Transcript
Lots and lots of webinars. Yeah, everyone loves a webinar. Live from the bottom third of a bag of organic Cool Ranch Doritos. I'm pretty sure that does not exist. I'm sure that's a lot of things that I don't want to exist. It's an all new terrific Tuesday edition of Business Pan story by analyst Hole Matt Muscarty. Yes. That's it? That's it? You're done? Okay, on today's I wish on today's long winded and sanctimonious gab fest called July twenty first, twenty twenty six, the blame game. Hey this is wait, is this this is the game where we blame everything that's ever happened on somebody. Not everything? Alright, just most things. Not everything. Not everything. yeah, I'm thinking our I was looking at the new platform that's soon to be released. That would be a good tagline for it. It's a long winded and sanctimonious gab fest. It's a lot of data. You know what? People will pay a lot of money for that. So yeah. It's a lot sanctimony. Our show today is being sponsored by Freeflow Analytics and Freeflowanalytics.com, the only platform measuring board power connections performance for free. I realize it dawned on me and I hate to say this to you, but this this new platform and website is so completely in in intricate and deep. The scope is massive, the ideas are, you know, novel. And we might have to start teaching people how to use it. Right? This is not like going to a website and being like and being like how many home runs did Babe Ruth hit? Like it's not Yeah, I know. You need like a advanced degree. It might be a little more complicated than that. So I hate to tell ya, but it might be time for some good old fashioned like webinars. Does those still exist? Yeah. I think people still do them, yeah. We maybe we can throw one. Maybe we'll we'll we'll do that. Ma you know what would be good for our company is another another COVID pandemic and then people will be back on Zoom again and then we'll just force people to learn about our platform every week. On Zoom with masks. Yeah. Cause people will be really bored and they'll want to listen to us. All right, you ready for the blame game? Not Zoom yeah. On a z a a Zoom with five hundred people on it. Yeah, let's do the blame game. I th just a quick ex re explanation how the blame game works. We pick headlines from the last few days and to to try to to try to explain the headline, we pick out potential targets to blame. It could be people, it could be things, could be concepts, could be policies, whatever. And then we answer that question by voting. No well we don't vote. It's y you just pick one. Just pick one. Yeah. This sh w just whoever p whoever's going picks one. This is all of our games are so dumb. Does anybody like This this first one is laborious. But it but it's interesting. It's fascinating. Okay, here's the headline. See, this is what the genius of of us is, is that we can take a headline like this. This is from Bloomberg. Warner Brothers Zaslov, that's David Zaslov, the CEO of Warner Brothers, offers sixty-eight million dollars to buy a a summer camp. All right. Well, why don't you kick us off then? Well I'll be the judge of that. W is that like a is that like an AI company called Summer Camp? No, it's like a it's a bankrupt an upscale summer day camp in Westchester that went that was dragged into bankruptcy last month. So I'm thinking to myself, wait, how how if we come to a point in American history where we have CEOs who have ex an extra seventy million dollars laying around that they can just buy a a bankrupt summer camp. That right? How? How did we get here? So but when you I'm trying to figure out what summer camp costs sixty eight million dollars. Well, it's f it's in Westchester. A bagel costs fourteen dollars, so you know. I I I but the but the summer camp like so the land that the summer camp owns would have to be in Westchester would have to be like a hundred acres of land to be worth like sixty eight million, right? You've seen these camps, right? They're o we have a lot of them in Maine and all over New England. You've seen these camps. They're pretty extensive and they get a lot of high end counselors. I think they're networking event they're like early networking events for seven year olds, I think. I I have to admit. I have to admit, I did go on Google Maps and like scroll through the street next to this summer camp to see what exactly an upscale Westchester summer camp that costs sixty eight million dollars looks like. And it looks like a small strip mall like with where kids go. I I I don't get it. I'm confused. really? Well, we we unfortunately to mu much to my son's chagrin, w we sent him to one of these fancy summer camps one year because the the owner of the camp offered him, you know, a free ride because, you know, we're those kind of people. So we're like, great opportunity. But we basically tortured him. It 'cause it's full of of of kids who who are coming f a lot of them are coming from boarding schools. Ooh. yeah. Yeah. Yeah, right to summer camp. And then they're and then their parents are dropping them off at a nine week summer camp and the kids are kinda depressed. Like they're like they don't wanna Yeah, I think they do. I think they do. Yeah. It is. But they're beautiful places. I don't know why we're talking about summer camps. Alright, so I so this is this is how the blame game works. I'm like, how how the hell does this guy get seventy million dollars? What's happening? So th there's a lot of potential things to blame here. Can you blame his as 'Cause all they want to do is hang out with their parents at home. I mean it's so sad. Alright, so who wait Am I blaming somebody now? What am I blaming for? January twenty twenty six employm his new employment agreement, which basically gave him so many options. I'm counting twenty five twenty-four million options and two million restricted stock units. It it's basically a five hundred million dollar like lump of c of money thrown at David Zaslov by the Warner Brothers board. Okay, can you blame that? Well that might be a reason, right? Yeah, it's nice. Yeah. yeah. Wha why would I blame the agreement? Somebody wrote the agreement, right? Well, I c I got more options. I got more options. Let's get to that. Let's get to the compensation committee as a whole. Now, this is incredible and and I I can now understand why they came up with such an egregious, terrible bonus to David Zuzilov. They met this compensation committee at Warner Brothers met twenty three times last year. Twenty three. I've never seen that many. twenty three that's twice a month, basically, right? For w That's a lot. I mean, you're giving out 24 million stock options. I guess there's a lot to talk about. Cass. What it w Right? All right. Well let's keep going. Let's keep a running list. The the the the bonus itself, the the entire competition committee. How about the chair of the compensation committee, Paul Gould? He's 80 years old. He's been on the board for about 20 years. yeah, he's been alongside David Zoslov for twenty years. He has a lot of other connections to Zoslov, including through John Malone's Liberty Companies, through Paul's company, Allen and Company, and where in fact Is eighty. How about this? How about this for a tie in, a throwback? Paul Gould's company, Allen Company, hosts an annual summer camp for billionaires in Idaho. It's true. It's called Summer Camp for Billionaires, where David Zoslov is a regular attendee. is it I w is that the summer camp that Zaslov wishes he was buying? No. That that one must cost like so much money, right? I mean, but that's the that's your chair of the compensation committee. Yeah, the two guys hang out at summer camp for billionaires. Like I Well, eighty years old with an eighteen year tenure duh is is there an investor somewhere who's like, Hey, is this a good is this what we want? Is this the kind of Yeah. y Yeah, so that's the that's a possible person to blame. Actually I'll that's a good tease 'cause they don't want that because the I'll get to the vote the vote later. or how about you could just blame the old board of ATT, okay? Because three three of five of the compensation committee members at Warner Brothers all came from that board of AT and T. and that's that board David Zaslov was instrumental and the transaction to spin Warner Media away from ATT. So those are just three old buddies from the ATT board still on the The yeah, from the AT D Day. How long ago was that spinoff? Wasn't that like twenty like fifteen or seventeen or something? I don't I don't have the the date for that, but it's three Richard Fisher, Deborah Lee, Jeffrey Yang all come from the ATT board. Maybe it was longer ago. And this is gonna be imp this is the this is where the blame game becomes just a crazy multi-tentacled beast, because you're not gonna remember any of this. Could you could you blame the poll board, the board of Warner Brothers that just ignores Sam pay votes? Last year they failed. This is before this pay package. They failed their Sam Pay vote and and they said in the twenty two. By a lot. They said in the latest proxy that it could kin that it continues to believe that our executive conversation structure is effective. They didn't k they didn't do anything. Like can I when a director gets voted out, they often say we are keeping them in the interest and share of shareholders. When the pay structure gets voted down, they say they believe it's we're doing a good job, it's effective. What mechanism do is required? Do you have to like have one of those jackass size, you know, punch like gloves that so that when they walk in the boardroom it We're doing a good job. punches them back out of the boardroom to tell them to tell them that we don't like what you're doing? What's the what's the mechanism? Ooh, th we could implement that. Well that's that's a good that's a good segue. That's a good segue because my next person thing to blame is the Dodd Frank Act, which said the shareholder vote shall not be binding on the issuer or the board of directors. She's Yeah. Good work, Dodd Frank. Yeah. And it may not overrule any decision made by the board or the company. So so and here's why I bring that up. Cause they failed in twenty twenty five. At the special meeting, in April to vote on the merger, the say it the pay failed, eighty three percent no. And at the regular meeting in June just last month, eighty four percent said no to pay. So from every direction, the shareholders hate the pay at Warner Brothers. And yet, because of the Dodd Frank Act, it no Go. So it's pointless. Nothing happens. And how about or you could blame the SEC, who also they they wait on this. They said say on pay votes are advisory rather than binding. do not require the company or the board to take a specific action. They say this in writing, the SEC. I mean, thanks a lot. And I'm gonna we're gonna get to this later 'cause I talk all about ESG haters at the end at the end of the blame game. This is all despite the fact that we Yeah, but the board look, the board votes are non binding. Worship the tea of shareholder capitalism. We're like, hey, w we can't pay workers more. We can't do anything. We can't like save the environment because we just have to we just have to honor shareholder capitalism. And yet when shareholders weigh in and want you to do something, the SEC is saying, No, you can't tell you shareholders don't matter. Your your opinion does not matter. G stop. How crazy is that? What's that? I But didn't Gould get voted out? Gould didn't he get a vote out? So in June June ninth, twenty twenty six, Paul Gould, fifty two percent said no to him. The the the committee, the rest of the committee members got thirty percent no votes. I checked at their corporate website as of yesterday, they're all still on the board. I and I have not seen a filing. Nobody's left the board. Right. Of course they haven't left the board because not only is the same we like so first of all, the pay is d you know how much investors spend to get pay data? I know ISS and Glass Lewis sell pay data. I know that there are firms specifically designed to analyze executive comp. and we get questions all the time about do you cover pay? 'Cause we want to vote on it. It seems like stewardship teams are Highly focused on something that literally no one has to listen to your thoughts, right? Like, so you are going to spend tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of dollars analyzing pay at all these companies, casting a vote, only for the company to say, Yeah, you know your vote doesn't matter, right? Like it no one cares. Second, the the how is it that we still live in a world where director votes are advisory? If you vote no on Paul Gould, there's no process by which an investor can say, Hey, why is he still on the board? Like the minute we voted no, he should be gone. It shouldn't be a company policy where you have to submit your resignation, then the nom committee reviews the resignation and then goes back to investors and says, We thought about what you said and dn decided you're wrong. We want to keep this person. That can't be the process. The process is it investors own the company, they choose their fiduciaries, the fiduciary has to leave. I I don't like The whole thing is a gaslight democracy at this point. is that all the blame options I have? Can I blame all of them? Like I have one more. I have one more. Can we just blame the workers Warner Brothers for being poor because the CEO pay ratio is fourteen hundred to one. So is it their fault? Maybe he wouldn't look so rich if they weren't so poor. Maybe he wouldn't maybe if the workers could also buy a summer camp, we wouldn't care. I'm gonna That's true. Yeah. How many were of the workers own a summer camp? Like other than like Gus who uses his basement as a daycare? So where do you I gave you I gave you a lot of good options here? Well, I mean where do you land? How do you land on this? And and I'm gonna add before you while you're figuring this out that the yes, the competition committee care got voted out and all the committee members got a very high no vote. This is not a controlled company. This there's no dual class shares. So really they should honor these votes. But David Zaslov himself. I know. only three percent of shoulder said no. So they're not blaming him. And notice I didn't include him to blame. well Yeah. Well I like that they don't blame the guy who's connected to all the guys that they do blame. Innocent Innocent bystander. But really he is an innocent bystander. It's not his fault. Sure. Yeah, yeah. Tw you meet twenty three times there's a comp committee and Zaslov has no idea what you're talking about or what's going on. But to be fair, to be fair, shareholders like So Yeah. The the guy who you go to billionaire summer camp with isn't talking to you about your pay package, but Ha ha. Hey, but I'm willing to honor the system. I what I'm saying is that you've rejected pay at least three times in a row, so you have to completely rip up the pay plan. You you you've kicked out you've kicked out Paul Gould, so you have to kick him off the board immediately. So I'll honor that David Zaslov got ninety seven percent support, so he stays on the board. So who are you blaming? And that is where I lay the blame. I I I am going to say the Dodd-Frank Act is who I blame. Well, I mean no, but the SEC is executing the Dodd-Frank Act. SEC could change the guidance, sure, but they can't go like go and change a law. The Dodd Frank Act is a law that got passed that says it's non-binding. So if the SEC says no, it should be binding, that's the SEC doesn't have the authority to do that. They have to follow the Dodd-Frank Act. The Dodd-Frank Act Okay, okay. Well and the SEC maybe, 'cause they the SEC could have changed. No. Yeah. Right. neutered itself post Enron post financial crisis to like we have these votes so not just so that you can register your opinion. Pick up the fucking phone you want to register your opinion. You have these votes so that you can run the you the fiduciaries, the people you elect to do the job of looking over the company, paying CEO, like giving you know the what boards do. What's the point? What's the point? Why have the vote at all? Like what That's true. Well to be fair, the board said that it it that it took note of the negative twenty twenty five San Pay vote when making compensation decisions. It took note I think yeah, I think it said they wrote down the word yawn and then they th threw it away. So you're blaming the Dodd Frank act. I you know, that's a that's a that's fine. I'm actually I think that's the right choice because the shareholders did the right thing here. good. They they wrote on a sticky pad, it don't like pay and and then threw out the note. That's who I blame. Th they c they've continually said no. They've in fact kicked off the committee member the who's most responsible, clearly, and yet nothing's happening. And their CEO is w despite They did a thing. Course nothing's happening. They're all they're just waiting for for the deal to close with the Ellison t you know, the Ellison Nepos. This yes. Well, it's it' the a court just held it up, put it on pause yesterday. Despite a fourteen hundred to one CEO pay ratio, their dopey CEO is buying bankrupt summer camps. So there go. All right, do you wanna go next or you want me to do another one? All right, go ahead. It's our pauses. yeah, I'll do one, ready? All right. Here's the headline. C suite promotions now come with three or more jobs. I know this because I cover the eight Ks at the largest cap companies in the US and I have noticed that there's a lot of weird combinations of job titles being handed out. So this is from the article, quote, when Target named Michael Fidelke CEO in February 2026, the leadership changes he announced went beyond a standard promotion. Target eliminated its chief commercial officer role and consolidated merchandising authority into a single position, naming Ka Cara Sylvester, previously chief guest experience officer, as the sole chief merchandising officer overseeing product development, assortment design, and partner, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So I like there's not an obvious who do you blame in that headline, but I'll I gave it a shot anyway. Do you blame? That's the game. Okay. Yeah, well that's the game. What do you mean? You're you're you you're sounding like yeah, like you you try, you're gonna try. Yeah, so that was your requirement. Yeah, let's play him. Come on. That's true. Good point. Wait, what? I'm gonna try. Yeah. Well, I could have picked any other headline. i the first first option is AI. Isn't taking on more jobs what the promise of AI is supposed to be? Isn't like isn't aren't you supposed to be using AI to like boost our productivity, allow us to do multiple things at a time because you've got AI agents running in the background doing a thing and Wait, what is the promise of AI? Uh-huh. I thought it was the the point was to get fired. Well, that's that's the other point, but that's mostly the point if you're middle management. Executive management's using the AI to replace middle management. So so like if you're a C suite having like multiple roles on one, you that's only because AI exists. And in fact, the article itself c makes this claim, quote, executives who excel in a specific function are increasingly entrusted with broader operating mandates spanning commercial technology, operations, finance, or customer strategy. yeah. I see. Okay. Really, aren't we just admitting that like chief guest experience officer isn't really a thing? That you can have AI do three of the things that that that Kara Sylvester's doing, and and that that she just basically sits in her office and types to Claude how we doing with our guest experience. How's merchandising? Like blame AI, right? Should we blame executive chairs? Okay, I like this. Alright. Alright, tell me why. Ex executive chairs who were former CEOs or just executive chairs in general? Okay. Who are former CEOs. For like, so what's happening is the boys at the top, right? The CEOs, and generally the the COOs as well, they are realizing that they can actually offload their work, become executive chair, they get the same salary, fewer hours, no responsibilities. Brian Cornell, it's it's telling that they use Target here, where Brian Cornell is sitting as executive chair, where he totally tanked the stock of the company. He did a shit job, and somehow. Investors and the board and the reputation, and there's huge whole communities of people, diverse communities that no longer shop at Target. Target in our town is empty now all the time. There's like no one who goes there. We drive by it on our way to Costco, where actually you can't even find a parking spot. but but Brian Cornell is sitting in as the executive chair, and so now every executive, every CEO is sitting there saying. And tank the rep and tank the reputation, but don't not just the stock. Yeah. I haven't I haven't been in eighteen months, yeah. Yeah, I do the same. I do the same, yeah. shit, the way to do this job is actually to offload all my responsibilities to somebody else. So so you're saying it's a it's like a vac it's a title vac like it's sucking it's a black hole, a t it's sucking in titles, the executive chair. And then it's spitting out it's randomly spitting them out and they're just like they're heasing to other executives. Well I I think that Well, if you're the CE if you're Michael Fidelke, the now CEO of Target and you basically have the CEO who's sitting above you on the board getting the same pay and telling you what to do anyway, there's always someone more important. Wouldn't you be sitting there saying, like, the way to do this job is to make everyone else do all the jobs and I do less? Like if I'm gonna have a boss anyway, like that's a great business model for me. I will sit as the CEO chair, but mostly I'm just gonna tell everybody else to do all the things. Yeah. Someone more important. Yeah. And and so the executive chair is an example of how to do less and hand it off to someone else. Well I gotta tell you, I don't know if it's gonna be an option later, but what came to my mind was that this is a perfect way for the the co CEOs at a place like Target, Fidelki and what's his name, Cornell. This is a a an a a genius way to blame people when something goes wrong because now that they have like way more titles, it's easier to blame them for things, right? You can f you can just find things that they probably did wrong because they're looking over seventeen different things and pass the buck, right? It's their fault. In Cornell, yeah. That's that's that's what I mean. Like the executive chair sets the example that I don't have the responsibility, now it's someone else's, but I have all the money. I have all the same power and money. or do you blame pay committees? look, they're hi handing out massive golden hellos to like CFOs, COOs, all everyone in the C suite, right? But how can you justify these massive golden hellos? Right. Yeah, I have nothing. Yeah, I have nothing. Right, that's a good point. I don't know about this one. Especially CFOs, yeah. Give them six titles instead of just the one. Like That that's interesting thought, except that Target i it they bypassed the golden hello because they hired from within, right? Although they they are bringing people in, so they're probably yeah. Yeah. Right, right, right. They're bringing people in, they're shuffling leadership, they're giv handing out retention bonuses. Like, I I don't know. It seems like if we're gonna justify, you know, giving these people a bunch of pay, make have five jobs, right? Like and then and the jobs are not hard. Like, let's be honest. Kara Sylvester was chief guest experience officer. First of all, that's not a thing, is it? Like, is that a thing? Like, since when was that a C suite role? Yeah. I don't know. I don't know what that means. Does that just mean the person in charge of like customer relations? I don't know what that which is important I would think, but I don't know. I I guess, but they the what Target eliminated was its chief commercial officer and merchandising officer. What w what is the difference? What is the difference? What are those people doing? Like what are they I don't totally understand and they all seem to fall under COO. So like aren't you really just a li like the pay committees are are like consolidating fake titles that that they were that they had like ten of. What is that? It I don't know. I don't know what that is. Is that like supply chain? I don't know what that is. Yeah. Yeah. So that they can justify massive pay packages, maybe. And then Okay. I I'm not I'm not totally with that one, but I hear what you're saying. Keep going. And and then finally, how about just boards straight up? Boards actually aren't paying attention to executives anyway. The data in the free flow analytics platform suggests that large boards in the US are either deferential to the CEO, they just do whatever the CEO says. So they don't they are not actually thinking, they're just, you know, casting votes with the CEO. Or they're deferential to one another. They're highly interconnected. They are horse trading board jobs. So the boards are like totally checked out at this point. So when you consolidate the chief guest officer and merchandising officer and commercial officer titles, does anybody really care? The board's like whatever. Whatever you say, Michael, well, really Brian, because you're still sitting in the company. So maybe it's board's fault. So those are your options. AI, executive chairs, pay committees, or boards? Brian. I I Hmm and that it's not the pay committees. It could be AI, really. Well I what AI has done well is make life w even more complicated and annoying. I I really I I gotta hand I gotta like clap my hands for them because it's just it's just i i i we've increased exponentially how annoyed everyone is with everything constantly. Just like reaching It's well that's for sure. Yeah. I'm permanently annoyed now. Just calling the pharmacist that I can almost see from my house. Like my Walgreens is so close, I can almost see it. Just calling them to ask them a question now is riddled with nonsense. Yeah, s slop and AI like Yeah, and that's that's AI's fault. So I could lean to AI, but I just because we are who we are and we're trying to constantly educate people about something they don't care about, which is the which is really the the ethos of our company, right? We're gonna tell you something that you don't care about. That's who we are. That's what we do. It it's the executive chair. It has to be. I am like I am just one thing I've learned one thing I've learned at this company is how constantly annoyed I am That's what we do well. Really? Wow. That any company does not have an independent chair who does not have a long relationship with the CEO or other executives who has industry experience, who is who is who is capable of setting an independent agenda to provide checks and balances. So anytime that doesn't exist, I am irritated. Anytime a CEO is a chair, anytime you're paying a chair like an executive, and especially in this instance where your chair is the former CEO being paid like an executive, I c it's called BS and I think it's all I think that's why Target Well, I think this is w well look, this c this article used Target as an example for a specific reason, and I think at Target that's the problem. Is it is just such a it's a muddled, fuddled mess. And they're just throwing titles out. They don't know what's they're just th they're not accomplishing anything. I just blame I just blame that structure governance structure. I don't know. I gotta pick something. So basically I s triggered you. That's what I did. Love it. All right. We'll go with that. 'Cause the game doesn't matter. Okay. Alright. It doesn't matter. Alright, I'm gonna go to my next one. Luckily, the my remaining ones are somewhat shorter. Okay. This one's def the two of them are definitely way shorter. This one, Andrew Cuomo, joins the OKX Board of Directors. That's the former governor of New York State. He's joining the board. I I I d I I doubt that's actually true. And and you know, this is important to us and should be to the world because we covered boards and directors. We what we put the who into what do we put the who into? I don't remember. We put the So he's he's joining this terrible crypto dumb exchange board Bitcoin. I I don't know. One thing I've come to realize is that it's all just a form of money laundering. It's a it's a modern form of money laundering. That's that's how I see Markets I d I don't know. We all kinds of crypto. If I'm wrong, write to me at Damien at Freeflow L Cause I won't but I won't open it anyway. I don't really care. who do you blame for this? The do you blame the entire world just because it's you know, I just get angry at the world? I don't know. That's a little that's a little much though. A little exist existential. I mean I don't know that I blame the world 'cause I'm I I yeah, I'm in a permanent state of anger. I don't know whose fault it is anymore. All right. D do you blame men in general? I I mean i i if there's an industry in a world that is dominated by men, and we've been covering everything. We cover the boards, we cover the but we cover the IPOs, we cover these exchanges, everything about them, we cover the VCs that fund these horrible crypto exchanges. The men are really dominating this world. So do you do you blame men in general? Even even a nice man from Mongolia, do you blame him too? Like all the men. Do you blame them all? Is there not one? Yeah, it's it's his yeah, it could be partially his fault, yeah. Do you blame greed? I mean that just a capitalism, right? That's all you're saying? Okay. The the world, man, greed. Or do you blame how about do you blame the US Department of Justice? so just last year, OKX pled guilty to essentially to money laundering, right? They they they Who really? Maybe that's why they need Andrew Cuomo on the board? They facilitated over five billion dollars in suspicious transactions and and they they they in fact they pled guilty to this. So that they didn't this isn't not one of those settlements where they're like, no, we didn't do anything, we're not gonna say anything. They pled guilty to money laundering, and they part of it is they explicitly told their clients how to bypass the rules, right? So, so I ask you this, and and they ended up with a $500 million penalty, OK X, and I ask you this. From the Department of Justice. Why didn't you just shut it down? How are we not just shutting this crap down? Five billion dollars in suspicious transactions went through this company, and a year later we're putting former governors of states on board like why are we making why are we letting this look serious? Like what are we doing? So there's my options. What do you think? Well, how about the fact too that the the the the OK the OKX board and leadership team aren't anywhere on their website. Like you can't actually find the the the people. No, it's only I could only find the C CEO, I think his name is is it Star Shoe? I think his name is Star. I I don't know. Like you can't find that it's not in our database 'cause it's not publicly traded and it's the the people Star Shu, yeah, he's from Singapore and the only other guy they mentioned was Andrew Cuomo who joined the board like yesterday. So I'm just like, how is this helpful? So th there's no plus, how about the fact that the DOJ actually found that Andrew Cuomo sexually harassed thirteen women in twenty like that that was a finding in twenty twenty four. and somehow there is a board that said that there is nothing you could do that would keep you off our board. I'm this one's hard because the Yeah. This is this this one triggers me so much. As you dig into it, like you wanna blame someone specific, but as you dig into it, you realize like the your joke options of the world, men, and greed are very real options. Like I like what Yo, absolutely. Yeah. Well, look at the current ad administration, politics aside, I don't care what side of the aisle you're on. Politics aside, our president has already hasn't he already like gained like two billion dollars in like crypto proceedings or something like that? Two billion and cr and just in crypto? Like th we're clearly just ma it's we're in make believe money laundering world now. Like 'cause we don't really know the that that money got to him. We Two, yeah. It's sh it's just make believe. It could be through OKX. I don't know where it's from. I'm no one knows where it's from. I don't know how you don't just shut this stuff down. I I I just I wanna know what Cuomo's signing w bonus was. Go ahead. I forgot the last option, by the way. and I sorry, I buried the the final option. The the final thing you could blame is Trump himself. I forgot that there's a there's a interesting piece by an economist in The Guardian who's saying who's saying that Trump has normalized crypto and it actually might could be the p this crypto world we're living in could be the path to our next financial collapse. So I think that's true. I also think that I t I Trump is a symptom. He's not the cause. I I'm gonna go with men. Yeah, none of these crypt no Okay, you don't have to vote for her, I'm just giving you options. Man. Yeah. Well we've done the math. This is a this is a male dominated industry like we've never seen before. It's not just male dominated. It is like ninety-five percent men that are running crypto companies. It is one of the most skewed industries of all industries in terms of the size of the crypto companies and that that matter and who's running them. It is men only. of course. Well it It also takes a man to live in twenty twenty six and just see the world as his piggy bank. J just sees pathways to getting richer and doesn't look around and think like, How are we gonna start to address all the problems we see? They just focus in on on greed. That Andrew Cuomo j that Andrew Cuomo who like yesterday was railing against socialist policies in New York dri yes was socialism in New York is driving out capital. The same day the same day he's doing that, he's put on the board of a convicted pled guilty crypto firm. Andrew Cuomo was? Okay so He's mad at Mamdanny? sure, yeah. that was investigated by the same gr a ma yeah US institution that found him to have sexually harassed thirteen women. Like there's no there's no ir we should listen to you, man. Another man that we should listen to, another mansplain of the world. Yeah. I know he should be doing like I mean, I'm assuming he's a lawyer. I could be wrong. He should be doing like pro bono work for I I all right, yeah, okay. I mean you're right, by the way. Yeah, go ahead. I have two more. How many more do you have? So do you want me to let's let's stay on the ESG and then I'll end on a quick one. so I'll do one and then you do one. But I wanna this one this'll take a little. I'll try to go through this quickly, but I found this interesting. No, it's men. all right. All right, here's mine. I one, just one. You wanna do two in a row? Do two yeah, do another and then I'll do one. This headline, John Ossoff, he's the he's the young senator from Georgia. some are saying is a potential presidential candidate in 2028. I still can't believe that in Georgia we have a Jewish and black senator. Like what happened? How did that happen? But that's beside the point. I I can't yeah, I John Ossoff rips RFK Junior's foolish cutback to c cyclospories monitoring. That's that's the diarrhea explosion, di explosive diarrhea outbreak. Can't even get that in Massachusetts. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The horrible, horrible bacteria thing. So here's the point in a nutshell that RFK Jr. the they the the CDC's Food Net program stopped requiring monitoring of of this this bacteria and that they they made the data collection optional for most pathogens, right? And I thought to myself, this sounds familiar. Data, getting rid of it, making it optional, not caring. I thought, wait, this is the same, this is the same. Yeah. Yeah, voluntary, This is the anti ESG world we're living in. This is the anti data world we're living in. And I thought to myself, did this come from the anti ESG world? Is this why RFK Jr. is here already this fast? So I thought I thought, who do we blame for this? Where did this anti ESG and anti data hysteria come from? And I'm have I have a list that's pretty long, but I'm gonna try to quickly. Do you blame Elon Musk? He said ESG is the devil and a scam weaponized by phony social justice warriors. Do you fame? Yeah, we know that though. Do you blame Vivek Ramaswamy, who was actually on this show? I don't know how. He's the he was the big he wrote a book called Woke Inc. at an anti woke company. He's like Mr. Anti Woke. Ron DeSantis. he argued that ESG is a way to bypass voters and enforce the political agenda through corporate power. Peter Thiel called ESG a hate factory, right? Yeah. Yeah. Was on the show, yeah. Yeah. It w is it a factory of hate, yeah. Tariq Fancy, a so called whistleblower called ESG a dangerous placebo. Okay, a dangerous placebo. Yeah. Yeah. I met Tariq. He's actually a brown alum my year. We were we met. Mike Pence, former Vice President Mike Pence. He he he thinks that USG ESG is used to enforce a radical left-wing agenda on everyday Americans. I wish. I only wish it was a radical left-wing agenda. That'd be fun. remember the Texas controller we talked about, Glenn Hagar. He actually created a blacklist of financial companies in Texas, including BlackRock. called ESG an opaque Yeah. I wish somebody would force a radical agenda. Yeah. Left four I mean. Yeah, that was good, Glenn. That was really good. That was good. That was funny. And perverse system. How about that quote? Opaque. Opaque and perverse. I like that one. Andy Pudzer. That's true. Andy Puzzder, he's the former CEO of CKA restaurants. He said that it forces companies to focus on social goals instead of profits, which violates shareholder capitalism. The reason why I mentioned that one, because it circles back to Yeah. Data's perverse. Yeah. Uhhuh. Yeah. How do you know it's perverse if you if it's opaque? okay, we're championing shareholder capitalism, yet when the shareholders vote on things, we're gonna ignore the shareholders. So I d I don't I don't know what world we're living. How about Senator Tom Cotton? He like threatened, he threatened people, warning top US law firms that advising companies to cooperate on ESG goals could open them up to massive federal antitrust violations. I love that threatening, right? And we saw that Yeah. Yeah. Those threats to be true. I mean, we have entered this world of litigation and blacklists. I'll I'll end at that. That's a lot. You wanna pick one from that list? so I'm gonna do something to simplify my my choosing here. Note that not a single person on that list is a woman. Go ahead. I did I mean that's true. In fact the w the person I left off for the for the s time of first time w is also another man, so you're right. so I I'm gonna go with men again. I'm just gonna go I just think that that that's Okay. All right. Yeah, I think I didn't even it didn't even dawn on me. It didn't even dawn on me. You're right. I mean, like, these are all just conservative men, almost all entirely white. Vivek is a is like an outlier here. Tariq is maybe an outlier here. but like th this is and and look, fancy actually his take was not that ESG is bad, his take was more that like Wall Street is using ESG to sell you something fake. He didn't say like ESG creates some perverse system. It's not even the whiteness that matters, it's the men. He just said it was about greenwashing, so he doesn't even really count. this is just a man problem again. This is just men saying shit. Like like the show, a couple of men saying some stuff. Alright, like that. Yeah, well that is truth. That is the truth, isn't it? I mean, I always tell people, I was actually talking to a listener of our show a few days ago, and she was saying, like, I need more w women in my life. Part you know, I like I listen to you guys. I was like I was like, I'm barely a man. Give me a break. I'm barely I'm barely there. I there's a lot of men who would not consider me a man, so what are we talking about? We ha you found one. WHAAA We need to get Ari and Jesse's back on the show. We need to get people. They don't. Yeah, that's correct. But if you're a if you're a woman and you you want to be snarky and talk about this stuff, reach out. Matt at freefloat.lc. Well, it's not just us. You have to not be boring in general. I I mean like you be all right. Here's here's my next one. I'll try to move quickly too. They don't b go I'll say congratulations to them. They don't want to be back. And you don't bore us. And you don't bore us, yeah. In general. All right. Give me your next one and then we'll ra I have one more and we'll wrap it up. Yeah. Go what do you General Mills is recalling seven hundred and thirty six thousand Pillsbury bread rolls over possible glass. I l I love that like how specific seven hundred thirty six thousand Pillsbury bread rolls. Can you imagine there are that many Pillsbury bread rolls out there? That's I like that. Yeah. Not only can I not imagine how many Pillsbury bread rolls there are and whet whether or not there should be that many, but possible glass is always fun to me. I love the idea that it's possible that it's glass. Yeah, exactly. Possible glass. Do you think it's like when you okay, before you get to the blame game part of this, when you imagine this, do you imagine like little pieces of glass in the roll or one big shard right in the middle? What are you imagining? I I imagine like those twisty rolls and like someone untwists it and there's just a giant hunk of glass in the twist. Yeah. Yeah. That's what I thought too. A just a j almost like putting in like a a candy bar into a like a into a I don't know, like a cookie and having it melt. Like a just a nice pig shard of glass right in your roll. Yeah. Yeah. All right, what do you got? Yeah. Just one big shard. One yeah, some something obvious. Something incredibly obvious. all right, who do you blame? Do you blame public responsibility chair Jorge Oribe? He he's a director on the com they have a committee, the public responsibility committee. He's the chair of it. He's the ex-productivity officer at Proctor and Gamble. He retired in 2015. He actually screwed up the free flow analytics knowledge mapping because he's a director? Okay. He got a bachelor's degree in something called management engineering. Well, I like I think actually he he got it in like in another i in a Spanish speaking institution. So it may just be a weird translation, but it it tripwired the knowledge, which is looking through like, did you get an engineering degree? And therefore, like what do you know based on an engineer? This so this was like. That's not real, is it? Management engineering. Okay, so maybe it's a weird translation? Yeah. Management engineering, not a thing, right? Like not an actual thing. but got an MBA. there's no actual evidence that he has any anything except sales and marketing experience. I read both of his bios, and he's got a 10-year tenure longer than the CEO. So maybe it's Jorge Aribe whose job it is. Wait. Yeah. Why is he why do we do we know why he's the chair of the public responsibility committee? We don't know why. No, we don't know. Yeah, why would we why would we know? Yeah, we're being asked to vote on these people, but why would we know why they're in the roles? Yeah. Do we ever know? Do we ever know why anybody's the chair of anything? W why would we know why they have the roles they have or even who they are? but he's got a longer tenure than the CEO, but not as long as your second option, who's the longest tenured director at General Mills, also on the public responsibility committee, Steve Odland. Steve Odland is the CEO of the conference board. This is in our world. The conference board's in our th they do like governancy stuff. Yeah. Okay. that's weird. Yeah, why is he why is why is he not the chair of the public responsibility committee? Well, he's he's was the CEO of Office Depot, which which does Office Depot exist anymore? Didn't it like d die a horrible, horrible death because it I didn't realize that. No. Or is that Office Max? Yeah. Wait a minute. Explain to me briefly. What is the conference board again? The conference board does like public policy and governancey stuff. they How does he end up there as a CEO, you think? I I I I he well, I don't know how he ends up the CEO there, but he's been there for a while, I believe. it is a non profit. and it's a it's like a think tanky thing. I think that the a lot of like governancey, you know, th economic y think tanky stuff. Okay. Huh. All right. Interesting. Yeah. Okay. I would thought it would have been like a an academic wonk type of person, but it's the former CEO of Office Depot and AutoZone. Yeah, that's odd to me. Yeah. Hm. An auto zone, right? Like, so not not exactly, you know, like like glass in your bread rolls is not exactly an auto zone problem, I feel like, unless maybe. Yeah, yeah. But he's been on the board for 22 years. This is General Mills. This is a blue chip company, and the guy who sits on the like president of a a nonprofit think tank that puts out Although it c you know, think windshields, I don't know, yeah. Wow. That's a that's a that's a governance thing to be proud of. Governance-related content has been on the board for 22 years. but Yeah. Yeah, that's weird. I mean long tenure directors is like one of the most old fashioned governance principles. The first. Early man was like, you know, Grok no like long tenured director. Yeah. It's like the first thing. Like, how long have you been here? Too long. I like that early man is named Grok. That's good. Yeah. Well I think that I took that from wasn't that from the far side, the old comic that no one remembers but me? Yeah, what yeah, fantastic. All right, keep going. Yeah, what a great comic. It needs a resurgence. but both Steve and Jorge are tagged as deferential in the free float data, which is an i th that meaning this is an important gig for them, right? So so maybe it's not either of them because they're deferential to the CEO, Jeff Harmoning. So maybe it's Jeff Harmoning, the CEO's problem. Okay. Okay. He's been with General Mill since 1994. He came from marketing, not public safety, but he was the COO at one point. Maybe it's Jeff. He's also got another job as a director at the Toro company. Maybe he's too busy to notice glass. Or maybe it's not any of their faults because it's RFK Jr.'s fault. Because here's the other headline. It's not just Taco Bell, Lettuce, Impossible, Glass, and Pillsbury rolls. Food and drink recall events reached a six-year-old. Right. Yeah. Ooh. year over year high meaning meaning we've gutted we've gutted every single person who's doing anything. bingo. If I had a sound effect I'd be I'd be hitting the bingo button. This this was the fear, right? This was the this was the precise fear. Yeah. This was the fear that all of our food would be contaminated. Actually, so much so that w I now buy as little as possible from from like stop and shop. I get local farms. It's like Yeah, you get local horse meat now. You don't get your horse meat at Stop and Shop anymore. I I love venison and horse meat and raccoon and all of this stuff. S so who do you think it is? Squirrel. You made this what you made this one easy for me, and it's a it's a great tie back to my John Ossiff anti-ESG piece. It is absolutely this world of anti data. It's men, anti data, anti-ESG, whatever you want to call it, anti-intellectual. I don't even know what you want to call it. Or just or just maybe we just call it a a seismic shift of a seismic power grab by management, which is just like We don't care what anyone else sells, management is king. We're gonna just do everything anything we want. No checks and balances. So just remember that as you're chewing on the glass in your bread roll tonight, just remember it's RFK Junior's fault. Yeah. finally, for the blame game, July twenty first, twenty twenty six. probably our our our most popular game, the blame game. When I say probably that's my way of saying it. I don't know the answer and I don't c nobody knows because no one listens. The the the headline is this one's gonna throw you for a loop. And it ties in nicely to everything we've been talking about today, and that's that's not that wasn't planned. It's just the genius of our intellects. The headline is Yeah. I pay my employees $1,000 a month per child for daycare. It's one of my ice cream company's best investments. I mean, this is incredible. I had to read this article, right? Because I'm like thinking, okay, so clearly it can be done. At a dumb ice cream company, there's enough cash that you can actually do this in America. So who do you blame for this headline? Her child. Do you blame a woman? 'Cause I'm guessing 'cause I haven't gotten into the meat of the article yet. I'm guessing it's a woman who would say that I pay my employees So but but that's that blame is hard because I'd just be guessing at who it is. I like yeah. Okay. do you do you guess do you blame all women? Because come on, this is a very f women centric thought here. I'm s I'm sorry to the men, but you're not thinking of this. Right, exactly. because men w when men watch their kids, they call it like I have to babysit, like I'm being I'm being told to babysit today, right? They're not thinking it as part of their general care job as a parent, right? Yeah, women care about child care. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Their job, yeah. As a parent, yeah. Do you blame DEI? I mean DEI just seems like the thing you blame when good th when good things happen, when systemic wrongs are challenged or reversed, when women are involved, when people of color just we just blame DEI, right? Just I mean that's just an easy layup always, yeah. Right? Do you blame a woman named Molly Moon Knightzel, who is the foun who is the founder and CEO of this company we're talking about, Molly Moon's homemade ice cream. Do we blame her? We yeah, exactly. In Seattle, right. Yes. But wait. Molly Moons. That's in Seattle. I know I I've been there when I we lived in Seattle. We went there all the time. They were awesome ice cream. Well, we went there like in December. Like it was we just go all the time. It was great. Well clearly something's working. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and this is not a this is you know, this is not a huge company the size of like General Mills, but hey, you know, you can scale up these models and still take care of your stakeholders. and finally, do you blame the CEO's business plan, right? Do you blame specifically her business plan, which included living wages and free health insurance for everyone who worked at least eighteen hours a week? Wow. How about that audacious statement? Cuomo Andrew Cuomo is pissed at all this is all I'm gonna th all I can think. How much glass is in her ice cream though? That's really the question. I wouldn't even care. Like if the company I knew was taking care of the people this well, I would still be in line eating the glass, honestly. So I would love to end the show by saying that I blame all women for this, but it I actually what we find is that when you get to like Fortune 500 companies, to the extent there are any women to be all women that are leading these companies, they either have a daddy babysitter like executive chair on the board, or they don't do this. They I don't I don't understand what happens. Yeah, we can't find them. Yeah. They would if they were there in numbers. No, but I'm I'm I don't understand what happens between Molly Moons where this clearly works. They make enough money to do it and Yeah. Yes. So famous that even you know it and went there and you don't you live on the other coast. And AMD, right? Like advanced microchips. Like w like where Lisa Sue is the CEO and has all the power and they don't do like the equivalent version of this and they have all the problems that a major corporation has. where is like somewhere in the middle is a big gap. And I'm pretty sure it's when like v V C bros get involved and say maximize every dollar, stop paying for childcare. but I Yeah, right. I think that's part of it. Yeah, I think it's all it's all the the things that we talk about. It's the VC bros, it's the it's the the listing exchange that don't that don't require anything. It's the state regula you know, like the the Dexits, the the Texas, the Delawares that that don't require just like no one requires anything. It's just like nothing. We're not gonna for we're not gonna force you to do anything. The only thing that they they they do require you to like like like when you don't want to advertise on Elon Musk's Twitter, d he will sue you and require you to advertise so that he makes money. They will require that you don't buy a car from China that's better than a US car. They'll just say, Well, no, you're not allowed here. Like the things that they like require you to do like they don't require a company to have any rules that protect anyone other than the CEO, but they definitely want to make sure that you can't get better products made by better companies, you know, and have equal rights. I'm gonna go with Molly Moon because I I think it's her business plan. And I think yeah, we blame them for everything. Why would I stop here? I'm gonna I'm gonna keep it going. That's it. That's Okay. Blame the founder and CEO. Yeah, we are always blaming founders and CEOs. You're right. So why not? Right. Why is it that every positive article I open and again there was no gender mentioned in this title, just like when I opened an article where a judge has shot down some horrible, you know, law created by Trump or whatever, why is it every time there's a woman attached to something good? What's going on? Why? The lawyers and j judges, lawyers and women are the last bulwark of yeah. that's all we got. That's Hazelnut Rollis, Damian Tua's friend. I'm your analyst, home Matt Muscard. We are Free Float. If you want access to the platform that we've been mentioning, just email Matt at freefloat.lc. You know the number of emails I've gotten t for for access? One. I got one email. And Molly Moon's. No. It's sad. It's sad because it's like it's it's like all the data you could possibly want. If you listen to the show, you want the data. I can see whether you've logged in or not too. Like like log in, look. I guess so. but there will be a shareholder primacy tomorrow with Mike Levin and Ann Lipton. There will be a proxy countdown on Thursday, there will be a Friday show wrapping up the week. You got so much content coming your way. If you didn't see the zine this week, there's a zine. Yeah, that's sad. Well look, we we have to start teaching people how to use it I guess. We gotta start teaching them. boy. boy. from yesterday. You should go get that. you can get it on the platform or ask someone for an email. That's all we got. Until later. Good. Bye.