Ep 769 ｜ What REALLY Happened with Silicon Valley Bank & Why It Matters ｜ Guest： Carol Roth
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Summary
Silicon Valley Bank, one of America s largest banks, has failed. The repercussions of this go beyond the bank itself and beyond California. This story actually has significance for us, for our lives and also tells us a lot about the federal government, about economic policy, and the goal of those at the World Economic Forum to force people eventually to rely on a centralized government-run bank.
Transcript
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One of America's largest banks, Silicon Valley Bank, has failed.
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The repercussions of this go beyond the bank itself and beyond California.
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This story actually has significance for us, for our lives, and also tells us a lot about
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the federal government, about economic policy, and the goal of those at the World Economic
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Forum to force people eventually to rely on a centralized government-run bank.
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So here to break this all down, explaining it to us like we are five, in the words of
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Michael Scott, and to actually make us feel a lot better about this chaos is Carol Roth,
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Then we've got a fun, unrelated segment, rating some of the best and worst of Oscar's attire.
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This episode is brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers.
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Carol, thanks so much for taking the time to join us on what I know is a busy day for you.
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Can you tell us a little bit first about who you are and what you do?
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I kind of call myself a collector of experiences.
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Many people know me from Twitter or television.
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So I do all kinds of things, but I really have come from the financial space.
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And I think what makes me different than a lot of folks out there is I was the first person in my family to graduate from college.
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So I came from a father who was an electrician, a mom who was sort of a hobby entrepreneur, and they really believed in the American dream.
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And I have been able, you know, through their hard work and then my own hard work to achieve that American dream.
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And I see that being tamped down for a lot of people.
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So it's my passion point to preserve that for everybody.
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Yeah, and that's exactly why we wanted you specifically on, because there's a lot of financial experts out there.
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But look, my audience, we don't typically focus on financial stories.
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It's just not really my beat, and it's not always the primary interest of my audience.
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But yesterday I asked on Instagram, as I often do on Sundays, what do you want to hear about?
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And almost every answer was, tell me what is going on with Silicon Valley Bank.
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Is it just a bunch of rich tech entrepreneurs that got screwed?
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And just kind of in summary, what happened on Friday?
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Yeah, so Silicon Valley Bank was one of the 20 largest banks in the United States.
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They were a big friend and partner to the technology industry.
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So if you think about all of the startups in Silicon Valley, a very large portion of them,
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as well as other small businesses and individuals and other businesses,
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had relationships that built this up into a very formidable, what we would call a regional bank,
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not necessarily one of the ones you would see all across the country.
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But they did have a few different geographic locations.
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What happened to them is a crazy story that we have to kind of rewind a little bit
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And the Federal Reserve is this quasi-private public entity that is charged with keeping stability
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They are supposed to hold down inflation and they're supposed to maximize employment.
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As you can probably guess, based on what's going around, they're not doing the best job with that.
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And unfortunately, as this sort of central planning entity, they are, in my own words,
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sort of playing God with the economy and the financial markets,
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saying us as a small group of people are going to make these policy decisions.
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And, you know, everything is going to flow from there and it ends up having ripple effects.
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So coming out of the Great Recession financial crisis, one of the things they did is they decided
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And part of what they did was hold down interest rates at an artificial level.
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And that injected a bunch of money into the economy so that the economy could grow and come out of the
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Great Recession financial crisis, a quote-unquote emergency measure.
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The problem is that they kept that emergency measure in place for the greater part of 15 years.
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And so when you do something that is unusual and you have this central planning kind of putting
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their thumb on the scale, there's always going to be reverberations.
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So fast forward to today and, you know, the COVID policies that came out of 2020,
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you had the Fed, again, standing by, taking their interest rates down to zero.
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There was government stimulus in the economy and there was a lot of money sloshing around
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So in the Silicon Valley, all of the businesses and individuals went to the bank and they deposited
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their money in the bank and the bank grew their deposits by like triple the amount.
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Now, what the bank is supposed to do then is take that money and loan it out.
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But unfortunately, at this point, people had had enough loans or they couldn't find enough
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So is that part of the reason why maybe not as many people were taking out loans during
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That potentially could be a reason as well, or that the bank was perhaps concerned about
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what the business would look like coming out of COVID and wanted a little bit more information.
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So they couldn't find anything to do with all of these deposits they had taken in.
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And they decided to invest them in what they thought would be safe.
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Treasury securities, mortgage-backed securities.
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I'm sorry to ask you probably such a rudimentary question, but what's a security?
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What's a treasury security and a mortgage-backed security?
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Yeah, so a treasury security is basically how the government finances itself.
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It puts out obligations that people say, oh, the government is going to pay back.
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They can be really short durations, or they could be 10 years, or they could be 30 years.
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That's sort of kind of the spread from a very short number of maybe 30 days up to 30 years.
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So all across the spectrum, mortgage-backed securities, just like, same thing, like what it sounds like.
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It's packaging up mortgages and saying, you know, basically this is what's going to back the security.
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So these are considered kind of the stability factor for the financial system.
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So the bank said, well, we're going to go put our money in these.
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We're going to get, you know, at the time, as I said, the interest rates were very low.
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So we're going to get, you know, one plus percent, you know, more than one, but less than 2%.
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Instead of buying maybe a one-year or a two-year or even a five-year security, they locked that up for 10 years.
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And this was incredibly stupid because these are bankers and the head of the Silicon Valley Bank was also a member of one of the regional Fed banks.
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So they should have known at some point that the Fed was not going to be able to keep interest rates artificially low forever and interest rates would increase.
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And what happens with bond securities, like a treasury, for example, is when interest rates go up, the bond prices go down and vice versa.
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So when the Federal Reserve ended up in a situation where there was tons of inflation and they had to feel like they had to do something, that's when they decided to raise interest rates.
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Which, again, something that if you are a banker, you should have known that that was coming.
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There's an inverse relationship between the bond prices and the interest rates.
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So when the interest rates go up, the bond prices go down, the Fed raises interest rates.
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So you have these 10-year bonds, treasuries, mortgage-backed securities that are on the balance sheet, which if they hold them for the 10 years, it doesn't matter because they're still going to get to maturity.
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They're going to get paid their interest rates.
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But if for some reason they had to sell them, then the market is now saying they are worth less because we could get more interest buying a different bond.
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So we're going to pay you less for the one that has a smaller interest rate.
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So as interest rates are going up, the people who have their deposits in the bank are going, well, I'm not getting very much on my deposit in the bank, Silicon Valley Bank.
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I could go buy a treasury, which over recent days and weeks, you could get 5% on a treasury of a short duration.
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So I'm going to pull my money out and I'm going to go look somewhere else.
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Or maybe because the economy is slowing down, I'm going to pull more of my money out for operating capital.
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So they had this money locked up and now they can't pay back all of these depositors who are pulling out more money than was expected.
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So to do that, they had to sell their bonds at a loss.
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They did on that, which, again, they shouldn't have had to do.
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But just the way they communicated this to the market and the steps that they took, their customers, who are very close-knit, they're in Silicon Valley, they're all talking to each other on Slack channels, go,
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If more people pull it out, they're not going to be able to cover all of this.
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And all of these entities started pulling money out, which is what is considered a bank run.
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And if the individuals don't feel comfortable and in good faith that their deposits are secure, particularly in this case, because so many of these were corporate clients, they had balances that far exceeded the insurance limits from FDIC.
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There were just a ton of uninsured balances, which made them even more eager to pull that money out and create safety.
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And that created the situation that we're in today.
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Okay, let me see if I can summarize it and you correct the points that are incorrect.
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So you said from 2019 to 2021, people were taking out fewer loans than they had before.
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But on top of that, they had got putting in a lot of money.
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And that is how banks typically put their money to work.
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So when people are depositing money, they typically use that money when people are taking out loans, correct?
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But because fewer people were taking out loans, they put them to work in a different way,
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which was through these mortgage-backed securities, through these treasury securities.
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That didn't work out for them for a number of reasons.
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They didn't foresee for some reason the interest rates would go up.
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Basically, they had to sell those bonds at a lower value.
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So they didn't have enough money when people wanted to take their money out to give them the money.
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And so then people started freaking out and saying,
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Well, I want my money before you run out of all of your money.
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And then they didn't have enough money to give to the people that wanted to take out all of their money.
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Basically, I think a couple of points to underscore here, just so that everyone can really dig in,
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is that if people weren't pulling out their deposits at a higher rate than they had anticipated,
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they anticipate some level of people are going to pull their deposits.
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But it was the fact that they had more people who were pulling it out than they had anticipated.
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So these long-term securities, which again, if they had held them the 10 years,
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they wouldn't have had to take a loss on them, today were trading at a loss.
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So it was what we call a timing issue and a liquidity issue.
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They didn't have enough money to be able to pay back today.
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It wasn't even that they had made toxic or bad loans or, you know, kind of bad bets that went sour in the moment.
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And that's something, as I said, again, that a bank of that size and sophistication should have been able to work around.
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And frankly, the Federal Reserve, who's stepped in here to create some backstops, could have done that at that point in time.
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I don't know if they were just arrogant or, you know, just in such a bubble that they didn't realize that this communication,
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the way that they were going to communicate this issue to the market was going to cause their clients to panic
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and to accelerate the pullouts of, you know, of these deposits.
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And then, you know, once you have it, that happened with one bank, then everybody else starts to panic.
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And the system is built on people not panicking.
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It's built on trust, which, you know, given the fact that the dollar is only backed by faith and trust in the U.S. government,
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which is really the U.S. economy and the productivity of U.S. workers.
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So when anything happens to breach that, particularly given the broader macroeconomic backdrop,
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it's not like we have this fabulous economic backdrop and everyone's like, oh, you know, this should be fine.
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People are sort of on edge about what's going to happen and what's going to be the next shoe to drop.
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And there are a lot of parallels in the broader market that are reminding people of previous financial crisis times
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and just little data points that are putting everyone on edge.
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So nobody wants to be left holding the bag here.
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So this is like if people want to reference point in popular culture, if you think of that famous scene in It's a Wonderful Life,
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when they're about to leave for the honeymoon and then he looks around and he sees that there's a bank run happening at the bank.
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I can't think of it at the top of my head on It's a Wonderful Life.
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And he has to go back there and all the people run into run into the bank and they say, I want my money out.
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And he's like, oh, I'll give you as little money as possible.
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But I can't give you your money because it's not actually here.
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And so I can give you a little bit, but I can't give you this two hundred dollars that you that you have here.
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And then, of course, part of the part of the movie is about them building, building back up through people's charity.
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But anyway, and so people kind of want to understand a little bit of what is going on here.
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And how does that relate to what happened to SVB?
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So if so, there's two different mechanisms in terms of making a bet against the stock.
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We buy the stock because we think that it's going to go up.
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If you think the stock is going to go down and you own it, you sell the stock.
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Because you want to protect whatever you've made or you don't want to incur more losses.
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But if you don't own the stock and you decide it's still going to go down, you might borrow
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that stock from somebody who does own it and then sell it, hoping that it goes down and
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then you can collect your money and, you know, pay back the person that you borrowed from.
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So that's basically the idea behind short selling.
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But there was tremendous downward pressure both in companies or, excuse me, investment
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firms that owned this company directly, as well as those who wanted to make bets against
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Silicon Valley Bank, as well as other regional financial firms and, frankly, as well as the
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big banks, because right now everybody's nervous.
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What does this mean for bank earnings and the financial system regulation and so on and so
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So it really does spread throughout the financial system.
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And tell me how the federal government is responding to this or is poised to respond to
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So what we know right now, and this is all unfolding real time, is, you know, this, by
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I mean, this happened within 48 hours of the panic and the decision to close the bank.
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So this was sort of unprecedented, particularly for a bank of this size.
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So what happened over the weekend is that the federal government, you know, the Fed and
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the Treasury put out a joint press release together that said they are basically going to make
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sure that anybody who is not only a depositor of this bank, but another bank that they closed,
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This one is based in New York, that they closed this other bank.
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But they said, we are going to make sure that whether you exceed that FDIC insurance limit,
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we're going to make sure your deposits are secure.
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They have very specific ways that they're doing it.
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One of the narratives that's going on around is that this is a bank bailout.
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And this is very nuanced, but they're not protecting the shareholders.
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They are basically just trying to create some of that, restore some of that faith in the
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system so that this doesn't become a full on contagion.
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And they don't want everybody to panic from their financial institution.
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We're going to make sure, because remember, I told you that the securities that they had
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So the Fed and the Treasury basically said, OK, well, we'll just, you know, we'll take those
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We'll create the, you know, we'll hold the money from that.
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We'll give a loan against that just to make sure everybody is taken care of.
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And that's frankly what they should have done before causing this panic.
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But, you know, we're here today because nobody decided to do that.
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So they're trying to create this feeling that there is faith in the system and you don't
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So they've given sort of an somewhat explicit manner of what they're going to do for these
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And then they have also basically given a general blanket that, hey, we're going to shore up the
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We're going to make sure all the banks are safe and you don't have to worry.
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But they haven't been real explicit about what happens if this were to happen somewhere
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We'll see if that's good enough to sort of, you know, allay people's fears or if that's
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And they're going to need to be more explicit about what steps they're taking.
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But that's the dialogue that has come out, you know, as of the beginning of the day
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And, you know, this this narrative is probably far from over.
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OK, so you disagree with those who are saying because I would say people on the conservative
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side are saying, well, Biden is just bailing out these billionaires because they're his
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And let's just let's talk about how this this works.
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A lot of artists and entrepreneurs who are selling their wares.
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So the parent company of Etsy keeps their money, all the cash that they use to manage their
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business in Silicon Valley, or not all of it, but a large chunk of it in Silicon Valley
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So if you have sold on Etsy and you're awaiting payment from them, their payment is now or
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before this was not available that they had to put a note out to their entire customer
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base saying, you know, we're trying to sort through this like we might not be able to pay
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And God forbid this, you know, became a bigger thing.
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So do you really want those small business owners who are, you know, making wonderful products
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to not get paid because you're trying to stick it to some Silicon Valley bro?
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If this was called, you know, small bank of, you know, Iowa, I don't think people would be
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So, again, the shareholders were not protected.
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But if you all of a sudden put out the signal that we're not going to help depositors, we're
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basically going to take down the entire banking system.
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And, you know, we have many more people's deposits who will be at risk.
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We have a lot of small businesses who will be at risk.
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And it will potentially could just collapse the entire financial system.
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Now, that being said, not to say that there aren't many, many problems with the U.S.
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And we're in a slow burn towards a new financial world order anyway.
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But I'm not in the camp that we like torched a whole thing overnight.
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I'd rather inform people, have them get prepared, do what they can to protect themselves and then
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But if it goes in that direction, at least be prepared for that.
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So I think that the narrative around, oh, this is a bailout for, you know, Biden is really
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If Trump were there and it was called the Small Business Bank of Iowa, people would be feeling
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So think about it on principles, not on the specific names attached and know that it just
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because it starts there doesn't mean that it ends there.
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And this would not be a good outcome for just about anybody.
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You put it this way or one point this way on Twitter, you said a key takeaway from the
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Silicon Valley Bank drama is the same as it ever was.
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The biggest and wealthiest benefit from Fed policy at the expense of everyone else.
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The great consolidation continues on the back of the Fed.
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And something that I've seen you talk about in commentary is this kind of movement towards,
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I mean, this would be, again, kind of the slow burn and the radical long-term goal of
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getting rid of banks and the Fed saying, you know what, but we're here.
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We are the central bank that you really can trust.
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And this is kind of a movement that we're seeing globally.
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So tell us a little bit about that and how this does perhaps play into what I know you
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write about a lot, which is this radical revolution of not just the American, but also the global
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So let me draw a parallel that I think people will be able to really understand between what
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happened here and what happened with COVID policy.
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What happened with COVID policy is they said, small businesses, you need to shut down.
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And these big companies that do the same thing as you do, we're going to keep them open.
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And so the dollars went from small businesses to the biggest companies in the world.
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And then, as I mentioned, when we were first starting this conversation, the Federal Reserve
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came in with their policy, which jacked up the stock prices.
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I mean, you had, I think it was seven tech companies that gained $3.4 trillion in value
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during 2020 on the back of both this direct policy of shutting down small businesses and
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then the Fed policy of suppressing interest rates, easy access to capital, cheap access
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And so what that did was it consolidated more money and power within these bigger entities
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and less against the decentralized part of the economy in terms of small business.
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And you're seeing the same thing here, that to the extent that you say, well, you know,
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we can't trust these regional banks, you know, they're a systemic risk, or you let them
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And then you change around some of the laws, you know, because it's a crisis and an emergency
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that would allow some of the bigger banks to pick off, you know, some of their assets.
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It is that, again, that consolidation taking away from smaller, even though this was a top
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20 bank, you know, it's still a lot smaller than the JP Morgan's and the Wells Fargo's and
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It's that movement towards consolidating power in a handful of banks, or even worse, that they
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use the cover story, as you had alluded to, is, well, we can't have bank runs, you know,
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we can't have this scenario where your deposits aren't available.
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So the Fed, we're just going to control this all with a digital dollar, and you'll never
00:27:40.260
The downside of that is the loss of freedom and control.
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Well, what they're trying to do, and what they're exploring in their tests that they're
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conducting, as we speak, on central bank digital currencies, or CBDCs, is the ability for them
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I mean, imagine like a dollar that you have, you know, sitting around, imagine had a tracking
00:28:05.140
chip in it, and they could track the movement anytime you went and you spent, and if they
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didn't like what you were spending on, theoretically, they could say, sorry, that dollar isn't valid
00:28:17.160
today, or it's only valid if you spend it with these stores.
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I mean, think about how much power and control that would give them.
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And for anyone who thinks this is a conspiracy, we've all lived through COVID, and we saw the
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things that were done here, Canada, around the world.
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It's not a very big leap to think that that could happen.
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And plus, we're actually already seeing banks, not a central bank, but we're seeing
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already seeing banks and credit card companies saying, well, we're not going to allow you
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You're not going to be able to go to these gun stores.
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And so, I mean, if these quote unquote private companies are already kind of imposing their
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values on the customer by saying you're not going to be allowed to use your own money to
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be able to purchase things that we don't politically agree with, then of course, I think that we
00:29:12.780
can all understand, we can all deduce very easily that the federal government would certainly
00:29:18.840
And we already see that kind of thing in China.
00:29:21.280
So tell us what ESG, which we've talked about several times on this show, environmental,
00:29:29.080
social, governance score, these points that basically all of these companies are trying
00:29:34.300
to score, tell us what this has to do with this, because as I've seen a lot of people
00:29:41.420
That means in kind of our terms, extremely woke.
00:29:45.160
There were a lot of reports on the different risk management people at SVB who were very focused
00:29:52.260
on diversity, very focused on equity and inclusion and all of the different activism sectors in
00:29:59.740
the left wing world. And, you know, I don't know if one has to do with the other, but I'm
00:30:05.160
curious to hear your assessment. I mean, were they too woke for their own good? Or are those
00:30:12.920
So I always hate the word woke, because I don't think that it always communicates, you know,
00:30:18.340
some of the deliberate and nefarious actions that are going on around things like ESG. I mean,
00:30:24.960
ESG is business social credit. It's a score, but it's not a well-defined score because it changes
00:30:32.280
based on the whim and the decisions and the needs of, you know, these group of elite and what it is
00:30:38.860
that they want to have benefit them by the day. And that's very, very scary. And so they're using
00:30:45.340
mostly like the World Economic Forum, but also the global leaders that are kind of in with the WEF.
00:30:50.440
Yeah, I mean, all of the political and business elite that are tied into, you know, the UN,
00:30:58.720
the WEF, and a number of organizations around the world, and this is infiltrated. And it's really kind
00:31:05.540
of crazy, because if you go into organizations who are pushing ESG, a lot of times the CEO doesn't know
00:31:12.500
what it means. I met somebody who was in charge of ESG for a publicly traded company who'd never even
00:31:18.060
heard of the World Economic Forum. So they don't even know where these ideas are coming from,
00:31:24.220
but yet it's sort of, you know, basically creating a distraction. And I think that's the message that
00:31:29.420
we want to take away here. It's not necessarily, you know, a cultural war other than we don't want
00:31:36.900
people who are in a small group of people coming in and using business and using your own investment
00:31:44.260
funds to be able to push their political agenda. Businesses work for certain reasons, and one of
00:31:51.540
them is their laser focus on creating shareholder value. And when you push things like ESG and all of
00:31:59.000
the other alphabet soup that's, you know, related to it, and you have the bank that's focused on trying
00:32:05.000
to please these other masters, it does take the eye off the ball. So I think it's a very valid
00:32:11.060
question is whether it's at the SEC level, whether it's at the Fed, whether it's within the banks,
00:32:18.580
all of these pushes for climate justice and, you know, DEI and all of these things that aren't
00:32:24.880
related to running a business, what kind of impact are they having on really important businesses that
00:32:32.660
are fundamental, you know, to the economy running smoothly? And I think that that is an important
00:32:39.860
takeaway and one that we should not push to the side that businesses need to be focused on their
00:32:47.300
shareholders. Their directors need to be doing a fiduciary duty, making sure that the shareholders
00:32:52.700
are being taken care of. And within the market mechanisms, other things sort themselves out.
00:32:58.260
And if we start distracting them, you know, not only are their evil ideas being infiltrated,
00:33:03.360
but it really can bring down really important systemic businesses that will completely obliterate
00:33:12.080
the economy. Now, you can make the argument that that's intentional. I'll leave that up to you. But
00:33:17.480
whether it's intentional or incompetence, the outcome is still bad. And so we still need to stand up
00:33:24.600
and say enough's enough. We can't have more of this infiltrating the business space.
00:33:29.700
Yep. And people are concerned about this. And I think rightly so, not just in the banking industry,
00:33:34.880
not just when it comes to economic issues, but really every industry. People are worried about
00:33:39.380
this, you know, as you mentioned, alphabet soup, all of the different, you know, acronyms that are
00:33:44.880
a part of left-wing activism, distracting students in the education system. Is that why our reading levels
00:33:50.440
are so low and they are spending less time learning math and science and more time learning about so-called
00:33:56.900
gender equity or whatever it is? We're worried about that in the aviation industry. We're worried
00:34:02.900
about that in the medical industry, that actually these people who should just be focused on excellence,
00:34:08.500
should be focused on competence, should be focused on safety. I mean, there's only, there's a finite
00:34:13.600
number of hours in a day and especially in the workday. And so what are we sacrificing
00:34:18.680
in order to focus our efforts, our energy, our time, our excellence, our money on this left-wing
00:34:26.500
activism that we are actually told, oh, well, we can do both. We can focus on DEI and all of these
00:34:32.580
inclusion efforts and be competent. Well, I say prove it because actually what's being proven in all of
00:34:38.200
these different industries is the opposite. You're proving that taking time away from competence and
00:34:42.960
excellence and serving your customers and all of that stuff and focusing on activism is actually a
00:34:49.120
manifesting itself in a lot of chaos and a lot of failure and all of the different industries that
00:34:53.980
we just listed. And you mentioned, okay, either it's just incompetence, these, all these well-intentioned
00:34:59.800
people just really do want a more equitable and inclusive world. And I'm sure that's true of some of
00:35:03.920
them, or if it is a, you know, a purposeful decline and you're writing a book or you've already written
00:35:10.800
it. It comes out this summer about you will own nothing. Well, everything we're talking about,
00:35:15.600
especially in the last few minutes is a part of that. That is a slogan that we've heard from the
00:35:19.600
World Economic Forum. By 2030 or whenever it is, you will own nothing and be happy. And it's hard
00:35:26.400
for me to hear that motto and to see the decline of all of these once excellent industries, especially
00:35:32.120
in the United States, because of these left-wing efforts and not think, well, it seems purposeful to
00:35:38.280
me. It seems purposeful to me to put all of our trust, you know, out of the private sector and put
00:35:44.380
it into the government. And then the government has all the power in the world to quote unquote,
00:35:49.000
take care of us. So tell us how you see it. Tell us what this book is about and how some of what we're
00:35:56.080
Yeah. So it's interesting. Financial world orders go in cycle. This idea that a new financial world
00:36:02.900
order is coming about sounds very conspiratorial until you look back in history. We have been
00:36:09.120
the world's, you know, reserve currency and kind of the center of the financial world for about 80
00:36:14.840
years. I know that we all think it's been since the beginning of time, but it hasn't. It was the
00:36:20.300
British before us. It was the Dutch before the British. If you go even further back, you know,
00:36:24.960
it was the Roman empire and these empires, financial empires always rise and they always fall
00:36:33.160
based on the same issues. And there are things like debasing the currency and the government
00:36:38.540
getting too big and taking on too much debt and they get desperate. So we know that that is happening
00:36:45.360
and we just don't know how long we have until things change. But the people who are smart and well
00:36:52.600
connected see this happening. And so they are, in my opinion, jockeying to come out on top based on
00:37:01.340
whatever reshuffling of the financial order is going to happen. And, you know, we see the events
00:37:06.900
that happened over the last few days and there's no doubt that that is tied in to late stage financial
00:37:14.160
empire stuff. And as we saw the elite jockeying to make sure that they're taken care of. So there are
00:37:21.880
all of these different things that are happening at once, you know, whether you have the push for
00:37:27.500
social credit at the individual level or the business level through ESG, you know, the Fed
00:37:33.500
exploring this central bank, digital currency, big entities, corporations competing with you to buy
00:37:42.040
single family homes, big wealthy people buying up land and water rights, technology.
00:37:49.440
BlackRock, Vanguard, probably others that I haven't even heard of.
00:37:54.800
Yeah. I mean, on the land and water rights, you know, Harvard University, that what I call the
00:37:59.620
hedge fund was masquerading as a university or with a university attached. You know, they are going out
00:38:06.600
and they're doing all these things that are creating impediments to ownership. And ownership is what
00:38:14.640
creates wealth. You know, it's one thing to make a living. But when you put that money to work for
00:38:19.840
you, when you build assets that retain value and have the opportunity perhaps to even grow in value,
00:38:26.480
that's what locks in your wealth. And at every turn, every sort of aspect of the financial elite,
00:38:34.680
whether it be the government and the Fed, whether it's these big global NGOs and big businesses and
00:38:42.420
big tech, you know, they're all working to secure more of that for themselves. And in the process,
00:38:49.400
leave you owning nothing. So what the book will do is explain everything that's going on,
00:38:55.900
you know, kind of like we've been doing here, very easy to understand, broken down by topic.
00:39:00.920
And the message isn't for you to panic. It's to give you the tools to fight back. I want you to
00:39:07.600
own everything. I want you to get in to hard assets and to be figuring out ways that you can
00:39:14.600
shift your financial lifestyle so that you are creating that opportunity to own things. Because
00:39:21.000
if you don't have that ownership, you will not be able to pursue that that American dream. And frankly,
00:39:27.580
if you own nothing, they own you. And we cannot have that every sort of, you know, ism, you know,
00:39:34.540
Marxism, communism, you know, any bad sort of central planning part of the spectrum. They don't
00:39:39.840
believe in property rights, because you owning something gives you power and gives you that
00:39:45.640
opportunity to create wealth and independence and freedom. And they don't want that. And unfortunately,
00:39:50.900
we're moving in that direction. So we need to band together and fight and preserve that American dream
00:39:56.360
for everybody. And nowadays, just with how the economy is, you don't just fall into ownership.
00:40:02.600
It takes a lot more strategy and a lot more foresight and a lot more thought than it did before,
00:40:07.740
which is why people like you and your book are so important. Because I mean, not all of us are going
00:40:12.060
to kind of have those natural skills and that natural knowledge of how all of this works. How do we
00:40:16.740
make sure that we invest in those hard assets? How do we make sure that we are owning? There was a time
00:40:21.980
maybe in our parents or even grandparents' generation when ownership was just kind of the
00:40:25.900
default. That was what you were able to do pretty early on in life. If you got yourself a good job,
00:40:31.840
you can own a house and, you know, own it for 30 years. Now, that's just a lot tougher. Even young
00:40:36.800
people who are making pretty good money in their first job, they don't feel like they can afford a
00:40:42.960
mortgage. They don't feel like they can afford a house. And so they're renting everything.
00:40:46.960
Yeah. If I can mention to you, so this is one of the things we dig into the book that was so
00:40:52.480
fascinating to me is that millennials, you know, in that sort of 35 to 45 age range actually make
00:41:00.280
more money on an inflation-injusted basis. So accounting for inflation than Gen X did or the
00:41:06.380
boomers did. I believe that. So you have more opportunity in terms of earning power,
00:41:12.240
but so much less wealth, including, like you said, in terms of real estate. And that has to do with the
00:41:18.400
way that the Fed has distorted the market. They brought down the interest rates. They've made the
00:41:23.960
capital more cheap, you know, and available, but it's inflated the cost of those assets so much.
00:41:29.760
So, you know, our parents and grandparents, when they went to buy a house, maybe their mortgage rate
00:41:34.940
was really high, but that house wasn't affordable. And that dynamic has completely flipped.
00:41:40.400
And now it has not only favoring the wealthy and well-connected, but in within the last 12 years,
00:41:47.080
you now have corporations who are coming in to compete, to rent you the American dream.
00:41:52.700
And we do not want to rent the American dream. We want to own the American dream.
00:41:56.220
I know that you talk about individual changes that we can be making in our lives to kind of combat
00:42:12.000
that. But I mean, is there any hope for top-down change when it comes to that? I mean, it just seems
00:42:17.940
like such a huge problem. I mean, how do we really compete against the power of the Fed?
00:42:22.580
To me, it's probably the fault of both Republicans and Democrats when it comes to this kind of
00:42:27.580
policy. And so, I mean, is there any hope that things can change? They can go back to a time
00:42:34.600
when it was, you know, if you're making $100,000 a year, you can afford a pretty good house and be
00:42:43.040
So I would say there are two answers to that. I mean, there absolutely is a trajectory and a path
00:42:48.440
here. Do I think that there are politicians who have the wherewithal, the backbone to come in and
00:42:58.160
do what's necessary? It's really tough. Have not seen it yet. So, you know, that's really going to
00:43:04.420
take some major fortitude. And unfortunately, politicians tend to be very reactive, as we've
00:43:10.140
seen in the events over the last few days. You could have prevented this, but no, you've chosen to act
00:43:15.140
once there was panic. And unfortunately, that's the way that, you know, things go. But are there
00:43:20.740
things that you can do individually to change your lifestyle, to put yourself in a better position,
00:43:27.480
and whether it's owning some precious metals, or maybe looking to own a smaller, you know, home in
00:43:35.040
a location that, you know, isn't your first location choice, but a second location choice,
00:43:40.320
there are choices that you can make to make sure that you are insulated so that when, you know,
00:43:46.960
whenever this completely becomes unraveled, and there is a financial, you know, change over,
00:43:53.480
as again, has been done in history before, you know, Bretton Woods for the United States. But,
00:43:58.960
you know, before that, with the British and the Dutch, this is not a conspiracy theory. This is very
00:44:03.100
well documented throughout history, that when these changes happen, that you're putting yourself in a
00:44:09.680
good position. You know, one of the data points that I've been pointing to is central banks over
00:44:15.140
the last year bought a record amount of gold, 1,136 tons, which the first time they sort of kept
00:44:24.520
track of this was 1950. It was the largest year since then. So, you know, if central banks think that
00:44:31.940
that's something that they need to do to kind of support their financial foundation, it may or may not
00:44:37.580
be right for you. But it certainly is an interesting and compelling data point. So it's, you know, all
00:44:42.600
of those kinds of things that if you're not talking about finances, and you don't want to kind of deal
00:44:47.640
with it, I get it. But at some point, you're going to need to take control of your financial future to
00:44:54.840
create that American dream for yourself, and for your family. And it can be a scary thing. And so that's
00:45:01.360
why I want to be here and be a partner and help, you know, kind of demystify this and make it easy
00:45:07.040
for people. Because, you know, as an American, we still people coming here from every part of the
00:45:11.440
globe, trying to pursue that American dream, you know, we need to preserve that opportunity.
00:45:17.400
Because it's something that's really special, you know, in terms of the history of the world.
00:45:22.020
Well, Carol, thank you so much. Thanks for breaking that all down. Honestly, I feel better after hearing
00:45:26.340
you explain it. There are still some scary things in the world. But definitely hearing you reasonably kind
00:45:31.540
of talk through what this actually means, and that there are steps that we can take in our own
00:45:35.760
lives to protect ourselves and to protect our family is a really good reminder. So thank you
00:45:40.960
so much. Again, your book, You Will Own Nothing. It'll be out this July. It's available for pre-order
00:45:45.880
now, though, right? It is. It is. And in fact, if you go to carolroth.com slash nothing, we're
00:45:51.900
actually gonna be doing some really cool pre-order bonuses. So you can you can go right now and pre-order
00:45:56.760
it. But if you want to get a bonus, which I always like to get a little something extra, you want to own
00:46:00.440
something, you know, go to carolroth.com slash nothing, leave your email, and then I'll get
00:46:05.400
back to you. And you know, when we have the bonuses up, which I think should be really soon. But I
00:46:09.760
think to Ali, to take away what you were saying, it is, you know, basically, you want to pray for
00:46:18.520
good outcomes, you want to pray that we're going to have that calmness, but you also want to prepare
00:46:22.800
for chaos. So you know, you want to hope for the best, but prepare for the worst. It's not about
00:46:28.340
panicking. It's just about preparation. So hopefully, if you move through it that way,
00:46:33.120
that will give you some comfort. And also, you know, anybody in your audience who wants to reach
00:46:37.520
out for me and need reach out to me and need some reassurance. I'm very accessible as well.
00:46:42.360
Pray for calm, prepare for chaos. I like that. That's really good. And a good note to end on. And
00:46:47.400
yes, we'll put the link to that carolroth.com slash nothing, correct? Correct. And we'll put that link
00:46:54.140
in the description and everyone pre-order your book, follow you on Twitter and all that good stuff.
00:46:58.340
Thank you so much, Carol, for taking the time to talk to us.
00:47:01.420
Thanks for making this platform available. I appreciate it.
00:47:14.960
Okay, now for a fun little segment on the Oscars. I don't know if you knew, but the Oscars
00:47:22.020
happened last night. And I did not watch any of it. But per usual, I looked at some of the outfits,
00:47:29.480
some of the dresses, garb on social media, and I like to assess. Now, I don't typically know the
00:47:37.940
names of a lot of these actresses and actors. And so I'm going to have producer Brie come on the mic,
00:47:45.040
and she's probably going to have to explain who these people are. And I also like to hear her
00:47:49.440
opinions about this too. And Dylan also, if he would like to share his opinions about the attire
00:47:55.280
at the Oscars. All right, let's go ahead and pull up the first one. I always make up the scoring
00:48:02.880
metrics as I go. We'll do 10 being the worst thing that I have ever laid eyes on. No, no. Let's do
00:48:12.180
the opposite. Let's let 10 be beautiful, gorgeous, awesome, handsome, brilliant. Let's let one be the
00:48:20.380
worst thing I've ever laid my eyes on. All right, let's see. Okay, who's this, Brie?
00:48:26.820
So this is Zoe Saldana. She's in Guardians of the Galaxy. Okay, tell me why we don't have a red
00:48:33.680
carpet. Why do we have a beige carpet? Is this new? I did look that up. They decided to do that
00:48:39.140
this year, and there was not a reason. And they also said it will probably not even be permanent.
00:48:45.200
They just wanted to do it this year. All right, beige carpet doesn't really have the same ring to it.
00:48:51.040
Now, here's the question. Did the celebrities know beforehand that the carpet was going to
00:48:56.800
be beige and not red? Do you know, Brie? I don't know that, actually, but that's a good question.
00:49:01.900
It's a good question. Because she matches. She matches. Yes, exactly. So she kind of
00:49:07.820
runs into the carpet because her dress is the same color. Well, she is very beautiful.
00:49:15.620
She is maybe one of the few people that can even pull off this color because it's really pretty with
00:49:20.680
her skin tone. I don't really like what looks to be like a bra kind of coming out of the top of her
00:49:27.800
dress. It looks like it should be strapless, but it's not. So I'm a little confused about that. It's
00:49:35.140
also kind of lingerie, kind of not. But the shape is beautiful. I don't know. What do you think?
00:49:41.980
I think it looks like there was supposed to be a dress on top of it. Like that's the under that's
00:49:48.840
the underdress. Yes. Yeah, it does kind of look like that. It looks like a slip or something.
00:49:54.520
Okay. Honestly, I'm going to go with like a four because this beautiful person could have worn
00:49:59.900
something that was way better. Yeah. Okay. Next up is. Okay. I'm going to guess these people's names.
00:50:10.300
I have never seen this person. This is also matches the carpet. Her name is. Good luck with this one.
00:50:21.440
Lauren Marino. And she is in a movie called Second Guessing.
00:50:29.900
That's what the movie is called. Second Guessing. Sure. What's her name? I have never seen this
00:50:35.580
person. Believe it or not, you didn't get guess this. It's Rooney Mara. Rooney Mara. That was next.
00:50:43.600
This is just ugly. I mean, it's hard to pull off. As I've said before, it's hard to pull off an
00:50:48.700
empire waist unless you are pregnant. Last time I said that you were like, oh, this person is pregnant.
00:50:53.640
So I don't think this person is though. The off the shoulder empire waist cinched at the bottom.
00:51:01.100
It looks like it's like tied at the bottom to where it's a little ploofy.
00:51:05.600
They forgot to cut it. So they had to tie it at the bottom.
00:51:08.200
They forgot to cut it or she had it tied up so she could go to the bathroom and she forgot to let it
00:51:14.220
She also looks very sad and I don't like her necklace. And yeah, it matches the carpet perfectly.
00:51:23.320
And so I guess all the designers, they didn't know about that. Very, very, I think, unfortunate
00:51:30.140
dress. It looks like an unfortunate bridesmaid's dress. So yeah, I'm probably going to go with a two
00:51:38.000
on this one. Also, the off the shoulder look is almost always a little matronly for this young gal.
00:51:43.020
What do you think? Agreed. I'd go with a two also.
00:51:49.260
Ooh, love the pop of color. Okay. So this obviously contrast. This is purple.
00:51:58.580
But I don't like it. I'm just not like a poofy gal myself. This also from here looks like chiffon,
00:52:07.160
which is a choice. And the sleeves are really big. Beautiful person. Who is this?
00:52:18.060
Oh, I've heard that name. Haven't I? What is, what was she in for?
00:52:21.340
Well, this, she was nominated for being in Black Panther this year.
00:52:24.860
Oh, okay. The shape of the dress is pretty minus the top. So I'm going to go with probably
00:52:34.920
a four. It's very much not my style. It's very 1980s. I'm going to go with a four.
00:52:42.300
What if I told you, I think this is the case. Those are not sleeves. Those are like
00:52:47.760
the top of her dress. And yeah, her sleeves, her like arms are bare. So it's just covering
00:52:54.100
her. Let me see. Let me see again. Um, but it looks like sleeves. It does in this photo.
00:53:02.280
It looks like sleeves. It could be, but I'm pretty sure it's not. I think that it would
00:53:05.440
look better minus the bow. I don't like the bow at the bottom. And if it had been strapless
00:53:11.320
or if it had been like a different top, I think I would like it better. Also, I think I would
00:53:16.580
have liked it because it's so much in the sleeves. I think I would have put her hair up
00:53:21.260
probably. Um, stylist Allie. Yeah. Stylist Allie. Um, probably would have probably I'm going to give
00:53:30.500
a four, even though she is very beautiful and it's a beautiful color on her. You sort of ruined
00:53:35.940
this one for me. I liked it. And now I'm not so sure. Sorry, Pri changed your mind. Okay. Next one.
00:53:42.500
Oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. All of these people. It's so funny that they chose this year
00:53:50.040
to wear beige. Um, no, this is fugly. I mean, this is just awful. Um, awful, awful. No, there's
00:53:59.920
nothing. There's nothing that I like about this. I like the shoes. I would probably wear the shoes
00:54:05.120
depending on what the heel looks like. I can't really tell. So, okay. So I'm forgetting that there
00:54:09.840
are people listening and not watching on YouTube, but okay. So this, how would I even describe this?
00:54:15.440
So this is this, who is this? This is Florence Pugh. Oh, okay. I know that, uh, this is from
00:54:22.480
that one movie that also has Harry Styles in it and was directed by Olivia Wilde. And there was some
00:54:29.200
drama there, but who, what, what's the movie? Don't worry, darling. Don't worry, darling. Okay.
00:54:35.600
Um, she should be worried. She should be worried about this dress. Okay. So it is like a mini black
00:54:41.540
dress that barely covers the crotchal region. And then, but it's, that's only like the bottom part.
00:54:48.680
The top part is, I don't even know how to describe something that covers the breast area and it's
00:54:56.620
beige and then huge goes out again, like empire waist, but opens up in a triangle in the front.
00:55:02.740
And then her off the shoulder sleeves are like as big as Saturn and off the shoulder sleeves. I mean,
00:55:09.040
it's like down to her elbow. So it's very bizarre. Again, a very, very beautiful woman, but this dress
00:55:16.200
would do zero people any favors whatsoever. That's my thought on it. Bree. I want you to look at the
00:55:23.980
hair. I can't really see it. I need glasses. Yeah. We would have to zoom in. Basically it's like an
00:55:31.260
extension and she's draped it over her head to look like bangs. Those aren't bangs. That's like
00:55:39.080
the back of her hair. Yeah. That's the back of her hair. It's a, it's a ponytail that is like,
00:55:46.140
okay. So it's a ponytail going forward like this, a ponytail going forward, but until it reaches for
00:55:53.260
bangs. Yeah. Okay. It's a look again, another decision. Um, but obviously, okay. So obviously
00:56:00.900
she's going for quirky, like she's going for bizarre. That's what I always ask myself to people
00:56:06.920
who wear things like this. Are they going for beautiful? They think it's objectively beautiful.
00:56:10.240
Are they going for quirky? If you're going for quirky girl, it's quirky and it's quirky. You still
00:56:16.800
look beautiful, but it's a little weird. That's fine. These remember most of these people were,
00:56:21.220
were theater kids growing up. And so they've got some dimensions to their personality. Um, okay.
00:56:28.820
Do we have another one? Beautiful, beautiful. I've, I think that she is like very beautiful and unique
00:56:35.720
looking. She looks gorgeous. Her leg looks great. Her shoe looks great. Um, I, again, I would do
00:56:43.040
without, so this is Kara. How do you, how do you say her last name? Delevingne. Delevingne. Um,
00:56:50.360
she's a model and I guess she acted in something too. She does. I don't, I think she was just there
00:56:56.180
this year. Um, I think this is a beautiful dress. I don't love the thing on the shoulder personally,
00:57:02.240
but that's just cause I'm a simple gal, but I think that she did. This is what I'm talking about
00:57:07.640
with the one that we saw. Angela Bissette. Is that her name? Um, who had the like puffy sleeves. I
00:57:14.960
feel like her hair should have been like this. I like Kara's hair like this. I think this is a
00:57:18.760
great color on her. Um, she is someone who is like quirky and wears weird stuff. Typically. I think
00:57:25.880
that this is very Oscars. Also, she definitely benefited from not having a red carpet because this deep
00:57:31.440
red probably wouldn't have looked good. So I forgot to write the last one. The last one. Oh,
00:57:42.560
I would say like eight and a half, eight and a half, nine. I really like it on her. What do you
00:57:48.940
think? Yeah, this was one of my favorites. That's why I included it. I would say nine,
00:57:54.120
nine. Love it. I even love the shoulder. I think it's just different. Like a statement. It's great.
00:57:58.880
Yeah. All right. You can weigh in people. Let me know what you think about these outfits.
00:58:03.220
Um, all right. That's all we've got for today. We'll see you back here tomorrow.