for Donald Trump.

• 17:21Speaker 03

  He thinks about these things and he's the only one who thinks about.

• 17:26Speaker 04

  There was a recent clip that went viral, which, uh, it went viral because it was funny. Uh, but it was Theo Von talking to J D Vance and, uh, Theo Von basically said some, something like, uh, you know, the quality of goods has been so diminished that Americans are suffering. Now he chose of all the goods and services in the world to use. He said, you can't do cocaine in this country anymore.

• 17:48Speaker 03

  Right, right, right.

• 17:49Speaker 04

  Because basically saying that it's.

• 17:50Speaker 03

  So viral, even, even a guy wears a suit, so.

• 17:53Speaker 04

  Yeah, right. And so it's like, look, he, he was making the claim that like even the cocaine is laced with fentanyl and, and J D Vance to his credit, just laughed and thought it was hilarious and, and, but I do think that, you know, again, strip out kind of the nonsense of the internet and say, look, like, what is he really talking about there? And, and if you think about, um, American made goods.

• 18:11Speaker 03

  Well, wait, but first, let's talk about the fentanyl thing. See, so it's slightly different than everybody thinks. So all the fentanyl comes from China. Why? Like, what's the whole fentanyl thing? It's the gutting of America from the inside.

• 18:27Speaker 04

  Do you think they're just playing like a century long game? And they say, we're gonna rot your brain with TikTok. We're gonna rot your population with fentanyl and we're gonna literally slowly kill you.

• 18:35Speaker 03

  So that's what it is. Why is the, uh, why is the American workforce have seven year less average life? Because what happens is if they get despair and they take a drug and the drug kills them. It kills them. So China is attacking America from its guts. You know, it's getting stuff in your stomach. Right? It's gonna get it directly into your stomach to try to kill you. Right? Because who's our workforce who might take fentanyl? Right? Are they old people like 63 year olds like me? No. Right? They're the 18 to 30 year olds. Right? So if I kill them, then where are you going from here? No, I think it's, I think it's the core evil. That you really, and people don't core, they don't call out core evil. Who makes fentanyl?

• 19:19Speaker 03

  Their core evil. It all comes from China. Donald Trump gets in office. He calls China and says, the next piece of fentanyl that comes in our country. I'm putting a 200% tariff on you. And your country must have our economy. Because otherwise you wouldn't employ your people. If your people are unemployed, then they'll be regime change. You know, they'll rise up against the Communist Party. So stop the fentanyl and you'll watch it stop. And that's the person who saved American workers' lives. And then the joke will be, he can't do cocaine again.

• 20:00Speaker 04

  And it goes.

• 20:01Speaker 03

  Which is kind of a funny comment.

• 20:02Speaker 04

  I mean, it's hilarious, right? But, but the, um, I think that if you watch the chain of, let's say, fentanyl. So you have the production of it in China, uh, but it's also getting into the country. And people have seen video after video after video of, um, boats pulling up to the shores of America and 10 to 12, uh, you know, military aged men jumping off and running into our neighborhoods and literally just leaving the boat behind. They've seen literally caravans of people crossing rivers, borders, et cetera. And you see all that and you say, you know what? The border patrol's got a really hard job. America's big. We've got these massive borders. We've got to try to figure out how to secure them. And building a wall seemed like a good idea now.

• 20:47Speaker 04

  You know, it sounds like both candidates are on board to build the wall. But I think the part that people then go from, wow, that's a really hard problem to pissed off, frankly, in the conversation I've had with both people on both sides of the aisle, is that the government then takes those people and flies them all around the country. And now, all of a sudden, if you don't live in a border town, you've got those same people who are crossing the border now living in your city, living in your town. And so is it just a game of, hey, guys, we're going to stop the production of fentanyl. We're also going to stop people from just coming in the country that aren't legal?

• 21:24Speaker 03

  Well, the whole open the border. So Donald Trump had 10 miles left. He built 500 miles. He had 10 miles left and all the steel is in a factory. He had 10 miles left and he made a deal with Mexico to protect the border. He said, I'm going to put tariffs on you, Mexico, unless you don't let people in. So the Mexican military was kept the border closed. And then Biden just ended it on executive order his first day. He said, nah, open the border. Why? Why would you open the border? Joe Biden, when he was young, was all against the border. Bill Clinton was against the opening the border. What happened?

• 22:02Speaker 04

  I think I know. Do you want to know what I think that happened?

• 22:06Speaker 03

  I think it's voters.

• 22:07Speaker 04

  There's only one thing that I can think of that a bureaucratic administration could all get in a conference room, have a bunch of papers, studies, all this stuff, and come to the conclusion that we should do this for one reason. And it's because they looked at the economy and they said, we don't have enough workers. Let them all in.

• 22:25Speaker 03

  Oh, my God, I can't disagree more. That is just such a load of crap. Sorry.

• 22:30Speaker 04

  No, again, not that it's accurate.

• 22:32Speaker 03

  I completely and totally disagree because if you wanted workers, you would actually check who they are. You think the people who are sneaking into our country are ready to go to work? Are you out of your mind? They are ready to vote.

• 22:51Speaker 03

  For whoever let them in. All right. So let's go through it. The census, you know, I'm sure this is like one of the most exciting things you've ever talked about in your podcast is the census, but the census does not count citizens. It counts humans. So what do you do? You put them on that plane and where do you send them? You send them to the swing states so that they'll have more people. The census will have more people, more congressmen will come from that particular district and then you'll figure out a way to fast track, as Kamala Harris has said, fast track them to citizenship so that by next election, these 20 million people

• 23:32Speaker 03

  they've let in, they let in 20 million people who vote for them because they let you in. And that is why I do not think this is worker based. I don't think it has anything to do with worker based. I think it has entirely to do with a deep seated view that I want to bring in and make this a one party country and all left all the time. They'll try to get, if they win, they'll try to get DC. They've said this stuff. They'll make DC and Puerto Rico states so they can have four Democrat senators. They'll break the filibuster and they've said, and Chuck Schumer has said that he would pack the court with Democrats and then congratulations.

• 24:11Speaker 04

  For a second, Chuck Schumer and Trump, I've heard, you know, they didn't get along for a long time, but then I saw the Al Smith dinner and they're acting pretty chummy sitting next to each other. How does DC really work? Like, is it a, you go on TV, you hold a press conference, you yell and scream about somebody else and then behind closed doors, your friends? Or when we see people arguing with each other, you know, talking shit essentially, they really don't like each other?

• 24:38Speaker 03

  It used to be that people were very civil to each other and that you had differences of opinion, but people, so Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg were great friends, right? So they had different sides of the Supreme Court, but they were great friends. That has Dissipated.

• 24:56Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 24:56Speaker 03

  You know, what happens now is you blame the other one for everything in the world. I mean, Kamala Harris goes on TV and calls Donald Trump a fascist, says by having a rally in Madison Square Garden where I'm speaking and I'm introducing Elon Musk, right? That's he's an he's a Hitler for doing Madison Square Garden where I'm introducing Elon Musk and then Elon Musk is introducing JD Vance and then Donald Trump is speaking and that somehow is fascist? That is just mean, nasty and completely false.

• 25:27Speaker 04

  How did we get here, right? So like, if it has evolved to this point where everyone is just, hey, no holds barred, just say whatever you want, really go after kind of now some of you disagree with. Is that the mainstream media kind of pulling people to the extremes? Is that they know that that's going to go viral online and they're and, you know, just get the clicks or, you know, what is it? Because I almost think in a weird way that the politicians, if you go and you talk to a young person, you say, you know, name 10 politicians, the ones that they will name, Trump, Harris, AOC, you know, Marjorie Greene, right? Like, you go to these people who are very good at getting attention.

• 26:10Speaker 04

  And so in a weird way, I used to say that Trump and AOC were like very similar, like much more similar than people realized because they both understood how to dominate news cycles. He probably did it even bigger than she did, but still they both understood like, hey, you can do certain things. The appearance at McDonald's is a great example, right? That was the talk of the world for 24 hours and the guy spent what? An hour at McDonald's, right? And so it's like, is that what's happening now is politics is basically falling victim to what gets rewarded online and just the people are getting better and better to understanding how to make it work?

• 26:47Speaker 03

  I think that's right. And I think what's happened is the media is now all one way or the other. So there's no such thing as nonpartisan media. There should be.

• 26:57Speaker 04

  Oh, people have opinions?

• 26:58Speaker 03

  Everybody has. By the way, you know, one of the things I talk about is, you know, people think, oh, they're generals, you know, the military, these are generals because they have all their, you know, medals and stuff. But the fact is, they're just people, which means they're either Democrat generals, or they're Republican generals. So who do you think all the four star generals are under Joe Biden? Let me give you a hint. They're all Democrats, right? Because what they're supposed to do is then if a Republican gets elected, they retire. And of course, being a retired general is not that bad because guess where you go to work? Lockheed Martin. Oh, you go right to General Dynamics. You go get a big job for money. So what's happened is the mainstream media is because it's all one way or the other, it's just echo chambers. And to get heard, you go stronger and stronger

• 27:43Speaker 03

  and stronger that way to get some attention. And then that's where you have you have this giant divide because there's no place to go have a civil conversation in the media. Where would I go? Let's say I wanted to bring a good debate for someone on the other side. Let's go have the head of the transition of the Harris campaign. And let's go have a good debate. Where would you suggest I go?

• 28:04Speaker 04

  You come right here and I'll make sure you both fight it out.

• 28:08Speaker 03

  I think that's right.

• 28:10Speaker 04

  But like, but honestly, I really do think that in a crazy way, the mainstream media is being replaced in certain pockets by people online who say, you know what, I'm trying to figure it out. And my wife is a journalist, and she would tell you that over the last 10 years, the shift that has occurred from, hey, people want to find the truth, to now, especially young people who work at these mainstream media organizations, are essentially activists who are able to publish with the big brand behind them. And it's not every organization, it's not every reporter, but there has been this massive shift that I think is really, really impactful. One thing I want, maybe we can clear something up is

• 28:56Speaker 04

  I've continued to say that the national debt is one of, if not the single most important thing facing the country because if you have a massive national debt that is exploding, literally exploding, there's almost $500 billion has been added in just the month of October, that national debt only has one solution, we're going to inflate it away. Because neither candidate has explicitly been promising to balance the budget, which we haven't had a balanced budget in this country for more than 20 years. You, right before we started, told me, that's not true, that you're going to help balance the budget. So let's talk about, one, is it possible to balance the budget? How do you do it? And can you and Trump figure it out?

• 29:40Speaker 03

  Okay, so I have to add one person to it. It's me, Elon Musk, and Trump are going to figure it out. So I went down on the day of the rocket, right? The coolest catch ever, right? Megazilla goes in and catches it. I flew down to Brownsville, Texas, right? And I met with Elon, and we spent two hours together. And I told him, we were going to create the Department Doge, right? And he did exactly that. He started laughing and he was happy. He goes, no, no, seriously. And I said, no, no, it's going to be called Doge, the Department of Government Efficiency, but we're definitely calling it Doge for you. And he was just so like, lit, happy. Like, he just thought it was funny. And that's

• 30:25Speaker 03

  what you're supposed to do. If you have the greatest capitalist in America, and you can make them happy, that's pretty good.

• 30:32Speaker 04

  There's an article a couple of years ago that asked him, you know, you're a multi-billionaire, but also you like memes. If given the choice, would you rather be a billionaire or a meme lord? And of course, he said meme lord.

• 30:44Speaker 03

  So he invited me over to his house, and I went to go see him in his house. And what's the name of the street? Meme Street.

• 30:53Speaker 03

  I have a picture of it on my phone just to make me laugh. Of course. You know, you go to the street sign. I mean, how often do I take picture of the street sign? But if you go to see Elon Musk and he lives on meme street, like literally they renamed the street for him as meme street. And so I put out a tweet with him. We took a picture in front and we said, we're going to rip the waste out of our 6.5 trillion dollar budget. Right? And we are going to then balance the budget. And I'm going to tell you how we're going to do it. All right. So this is, this is the plan of the Trump administration. And here's how it goes. We have a 6.5 trillion dollar budget. We have 4.5 trillion dollars of revenue. Right?

• 31:36Speaker 03

  So taxes and all the rest of our money and the tariffs that Donald Trump put in that Biden, who he said bad things about it, didn't take off. Shocking. 4.5 trillion of revenue, 6.5 trillion in spending, 2 trillion a year budget deficit on only four and a half. I mean, it's irresponsible if there ever was one. Our GDP, total sales. Right? But you're not counting the price of the sale of a house. You're just talking about the commission. Okay? That's about 29 trillion dollars, just under 29 trillion. And our total debt, just under 36 trillion dollars. We're going to hell. We're going to hell. But if you go to a financial expert and you sort of hit him a few times

• 32:20Speaker 03

  and, and get him to pay attention the right way. You say, what ass, what thing didn't I say? Cause those are the only statue ever here. I'll give you one more. What is the balance sheet? The United States of America. What's everything we own and everything we have? I think it's worth 500 trillion dollars. So then you say, okay, Howard. Can you make a quarter of 1% on it? Right now, if all of your assets are a giant mountain of, you know, palladium and, and gold and, and you can't move it and you have to just look at it and go, oh, that's so pretty. That's not gonna help us. But we have land and we have minerals.

• 33:05Speaker 03

  So if we have 500 trillion and we can make a quarter of a percent, that's a trillion and a quarter. You ask Elon Musk, can you rip waste out of our, just, I mean, I'm talking waste.

• 33:16Speaker 04

  But what are examples, right? Because I think people don't quite understand how inefficient, how bureaucratic, just how ridiculous this is. And this is coming from somebody who, I forget which bill it was, I think maybe it was the Inflation Reduction Act. When that came out, I went and I, I read it. And as I was reading-

• 33:35Speaker 03

  Inflation Creation Act.

• 33:36Speaker 04

  Well, here's, here's what hilarious is, well, whichever bill it was, as I was reading it, they're talking about, we're gonna invest in infrastructure. Okay, that sounds good. But we're gonna do a study that's gonna cost $50 million to look at the impact on exotic plants. There was, you know, another $50 million that was to study the impact of driving high. And I literally said, I have hundreds of people in the audience that will do it for free. So I saved you $50 million there, right? Then you go and you look and it's like $25 million worth of cleaning supplies for the Capitol building. And again, these are only 25, 50, whatever. But then I start looking and I see, we're giving a billion dollars to some Appalachian nonprofit who happens to be run by the wife of a politician, right?

• 34:21Speaker 04

  You start doing, you're just like, dude, like, where is the money going?

• 34:25Speaker 03

  All right. So we'll, I'll, I'll give you one that I promise will make you laugh.

• 34:29Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 34:29Speaker 03

  And then I'll give you one that makes you sad and shake your head. So the Department of the Interior. Okay? So you tell, what is that? That's like the, the parks, okay? Uses the most real estate of any department in the United States government. You say, really? You mean like a lot of office space? Yeah. Because they have office space across the country. So why would they have so much space? Oh, each office must be one day's horse ride from the next one.

• 35:06Speaker 03

  And your audience is saying, no, no, that's not true. Oh, no, no, no, that's true. Who, who told you that? Well, the Secretary of the Department of the Interior told me that. And I'm like, and then I go look at the numbers. You're like, stop it, stop it. They came, I mean, one day's horse ride, one day's horse ride. See, but that's, that's literally 2024. I mean, think of things that make you laugh. Come on, you go to the airport and there's the aircraft, you know, the, the air traffic control tower. The tower, because they built it like a little taller, because they're what? Looking out the window? Are they looking at the planes going, oh, look, that one's going to hit this one?

• 35:49Speaker 03

  No, they have, they have radar. You'd say radar. What radar? Like, was that 1970? Yeah. We have a company that makes 1970 radar equipment, a monopoly, by the way, of course, we always have that, but monopoly, who makes this 1970 radar equipment new and gives it to us. Because GPS, that would be a challenge. I mean, you know how much it would cost us to put GPS in every plane? Oh, they already have it. Oh, I forgot, they already have it. It would cost, all right, if we put GPS in planes, all our airports would be three times more efficient. Three times more efficient. Why don't we do it?

• 36:34Speaker 03

  Because the monopolist selling us the radar would be really pissed off. And his congressman would be really sad that we modernized America. Someone has to have the guts to do it, to get rid of all these offices. And so you tell that to Elon Musk. We send more than $100 billion a year and lose the money accidentally. Now, you might say, come on, Howard, someone switched the number and sent it to his pal. I'm not doubting that. We buy over $100 billion worth of product that we never receive. Or I'll give you a fun one. When we left Afghanistan. Right? We all know those pictures of us leaving Afghanistan.

• 37:19Speaker 03

  And we all know that we left 80 billion dollars of equipment behind. And if I ask anybody, all my democratic friends, and I ask them, what happened? They go, it's so stupid.

• 37:33Speaker 03

  Stupid. 80 billion stupid. See, when I say it slowly like that, you know what's coming. Yeah, I don't think it's so stupid. If I said to you, let's leave your house. And let's leave all your furniture behind. We're gonna move. And we're gonna leave all your furniture behind. We don't want to take it, a moving truck. No, no, no, moving truck, that would be clever. Leave it all behind. What's the first thing you have to do when you go to your new house?

• 38:02Speaker 04

  Buy 80 billion dollars of furniture?

• 38:03Speaker 03

  No, no, no, you left 80 billion of furniture for the, for your, the evil people and the enemy. You have to buy 120 billion to fight them off.

• 38:15Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 38:15Speaker 03

  Oh, you think it was stupid? See, everybody thought it was stupid. It's the military industrial complex. Let's go over a little history for a minute.

• 38:26Speaker 03

  Why does Dick Cheney hate Donald Trump? Donald Trump hates wars and had in his presidency, no wars. Dick Cheney was the Vice President of the United States convinced George Bush to attack Iraq. Right? Think of the amount of money you're gonna spend and Dick Cheney is the military industrial complex, right? That's his family, that they own stock, he ran military contractors. I mean, that's what he does. So he's a member of that club. Right? And so they, we attack Iraq and we destroy Iraq. As it turns out, Iraq and Iran have been at war with each other for 2,000 years. So we kill one of them.

• 39:07Speaker 03

  And the other one is like Thanos now, he's just free to attack the Western world because his arch enemy is gone. And think of how much military spending has happened since then. Don't think of the wars and those, just think about it like if you were in the business of the military, when we went into Iraq, right? You opened a bottle of champagne with your family and you said, today is the greatest day in the history of our military family because we're going to be buying missiles for the rest of our lives. Cheers to missiles. And if you look at things with the right glasses on, then it's a head shaker. Like,

• 39:52Speaker 03

  really?

• 39:53Speaker 04

  How much real estate you think there is that we can sell? Right? So like the military, the military?

• 39:58Speaker 03

  All right, let's go back to.

• 39:59Speaker 04

  But here's the thing, right? So like.

• 40:01Speaker 03

  No, let's go back to balancing the budget. I love that discussion.

• 40:03Speaker 04

  We've got, we've got like the military stuff, all that. And I think people, it's hard for them to wrap their head around. But this idea that like, the balance sheet of America, there's a lot of, yeah, there's a lot of people who say, you know what? If I was sitting there and I was spending more than I'm making, but I had a bunch of assets, I could sell some of the assets, I could monetize the assets, whatever, like they understand that. Is it a thing where the Department of Interior, we're just going to take away 80% of your offices, we're going to sell them off? And now we've got money to pay the deficit or what?

• 40:34Speaker 03

  All right. So Elon will take between 650 billion and a trillion dollars off our budget.

• 40:40Speaker 04

  And what's he going to do to do that? Is he just going to fire people?

• 40:43Speaker 03

  Efficiency, right? We're just, we have offices we don't use, we have procurement waste at vast scale. And I mean vast scale. I mean, we have 2.9 million full-time employees.

• 40:59Speaker 03

  Okay, and we have 3 million contractors who are effectively full time. So we have 5.9 million employees in the US government. That's a lot. Oh, my God. And so many of them just do, they just give them work to push around paper. So if you actually used computers, you know, they have these cool things now that computers you like, and you know what's amazing now, they just recently invented, we don't even need to plug them in. They're like, they charge overnight and they can use them. So modernize America, you could easily make these people's jobs better, more efficient, and cut 20% of their time waste because they're just moving paper around and ridiculous things. But I think what he's going to do is he's going to cut waste and he's going to cut

• 41:44Speaker 03

  the size of the government by and save us a trillion dollars. So now we're a trillion left, right? And that comes into my job. Let's talk about how do we make a trillion dollars? If you give us a $500 trillion asset, can you make a trillion dollars off of it? Hopefully. I'm going to rename that famous department, we just called it, we called it the Department of the Interior. Let's give it the real name, the Department of all the land and mineral rights of the United States of America. All the land and mineral rights. It used to be called the US Naval Petroleum Reserve. Now it's called ANWR.

• 42:26Speaker 03

  19 million acres off the coast of Alaska that has as much oil, slightly less oil than Saudi Arabia, and it's ours. If we pump that oil, who wants to buy that oil? Let me give you a hint. You know how much oil Korea has? None, and they're our ally. You know how much oil Germany has? They need it. They're our ally. If we sell oil, how about Japan? How much oil does Japan have? None. So it's in Alaska, you sell it to our allies. They become strategically important to us. They make a better trade deal with us. They thank God for America, right?

• 43:10Speaker 03

  And we make money and you know what we do with that money? Reduce our deficit. We use our assets to make money. We have lithium mines. Mine it. Make money from the United States of America. Don't tax our people. Make money instead. Put tariffs on China and make $400 billion. Now let's go to the military. We spend $200 billion a year on R and D. Every year, we spend $200 billion on R and D. We take the cool stuff that we invent and then we give it. Give, it's a great word, G I V.

• 43:52Speaker 03

  Give it to a military contractor who makes the thing we want, the plane or the missile or whatever we come up with that's totally frigging cool. And then they sell it back to us. At like a 50% margin. If we simply said to them, you have to give us back our 200 billion on the products. Do you realize I just said 200 billion a year? So you'd say, all right, Howard, you got the interior. That's probably like 100, 150 billion. You have this 200 billion for R and D. If we make zero return, we are now the dumbest investor in the history of the world. We spend 200 billion and we get our money back. That's 200 billion. Now we're in 300 billion to the plus, right?

• 44:33Speaker 03

  We're gonna put tariffs. Donald Trump said his tariffs would be between 250 and 500 billion. Right? And I spend time going on and on and on. You'd say, Howard, you have a view with Donald Trump to get to a trillion at the end of four years, don't you?

• 44:50Speaker 04

  I think it can happen faster. I think that's, yeah, I think, I think that, well, here's,

• 44:54Speaker 03

  Like I say, I'll get to a trillion in four years. And you're like, I could do it faster.

• 44:58Speaker 04

  No, no, I'm not even saying, no, I'm not even the one who's saying that, uh, I could do it. What I think is, um, the problem with doing it faster is that you're, it's kind of what Elon faced at Twitter, right? Is he walks in the building and they have thousands of employees. And he says, all right, I'm gonna let some people go. And the second he lets anybody go, the rest of the employees outside of the 500 that are the stars start yelling and screaming. So he's got to make another cut. And what you find is that he's trying to turn the business around while fighting the people who are there because they're entrenched in the bureaucracy. They've got cushy jobs and you know, all these issues. In hindsight, I think he reduced that staff by 80%.

• 45:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, he did.

• 45:43Speaker 04

  And the product is better today than it was before.

• 45:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's at least the same.

• 45:46Speaker 04

  And so if you were unencumbered and you were able to go in, God forbid, we did a zero-based budget of the government, you could do it way faster. I think that you've got to say four years because they're going to fight you every second of the way.

• 46:02Speaker 03

  But remember, there's two sides. There's the cost cutting, which is Doge, right? And there's revenue production, which is, which is Howard and the economic team. So we're going to have a Department of the Interior person who's going to be the Department of Land and Mines, and let's go make money, right? We have our tariffs. Let's go make money. We have our procurement. Let's go, right? Use our R and D to make money.

• 46:27Speaker 04

  Is there, I think, if I watch just enough to be dangerous, you talking, Trump talking, JD talking, couple of others, is there a world where we can eliminate income tax in this country by using tariffs and other means to replace all that tax revenue?

• 46:45Speaker 03

  Once upon a time in the land called America.

• 46:50Speaker 04

  Don't do it. Don't do it.

• 46:52Speaker 03

  We were the richest country on earth, right? The turn of the century. We had no income tax. We had tariffs. We have this great economy. You want to come play here? Pay. It's like joining Costco. He's got to pay to come in. It's the best place to be. You should pay to come in, right? And we were the richest country and we had, we had commissions on what to spend our money on. Seriously. The United States of America had commissions on what to spend our money on. Then Teddy Roosevelt became the president, and he had so much surplus that he built parks and roads and bridges. Remember all

• 47:33Speaker 03

  that? Okay. Then we had the world wars, and we decided we've got to help the rest of the world rebuild. So what we're going to do is we're going to drop our tariffs. Think of another way to say it is drop our pants. That's another way to say it, right? And let the rest of the world have at it with us, and we'll use the power of our economy to help them out. And we will switch from charging tariffs. To charging our gigantically rich Americans income tax.

• 48:04Speaker 04

  One percent, two to one percent to start.

• 48:06Speaker 03

  And that's where it began. Okay. And then you get to World War II. Right. And we really need to build the rest of the world. You got destroyed Japan. You have destroyed Germany. And we want to show them democracy is the way to go. So let's. We'll just undress our economy, have at it. Come with us. Come on, come on. And we. You can put trade barriers up and we won't fight you. So you could put tariffs, you could put trade barriers, you just. We won't sell a car in Europe. And by the way, we don't sell cars in Europe. You'd say, so it's 2024. When should this policy have ended? 1980? I mean, 75?

• 48:49Speaker 03

  It can't be 2020. Who says this is great? So if we did tariffs. China would have to pay because if they don't use our economy, they can't employ their people. If they can't employ their people, there's going to be a revolution.

• 49:02Speaker 04

  Do you think that you can put the tariffs high enough to replace 100% of the tax revenue?

• 49:08Speaker 03

  No, no. But I think what you could do is you could create a world where the business of America is so good. That the tax rate can come lower and lower and lower. I think here's, here's what I said to Donald Trump. I said. If Elon Musk cuts the expenses enough. And we build the revenues, the way I've talked about it. Would you please consider dropping all income tax for everybody makes less than $150,000 in the United States of America? Zero, zero. And they don't pay, they only pay $10 for any truck, nothing more expensive. And we, because if we balance the budget, that's about $200 billion.

• 49:48Speaker 03

  Why wouldn't we do that? And you know, the beauty of Donald Trump is, that's a good idea. Okay. You balance a budget, I'll do it. You balance the budget, I'll do it.

• 49:57Speaker 04

  Cause I don't think, I don't think people understand this. Yeah. I don't think people understand this. Right. Is um, tax rates keep going up and of course there's local, state, federal, there's a whole bunch of money by the way.

• 50:07Speaker 03

  You know, even, even worse, we lose money. So there are people in this country that pay more than 50% of their income. I always joke, you don't start working for, you don't start working for yourself. I don't have a special deal with the government. I make money. I pay 55% because I live in the gorgeous state of New York.

• 50:24Speaker 04

  So you don't start working for yourself until like July 15th every year, right?

• 50:29Speaker 03

  That's pretty good. Dance to my birthday. I like it. I like it. But now I'm going to think about it that way.

• 50:33Speaker 04

  Yeah. I mean, it's crazy, right? Six and a half months of the year, you work for the government and then you get to work for yourself for five and a half months. Like, okay. Um, but here, here's what becomes pretty interesting is that um, as that happens, if the government can balance the budget, you can start to drop interest or start to drop the um, tax rate. And to your point, one of the things that I never hear politicians talk about is everyone wants to talk about the rich are taking advantage of the tax system, et cetera. I don't know what the percentage is today, but it's something like 50% of Americans don't pay tax. Right? There's some big number. Maybe it's 40%, maybe it's 50%, whatever. There's some big number of people

• 51:13Speaker 04

  who either don't make enough money, the way they make their money, whatever. There's some huge number of people who do not pay tax. And so actually wealthy people, they may pay less in tax than you think they should pay. But the people who pay zero are on the bottom end. Now, I would argue that that's actually a good thing. They're the people with the least amount of money, right? They don't have enough money to pay the taxes. So if you, if you balance the budget though, you can actually expand that group. So let's just say it was 20% of Americans that don't pay taxes, whatever the, the number is. If you get it at 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, let's say you get 80% of Americans who don't pay taxes. I actually think that the top 20% would say, you know what? We got a balanced budget. You're going to bring my tax rate down anyways. That's a great deal. Let's keep going.

• 51:58Speaker 04

  Just get my tax rate down. Most wealthy people I know don't look at what is everybody else paying? They just want to know, how do you get my tax rate down? And it's because they want a more efficient government, which actually has a surplus, not a deficit.

• 52:10Speaker 03

  There were, there were two theories kicking around. I haven't studied them. One says eliminate all tax in America or all taxes and just do a, um, like the equivalent of like Europe has a VAT, value added tax, right? And just, so it's a consumption tax. You want to spend money, you want to do something. So the rich will spend way more money. But what would happen is the cost of employing people in America would go down, right? Because there's no tax, right? And then, and then you'd have a sort of a, another model where if you earn a certain amount of money, you get relief from the VAT tax, right? That's, that's the idea of the model.

• 52:53Speaker 03

  And what happens is if I want to buy something, it's just much more expensive, but I don't pay any tax. So why not? And what happens is because we have the greatest economy in the world, all the money in the world flocks here because there's no capital gains tax. All factories get built here. All our people get employed and they're, they get paid more and more money because there's no tax on them. So they, they're willing to work for a lower price, but then everybody gets employed and it goes up and the, the whole economy becomes the envy of the world and no one else can do it. Because it doesn't matter what else, you know, what some country does, you know, which has got the greatest economy. Us, so that's one model.

• 53:33Speaker 03

  The other model was a, um, a transaction tax that you pay, uh, 1% on anything you do. So you buy a house, you pay 1%. You pay this for 1%. You pay that for 1%. You pay 1% on everything, everything everybody does. And, uh, you know, I haven't studied it, but that would earn us money and we could get rid of the income tax. But the concept of these things is only relevant if you actually look at the power that is America. And what we do is we sit there and we say, hold, take your right hand, grab your right ankle, pull it back behind your butt and let's run. And that's what the America is that we know today. We don't use our land.

• 54:17Speaker 03

  We don't use our minerals. We don't use our R and D. We don't use our economy, which people should be paying to come in here. We don't just use the power of the United States of America, incorporated. If you think about it, if you said to me, Howard, if you brought together the greatest business people in the world, and by the way, I run Trump Vance Transition, and I promise you, if he gets elected, you will see the greatest group of executives ever to walk on the field of an administration are gonna walk on because of this conversation. Let's go out and make America great and not like some hat. I mean, this is the United States of America.

• 54:59Speaker 03

  I mean, if we can't make a trillion dollars a year, come on, right? And you get people to start dreaming about it. We will build a sovereign wealth fund. Because if I do R and T, the US government does R and D, right? And we give a company, we buy product for a company with something we invent. We say, I'd like 25% of the equity of the company. You'd say, is that legal? Oh, yeah. 1947 Supreme Court case, the United States can take equity. Why don't we? We're silly. Silly is a good word, I think. We're very silly. I take that 25% of the equity. What do we do with it? Put it in social security. You say, oh, shit.

• 55:42Speaker 03

  You start doing that, then the economy of the United States of America, the success of our companies, they'll pay the social security, right? And all of a sudden, our social security deficit, which we all go, we have to stop paying, you know, have to make the retirement age older. We have to do all these things that no one who's running for office is ever gonna do. And all you're gonna do is just piss off everybody who gets the money. How about we use our brain? To solve it.

• 56:09Speaker 04

  Well, the social security thing is hilarious. I mean, it is 100% a Ponzi scheme at the moment, but we got here because we were bad at investing.

• 56:17Speaker 03

  No, we don't invest.

• 56:18Speaker 04

  No, that's what I'm saying. We were bad at investing. If somebody gives you money today and they say, I need it back in 40 or 50 years and I'm going to need, you know, X percent return on that money. You just got to make more money than what you're going to have to pay out.

• 56:30Speaker 03

  Be an insurance company.

• 56:31Speaker 04

  But we didn't do that. Instead, what we started to do is

• 56:34Speaker 03

  Spend the money. Come on, we had fun, but if we do it this way, we will balance social securities. We'll just balance it.

• 56:41Speaker 04

  I actually wonder if

• 56:43Speaker 03

  You never heard it before.

• 56:44Speaker 04

  What American entrepreneurs Yeah, one of the things that I think young people specifically seem to be trying to wrestle with is patriotism. And this idea that doing things in the country should also be good for the country. And so, you know, could you convince entrepreneurs where you say, listen, if you build a company in America, you've got to give 1% of the equity into whatever the social programs are, you know, you that sovereign wealth fund, whatever. I don't know if people would do it. I actually don't even know if it's a good idea. But things like that are almost too creative. You can see like a bureaucrat's brain breaking to even try to figure out what something like that would look like.

• 57:23Speaker 03

  Well, what, asking someone to give, right? But if we are, you're a contractor and you sell stuff to the US government, huge size, I become the CEO of the US government purchasing incorporated. And I say, gee, you know, I just noticed your entire company is worth me as a client. In, in, in the world I live in, you know what the client says? I'd like to own equity in your company. Or I'm going to buy from someone else. And you know what you say? Sure.

• 57:57Speaker 04

  How much do you want?

• 57:59Speaker 03

  Right? What's the deal? If we acted that way and took that equity, so use the power of our 6.5 trillion dollars a year spending.

• 58:11Speaker 03

  Got equity for it and put it into social security. Then social security would be paid for. Now you'd say, yeah, but you're just taking money from vendors. No, we helped the vendor. I'll give you an example. We buy missiles once in a while, right? When we use them, then when we need more, we buy more. But we don't do it. So if you're a contractor and you sell a thousand missiles every now and again, you have a very low multiple on your stock because no one can rely on when you're going to make money. So if we said, why don't you give us 20% of your equity? And we will buy 250 missiles every single quarter for five years.

• 58:56Speaker 03

  Your stock will double because now you have consistent earnings. It's very clear the math of how you're going to do. So your stock went up 100%. The US government got 20% equity, which I put in social security, which now became worth 40, right? Was for free and everybody wins. Nobody lost. Like you realize in that story, I didn't take anything from anybody. I didn't do it. But what we did is instead of just buying when we need it, we bought in a way that our vendor appreciated because their multiple will be higher. Now you have to be really smart. But did you know in the United States of America, do you know how many smart people there are?

• 59:39Speaker 03

  And you know how many smart people, if you actually talk like this, you know how many phone calls I get, you know, from people who are incredibly thoughtful, incredibly smart, who want to help. And if you give them a chance to help the United States of America, which we love, they all want to do it. It's amazing how many people want to help. But you have to give them the idea. And that is why I love Donald Trump. When did you have these ideas, Howard?

• 1:00:07Speaker 03

  Two months ago, I had dinner with Donald Trump. And he said, we should have a sovereign wealth fund. And I said, okay, 300,000 citizens, the oil gurgles out of the ground. They take care of their citizens, they sell their oil and they buy other people's stuff. That's the Middle East and that's the sovereign wealth fund. What do we got? And he says those magic words that only Donald can say, you'll figure it out. Okay. And then he has all sorts of people call me and they all call me with their ideas. And we figure out that we can invest $150 billion and in six years, we'll make a trillion. We'll make 100% return a year for six years. And I said, you know what the problem is? Our deficit will be, you know, 45 trillion and we'll make 1 trillion once.

• 1:00:51Speaker 03

  The United States of America is so big, we don't care. We need to make a trillion a year. And then the thinking clicked and changed. About two weeks after that, I called him up in the morning. I said, I got it, I got it. And I started talking like this, that we can use our assets to make a trillion dollars. And we can use our wealth fund ideas to fund social security. Make social security an insurance company with the most powerful ally ever. The United States of America Incorporated. All, I mean, come on, all the land of America, all the mineral rights of America. Wow. All our patents, oh my God.

• 1:01:33Speaker 03

  The power of us is so awesome. But if we force the greatest athlete in the world to hold with their right hand, their right ankle, and hold it by their butt, then I get fast. But if you let him, if you take his hand away, right? Elon Musk said, if we cut the shackles. So he texted me after I put the, I put, we put a tweet out together that said, we're gonna rip the waste out of, um, out of the government 6.5 trillion. And, and then he, he texted me that, uh, we're gonna cut the shackles of America like Gulliver. Right? And I sent them back a picture of the world's biggest scissor.

• 1:02:15Speaker 03

  Right? Because I'm trying to like be like a cool meme guy, even though I'm not like pathetic. So sorry, I can't do it. And he sent me back, of course, a sword, which I was like, fair enough. So much better. Like so much better.

• 1:02:29Speaker 04

  So, speaking of, speaking of swords and scissors, Bitcoin is something that you've become very excited about. I think there's a lot of people who are looking and saying, wait a second, all these dollars, all this tax talk, all this national debt. It all just guarantees the dollar is going to lose value over time. We're going to continue to lose value in the dollar. This Bitcoin thing is the opposite. It continues to appreciate its purchasing power over time. Why are you so excited about this?

• 1:02:59Speaker 03

  Okay, so I think about it differently. But we get to the same outcome.

• 1:03:04Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:03:05Speaker 03

  Okay, so let's think about it differently. So people use Bitcoin and they say it's a, it's like a currency. It's not.

• 1:03:14Speaker 04

  I don't think it is.

• 1:03:14Speaker 03

  It is not a currency. It is a commodity, like gold, like oil, right? We don't know how much, but in the end, that's why they call it mining. It's not like that funny, actually, right? And they have a gas fee, right? Like of all the words that everybody uses with respect to Bitcoin are really commodity based. So they, it should be regulated like a commodity because it is a commodity. And Bitcoin, and let's only talk about Bitcoin, right? It's a commodity, right? Commodities, you can sell oil to anybody you want, anytime you want, without regulatory, anything. If you want to do an oil futures contract, okay, fine.

• 1:03:58Speaker 03

  But if I just like have oil come out of my, you know, or out of my, I have a drill, an oil well in Texas and I want to sell my oil, the government.

• 1:04:11Speaker 03

  Just do it clean and that kind of stuff. But I could sell oil. I could, I could mine gold and sell gold. I should be able to mine Bitcoin and sell Bitcoin. To who? Anyone. Anyone where? Anyone ever? It's just a commodity. So if everyone started talking about Bitcoin being a commodity, they would actually be talking about the freedom of Bitcoin. And they'd be talking to people and everybody who's in power would now understand. Cause when they think, oh, it's going to replace the dollar, the way you talked about it.

• 1:04:43Speaker 04

  I don't, I don't think it's going to replace the dollar. Actually, this is something I've changed my mind on over the last three or four years is early on, I think people looked at it as Bitcoin has to, to be successful, the dollar will suffer. What we've seen, which was not really a thing five years ago, is that actually Bitcoin continues to grow in value. You know, trillion plus dollar asset now, but stable coins have also grown in value. And so now what you're starting to see is the framework that I use is that Bitcoin is like your digital savings account. You put your money in there, you don't touch it, right? It's like gold, you, you buy it and you hold it. The whole point is not to spend it. You're disincentivized in America. You get taxed if you spend it right now and you're giving up future appreciation. So it is that commodity, you sit there and you just hold it.

• 1:05:28Speaker 03

  I don't, I, it's.

• 1:05:30Speaker 04

  Stable coins are like your checking account.

• 1:05:32Speaker 03

  Okay. Stable coins are your checking account. They're not like your checking account, right? So in America, I have my money in JP Morgan. Okay. And I have a Bank of America, Bank of America and JP Morgan. I have checking accounts, they don't pay me interest.

• 1:05:46Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 1:05:47Speaker 03

  Okay. And I Venmo you, I could PayPal you, I could write a check to you, right? I can use my credit card. I have dollars in my pocket. Who cares? Dollars are our fiat currency. Okay. Snap my fingers, you and I would transport to Argentina. Now I look in my pocket, I have Argentinian pesos. My savings account's in pesos. The only bank account I can have is in pesos. Pesos going down only 70% last year. We're screwed. I can't have a savings account. I need to get out. I need to get out. What do I want? I want a checking account in dollars. I go to the bank, say, can I have a checking account in dollars, please? No.

• 1:06:28Speaker 03

  There's no currency in the whole wide world that's allowed to operate in someone else's country. They do their own. So you go to Britain, they do the pound. You go to the euro, right? All the European countries, they only have the euro. So you can't open a dollar-based account in Europe? Of course not. You have to use the euro. So what a stable coin is, is the dollar checking account, right? Cause I can pay you in it. A dollar sixty-two. I can get that, like, I don't need to get a currency, swap the currency, give it to you, try to get change, try to get the dollar. I can just pay you in it. So it's a dollar-based checking account. It's the digital dollar all over the world. So I'm a fan of it because it's smart.

• 1:07:11Speaker 04

  I want to talk about your story because your story, I think, is a story of resilience. It makes a lot of sense when people learn your story as to why you're into Bitcoin, why you want to slash government spending, why somebody like Trump, you believe so heavily in what he can do. And there's two parts of the story that I think are probably most important. What's the story of how you became the CEO of Canter? Cause I don't think a lot of young people understand how this happened.

• 1:07:39Speaker 03

  All right. So I had a, I had a job. I had a summer job.

• 1:07:46Speaker 04

  Let's go back even further. What's your social security number? What hospital are you in? No, I'm joking. But before you explain the job.

• 1:07:51Speaker 03

  Classic middle-class Long Island. Classic, middle-class Long Island. Mom, a teacher, art teacher. Dad, a professor.

• 1:07:59Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:07:59Speaker 03

  American historian. So if you grew up in my household, you'd go to the supermarket and something was eight dollars and fifty-seven cents. And my dad would say, eight fifty-seven. A fantastic year. That was the year that Charlemagne went into France and be like, great. That's what our face was always the same, you know, dad giving us a lecture on what happened in fourteen, twelve, you know, he knew, he knew a fact about every year. What's a historian will do. So it was fun. So I have like you, every once in a while you can hit me with a fact and I'll come up with something you're like, where do you know that from? I'm like, who knows? You know, my dad sort of drilled it into me when I was young. So teachers,

• 1:08:38Speaker 03

  classic middle class. Okay. Nice little house on, you know, the house across the street next door. You'd play in the, in the street and yell, car, get off the road, right? Same thing. Get back on. Okay, fine. So

• 1:08:53Speaker 03

  my mom dies when I'm in 11th grade. Okay. Long Island breast cancer. So there's a heat map of cancer on Long Island. It comes from my best friend's father. He owns Matisse Home Heating Oil. And as it turns out, unbeknownst to anybody, he's cleaning the heating oil trucks with water and just running the insides out with water and just running it into the water. Kills 10,000 women. Goes to prison, uh, super fun site, $2 billion to clean his stuff up. My best friend, his father. Unbelievable. But, you know, I didn't know it then. Of course. I know now. So he, his father actually killed my mother, which is fascinating. So

• 1:09:34Speaker 03

  my mom dies in 11th grade, but nobody's life is perfect. I go to Haverford College, small college and, uh, outside of Philadelphia. Uh, cause my dad sort of pushing me and they recruit me for D3 tennis. D3 baby. Good enough to enjoy playing tennis. Other D3 people, never playing tennis when we're done with college. That just ain't a thing. Okay. So play other people like me. I was, I was ranked like top 50 on the east. Bad, but no John McEnroe. I mean, I watched them play.

• 1:10:07Speaker 03

  You know, so I go to, I go to, uh, Haverford College. I'm there a week. Unbeknownst to me, my dad has cancer. He doesn't tell me. He goes for his first chemotherapy shot, goes to a local SaaS at hospital on Long Island. We don't have the money. We're not going to like fancy, you know, cancer clinics and stuff like that. Nurse makes a mistake, gives him someone else's dose and kills.

• 1:10:31Speaker 03

  I'm in college one week. So you lose one parent, it's one thing. You lose a second parent, it's like a whole nother thing. Sister's 20, I'm 18, brother's 15. Okay. Go to my dad's funeral. By the way, my dad gets killed September 12th, 1979. Great time to hang out with me. I'm so much fun in the middle of September. Oh, man, that's bad. Go to my dad's funeral, September 15th. My dad's brother comes up to me and says, what are you doing for Thanksgiving? I'm thinking, Thanksgiving? Isn't that like in November? Are you actually inviting me for dinner in November? Aren't you worried about how I'm gonna eat?

• 1:11:15Speaker 03

  Like tomorrow? And he said, let me know if you want to come over. Never spoke to him again. Never spoke to him again. Why? They were afraid we'd be sticky. We'd come over, we'd never leave. So my family, my parents', siblings, pull away. And they leave me and my sister, my brother, to ourselves. Just the three of us. So we take care of my brother. Havreford calls me. I drop out. Obviously, I'm gonna take care of my brother and try to figure out how we're gonna like, you know, I try to cook. That was fun. I have no idea to cook. So I try to make like chicken or a steak.

• 1:12:00Speaker 03

  Didn't work out well. Mac and cheese out of a box is like rock star, man. Mac and cheese, you just boil it. You got to pack it. I can still, as I'm saying it, I can see the silver packet.

• 1:12:10Speaker 04

  I'm surprised you didn't just stick with like Pop Tarts.

• 1:12:13Speaker 03

  Mac and cheese, baby. We ate. So I had a nightmare. My brother was really fast and he ran track. And I had a nightmare. And he was running track and he started sweating a little macaroni stuff coming out. Because every night we'd have mac and cheese, like every single night. I was killing my brother with mac and cheese. I was actually killing him with mac and cheese. So Havreford calls me and says, we'll take care of it. Please come back. So I make a deal with my sister. I go back to Havreford College. My brother goes to a boarding school right near Havreford. He lives with me on the weekends for one year. Then my sister goes back. She graduates. She goes to grad school, underachiever, of course, has JD MBA.

• 1:12:58Speaker 03

  Classic underachiever. And, uh, and then my brother will live with my sister. And the next year and he graduates. She went to Syracuse for her JD MBA, her law degree and business degree. And he lived with her. He went to the public high school right by Syracuse. So he graduates from there. And then, um, and then he goes to Rider College, which is, uh, right near Princeton. See, instead of saying he went to Princeton, he went, uh, near Princeton. But, uh, so he went to Rider College and, um, and then eventually he joined me at, uh, at Canada Fitzgerald, but the, my sister, my brother and I couldn't be closer as human beings. And we'd been to hell together.

• 1:13:42Speaker 03

  You lose one parent, that second parent, it smelled a certain way, felt a certain way. We're just, no one else around. The way I said, it felt like, uh, you know, the astronaut, when they, you see that video of the spacewalk and they're tethered.

• 1:14:00Speaker 03

  Cut it. And you'd sort of drift. That's what I felt like when you lose your parents, you lose your, you know, your foundation.

• 1:14:08Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 1:14:08Speaker 03

  And so then, you know, I went all in my life. I got a job at, uh, Canada Fitzgerald.

• 1:14:15Speaker 04

  How'd you get the job?

• 1:14:17Speaker 03

  Classic way, family friend. Family friend introduced me. So I had, it's sort of a funny story. I, I, I had this, a family friend gets me a job for, uh, I take a semester off of school and work on Wall Street. But I don't know what Wall Street means. I just get a job and a friend of the family gets me a job. So I work for this company and, uh, I become the pet of the boss. He, he likes me. I send them ideas and stuff. So I've, I've become his pet. So the next summer they offer me a job back. So I go back to the firm and, uh, and he's working on a deal to buy a company from Canada. Just rando, totally rando. So.

• 1:15:04Speaker 03

  I get to work on that deal as his pet. Basically, his bag carrier is at a fair caddy, bag carrier. Not important, but there, get him a Diet Coke if he wants one, kind of guy. You know, really important. Anyway, so.

• 1:15:20Speaker 03

  So Bernie Cantor and his team, they see me and they decide they hate this guy. So I go back to school, Cantor Fitzgerald calls me and says, we'll offer you a job. I said, well, I'm gonna go work for that guy. He lets me to go. We'll pay you double. I'm like, cool. So now I'm walking around college. Okay, baby. They love me. I'm the king. I'm going everywhere. I go to Cantor Fitzgerald, the first day. I'm the king, baby. Getting paid double. These guys love me. They know how great I am.

• 1:15:55Speaker 03

  I said, where do you want me to work? They keep sending me over there, over there, over there. Finally, they say, you'll see the president. I go to the president's office. President says to me, listen, we hate that guy. We know he loves you, so we hired you just to fuck him. We don't give a shit about you. Get out.

• 1:16:13Speaker 03

  I'm like.

• 1:16:15Speaker 03

  Roadkill. I'm roadkill. I go from like, who's got a bigger ego than me? To I'm the squirrel at the end of the road. I mean, I'm just like, get out. So I've got, I figure I got 48 hours to figure out how to get a job. If it's Gerald or I'm fired and I pissed off the other guy because I didn't take his job. So I'm like, between the two toilets, there we go. And so I figure out how to get a job at the.

• 1:16:42Speaker 03

  In the firm. And and I figured out because I have no choice. Which is like, I go into this giant trading room, try to pick out who's a winner. And I've got to pick out who the winner is. And I go up to, I just pick someone who's got a big mouth, who's like making a lot of noise, who looks like they know what they're doing. And I say, what kind of coffee like? And went and get him a cup of coffee. You know, cream or whatever. I bring him coffee. And and then I tried to sit down.

• 1:17:15Speaker 03

  He's like, what are you doing? And I said, listen, I need a job. I'm hired here, but I need a job. And he's like, what does that even mean? You're hired here and you need a job? I'm like, look, I'll get you coffee. I'll get you this and that. And I'm making this story shorter. But ultimately, he says, you really want a job here? And you want to get me coffee? You willing to go further? Now, thank God, he was a good guy. It wasn't like P. Diddy kind of bullshit.

• 1:17:44Speaker 03

  But he says, well, you mow my lawn. And on that Saturday, I went to his house in New Jersey and I mowed his lawn. And in exchange for that, he let me sit down. And so he, he did the right trade. If you're willing to give of yourself like that, I'll help you. And he did. And so I got a job at Canterbury Show. That's how, so that's my official getting a job.

• 1:18:08Speaker 04

  All right. So you get the job, you're on the trading floor and you eventually become CEO. But I think there's something.

• 1:18:15Speaker 03

  When I'm 29.

• 1:18:16Speaker 04

  And there's a, a whole path here where Bernie Cantor eventually goes blind?

• 1:18:23Speaker 03

  Sort of. Well, let's just go a little slower. So, so.

• 1:18:28Speaker 04

  Cause from mowing the lawn to 29 as a CEO, there was some, something happened.

• 1:18:31Speaker 03

  Right, so I'm 22 when I'm mowing the lawn. Okay, so then I'm a, I'm, I'm a reader, which means I, I, I really want to read it. And, and so a friend of mine, when I'm 25 or like 24, the end of my 24, mentions this, this just crazy idea that in the 1890s, when the United States was industrializing itself, it gave land, took eminent domain of land across the United States of America and gave the land, sound familiar? Gave the land to railroads. The brilliantly named Northern Pacific. And now here's the quiz. What was the other one named? Yes, the Southern Pacific, right?

• 1:19:16Speaker 03

  And they built two railroads across the, the United States. And that land was then put in trust. They barred against that land, 100 year bonds and 150 year bonds, what we call railroad bonds at the time, in 1897. By the way, you want to know interest rates? 4%. I'm just saying, when you think, oh, rates were so high. What were they in 1897? 3 and 4%. Seriously, so.

• 1:19:42Speaker 03

  All this land is on the books of this company called Burlington Northern. Okay, so my friend tells me the story. So I do some research. There's 150 million worth of bonds. So I do all this work and I walk into Bernie Cantor's office, my nicely strong arrogant 25 year old self. Had hair then, just saying. And, uh, and I say, here's the idea. We buy all the bonds and I found everybody owns one of these bonds. John Hancock Insurance Company owns them at par from 1897, still owes them, this is 1985 now, 85, 86. We buy the bonds. We do a takeover of the railroad. And I think the land is worth $4 billion. The railroad's only worth $4 billion.

• 1:20:27Speaker 03

  We'll buy the railroad, let's say pay $5 billion for the railroad. Flip out the railroad, keep the land. Right, we'll lose, we'll lose a billion in the flip out and we'll have the land for a billion and the land's worth $4 billion. What do you say? Bernie Cantor, in his powerful, strong voice, tells me to fuck off. Cause I'm a 25 year old, what kind of idea is this? I should buy a billion, $4 billion, like, what are you talking about? Get out. So I pound on him and then he gives me $2 million to invest. Two. So I take his $2 million.

• 1:20:59Speaker 04

  Did you tell him, uh, there's zeros missing?

• 1:21:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, listen, it took me 12 meetings to get to two. So, you know, remember I'm, I'm 25 doing whatever. So my career is growing quickly because I'm, I'm a good salesman and I'm a good talker. So I'm going, I'm doing really well, but so. I buy $4 million worth of these bonds. Right, cause I, I borrowed 2 million, I put 2 million down and borrowed 2 million, so 4 million. That, you can borrow 50%. That's the general rule. That's an easy rule on Wall Street. You can do more than that when you're a pro. But if you're watching the show, you definitely can borrow 50% on anything that's a public stock. So I buy 4 million worth. But, you know, this whole land idea.

• 1:21:45Speaker 03

  They know it too. So the CEO of Burlington Northern announces he's going to retire, and he's going to take the land out of this trust that backs these bonds. And he's going to put 300 million in treasuries in for only 150 bonds, double, just a double super protected, and they're going to take the land out. But I told you I'm a reader. So I had gone to the library, and then they had microfiche, no iPad. Yeah, like you did this stupid, like, you got a, like a negative, and you put it in a light box, and you like twisted it like this, and you read it on the light box. And I'm that old, seriously.

• 1:22:22Speaker 03

  It's sad when I tell this story. So I knew what it said. And so I hired some cheapo lawyer, and my 25-year-old brilliant self wrote a letter saying, "You can't take the land, and I will sue you." So there's no video. So the general counsel of Burlington Northern calls me, but he doesn't always talk to a 25-year-old. And he says, "What do you got?" I said, "I have 4 million worth of bonds." He says, "I'll tell you why. How much did they cost?" I said, "Whatever. I paid 4 million for them." He goes, "All right, I'll give you the 4 million. You keep the bonds. I get the land." Now I invested 2 million. I still got 2 million debt, and I made 4 million, so I made $2 million

• 1:23:07Speaker 03

  profit. I made 100% profit, and I still got the bonds. And that's true for everybody. So I marched into Bernie Cantor's office and said, "I made 100% on our money. Double A bonds, taking no risk. Now do you believe me?" And to Bernie Cantor's credit, he buys 5% of Burlington Northern. They split the company in two, Burlington Northern and Burlington Resources. DuPont buys the land for $6 billion, right? The stock goes up 2 and 1/2 times. Bernie Cantor makes $100 million. He gives me a bonus at the end of that year of...

• 1:23:49Speaker 03

  One million dollars.

• 1:23:50Speaker 04

  Oh, okay.

• 1:23:51Speaker 03

  One million dollars. Pretty good. So my friends say he makes a hundred million and you only get one. I go, what do you got? I got like $12,500 bonus. Like you got something to say to me? Right? So let's be clear. Bernie Cantor really likes me now. So fast forward, my business continues to do super well. I'm a salesman. Okay. But he lets me start my own division now. So I have my own little division and we're rocking. Great salesman.

• 1:24:21Speaker 04

  Figures that if you lose them 99 million dollars, you just break even, right?

• 1:24:25Speaker 03

  But I'm, I'm doing well and my income, my ordinary income is doubling every year. So you think I started, I started 40 grand, which was double to 20, right? Then 80, went 60, 320. I mean, you know, doubling grows fast. So I'm making millions a year now. And I come up with my next idea, 1988. And, uh, and that's about Pennsylvania banking. Remember Citigroup was called New York Citibank. Okay. Because banks were only in state. And then the federal government created these federal charters where you could be a state in every, uh, so each state would make a rule when the outside banks could come in. So Pennsylvania had made a rule that the out of state banks would come in in a year. So I went to Bernie Cantor's office. I said, they're all coming. So let's buy

• 1:25:10Speaker 03

  some shitty bank with good locations. It's definitely going to get taken over. So we buy this shitty bank called First Pennsylvania, at really nice locations, crappy bank, for $6 a share. Gerard National Bank, one of the big banks in Pennsylvania, starts to buy it just to bulk up for when the outsiders come in, 12 bucks a share. Bank of New York comes in and buys it for 18 bucks a share. Triples his money. But because this was the second time, this time he didn't buy 100 million. He bought 200 million and he put all his friends into it. So now he makes a ton of dough and he gives me a bonus of $2 million. My friends have the same comment. You only get two? I'm like, seriously? Again, like, what do you got? Nothing.

• 1:25:57Speaker 03

  And that's how it went. So what happened is, I say it this way, the first time I made him a hundred million, he liked me. Second time I made him a hundred million, he loved me. And the third time I did it, family. And I say to my guys right now, you make me a hundred, a hundred, and then a hundred Thanksgiving, where you want to sit? You want to sit next to my mother-in-law? Where do you want to sit? Come on over. So that's what happened. We, we became so close because I was his, like his kitchen cabinet, and I was his cabinet the way, you know, I, I talked to him. So I talked to Bernie Cantor the way I talk to Donald Trump now. He's the czar king and ruler. Okay. And now I'm going to get picked on because I was our king and ruler. I'm just making a comment that he's the boss.

• 1:26:38Speaker 03

  Right? I'm not the boss, but I have ideas where you listen. And Donald Trump listens. He hears me. The way, the right way to say this, he hears me. He doesn't always listen to what I say. I mean, he doesn't always do what I say, but he hears me. And that's all you can care because he then listens to lots of people and modifies. So that's my world. So then I become the, the, the president of the company. And when I'm 29, just, just before I turned 30, because I've made him so much money, he loves me. He just loves me. And that's, uh, so he makes me the, the CEO, and then we have the 93 bombing.

• 1:27:19Speaker 03

  And it was, you know, we lose our office space, right? We don't know if the World Trade Center is going to become the leaning tower of Pisa, right? So can't use the space. So we have to work. Nobody dies, but we're like,

• 1:27:32Speaker 04

  By 93, you guys were in the World Trade Center?

• 1:27:34Speaker 03

  Top of the World Trade. So I'm Bernie Cantor signs the space in 19, in the 1980s. Right? So for $8 a foot, like for dirt cheap. And while I'm like,

• 1:27:48Speaker 03

  A kid, right? So in the seventies, he, he, he signed it in, in the late seventies when I was still in high school. So, you know, I go in and we have the most awesome views ever. Holy moly, you look that way and you see the Statue of Liberty's armpit and you look this way and you see, you know, Manhattan like a postcard. It was awesome. Like early in the morning, you'd come in, the clouds would be below you and the tip of the Empire State Building is sticking up and there's Jack and the Beanstalk. I mean, literally, blue sky tip and it was just magical. So you never took it for granted. It was so awesome. You'd

• 1:28:30Speaker 03

  never took it for granted. And, and the views from my office were the same as, didn't matter which way you looked. It was perfect. So we're always there. So then there's the World Trade Center bombing in, in 1993 and it creates unbelievable stress. But what happens is the executives only care about themselves. Remember, I got promoted in 1991 and what do I know? Like I leave the CFOs, the CFO and the general councils, the general council, like I just replaced the president of the company. I got promoted and whatever. I'm worried about revenue. Let's go build the company and, and these guys run the administration. Good for them. Little did I know that they were a team and they hated my fucking guts

• 1:29:16Speaker 03

  because I fired. I was the effective reason why their, you know, their leader who promoted them all got fired. So during the 93 coup, during the 93 bombing, they do a coup and they go to Bernie Cantor. While we're out of our office and we're going through hell, they say him or me, you know, they say he or we all, we all quit.

• 1:29:40Speaker 03

  And Bernie Cantor calls me, tells me the story. I go, and like, am I gone or they gone? He goes, fire them all. And that's that. I fired them all. So I'm now clearly in charge of the company. 1993, we moved back to the World Trade Center and all sorts its way out. And then I make a rule. We're only going to work with people that we like. Only people that we like. So interview, the guy has to have capacity or the woman's got to have capacity. But you're going to spend a huge amount of time with him or her. Make sure they're your kind of person. Right? Because I'd just been through that. And that's the company. So we all hire everybody. I hired my brother. I hired my best friend Doug.

• 1:30:24Speaker 03

  But everybody does. You would do it. Everybody hires. I see it this way. We all have the same rainbow of friends. We have the ones on this side, smart, capable and thoughtful. And then we have the ones on the other side, make you laugh in a bar, a little crazy, a little wild. Let's hire the ones on this side, please. And then that's the company.

• 1:30:44Speaker 03

  Right? So Bernie Cantor dies in 1996. Iris Cantor tries to sell the company. His wife tries to sell the company.

• 1:30:52Speaker 03

  We have a big court case, gets me on the cover of the New York Times, business section, full thing. With partners like these who needs rivals.

• 1:31:02Speaker 03

  I win the case in every way.

• 1:31:05Speaker 03

  Buyer out.

• 1:31:06Speaker 04

  What was the argument?

• 1:31:08Speaker 03

  The argument was.

• 1:31:11Speaker 03

  He had 51% of the company. And when he died, he left me his votes and his, and his second wife, his younger wife, his shares. And she was saying he wasn't dead yet. He was on life support. And her lawyer made one of the great mistakes of all time, like never ask in a big court case, a question you don't know the answer to. Right? So her lawyer, I'm on the stand that this, and remember, there's this big giant article in the New York Times. So the courtroom is packed.

• 1:31:42Speaker 04

  And it said, with business partners like this.

• 1:31:45Speaker 03

  Who needs rivals?

• 1:31:46Speaker 04

  That's a pretty good title.

• 1:31:47Speaker 03

  That's pretty good. And there's my picture and her picture and Bernie Cantor's picture like, I mean, it's the whole thing.

• 1:31:52Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:31:52Speaker 03

  It's all above and below the fold, the whole thing. And so that, I mean, without ad for the court case, the courtroom.

• 1:32:00Speaker 04

  Everyone's there.

• 1:32:01Speaker 03

  Cameras and everything's there. So I'm on the stand and her lawyer says,

• 1:32:08Speaker 03

  And I testify that my power is ephemeral. It's limited. It's just because if he's okay, the power just goes back to him. I only have it because he's on life support and he's not well. But if he's fine, it goes back to him. And I just testified to that. And, and her lawyer says, where did you get this stupid, ridiculous, insane? It goes on and on and on and on. You know, where did this come from? This is ridiculous. It's obviously absurd. And then I let him lay it on as much as he can.

• 1:32:44Speaker 04

  And then you pulled up the paper?

• 1:32:45Speaker 03

  And I said, it's the 20th, a copy of the 25th Amendment of the United States Constitution. And the courtroom went insane, like erupted, boom. And everyone's like screaming and yelling. It was like just quack. The judge leaps out of his chair. He storms out of the courtroom and it's over. I mean, come on, right? She's trying to sell the company in the 25th Amendment of the United States Constitution. Says the power is vested with the vice president until the president says, I am the president of the United States. Of course, if he then wakes up and says, and I'm Napoleon too, then you got a whole nother thing. But if he just is getting an operation for appendicitis, he comes back and when he feels fine, he says, I'm the president. And the power just automatically goes to him.

• 1:33:30Speaker 03

  So, so I bought her out and that was the model.

• 1:33:35Speaker 04

  Do people know for how much? Is that a public number? Why don't you just tell us anyways?

• 1:33:41Speaker 03

  It's like 120 million bucks.

• 1:33:43Speaker 04

  Okay. And how big was the firm at the time?

• 1:33:47Speaker 03

  Much, much smaller. But I thought in the end, that's how I became a billionaire. That transaction was it.

• 1:33:54Speaker 04

  But how did you get 120 million dollars to buy her out?

• 1:33:57Speaker 03

  I had to borrow it.

• 1:33:58Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:33:59Speaker 03

  I had to go into debt in a crazy amount, but.

• 1:34:02Speaker 04

  But you bet on yourself.

• 1:34:03Speaker 03

  I did. I bet, I bet on myself and, and I had a.

• 1:34:09Speaker 03

  I had like a six day old baby. Six days old.

• 1:34:14Speaker 04

  So nothing like compounded in risk.

• 1:34:16Speaker 03

  And I held him up and when I bought the company, I held my baby up like Simba. And I'm like, hey, you know, like, and I said, I look at my little kid, I go, you have no idea. What a good day you just had.

• 1:34:32Speaker 03

  You know, cause, cause before that. It, it was my company to run, but when I died. You know, she ran it, you know, it was her will that would divide it. Now I had bought her out and now, you know, it was my family's company.

• 1:34:48Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 1:34:48Speaker 03

  So that's 1996.

• 1:34:50Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:34:51Speaker 03

  Okay. And then, so we're only hiring people that we like. We're only hiring our friends. I own the company. I'm putting all my money into the company. The company's incredibly successful. It's killing it. We are growing fast and furious. I'm hiring all the talent in the world. We're making a million a day.

• 1:35:12Speaker 04

  That's a lot.

• 1:35:12Speaker 03

  Two thousand. A lot. I'm a super rich guy. I have the famous hundred million dollars set aside just in case, like super rich, super rich. And the rest of my money, just feed the beast, feed the beast, golden goose, feed the golden goose. Can't Fitzgerald has no debt. Howard Lutnick has no debt. Well, I make a lot of money. Why would I need debt? Right? No debt. Rockstar company, winning in every way. On the top of the World Trade Center have expanded, expanded, expanded. Hundred and first to the hundred and fifth floors of the World Trade Center. Right? September 11.

• 1:35:52Speaker 03

  I've heard all my friends. My brother works there. My best friend Doug works there. My roommate from college, his brother works there. My other best friend, his brother in law works there. And my other best friend, his brother in law works there. I turned 40 that summer. So before then. It's April.

• 1:36:13Speaker 03

  Of 2001, I'm going to turn 40 during the summer. I declare victory. I win in life. I'm making all the money in the world. It's my company. I work with all my friends and they work with all their friends. Everybody works with their friends. Okay, I win. I take each of my senior executives, six of them, out to dinner alone. Each one alone. I get up from my table. I walk around the other side and I kiss him. I tell him I love him. I said, but I win. So here's, and I give him each, I don't know, 20, 25 million bucks worth of stock. I said, I win. So here's the way it's gonna go.

• 1:36:49Speaker 03

  Every day my kids are out of school. I'm out. I'm gonna live my life with my kids. When they're in, I'm in, same

• 1:36:57Speaker 03

  as I always am, but I'm just gonna be out way more often. You guys are great. Here's a stock. I give him mine. Okay, that's April. I have my birthday party that summer. About 65 couples at my birthday party. So my 40th birthday.

• 1:37:11Speaker 04

  So your 40th birthday, 120 people come?

• 1:37:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, 120, 130 people. It's a nice party and uh

• 1:37:20Speaker 03

  and then September 11th, it's July, July 14th is my birthday and uh three months later, 20 people at my party get killed.

• 1:37:30Speaker 03

  So my friends, my brother gets killed, my best friend Doug gets killed. All those people I listed before, they all get killed. We employ 50 sets of brothers. And we lose, you know, more than a dozen brothers, meaning mom loses two, two sons. I have, I have one father who lost two daughters because they worked together and

• 1:37:54Speaker 03

  658 people out of nine, I have 916 in New York, 658 people get killed. 658 people get killed.

• 1:38:03Speaker 04

  Why not all 900?

• 1:38:06Speaker 03

  Whoever wasn't in the office. So every single person who was in the office gets killed. There's no way out. I am here because I'm taking that oldest boy who I held up, first day kindergarten. Five years old, kindergarten, new school, cold horse man. 90th Street, first day is September 12th. My best friend Doug, his son's first day.

• 1:38:31Speaker 03

  My first day is September 11th, so I'm not there. His kid's first day, September 12th. If I had gone to, by the way, and he pushed me to try to go to that school called Riverdale, which is a great school, but I, for whatever reason, I chose Horace Mann and that choice saved my life because his school started on 12th, so he was on, in the 11th and he, and he got killed. He was planning to take the next day off. He had to take his kid to school. So I'm at the school and those days when you took a picture, uh, when you developed the picture, it often had the timestamp in the low right hand corner and like an LED display, like

• 1:39:12Speaker 03

  your LED clock. And I have a, that picture is 8:46 of me and my boy, him wearing his like little backpack with his little hair right in front of the school, right? I have that picture and, uh, and then I go up in the school and then they tell me a plane hit the building. But I think it's like a Piper Cub or something. So I get in the car and I drive, I tell my driver, uh, you know, let's go to Fifth Avenue because that's the soonest place where you can see the tower. I mean, I've been working there my whole life and I know, uh, I know the building by heart and, uh, I, I see the just fire and smoke just pouring out of my tower, the one with the antenna on the top. So I'm

• 1:39:55Speaker 03

  in the top floors and my driver starts crying. You know, he starts crying hysterical. I go, let's just get there. Let's just get there. We have to get there. We have to get there. He's a retired police officer detective. So he uses his badge and we get all the way to the building and I get out of my car and I go to the door. Um, and it's the door on Church Street, you know, on this side and I'm grabbing people, asking them what floor they're on. I just keep grabbing them because I know there's like 20 doors. And if I get one coming out of this door, then they're pouring out of all the doors. And, uh, and I have everyone yelling out the floors and people didn't have anybody standing around. They had no idea what to do. So they were all yelling out the floors and the highest floor I got to was 92nd floor. And then, and then I hear the loudest sound I've ever

• 1:40:39Speaker 03

  heard in my life. Now, I haven't seen this. Remember, there's no video. There's no time. I got a flip phone at the time. That's so, um,

• 1:40:48Speaker 03

  I start running. I'm dressed like this, suit and tie, shoes on. I'm running my ass off, running as hard as I frigging can. From what? I don't know. I look over my shoulder, tornado's chasing me. Remember that black cloud? You guys have seen the video. So I'm running, I'm running all my might. Now, I've, I've gone from a sunny day in New York City, with a blue sky, to horror film. I'm in a suit, in a horror film, and we all know how the guy in the suit with the horror film works out. So it's not a pretty sight. So I'm running, the tornado's coming. I see it coming from the right. So I dive under a car.

• 1:41:28Speaker 03

  And then whoosh, all black.

• 1:41:33Speaker 03

  The world's black. My eyes are open. It's black.

• 1:41:38Speaker 03

  I think to myself, I'm dead. This is dead. I mean, it's black and silent. So I go like this, and I stab myself in the eyes. It hurts. So then I figure, okay, I'm not dead. I'm blind and deaf. I'm not blind and deaf, but I'm alive. So I get up. But of course, I'm hiding under a car. And I slam my head like so hard, you know, and now I'm, now I feel the blood like running down my face. So like I climb out and I stand up.

• 1:42:17Speaker 03

  And then I start to run. But of course, it's pitch black. So what do you think I run into? Park car. Just hammer into some park car. I'm like running in the pitch black. And I just run into some parked car. So I hit the right quarter panel of things, but flying over the hood, smashed those. So now I'm like, now I'm like, I get up from the ground. I'm like, I'm bleeding, I'm limping, all self-imposed, right? This is all just happened to me. And I'm walking.

• 1:42:47Speaker 03

  In the darkness, away from the World Trade Center.

• 1:42:51Speaker 03

  And so, I just walk. And eventually, you know, the black turns to gray. And you can see, it literally drops down. And the event, of course, was the collapse of two World Trade Center. If one World Trade Center collapsed, I don't tell the story. If I run that way, I die. If I run that way, I die. I just ran this way. My driver ran that way, too. But I didn't see him. I just found him like a half hour later. He found me and

• 1:43:25Speaker 03

  we walked uptown. Till people were clean.

• 1:43:30Speaker 03

  And then, so there's this line and a payphone. And

• 1:43:36Speaker 03

  and this woman's talking on the phone. So I go up to the front of the line. And I, you know, remember, I'm like covered, it looks like I was flushed down some chimney a bunch of times. Plus, I'm bleeding down my face and limping and like, I'm like, I am a horror movie, but now I'm like the character in the horror movie instead of. So I just hang up the phone from her and I take the cradle out of her hand. And she turns around to me and says it's cursing at me. Then she looks at me and goes,

• 1:44:06Speaker 03

  backs away. And I call my wife.

• 1:44:10Speaker 03

  It's been like two hours. I call her and she hears my voice and she makes this noise. That I'll never forget.

• 1:44:19Speaker 03

  And, because she said, when she was watching on TV, when the, when the Trade Center collapsed, she knew I'd be in the building. She knew I'd be there. And so she said, when that collapsed, she fell to the ground and she thought I died. And it was two hours. So when I called her, she made this noise, you know, she, she understood what it was, that people died. And then,

• 1:44:46Speaker 03

  then I told her, everybody's dead, it was in the building. Because I I felt I was suffocating to death outside.

• 1:44:52Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:44:53Speaker 03

  So I didn't buy this whole rescue recovery stuff for my people who are up a quarter mile.

• 1:45:00Speaker 03

  So then nobody survived. Nobody survived. So the only people who lived were either in the lobby. So do you my my my lawyer, my general counsel, he was in the elevator going up from one to seventy eight was like a speed elevator, big speed elevator. And then you switched and you had a sky lobby and you switched. So he's in the big elevator, plane hits the building. Elevators don't collapse. They have like a mechanical arm that goes out like this and slows it down. It rolls it down and then the doors open. He goes running out of the elevator. Fireball from the gas falling down explodes through the lobby. Fireball goes across the front of the elevator. He's running out. Fireball runs out.

• 1:45:47Speaker 03

  Glass goes flying by. He steps out, gets covered in blood.

• 1:45:52Speaker 03

  So think about it, he stepped out between the glass and the blood. Gets splattered with blood. So I call my wife, I'm talking to my wife. She says, Steven is alive and he lives in the village.

• 1:46:10Speaker 03

  So I walked to the village. Wow, okay, well. So I walk, I go to his apartment. I ring, I ring the bell, he answers the door, he's covered in blood. This is like three hours after the attack. Guy's covered in blood. So I grab my, you're right, you're right. He goes, yeah, yeah, I'm all right. Whose blood is it? He goes, I don't know. He's in his apartment. He could wash his face, but he's so in shock. He's he's just wandering around. And and then there's the TV and I look on the TV and I see the giant plane at the building for the first time. So.

• 1:46:50Speaker 03

  You know, that day I lost, I lost everybody in the office. Six hundred and fifty eight spectacular human beings. Um, out of nine hundred and sixty. And the only reason the other people didn't die is because they weren't at work yet. They were. So if you think about it, on Wall Street, the show is on at about, you know, seven fifteen, seven thirty latest. So everybody who's a moneymaker is in. So who comes in like after eight forty five? Finance department, compliance department, legal department, you know, all the support staff comes in later, but all the talent of revenue comes in when the shows are. Right?

• 1:47:35Speaker 03

  So I lost, everybody made money in New York and we were a hub and spoke. You know, and the hub is obliterated from the face of the earth. So the challenge of survival becomes infinite because everybody who's alive thinks they're still going to get paid. And there is no revenue. It's gone. It's gone. So I, um, I tried to figure out what to do. And remember, these six hundred and fifty eight people, these are my colleagues and they're my coworkers, but they're my friends and they're everybody's friends.

• 1:48:19Speaker 03

  Everybody who survived, best friend, college roommate, brother in law. Everybody had that relationship. It wasn't one big happy family. It was like, you know, and, uh, so we've got to take care of their families. We, we have to, but how? I can't, we have no money. We went from making a million a day to losing a million a day in like that. Right? Because all these people are alive, you got to pay them. You know, all the other offices around the world, you got to pay them, got to pay rent everywhere else, got to pay them. What money? No money.

• 1:49:04Speaker 03

  So we come up with our plan. We'll try to rebuild the company and we'll give 25% of our profits to the families.

• 1:49:14Speaker 04

  But you came up with this plan, just real quick. You came up with this plan that night, right? Didn't you do a phone call with the employees that were remained that night?

• 1:49:23Speaker 03

  So I don't, I don't know. It was probably the 12th at night. Um, cause I doubt I was capable of doing anything the 11th at night, but I can't remember. Um, we did a phone call of everybody at the firm and we put it out on the news. If you work at Canada Fitzgerald, call this number. Cause like, we have no HR department. I have no one's phone number. I don't know, you know, but the women, they, you know, they went to their mother's house. When their husband gets killed, you go to your mother's house. I'm never going to find them. Um, I get everyone on the phone and say, we have two choices. We can shut the firm down and go to our friends' funerals. Cause there's going to be 20 funerals a day, every day for 35 straight days, like 35 straight days. Like I couldn't even go to my friends'

• 1:50:08Speaker 03

  funerals because they would be literally my best friend from college's brother and my other best friend's brother-in-law were buried, had their funeral in different funeral homes. One in Westchester and one in Manhattan at the exact same second. So I went to one and my wife went to one. I couldn't even go to my friend's funeral. Man, how horrible is that? So, you know, we, we decided, or we'll go back to work and we'll have to work harder than we've ever worked before in our lives. But we got to do it to take care of their families. And so we decided we would give 25% of our profits to the families. Um, we paid for their healthcare for 10 years and I promised them all it would be at least

• 1:50:53Speaker 03

  a hundred thousand a family. Because if I didn't make enough profits in five years, I'll work for the rest of my life for it. And so we announced that and a weird thing happens. The media, which had said lovely things about us, you know, trying to rebuild the company, try to take care of the families and they had the mass murder of 658 people who worked for us.

• 1:51:16Speaker 03

  They say, because a guy who looks like me can't be a human being, can't actually cry, can't actually be a person. Just, you're not like, so he must be lying. He's crying crocodile tears. The murder of my brother, my best friend, all my surrounding people and all the people I hired is insufficient to get a guy who wears a suit to cry. So I'm crying crocodile tears because I'm giving 25% of our profits. But of course, there's never going to be any profits. So 25% of nothing is nothing. Bill O'Reilly, every night, death threats, calling me names. Rosie O'Donnell, calling me names.

• 1:52:00Speaker 03

  Everybody's calling me names. All I did was have everyone around me get killed. And I tried to help them, but you know, the media builds you up and then they whack you down. And so, but we have a different idea. We have 25% of our payroll. All my employees who we hire, we say, look, we gotta take care of the families. So if I'm trying to hire you for 200 grand, I can only pay 150. But when it takes 50 grand, and we're sending to the families. Every two weeks, we're gonna just send the money. We're just gonna send the money. You know, I think we send it every month. We just send the money.

• 1:52:41Speaker 03

  And we send the money. And then three of four people who we hired said yes. And the one out of four, they just didn't take the job. It was okay. Like, if that's not your gig, don't come. So everybody who comes, think about how awesome they are. They're giving 25% of their pay to someone they don't even know because I asked them to. I mean, they're, this is, this is a story of a miracle. I have another story. My, so we have a big, we have a big memorial in Central Park.

• 1:53:22Speaker 03

  Rudy Giuliani comes, comes in the backstage, comes up on the stage and there's 5,000 people there. 658 people have husbands, wives, sons and daughters, friends, cousins, you know. He walks out, he comes up to my ear and goes, "The fuck are all these people?" Because he thought he was like going to some little... You know, and so we have this big memorial in my LA office. My most productive office in the hub and spoke, right? LA. These guys make millions and now the firm is destroyed. They could easily go across the street, set up shop, work for anybody else. They pay him a fortune to come and I know they're gonna leave. So they say to me, "We're gonna close the office.

• 1:54:07Speaker 03

  We're coming in for the memorial and we need to see you." So we go to the memorial and then they say they're gonna come over my apartment. And my, my heart is exploding out of my chest because I know what's gonna happen. They're gonna come in, they're gonna tell me that they're leaving. And then the whole thing's gonna unravel and I can't do anything about it. So I walk into my living room, there's 12 of them. And them closing the offices is not a good thing, right? Look, they come in and they surround me, say, "We're never leaving." This is not... This is not what people do. This is what superhuman people do. This is what heroes do.

• 1:54:51Speaker 03

  So they, they stayed. And I was, it was on their shoulders, we're able to rebuild the company. Then we hired all these other people and we, we rebuilt the company. The press beat the crap out of us. When did it stop? The end of October. I take my 100 million. Remember that 100 million just in case? Well, I got the 100 million just in case. I sent it to the families. Just give it away. I give it directly to them. I pay them their bonus for 2001. Kenneth Fitzgerald's not gonna pay a bonus. There's no money. It's out of business. It's destroyed, it's ruined. So I send them the money that they would have made had they lived.

• 1:55:36Speaker 03

  And I send them my money.

• 1:55:40Speaker 03

  And then the media just stops. Cause what do you, what do you do with someone who does what they say they're gonna do? That's like crazy. The guy actually says what he's gonna do after everybody's been murdered. What a shock. So they leave me alone. And then at the end of the year.

• 1:55:58Speaker 03

  Cause now I'm paying the families once a month. I'm sending them money. The employees are, you know, we're gonna survive and the business is, you know, surviving. Let's not overdo it. There's no profits, by the way. Cause if you think about it, you're gonna make a profit.

• 1:56:15Speaker 03

  The Financial Times, you know, the sort of the orange pinky newspaper names me the man of the year. Like, I don't, Angela Merkel is another year, you know, like, and then The New York Times writes a multi thousand word apology to me. January 3rd, 2002. Basically, the man who did what he said he would do. As if that's a high moral bar. You just do what you say you're gonna do. So, company survives. And then to end that story for you.

• 1:56:49Speaker 03

  So, we do that for five years. We give the families $180 million. And pay for their healthcare for 10 years. So, now it's 2008. The financial crisis is going on, but, but we avoid it. We understand that I see it coming. We avoid it and, and we're, we're making real money. So one of our divisions is not strong enough to take and go public. It's called BGC. I named it after Bernie Cantor's initials. B Gerald Cantor, Bernard Gerald Cantor.

• 1:57:20Speaker 03

  Still public. It's worth about $5 billion now. And it's strong enough to take it public. And so we do an IPO, but, but a very different kind of IPO. So, pages and pages of selling shareholders. So what I do is I take my shares and I pay all the employees back who donated. Remember that employee who gave 50 grand? And the next year they got a raise. So they paid 55 and then they paid 16, then they paid 65 and they paid 70. And they gave, I don't know, $300,000 over those five years to the families. They don't even know them.

• 1:58:01Speaker 03

  How great is that person? How am I supposed to go on with my life? And be a rich guy? When I have these people who gave so much? So I give them, at the IPO, we sell about $180 million worth of shares. And I give them back all their money, which was not the deal. They didn't expect it. And then I give them on top of that. So I sell my shares and give them the money. And then I give them all another $180 million worth of shares. So they should have. I can say thank you. So they doubled their money. So their generosity doubled their money. And, uh, and I squared it with them.

• 1:58:45Speaker 03

  So I could go on with my life. I could become successful as I have become. And, uh, but I'm square with my employees. And, uh, okay. What's the turnover at the firm? Low. Lowest in the world. What percentage of the company do the employees own a BGC? 30%. Now, they never sell. Why? And then I have, it's 20 years later, but I have lots of new people. But the new people, like, they go out with the old people and they, like, get the story of the company. And, and so the company is owned, who works for who? Right? My employees own 30% of the public company.

• 1:59:30Speaker 03

  So I work for them, they work for me. So when I go and say, like, you know, I go on, like, CNBC and I say, I've got the best employees, you know, people think, eh, he's just a CEO. It's like platitudes. And no. I, Kenneth Fitzgerald, we have the best employees. Cause these are the greatest. See, they stitched my soul back together on their shoulders with their money. They saved my life. And I am forever indebted to my employees. Cause they are.

• 2:00:08Speaker 03

  Superhuman, spectacular.

• 2:00:10Speaker 04

  But so are you.

• 2:00:13Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 2:00:14Speaker 04

  Right? It kind of in that entire story, it takes both sides.

• 2:00:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, I don't tell that story too often. It doesn't really, it's kind of my, uh.

• 2:00:23Speaker 04

  But like if you think 23 years later, I'm not gonna cry. I'm in a beast.

• 2:00:29Speaker 03

  I'm not supposed to cry.

• 2:00:32Speaker 04

  What you have to do, what you have to do is come up with a hundred million dollar idea this week and you'll be okay. The, uh, no, but I do think that there is, um, in these stories, you know, one of the interesting things about leadership is like, it is in service to other people. And so you took care of employees and employees took care of you. And it kind of nets out positive. And so you get loyalty in both directions because you're just as loyal to them as they are to you.

• 2:00:57Speaker 03

  Yeah. So that's, you know, so I have, we have two public companies.

• 2:01:02Speaker 03

  And the employees own 30% of both because one spun off of the other. All my employees, they own it. It's cool. It's, it's why I'm religiously in favor of your employees owning your company. Because it, you know, I love the idea of I'm the boss and you own the company. So who works for who? Right?

• 2:01:24Speaker 03

  Think about it. Let's say I screw all the employees. We're gonna pay you all less and all your stock goes up and you get the same exact amount of money back in the afternoon. How dumb could you be? Right? You're so aligned that you all work together. It's, it's how it's supposed to be.

• 2:01:43Speaker 04

  I have one last question for you before I let you go. Um, how rich are you and how much of your net worth is in Bitcoin?

• 2:01:52Speaker 04

  Cause if I don't ask you, everyone will be really mad at me.

• 2:01:58Speaker 03

  If you took my stake in my public companies, which is, uh, public and you did the public math, you'd see a couple of billion dollars.

• 2:02:07Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 2:02:07Speaker 03

  Okay. And then at least a couple of billion dollars. And then you'd have, uh, you know, what's Cantor worth? Yeah, I'm not saying. Okay. But, uh, things are good for me. How about that? Is that a nice way to say it? Since Cantor owns the stakes and the other companies, it's good for me. So, and I have.

• 2:02:26Speaker 04

  Like percentage, you don't have to say exact number, but like, how do you think about either you or Cantor?

• 2:02:31Speaker 03

  I don't have a big enough percentage. I probably have, uh, you know, if.

• 2:02:37Speaker 03

  Now, I can't say, because then people can figure out that none of how much I have. I would say I have hundreds of millions of dollars.

• 2:02:44Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 2:02:44Speaker 03

  Okay, hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars. Uh, exposure to Bitcoin. Um, and it will be billions.

• 2:02:53Speaker 04

  I was gonna say, so next year, when you come back and we'll do this again, and you'll be a Bitcoin billionaire. And, uh.

• 2:02:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, you remember that model I told you, so if every time Bitcoin dips, I'm gonna be the buyer.

• 2:03:06Speaker 04

  Trust me, I know why you're doing the lending.

• 2:03:10Speaker 04

  Listen, listen, you don't have to explain that one around here.

• 2:03:14Speaker 03

  I got the 50% Bitcoin, I got the Bitcoin lending, but basically, what you're gonna see is Ken Fitzgerald is going to be the sponsor of Bitcoin into traditional finance.

• 2:03:23Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 2:03:23Speaker 03

  And so we will be the leader of it. And I'll pull out this podcast in years to come and say, see, I told you, because no one's gonna remember.

• 2:03:31Speaker 04

  Of course.

• 2:03:31Speaker 03

  Right, but all the banks, after we do it and show people how to do it, right? They'll all copy.

• 2:03:38Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 2:03:38Speaker 03

  And so the asset of Bitcoin will just, as it becomes more accepted, it will become more valuable. And the whole Bitcoin nation should just call it a commodity, never a currency. Just call it a commodity, because if it's a currency, you're attacking the politicians of the country.

• 2:03:57Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 2:03:58Speaker 03

  Right, you're, you're trying to replace my currency with yours. But if you say, hey, hey, hey, I'm just oil, I'm just gold, I'm just a commodity, leave me be. Right, then they'll leave you be. And that is true. And it will be why Bitcoin, which is rare and is special, will become ever more rare, as we both know. Ever more valuable over time. It'll be financed, just like gold is, right? Gold is, it's not like super financeable, but it's financeable. Oil, it's not super financeable, but it's financeable. Right? Bitcoin will be financeable.

• 2:04:39Speaker 03

  Bitcoin will be way, way, way higher, sometimes lower. You just have to have faith.

• 2:04:47Speaker 04

  Ladies and gentlemen, Howard Lutnick. What's up, guys? I hope you're enjoying this episode, but I got a quick message for you. I just released my very first book. It's called How to Live an Extraordinary Life. In this book, there are 65 life lessons that I've picked up over the years. These lessons will teach you about money, investing, relationships, work, health, happiness, and much more. In this book, I wrote letters to each one of my children, and I tried to share those life lessons with them. If you pick up this book, there's three things that I can promise you. The first is that it is very concise. The audiobook is only three hours. You can listen to it on a long drive or on a rainy afternoon. The second thing is that you're going to learn something. It's worth the price of admission just for the lessons themselves. And then the third thing is it will make you think more deeply

• 2:05:32Speaker 04

  about your life and how you try to live it. So go pick up How to Live an Extraordinary Life today. It's a quick read. It's very impactful. It's very concise, and it would mean the world to me for the support. Go check it out today on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or wherever you buy your books. Hardcover, audiobook, it all works. Thank you so much for the support, and I'd love to hear what you think about the new book.