Transcript
Yeah. Whoa, we're back. Yeah. Woohoo live from the SEC, the SEC know that is security Exchange Commission. So, not the SEC, the college football, the sec's, Neutered, shareholder Ballroom. Oh, that sounds weird. It's an all-new terrific. Tuesday edition of business pants, joined by analysts all Matt McCarty. Yeah. Hey on today's giving Tuesday that smells like feted greenwashing called December 2nd 2025, the good game. Game, I came out there really sarcastic. Well, I mean, look, the good game in 2025 has not been It's been something to celebrate. Celebrate it all year was a brief glimmer of hope during an election week but who knows if any of that's real. Yeah. When like three Mayors and like, Wisconsin got elected. Our show today is being sponsored by free, float analytics and free flow, analytics.com. The only platform measuring board power connections performance for free. Oh I got news on the update. Next it looks like a week and a half. It all, finally, be all updated. Yeah. It takes a while it takes a while. It's I mean like look you're getting something for free. Did you have something before you didn't have this thing before you just stop whining. I I hope our warnings are accurate. The SEC is neutering shareholders, basically, stripping their rights to put up, shareholder, proposals it. If now is not the time to put the focus on directors, then the we should all just give up. So I this data set Is probably the most important data set the most valuable tool. You can use you'll ever see back against directors and And if by partnering with free flow analytics becoming a client, you'll only help grow the data. You'll make it stronger. You'll make it better. You'll make it update more quickly. You'll add data because it and, but of right, anybody have Infrastructure. Any bit of Find anything money, how well build it, right? Every advertisement that is on this show goes to build the data that you keep free. It's it's what everybody right? Did you read the story about the New York City controller? Wants to pull out a black rock. He wants to stop. What is that? Do you know, BlackRock Fidelity and somebody else. What, you know, the general point there, he's upset about climate stewardship that they're not, what is he wants? The call out the contract. What does he mean by that? What he, they have you know like tens of billions of dollars managed by BlackRock and Fidelity and whatever they would pull that money from Fidelity and they'd either move it to a different vendor or they would, there are a lot of vendors who can handle the amount of money, but they could also hand, you know, manage it themselves. I mean, they probably have a Robin Hood account at this point. Look, we can't help you with all that, but we could help them enormously with voting. So New York City controller, the office. Anyone listening? Come on. Yeah. We're gonna set up everything for you, and it's going to be a objective, it's going to be awesome. You know, love it. No really. No. All right, come on, the good game. Ah, Whitney, I think we need this. So, here it is. I finally headlines that seemed good. And Matt The Arbiter of Truth, tells me on a scale from zero to 10, whether they're good or not. The green wash. Good game today. Oh good. I can I rate that? That's a two. Yeah. I don't like a denims to my Gates. It's three uplifting stories. I don't like when other producers do stuff. Well, stories. Good. Yeah, just uplifting. They don't have to be good. There's no, these are uplifting objectively. Let's start at the top with a story that very well, could be woke, washing greenwashing, whatever you want to call. It could be corporate PR. This is a New York Times, is all over this. Everyone's all over this. The headline is Michael and Susan Dell. They yes you're Susan sure all of the and this is not to crap on Susan but all the headlines they have to include Susan for some reason. Michael and Susan Dell to donate. This is very specific amount 6.25 billion dollars to fund Trump accounts. For 25 million us kids. Now try to overlook the politically charged part of this where God knows why they're called Trump accounts. I mean, but, because try to be objective here. I don't actually even know. Maybe you voted for Trump, maybe you didn't Uh, who knows, right? I can't tell. What give me a score is 0 to 10. Okay, I I am really, I was reading this story. I'm really torn whether you're not hate at the story. Yeah, I I might hate this. Like look in concept these, the Trump accounts are basically just you know forced investment accounts that you give a kid when they're born, the total amount that they were estimating, it would cost to fund the Trump accounts as they sort of sketch them. It's not exactly like the Trump administration's good on details and or execution of anything, right? Always true. Or we, the legality of things, they're all the way they can do with it. Right. Whether the lawyers are using to draft laws, or fight cases are actually even lawyers or we don't even know what's happening. Yeah, whether the boats are blowing up in the ocean or boats or whether there's just the guy right. What? And when know there are there's no good but the estimate was 15 billion dollars. Here's what I don't like. I don't like the fact that we have to basically beg a billionaire for an. Who can pay tell just is like, well give another six billion or Worse, use it like some political messaging. Right? But what, what are we doing? When a guy can just decide at his Jess whether or not to help children. And he's gonna pay six billion dollars and it won't matter to him like yeah. And if it doesn't matter to him, that's just money. If he's got so much of it, it doesn't matter. They're clamming it would be a one-time seed contribution of about 250 dollars if you could so that the the amount sounds impressive. But when you when you think about that, I mean they give a call a Dropout from the ivy league you know like 10 million dollars to start a horrible AI company, that helps you like, you know, I don't even know what put pictures on the internet but a kid gets 250 dollars. Now, The the other problems with this and I don't I'm not trying to sway your number here, but you do have to opt into this program. It's not automatic, and it clearly benefits families with with any kind of financial literacy because these accounts have to be managed, right? I mean, it doesn't, it's not just gonna magically turn into a pile of Charlie Munger gold. Well here, here's the other reason why this is Like a little bit of a of a total like this is what I love the concept but I execution again, is just pure again. It's like it's like the concept of handing a homeless person a dollar in theory, like it's good. But it doesn't, it doesn't cure any Social policy needs, right? It doesn't, it doesn't attack the actual problems. so, fifty dollars per kid. Compounded at 7% annually, which is roughly, the average of the stock market return over the course of 60 years. So the kid is born which will be important because you know Trump's also trying to sell this 50 year mortgage thing too. Right? So yeah, so they can take out a mortgage when they're born and and retire when at the same time, well be dead before they pay out their mortgage. But yeah, the total amount that that 250 dollars. If it compounds annually at 7% which is fairly conservative but let's say 7% is about 15,000 dollars. That's how much they'd have 60 years from now. Okay, which is, oh, 60 years from now, 60, I thought you were gonna say like, when they turn 18 because I said, that's at least, like a year of tuition at a state school or something, right? Not 60 years from now, it is no, no, of course. That's, that's Michael Dell's contribution of 6, billion dollars. If Elon Musk decided to give us 1000 dollars per kid and he still be the richest one of the richest people on Earth with more money than anyone knows what to do with ever. He gave a thousand dollars for kid. It would be 55,000 dollars by the time they turned 60. The whole thing is nuts because musk Sergeant Larry like if there's like there's like 10 guys that could give every kid born 10,000 bucks. And those kids would retire without ever having to save again. Well, wouldn't matter to those dudes way. How much would 10,000 dollars over 60 years. What would that result in if it was 10,000 dollars over 60 years? They were talking about in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Of course, you can't touch that, right? It just has to sit there and it's at the stock market goes up every year, right? It assumes that you're getting about attend a 7% annual return. It's not completely safe, though. I'm right assumes the return, right? I mean, as opposed to like, putting that money together in and fixing all the of the ills like that face, people like help Rising health care costs, etc, etc, etc, child care, all that stuff. Well, you'd have five hundred forty five thousand dollars in in the account after 60 years at 7% if it was 10,000. And you know how much that would cost you, that all you need for that is about 250 billion dollars, Elon Musk can pay for that himself. That's crazy and still have billions of dollars left over. Yeah, that's crazy. So I'm giving this a two because I, I'm only giving it more than 0 because I like the idea of doing something, for someone, who isn't a fucking loudmouth billion, sure. But it makes me feel gross that we have to beg billionaires for our kids to, like, eat and, and drink like, we took away, SNAP benefits. But we're gonna give them a 250 dollar stock account, and charge them fees at your every, you know, who's going to administrate, Robinhood administrator, we make Vlad 10 off more, a billionaire. Like, what do we do doing? Like, yeah, the irony here is a, is a bitter pill to swallow because, as in Trump, remember no Del chose to give this. And he is a friend of trump. He and he calls these Trump accounts to he's playing the political game. And this is the man who is cutting Social support systems like healthcare welfare, education, child care. So we, there's clearly a game. It's a game. It's a game, right? Like, yeah. So, you get 250 dollars that's worth 15,000 dollars. Sixty years from now, but you have measles you. You your job was displaced by Ai and you like, so, and this is what, unfortunately, I found a joke. And, and the irony cycle here is is sad. Unfortunately, for a lot of people because the, what a lot of the, the people who could benefit from this, a lot of the Trump supporters, who the one who laugh at and and mock, like, high European taxes. And these are the same people with low financial literacy. What they don't realize is that that those high taxes are pumped into a system that gives people make sure they don't get health care, well in there. Okay. So it's sad that it's very simple point is lost but anyway, let's move on. Yeah, so choose that started a good game. But I do have I neglected to say in honor of giving Tuesday, the first category, here is the giving tree. That's the first headline. The second one is from the Lyft CEO, here's some more good. PR, the headline is Lyft, CEO this giving Tuesday I matching every Rider's donation. Can you just give the money? This is David. David risher who made 78 million dollars in 2023. Why do we have to like, oh if every writer donates, I will match. He gets this. Why? I always wonder fucking money away. Fortune is an interesting publication, fortune.com. I always wonder like, how does how does David Richard of lift? How does he get this space? This space to announce these things. You know I mean I guess again in theory this is good. Right? I mean I can't completely crap on zero. Well, this is the thing. This is the thing about like giving and philanthropy, right? Like it's the concept of philanthropy. Everybody can agree that if you have had the good fortune and the infrastructure and all the, all the cards lined up and then, you know, like you did some hard work and you built, you know, like a nest egg of money and you give a bunch of that money away because you realize you don't actually need all the money that you got, and you just been really lucky and all that stuff, that concept of everyone can get behind. But these are like, you know, rushers not a billionaire. But these are mostly like, billionaires, deciding how to give their money to people who are less fortunate at the same time. They're backing everything making them less fortunate like lift doesn't want their drivers to be employees. Yeah. Okay. But it saves lift a lot of money. It hurts the people that. So the donations you're giving, you're gonna match the donations of riders. Those writers are going to give money to help, you know, I don't know, whatever they were helping, whatever the matching is, and inevitably. How many of the Lyft drivers are going to need to tap the foundation donations that you just made because you won't make them employees and give them Health Care. Well, they're the reports, current reports are that the net earnings of Lyft drivers are somewhere between 13 and 18 dollars an hour. So that's yeah. I mean they imagine imagine having a family of four on making 13 hours and anymore. So I'm giving this too. I think this whole is a terrible game. I think actually this whole segment just gonna be a two like so no, it might pick up Jeff Bezos. And Lauren Santos said in Lauren Sanchez Bezos commit 100. Another specific amount that makes me crazy, commit 102.5 million dollars, Two organizations, combating homelessness across the US, quote. This is just the beginning, wasn't their wedding 102, okay. No to be fair, the S, their estimated cost of their wedding was only about 50 million dollars. So, they're all these care about homelessness, 2x their wedding, 2x their wedding, you know? Okay, I, this is all so too, I just, all right. Well, look, I'm just just reporting the headlines that look, there are a lot of people who see these headlines and think, you know, hey lifts, CEO, David reishi is a good guy. That's what they think. I know, I hate it. All right. Finally Mackenzie Scott's 19 billion dollar donation. Have turned philanthropy on its head. Why her style giving actually works. That's the headline again at a Fortune Magazine fortune.com. So Mackenzie Scott's current net worth. They asked me at around 30 billion dollars which is a tremendous amount of money. She's already giving more than half for Network. I that's true that it doesn't really like the remaining money is still makes money, right? I mean, of course, it does not like here, she could have one billion dollars and never, ever, ever need to ever work for a day in her life. If she didn't want to She could have 500 million dollars and probably live a very comfortable life without having to worry about it. I mean, come on this is the way you do it. This is a 10 that's the only 10. All right, well we're picking up a little bit let's move over to I think our average is like a 3.2, let's move over to a category called fighting back. This is a stakeholders version, stakeholders rule. I have a shareholders version later. Fighting back. New York City Council passes, landmark. AI oversight package. A collection of bills that are designed to provide a heightened level of oversight for the city's use of AI tools. I don't know what that means. Like what is a heightened sense? Can you just ban it? Like why don't, why don't we need heightened senses? I heard, I did hear that. Open AI is freaking out about Google's Gemini. All right, look at, we'll get to that later. I actually have a headline, the legislation creates an independent oversight office, that's mandatory standards for fairness and transparency, creates a public list of every. I told the city uses. I know, I don't know. It's full disclosure of the AI uses I you know, I guess it's fine. I'll give it a five. Okay, let's move on this yeah. Move five means we can move on again. This is the fighting back category stakeholders real. Bernie Sanders and Mom. Donnie joined the Starbuck's picket line. And Brooklyn, I mean, how long are they been picketing? You start Works workers like It they've had 17 different CEOs. They still going, that is their Contracting site. Like what's technical work at Chipotle guys? Just stop it. Like, unbelievable, what do you think of though about the the mayor-elect joining a picket line? That's always good. News positive. I didn't did the same thing and the right wing media. It turned it into like his his version of khaki pants on Obama. I don't know. I don't Do I care about that? Like make a policy. You're not in office yet so you can't but like when you make a policy then then I care five. More than and again I'm I know that you're going to think the message here is is horrible. But I'm just thinking about this is stakeholders fighting back employees, by fighting back, more than 1,000, Amazon employees sign open letter, you know, you're not gonna like with a letter about warning. The company's AI will do staggering damage to democracy our jobs and the Earth. Okay, but they're fighting back. They're doing something right I mean it's good yeah they're letting letters, they're writing sternly worded like oh you're not in a good mood today and this is not good. This guy this is this is less than a five I guess that could walk off the job. But you know true or get jobs and companies maybe that do fight back I don't know what to say. There are no other jobs and there is no way to pick it. This is how they have you write. Like the best you can do anymore is write a sternly worded letter and hope that a billionaire decides that. They agree with you. There's not another thing to do like Jeff and Lauren. Do you think Jeff and Andy jassy are sitting around being like, wow, I'm really worried about what those thousand employees think. How many people? I mean, they have like a million employees. Like they have a lot, but let's say these are all executive at Amazon and they have a thousand Executives 1.56 million. Oh wow. I didn't realize. So what are we talking about here? This is a three. I kind of that was a bad choice there and maybe feel good, kind of sort of that's, You do really think of really poorly. What's the percentage of the company of that is is that like that's it's way less than less than even point one point zero one zero something yeah. Okay. What did you give? What was the score a three? What are people supposed to do? If they care anymore, they're supposed to just watch Netflix and shut up. I don't know. I'm trying here. Okay, here's what here's one. This is a company. We've talked about all year, this seems like a media headline. Although Michael Dell headlines, seems to be pushing it away for some reason. Michael Dell's getting more credit. Costco, Sue's Trump Administration. Remember what we talked about like, hey, Harvard and brown and Northwestern like why don't you just Sue back? What are you waiting for Costco? Sues Trump Administration over. Tariffs seeks. Full refund. They're saying that the tariffs are unlawful. And that the 1977 law of the Trump Administration is using has historically been used to impose sanctions against other nations not to create tariffs. So Costco's just suing Trump and saying hey why don't we get that money back? What do you think? So for first of all, yeah, this is one of my uplifting songs, so it's great. We don't have to do that. We don't have to wait. Let's just do it right now. I give this a 10 hands down to 10 and here's why it's uplifting. Yeah. First of all, Costco is the only one fighting back against stupidity like this. Well there are some smaller companies also suing I don't know that the scale that Costco giant we're talking about. This is a large mega cab companies. They are not fucking you know constantly talking about their a new AI adaptable, whatever. They don't follow up to see dollar market, Saudi Prince, murderer dinners and they they didn't donate to the destruction of the East wing of the White House. They are getting support getting up probably supported Dei so that it was good for the business. Costco board, member Jeff rake's, actually defended Dei and and told other companies were scrapping it. They were idiots. And he said that publicly not to mention. This is board member not to mention the value of Costco. At 405 billion dollars is nothing to do with smoking mirrors. It's not about Market manipulation. It's not meme stock it's not bro culture. It's not like future evaluation. It's an actual company like chocolate. Doing a thing selling a thing, like putting putting air in tires, like they do. So, here's the thing, I I'm not, I'm not a big consumer, I don't like buying shit, but when you talk to anybody who goes to Costco, they love Costco. They love everything. They sell their, they love the vibe there. Everyone's happy. It's it's fun. Costco is also being sued or under Fire in 19 States just for taking a stand against Trump. They're investigating Costco. Okay? Understand think about that. And let me read you this headline that came out yesterday on Yahoo finance. Think about what you just said, listen to this headline because this would, this would disproportionately probably positively affect the people. Who were suing, the, the workers from those dates, the Costco affect highlights. How new Costco stores, transform, local economies surrounding businesses, raise wages up to 40% more. Think about that, just by opening a Costco. It raises wages in the surrounding area is Edible. Look, I've been hard on Costco's board because they're highly interconnected with one another. And they have Tony James is on the board. He's been there from bajillion years. I will eat crow and say this board and this management team, despite the fact that they are dead set on keeping X CEOs, on the board for a while. And they do an exceptional job at Costco. They do a great job. They are 10, they are the one Beacon of Hope and the Retail Landscape where you have Target, who has Brian Cornell fucking sitting in the shadow CEO position on the board and and they scrapped their private even move on, you know, merchandise. Because, you know, one internet trolls said and then all the Bots. Just like these people are professionals and Costco is great. I feel like I don't want to shop anywhere butt Costcos. So I am telling this and they're the one of the uplift. Lifting stories. I will tell you, I've said many times in the show how I'm now a Costco person. So I don't have to go into that. But I will also tell you this and you will, you will probably personally like this is that if you get the executive membership, which is only, yeah, twice the cost of the basic, not only do you get 2% cash back. So, like, you're gonna pay for that membership anyway, you get an hour to yourself every morning, so only that only that. So I only go at 9 a.m. and there's nobody in my storage, amazing. It's beautiful. You will love it. Literally, my favorite part about it like going, you know that early? I love it. All right. Fighting back, stakeholders rule for the good game. December 2nd here, I'm still in that category. Fighting back Exxon, You're gonna laugh at this, but this is your home state. But I'm taking the Goodwill. The good can come Exxon bid To dismiss Connecticut climate lawsuit fails a judge moved, the case closer to trial after rejecting the company's request toss it out you know it's something we're going with closer to trial. That's where we're at I mean yeah kinda I mean look the SEC. First of all remember Exxon sued their shareholders last year. Now the SEC saying shareholders, you can't even put up proposal up so hey I mean we got to take this the the courtroom might be the only place of fight these battles. I'll give it a five. I'll give it just to play. Kate you Oh, okay. I have another opening I headline later, but here's the first one. Oh, okay. The headline is open. AI completed. Its conversion. A new ballot initiative, seeks to reverse it. So this is a basically, a California ballot initiative. That is trying to reverse open AIS, conversion to becoming a for profit company. So, We think about this and now, it doesn't mention open AI by name. But it calls for the creation of an oversight board empowered to review and potentially reverse conversions to non-profit organizations, engage in scientific technological. So it's basically like it's focused on open AI but it doesn't name it specifically. I, I just don't know what the end game would be that. I assume would be the opening. I would just leave leave California, right? Like, but I mean, we really care. We're just making it annoying, but you're at a two. It's just that we don't even try to fight back. I mean, we had a get a fight right? I think if California didn't veto the restrictions on AI. If new some actually allowed the restrictions on AI to go through it isn't that the same? Isn't that better and more effective than like doing some circuitous way? Like what, why are we not even naming? Open are just go fucking at them, right? Like well, I think ultimately some doesn't have a problem with it, right? The this initiative is called the California Church its protection act. This feels like like they asked backwards way of getting at the problem, it politically looks good, but Sam Altman, doesn't have to leave California. Like what would we do in? Like, I don't know, it's a four, its a four, it's something but nothing good, we're not striking a lot of gold this week Starbucks to settle. With over 15,000, New York, City workers for roughly 35 million dollars. The clip, the this is over workers, claiming that Starbucks denied them, stable, schedules and arbitrarily cut their hours. The company will also pay a 3.4 million dollar civil penalties in civil penalties now. Oh, they also agreed to comply with the city's Fair Work. Week law going forward. So oh that's nice. They they agree to comply with the law. This sounds like a bit of this is five. This is really started Starbucks. One of the put out a positive press release maybe and they put that out. I'm saying they probably settled this. Another picketing in Brooklyn and Donnie's their Bernie's. I don't know. I don't know what's going on with Starbucks. I don't know why they can't. They're gonna have right now is listed as one of the worst CEOs, according to take their act together quickly because they got to realize that like All the hours of drugs company they just sell drugs to addicts, right? That's all they do. Let's let's not pretend otherwise now if they don't if they're cafes aren't God damn beautiful and comfortable and if their workers aren't God damn happy and well paid and treat their customers. Well the whole thing is just gonna fall apart. All we're looking for as addicts is a comfortable place to sit. To get and get all to get my fix to get your fix. Get all shaky, and just have pleasant people. Pleasant workers, Pleasant couch. That's it. Brian, its scale. You like, I don't know what you're waiting for. Like listen to Costco. Like I mean, the the gap between Starbucks and the pit in the wire. Do you ever see the wire like, you know, like it's basically an open-air Market. They created like a quasi Legal Zone to deal drugs, even though that the Gap is basically Starbucks, has better couches, right? Like well yeah. Not even really. That's what I mean. Upgrade should be very simple. Yeah, this is why maybe they calling Brian Nichols. One of the worst seats of the year because he's just he's not he's not he gonna have to, you gonna have to solve this worker. Is it was it? Can we finally vote out the board of Starbucks? Can we finally get around to it? Can we finally make some real change? And not give a golden shower to, you know? Know. Some guy because he could push beans better than the guy right before him. I yeah, it's reversing stupidity. Move, I mean, you know, what you dumped 100 million dollars and Brian Nichols left, because he managed to sell burritos, which is like, how do you not sell burritos in America? I mean, everyone loves burritos in America. You couldn't fail goes and burritos. I mean, I mean, the fact that you coffee is actually a like, a master class and sucking, like, I can't feel like people, even put them, they buy frozen ones and put them in microwave. All right, let's, let's move on on the good game. This section is called fighting back shareholders. This is the shareholders rules shareholders are fighting back Michael. Burry he's a well known shower calls Tesla, this is the big short guy, Michael Burr. You know him. I like him. Yeah, he calls Tesla ridiculously overvalued and he knocks the tech industry for a wildly used practice. Now, he's critical of the industry for its use of stock based compensation. And then ignoring it as a legitimate expense. He says that Barry said that Tesla. Shared dilution should continue following shareholder approval of CEO. Elon musk's historic PayPal package. Can you like help us understand all this? Okay, so one of the things that happened in the timeline of Elon musk's pay was Delaware. He was paid and what was a 2018, the big package and then Delaware, revoked the pay And then last year the board was like, please re-approve the pay, but we don't have the shares to give them. So, you're going to reap the pay. We're going to pay Elon Musk with all of the shares from the employee shareholder plan. And then, we'll make it up to them later. And then this year, they basically asked to replenish the employee plan. And on top of that, give Elon Musk more shares. If he hits certain tranches, but they use the shares. They don't account for the share dilution, like when they do this, what Michael Berry's effectively saying is given the number of shares that you've just committed to Elon Musk recommitted to the employees. What you've effectively done is take down the value of the shares, the price of the share should go down but they're not going down the price of the shares. Keep going up. And they're going up, even though the company is making less money, they're not as profitable. They're Multiple is getting higher and higher because a meme stock, every month is a new headline, about sales, cratering all he is. This is fundamentally insane because a big element that should push the price down, like just just surely on supply and demand the number of shares that exists. Yeah, is not doing it and the practice because they're not considering in an expense at the time. They're sort of deferring it into the future that the way that these the accounting, you know, tricks they're using for these shares is masking. The fact that the shares are worth less than they are. What what is the market generally? Think of of Michael is he ever? Is he considered a wacko? Was he respected? Well this have any effect on bringing down and overvalued share like what do you think? Because of The Big Short he he gets his headlines. He gets a lot of deadlines, Elon Musk and Alex karp will respond. They call him an asshole. That'll fuel the sort of but he he's not like a massive investor. He's not like Warren Buffett. He's eventually tested. Eventually, the ridiculous memes. Talking this of Tesla, the sheriff price, it'll eventually come down. No, is it? I mean, what is this like, forever situation? A nobody knows like X eventually xai will buy Tesla and it'll never go down. It'll always just be this incredible meme star. I just can't actually. I cannot buy Tesla because Elon Musk needs liquidity to, right? That's true for shares. So his payback, it's his piggy bank. I'm just calling the piggy bank for four years. I like Michael Berry and he is correct. It is ridiculously overvalued. I'm just gonna give it an eight because I will give him credit for this. I don't think it actually accomplishes anything but I like he is the one voice that they will allow to call Tesla ridiculously overload. And by that, I mean like the business press the that they do let him have his platform because no one else is really people take shots at Elon politically but but no one really seems to question a car company. With a CEO that makes outrageous promises that never happened and can't sell cars she over promised her. Yeah. Yeah. They don't they don't and they're not worried that the share price is out of control that just like they just think it's great. They just think it's cool neat. I mean, it trades at a 300 PE ratio like it. Sells cars. All right. Next one, get a little nerdy here. The headline is second proxy. Advisor calls for vote against Westpac director. Over as over. ASX stint. Okay, this is a out of Australia. So let me just explain what this is. Westpac, Westpac director, Peter Nash, served six years on the board of Australian Securities Exchange, which has been through a lot of trouble over the over the years. So glass Lewis And Issa believe are both recommending a vote against Peter Nash. Because of his term at the Australian security exchange. All this to say, that if you spend a little effort, I'm looking at you proxy advisors there really is a we can glean a method of determining whether directors deserve a vote for or against, right? I mean, I know this is like completely out of left field and for some reason, glass Lewis is paying attention to something. I don't know. What makes them pay attention to anything, but the reason why I'm calling this good is, yeah, we can do this. Like, we can actually, we can find reasons, we can find things. I'm gonna do you one better? This is my second uplifting of the week. It is. You can probably say it better than you. You tell me why you pick. Look. There's there. There are, two key reasons. Number one, this is not activists driven, there's not an accident. It's just, they just decided to do their jobs. This is purely driven by a conflict of interest. So the ASX this is Westpac which is listed on the list Australian stock exchange. So when an Asus ASX listed company is using an ASX board member On its board. And that same board member, well, LED KPMG the auditor in Australia. And now Westpac is using KPMG as their auditor, it's very obvious conflict of interest stuff. The amazing part about this is this is I think This is the first of the move underway to Target directors. This and last Lewis picking a person who has a conflict of interest, that is not blatantly obvious. This is beautiful. Scratch the surface, you can see ISS glass Lewis. I'm talking to you now, I'll give you. In fact, I'll give you the month off. Don't worry about it in December. Like take care of your your your your, your partners, your kids, whatever you have to do in January, let's get out this. Let's start a list to Matt's Point. Let's Start, let's start with conflicts of interest. Let's let's come up very massive list, objective list of criteria based on this kind of reasoning. Let's do this. Let's we can do this together. I just apply it to all the companies that you cover, we can just start there. Okay. I think from from an Administration and Regulatory standpoint, Isis and glass Lewis are strategically saying Australia first, because Australia has some of the worst conflicts of interest in. Any market? Like it is a very small Universe. Not forget glass Lewis there can be just conflicts a simple conflicts of interest, like the fact that several board members are all in the same network, which is really not a benefit to, to shareholders. You don't that write complex. How about your brothers on the board, that's a simple one. Yes, start there, right, I'm giving it a 10, it's really uplifting to see the proxy advisor. Do what they're supposed to do, which is analyzed up person, not driven by an activist, not driven by something else just saying, hey this person is conflicted and we recommend voting and that's pretty simple about this. One, one more from shareholders fighting back, Norway Health Fund. To back call for Microsoft, human rights report annual meeting which is taking place in three days, although, you know next year, will this vote even come up? No, probably not, but that's not the point. I'm not even focusing on the shareholder proposal that the Norway health fund is supporting. I actually looking at this, they're also voting against Dallas pay package that at a minimum that seems obvious and they're also voting against Sought in Adela to be on the board because he's also serves as a chair and they have a simple policy that they vote against, you know, CEOs who are chairs. So I made this point forever. And I know this is like a is just too much for most people to hear and deal with but we you can vote against CEOs. Not even who are on the American boards. First of all, they're chairs, I should be an automatic vote against, but they don't even need to be on the porch in the first place. They don't need to be on the boards at all. So I this one I made me feel good, Norway Health, fun voting against You Adele. So I'm gonna give this one a nine simply because I'll take a nice. This is the last shot of the nuns. This was brought by the religious, this is the nuns, the religious Heart of Mary. It's the nuns. Well, maybe we should judge the nuns and they can help us, like, vote against directors. Now, they are strictly asking for like, you know, human rights. He thinks and I, you know, like good good for them. I'm, you know, I'm fine either next year. More than that. I love the fact that Norway's Health fund is not backing Sachin Adela because that one's the one. That matters. That's that matters matters. Get that dude off the board. Listen to me again. Doesn't mean you're fired. Yeah. What's what will be fascinating to me? Next year is which companies will allow their shareholders just to put out these proposals just to just to take the Pulse of their strollers to see what they care about. Because, I mean, they're gonna be so good to be some. Right that that say, Hey, I'm I'm not gonna listen to sec, I'm not anti ESG. I actually do want to know what my shows, think about these. I can tell you one Costco, let's see, gonna have we don't know, 20 year older proposals and just let them go to vote. All right, let's wrap up with Pope Perry, category, a story that you cited earlier, open AI, declares code red, Sam Altman, I mean he's the greatest blowhard ever, right? Oh, open AI declares code red as Google catches up and AI race. But here's why I thought this was good not only because I just like anyone catching up to Samuel and although you could argue that is Google any better or worse. That's, you know, that's a different debate. But he said that because of this code red, The company will be delaying initiatives like ads, shopping and health agents and personal assistance to focus on improving that GPD. Yeah, how about Sam? How about you? Just permanently strike any ads, any shopping, any health, agent, any personal assistant? Let's just never, never do that. Don't say no one has asked you, you don't, you don't have the expertise. On any, you don't even have the expertise to tell me what kind of what kind of computer to buy. So I just see. Yeah. So yeah, judge EBT is fighting back against the kid, who committed the blame, you too, because they blame him for for breaking the terms of service, just, you know, supposed to talk about. Yeah. Yeah. It does help you deal with your cycle struggles but you're not supposed to use it for that. No, he, what he did was he was talking about suicide and they said in their counter or their defense. That 100 times during the chat, the chat GPT put up guardrails and said, you need to go, get seek. Help right well and then the kids said, well what about purely academically? Like if we're just hypothetically not for real and then it was like, oh yeah, use a knife like so sorry. Yes, sorry, Sam but you know how many times like, you know, I've been in deep conversation with friends on like you should really think about going to a therapist dude. That doesn't mean my friend goes right to the therapist like they still, they're still talking to me. They're still and they don't like, they don't actually go, and they still want to talk their problems out. And they're not gonna stop people from talking to problems out. There was an interesting point in the defense in which after saying, like oh we actually did all the things we have like robust, you know, we've innovated around safety, whatever they say, all this stuff and that in their defense. And then like, towards the middle of the end, they say, oh, we're covered by section 230. Section 230 of the of the communications act basically protects you from, as a platform, effectively from anything that you say, or anything that said on your platform, they're trying to argue that chat GPT is not. Saying the thing it is an amalgamation of everything that's out there and it's a platform and yeah inviting information via the Internet and like so it's not and yes GT says and yeah all the management at opening all the employees, the investors, they're all stand to make, you know, a ton of money off this company and yet they can make money off of this. So, but just think about the implications of that. What's Sam Allman is saying, Is what's we are not responsible for what chat GPT says, none of them. One of these cut, none of these data companies are responsible simultaneously. He's saying they're building it for the benefit of humanity, but we're not responsible for what it does or says. And notice that the code red is not about notice that the code red were simultaneous. Not about how it's gonna affect Humanity, it's about Google catching up. Yeah. Well, this is that the end state, right? The end state is effectively the same thing is social media. They know, they think that there's only one chatbot that's going to win here. There's only one model, one, big chatbot, one, big, whatever that wins. And so they the code red is oh shit. We're losing to Google and frankly, I've used Gemini and Chachi BT and Claude Gemini is way better now. It is way better than them. It's fine. But that this is a competition and it's like, this is what's so ruin Humanity. So what this is why we lose because you're fighting with each other. Yeah, about the best chatbot and not the best outcome. The best outcome is we don't lose our jobs. We don't use every fucking piece of, you know, energy on the planet for you and your ego and your artificial intelligence. We don't Mark Zuckerberg talking about super intelligence and like this is a, this is a zero. There should be no cold. Read the cold read is that you exist? The code red. Is that this is what you're terrified of. Because what what's happening is you build in Empire to raise Tens of billions or hundreds of billions of dollars from investors and you are more worried about that then you worry about whether or not she Beatty has a sufficient guard rails. Because in the race to improve GPT. What do you inevitably lose as part of that race guardrails? That's the thing that you have to get rid of to win, right? Like you, you put out porn, which is you talked about already doing you. It just has to be better and faster and break stuff and worry about it later because now we're losing to Google. Listen, I hate it. Ties into what we've been talking about all years at the, the Big Data Tech Bros closing up to Trump has as keeps winning them favorites, right? So Trump his big thing now, is that preventing States from regulated, regulating AI, right? Which is already pissing off some of his supporters because I his supporters are just as wise as we are in realizing that like we cannot let Tenn Tech Bros decide the future of our planet and all. So there's a report I read an article in CNBC report last week that they're actually saying that that France and Europe that they're slow and steady approach to AI, could actually be its competitive competitive Advantage because it is regulating, it is it's not racing ahead to like, kind of like a uber versus Lyft. You know. It's, it's being cautious and who knows? Let's hope that maybe the AI that we rely on comes out of this slow instead of approach and not from the Sam Altman Playbook which is just let's just Make money destroy break laws. I don't know. Kill kids, I don't know what it's just. Give it a zero. Go to the next. That wasn't the point of the good game. We're off track as usual. It's been a hard year for us. Let's find. Let's end Today's Show. At least my portion of a show on this. Headline, which I'm calling good. Because this is a topic that I have been passionate about for many years. And I'm just, I'm happy that it's being aired. This is from Fast company.com. Of course, the person who wrote, this is a woman, she is the CEO and chief content officer of the company that puts out the publisher that puts out fast company. But the headline is Corporation, say they prioritize people. So why do so few Chief people officers become CEOs? Only 16 of the CEOs at the 1000 biggest companies have HR experience. I just like this topic. I don't want this topic to die. I actually think it's a it's an important sort of Bridge to the future of our of the US workers that but I don't know. You know while the men are busy creating AI that is helping to fire everybody. I'm hoping there's a counterbalance to this, you know, so I I don't know. I I threw this in here just because I'm, I don't know, even know why? I just like the article. I like the content. I like the message. Look, there's some simple statistics that explain why that they don't become CEOs because they're women, they're all women. The the vast majority. I think the last I saw was in 2022 or 23. It was like, 77% of cheap people officers are women and of those, there are actually more people of color than there are in the broader sort of anywhere in any role. Yeah, they've seen that occupies, the two little, right? Like black women, Or Hispanic women or Asian women means you get twice the diversity for one role in your c-suite. They also said that over nearly a quarter or three quarters of them rather have advanced degrees. So these are not just women, they're really smart women. In the last thing, anybody wants is a really smart woman. Occupying. The c-suite, the c-suite is reserved for the big boy pants where you manage p&l and you know we build products that you know Make the World Go Round. We don't want our smart women who just deal with like the kiddos that are our employees. They'll probably company. That's the attitude. The smart women will probably act a lot like France and Europe when we're talking about Ai and they will probably have a slow and steady approach, right? They won't, they're not gonna race forward. I mean, they're gonna they're gonna be cautious. I don't know. How am I supposed to rate this? I don't know if I'm gonna give it a five, all right, okay. So do you have anything to add before I uplifting while you do scores? There's one left of uplifting thing and that is this headline. Google's data centers could actually be going to the Moon, that's good. I saw this is that good is, is Sundar pichai? Is he like the new the new we're talking about this early? Is he like the new blowhard? He's like, Released this year, he kinda saying it's like the Krakens out. Yeah. Before you get to your point. He he said this also he said As AI wipes jobs, Google CEO, Sundar pichai says, it's up to every day people. That's not him, obviously, I don't know what every day. What is an everyday person? Sundar, are you, are you not an everyday person? Like, is there a distinction between an everyday person in like a Tuesday person, like a doctor about? Yeah, the occasional person. He says, it's up to Everyday People to adapt accordingly, quote, we will have to work through societal disruption. So he's, he's a weirdo too. We, we will have to what is gonna wheeze? He party people, I don't understand the thing that destroys Humanity. We're just gonna have to work with figured out together that we thought we knew until yesterday I could stop building it. Yeah, we all. Yes. All figured this out. Yeah. But cashier, so we're not gonna stop. We're not gonna stop you every day people. No one is because well, even though the cynical view is we couldn't solve the climate crisis for the sake of humanity, but we absolutely will solve it for AI. They want to go to the Moon. Because they estimate 100 trillion more times more energy from the Sun. If the produced energy on the moon, which means there is more than just soon to opportunity in Google talking about this. These are actually Mark benioff was talking about this. Elon Musk has talked about this many of these billionaire weirdos have talked about Bezos has talked about it. The pitch here is US data centers are currently already eating over 4% of the United States electricity. The estimate is it could triple by 2028 in just two and a half years effectively because they're building Ai. And everybody's talking about AI if you go to the Moon, You need to hire people. You need to build components, you'd need to get stuff up there. You need maintenance of it and extraterrestrial data centers, could cut emissions by a factor of 10, they would reduce energy consumption on Earth by 10. It would all be solar, you could have ai, which I hate but you'd have it without the energy. Does the sun like saying this, every day people in Ohio? Does the Sun have a vote of whether it wants? Its energy to go, all the big tech company? The sun would vote for, I will destroy you all in a billion years. Anyway, that's the sun vote. You know, what's up? Yes, stupid. This is you know what they're the name of this is called you know as soon as calling this project. Yes project catcher projects son catch. Yeah, it didn't that one. Didn't go through a focus group clearly one. Well because the one thing that we know the AI can't do is creativity. So what's the final score here? Let's get out of here. It's been a depressing doing this for us. You're down to a, you've actually broke the string. Since May you've been a six every week, we are down to a five 5.3. Oh, I'm surprised. It's that high. I was wrong with us. I I mean we were extra cynical this week. I don't understand it. I came up with uplifting because I felt like I ruined it. I got I was ranting bloated because I'm like, eating whatever. I feel like I just think you could possibly ruin that. I ruined it. I want more sugar like Old Dell gives six billion dollars of kids know. He's giving it to the Trump accounts. Not yeah, the whole thing got ruined, that's his little known as Damian to his mother. I am your analyst whole mattress. We are free float. Come back. We got shows what we doing the proxy count on us forever. We do shows forever. Maybe, we'll see. I think we'll do a proxy countdown this week, probably, but we have our Friday, show, Mike and Anne Sheryl. Surprised me coming tomorrow, they're talking about proxy advisors and the legalities of you know, Florida's attacking him, Texas attacking Them. They're going to talk about that stuff. Otherwise stay tuned. Come back soon till then good. Bye.