Transcript
Oh, there we go. There it is. I'm glad we don't have to be funny today. There's no pressure to be funny live, funny from your ESG anxiety machine. Why would anyone buy that? I just, I don't know why you'd want that. I am a CI is selling one. Yeah, they're selling them now. Yeah, I don't know why it's a business pants Friday. Show here at September 12th Studios, featuring analysts whole mattress gardee. Oh yeah, on today's weekly wrap up, nepo babies, dominating media ownership, that sounds fun. Yeah, that's what I love a male CEO whines about being tired. While a female governor does a thing, And a hole. Yeah. And a whole speed round and me doing everything I can to avoid talking about a massive jerk that was killed a few days ago. Oh, I don't want to talk about our show. Today is being sponsored by free flow analytics.com. Yeah, the only platform measuring board power connections performance for free. Float Analytics. um, can we just get into the whole thing goes through story of the week. Not even know the whole thing is, I don't even know. We got a lot of production notes Here. I kind of want to know. I've been feeling just dreadfully anxious and depressed. The last few days, it's been bad. It's been like like I feel myself getting grayer by the second and people in this country. People keep telling me like, oh, we gotta go. Now we gotta move. I'm like, where am I going? Like, where am I moving? I mean, come on. I mean, where am I going? I honestly Island somewhere. We could go to. I mean, I feel like may already is an island, but where that we're who's buying that for me, who's like, for you, have like a populist or oyster, man, who's gonna win the great good. It's great. Probably not, you know, he's gonna lose. All right. Come on, let's go. Start. Yeah. All right. And by the way, if you were listening and you do have a solution for me and you do know where I'm going, tell me where? Where am I going? Really, honestly. Where am I going? I started the week. Not not the one, maybe you're thinking of because really and maybe Matt will disagree with me later but it's not what we do here. We don't cover like like you know, the color assassinations Mass violence and horrible media coverage. I'm gonna mention later. All right, I want to mention the thing later but it's not really what we do. That's correct Lachlan Murdoch, secures control of fox and News, Corp. I mean, really, it doesn't? It almost seems related, I mean, and ending succession fight. I mean, all the stories. I'm actually picking do seem related to this. Horrible assassination. Blob bull crap. But so here it is, here's the deal. I didn't even know this is a possibility, but but Lachlan Murdoch, who is the conservative one is being given the Empire and the way and the way they saw this was quite easy. And again, I didn't know this was a choice. They're buying out his siblings, they're giving them cash, not permanently. Okay, until the new, trust Arrangement Secours. Lachlan's control over the companies through 2050 and and for and he gets all the voting rights and for those siblings to give up the Voting Rights, they each get 1.1 billion dollars in cash. That's a little took just a nice check. That's that's my favorite part about this. Congratulations, liberals. They were supposed to be the liberal runs good. Go and liberals. My favorite part about the story is like, sewing machine. And hate just cost 1.1 million per what. It, what would have been the discount if you would stayed and fought? You would have gotten like 600 million or something like, what did you sell it out for? I really wanted to know how much money do you effing need honestly. Like, when, when Prudence Elizabeth and James get their 1.1 billion, do they look at the pile of money like, in their 15th bedroom and say, yeah, it was definitely worth selling out democracy for that pile. The other piles were not big enough. This pile makes just don't tell me that they could have taken. Like, if I find out later that they could have still had 500 million but still fought lachlan's control. I'm I'm gonna throw up in my mouth once again. The other part of this, I don't know if they're interested in what verse report says his chair Emeritus. Do we care about that. As he said, the the trust runs through 2015. I don't. What is it with 2050 explained? I don't really know. I don't really know 2025 right now. Why is everything? I don't know. World ends in 256 so I guess Fox News is going to stay horrible. They're gonna just keep Trying to destroy our democracy, one horrible newscast at a time and there you go. Congratulations, Murdoch family. I'm really excited for the shareholder proposal next year, that asks for them to declassify the board. I'm really excited for that for it to lose again. Uh, the next, that's the first story, the next story. Let's just stay in media, the next the Larry, okay. Then it was a weird week and so many ways other than this stupid, you know, people wanting to kill each other. Larry. So, I don't know if you know this, but Oracle, I guess reported massive revenues or something and they're yep, because everything's a meme stock. NOW, one thing, you'll notice the entire country seems to press both left and the right, but the stock market is doing great. Like, it's all awesome. Yeah, it's storing. So Oracle did reported something suddenly Larry Ellison's, net worth skyrocketed, all the headlines were like Larry Ellison passes, Elon Musk, and the richest man in the world. First of all I don't I can't believe you're report on this. I find it. Yeah the story. Who's the richest? Yeah. If I had to be just tasteful and growth But the headline was Larry Ellison's 100 billion dollar day reminds us why David Ellison could buy Paramount. So here's what's also happening. David Ellison who is the new owner of Paramount skydance is preparing to make a bid for Warner Brothers Discovery. So His son. Is because his dad is super rich is now in the position to basically own every Media Company except for Fox, I guess, right? I guess he, well, I guess he could buy Fox but also Disney would have ABC, the Legacy. Well, he could maybe could buy that too. I don't know, right? That happily probably sell that. I mean, that's already controlled by a family, the Disney family, right? I mean, it's all control it anymore. Oh, yeah. Okay, but yeah, that's just their name. They don't have your right. It's not like the wall. It's not like the wall. Mart know the Walmart. Well. This is a little scary in as much as like, like conservatives in this country have been talking about how the left-wing media and radical left is been basically controlling everything. You know what Mother Mother Jones magazine? They control everything right. You know now so Fox News is the most watched channel in this country that Larry Ellison's. Son has already transformed. CBS, they already like brought in a New Deal. Basically, like liens conservative. They're basically pushing it to be a conservative media Empire, between Paramount and skydance and that leaves Disney and we think Disney is a paragon of liberal virtue, like Disney's. Yeah, even MSNBC is like disavowed its left leading and they're changing their name, they're rebranding. So there's nothing there's not a thing, right? Like there's not even a political thing media are we angry about. Honestly, if locked, if the Murdoch family, the Ellison family, if they were left wing, I still would be against this. This is just the way it's meant to be. Like, it's not how media should be controlled. So it's just disturbing to me, especially when you have It's just kids who didn't even earn their right to control media. I mean this is a he's the proposed bid is to buy all of Warner's brother's Discovery. That's a lot of media property. It's he's gonna buy the entire company with cash. I mean like yeah, his cash, right? I'm just saying I just find to be, it's outrageous and I can't believe we looked the other way on this. I I mean, one of the things that has disturb me over the past few days is just is the American Love Of Violence. I know we all pretending that we were upset about this. But I mean, we got, we love violence in this country. We do we, like on CNN, which is, uh, which would be one of the companies that Ellison would buy, right? I think it's a Warner Brothers. CNN, yeah, the headline itself. The headline. Talked about how they discovered some rifle and they detailed the everything about the rifle. Like, I'm not a gun person but they details like the size of the rifle and all just like, like why can't you just say rifle? Like, how bloodthirsty are we in this country? That I have to know all these details? Like we need to know the rifle at all. Like I don't know. I don't even know. But anyway. So now we have nepo babies who are right? Leaning controlling the media. So and, and again, I didn't want to talk about the guy who was assessed but it is really most of the people. I know most of the people in my, you know, boring little state and city of Portland Maine life goes on. I don't even know that most of us really know who this person is or was, who was killed. It really the media does a great job of just pumping out story after story about this and highlighting every angle of the death and I didn't even see the video. But But I heard that there's a horrible really atrociously violent video where he gets kill. And anyway so you didn't want to talk about it. Okay, but no I'm only talking about it in the context of look who owns our media like yeah. Well I mean it's not a non-profit Consortium, I mean it's David Ellison is a very mature 42 year old who like like I'm sure is not going to use divisiveness and violence to sell advertising media, right? Like that wouldn't happen. Not like the mature. Mark Zuckerberg, who owns, you know, all of the internet media and it doesn't want divisive, you know, engagement. So like I don't know what your problem is here. There's just going to be four. So now we have Four, billionaire white guys who run all of AI and technology and we'll have four nepo. Baby white guys who run all of media. Yeah. And like Legacy Media plus, you know, like some dabbling of tech media. What do we left with? So there's like eight white guys who run. Everything we see here. Touch what we're left with is put your fucking phone down and go outside. Guess where you can't actually write that? Well, that's true. We took a took a drive with my my lady friend yesterday because me a little to anxious and we drove around looked at the ocean. And yeah, outside is actually kind of nice. It's calmly. Nice out outside. It's like really nice for the moment. We haven't destroyed that yet. That's true. That's true. My last story actually, my touch on that. I talked about Vanguard and voting, but let me get to the third story that week first. So the second one is another nepo baby buying all of media after his daddy gets super rich. The third story of the week. Meanwhile, I just wanted to mention this because we love to talk about Jamie dimon and this was sort of the big story of the week and I don't think the story is going to go away necessarily. I mean there's already conspiracy theories about about tying This Together. Anyway I just wanted to capture this because just still feel sort of important to me at least Senators call. For hearings about jpmorgan's ties to Jeffrey Epstein. So they want to CEO, Jamie Diamond to testify about keeping Epstein as a client until 2013. And, and also this week, the Trump, the Epstein like birthday book was released and Trump has a has some horrible stupid. Birthday letters that do stupid is the right, but I'm just telling you the reason why I picked this is because it all kind of ties to get together, right? Because you to your point there's like 10 white dudes who kind of her seemed in control and they all kind of it. All kind of trickles back towards Donald Trump, and a lot of his, a lot of him and his buddy. And remember what last week, one of the stories was this big lunch or whatever he was with all the tech CEOs, all the tech Bros, like that was right kissing his butt and making up numbers. Yeah. In which a third of the room were College dropouts, which like twice as much as the as the number of women in the room, but that's the point, right? Like I actually think the thing that ties all these stories together, right? This the meritocracy is Donald Trump and Heritage his dad's money. And you know, that's true, you're on it Lachlan. Murdoch and Heritage is, yeah, Empire makes all his money on it. Derek Danielson uses some of the money to buy himself. Some of them might On a college. Some of them may be didn't like most of them, didn't go to college like Elon Musk used his dad's money to start his first company and then sold that and then used that money and subsidies from the US government to build SpaceX. He bought Tesla, he didn't build it, right? Like this is basically rich white guys, which right kids Using their parents money. To give themselves absolute control. Well, this is why the there the the Sinister Genius of controlling their voters through this divisive hate. And this culture war is is really it's a boon for them because I don't know how there were reports at the Trump family has already and I have a story. I want to cover before I move on to my last tour that weak but the Trump family's already made like three to six billion dollars so far this crypto or whatever, just put a nonsense, that doesn't benefit Humanity at all. I and it's just I sit back and I Marvel, that his supporters still support him with all this graph going, but, but, I'll let you talk, but I want to cover one more thing. Yeah. Segue into the next thing, I mean, like you're talking about voters, right? Like well, hold on. Wait, there's another set of Voters that wait to weigh in. Wait, wait on the voters. I found this little nugget in my trolling of SEC stuff and director stuff. Eric Trump. So okay, so Eric Trump was elected, I say elected. He was appointed to the board of alt 5, which is another one of these stupid crypto things. Right? It's in crypto bank for the Trump crypto which, you know, at first I was like with all the hunter buying stuff. I was just amazed like his like kids are getting appointed boards like during his. Like what the hell is going on? No one cares, but but then I don't have a laptops that I saw this. He was removed from the board. This is a filing I just saw after discussions with Aztec Stark stock market, Eric Trump was removed from the alt 5 board and this is a segue to the next story. This is based in order to comply with nasdaq's listing, rules, that was kind of the vague language they used, right? He's gonna stay as a board Observer, which means he can attend meeting shows up, but which is stupid to me. But here's the even stupider part. NASDAQ, I hate you. They it's unclear which of NASDAQ rules, cause Eric Trump to be where they don't even telling us. Why? The like this is the part of the alternative democracy and all the stuff that makes me. Insane is, like, you're removing this guy's a director, whether that's good or bad. I don't know. Tell us why like, shareholders. Why I hate that. I hate. I don't like it. I don't like that. Tell us a part that buy. Yeah, what about that? Bothers me is, you will remove Eric Trump as a director and I'm still say he does not have voting power. He's allowed to be a board. Observer, how was it in the back of the room and says, dad's not gonna like that? Oh, I don't get to vote but dad's not gonna like that. And you think every director in the Trump, you know, World Liberty, Trump, crypto Bank company is going to be like, we should we're gonna vote down. What Eric says about his debt. There's no fucking way and NASDAQ fill us in. Why is it cold company? NASDAQ, this is what you do. You get you get rich off of this. NASDAQ, first of all, tell us why? The second of all tell us why he gets to stay. Like, tell us things. Tell us anything like, ridiculous. Anyway, that segue isn't the last story of the week, Vanguard. This is where I get nerdy. Again, Vanguard tries to get investors interested in proxy voting. For those of you don't know, Vanguard is one of the, what, the three largest Vanguard State Street and black rock that three big ass. The three big ones. Yeah. You know what? Yeah, just go ahead. The end of that. Go ahead, the alt 5. Oh, they're no women on that board. Well yeah, we already covered not a woman in sight. No just be sure. Well this is the meritocracy right? Like we want we want the sons of of rich people or presidents or president rich people. That's what the meritocracy really represents. So vanguard's trying to I I don't know why this story popped this week. I think there was a I think there was some research revealed about this vanguards trying to get millions of its fund. Investors involved in big corporate decisions by giving them, you know, choice in voting. But so far that they said that most people are just tuning out. They're calling this rational apathy where most investors skip shareholder votes because it feels like it has hassle with a little impact on their own wallet. And I got to say that the companies do a great job, making it feel like a asshole because the proxy statements are even for us, are often pretty hard to kind of understand and figure out. They said that they all said the individuals often skip votes or side with management letting company leaders keep their grip on their companies. So So now, we've told manager. So so the Vanguard, the reason why this is in the news is Vanguard, just released some data about it. They said there's 82,000 investors who are participating, investor Choice which is a very small percentage of very small. Number of investors is double them 2024 and Tiny, right? Like they're actually part of what their problem is. They can't reach the investors to even get them to make a choice about their own voter choice. So this is a yeah to your point 82,000 people out of the companies, 50 million investors. That's not yeah, this is nothing. This is nothing Burger of those 82000, the data that they released is 46% of them or for just under 46% of them have chosen eyes are company aligned policy or Eagan Jones, wealth focused policy which is just come company alignment policy? Yeah, so literally everyone's just choosing what sounds like do. What management says the signaling here. If you are Our management is when it because Vanguard is going to publish this and you know, exactly how much Vanguard owns of your company. You know exactly what to expect in every single pilot. Like you could just let every share a little proposal, go to vote and know you're gonna win them all. You wouldn't even have to do a rebuttal. Why even bother? Just be like we we say vote. No, you know that the policies BlackRock State Street are doing the same exact thing. You know that the policies are and the policy choices of the investors are it just means literally, you don't even have to show up to your own elections. You're guaranteed to get voted in. It actually turns out to be nuts because you've not Vanguard has an educated anyone into what voting means, they've given the choice without education, so all they do is Empower management to get control. It's effectively, a private company is now every public company with voter choice, will become private because Vanguard BlackRock and States Street owns. So, Much of the vote that it's that, you're giving management 20% of every vote and here. And here's what else is going on to ensure that this is from Wednesday. Found this. On the SEC website, Financial Services committee is from the house. That's the house is financial services committee examines the shareholder proposal process and proxy advisory firms. So here's a quote from chairman french hill of this committee. Man to get. He's talking about the sarbanes Oxley and Dodd-Frank sit together. These two laws have driven up costs. This is like the misinformation that's being like dollars if you cost, but this is important because this is what they're doing. They're they're throwing out unresearched unverified evidence to support that we should shut down the shareholder democracy. Essentially, this is what he said together. These two laws of driven up costs, increase the length and complexity statements expanded this disclosure and oversight process and fundamentally change. Much of the children access to the proxy system. And just let me just tell you who french hill is. Just in case you're curious. He was the chair and CEO and founder of Delta trust in bacon Corporation. So he comes from that world. He's also a direct descendant of a slave plantation, owner, Creed teller. But that's Another, but that's, that's beside the point that's beside the point, okay? So Andy Barr. He's a Kentucky representative. He had this to say that guy's a mo about shareholder proposals. He said, allowing a small group of left-wing activists to hijack. The proxy proposal process to push, social environmental, Dei or political objectives, totally unrelated to the Core Business of a company does not Advance the cause of capitalism undermines capitalism it corrupts capitalism, because it results in the Miss, allocation of resources of the company, it undermines, the profitability of the company hurts the shareholders. Again, there is absolutely no proof of this. That itself is a highly politicized politically charged. Wow, that surprising and okay, well, he put, but I'm just saying on the show. I'm just saying, like, like It'd be one thing if they backed it up with proof that it's undermining Capital to me, it seems like a healthy part of capitalism to have shareholders be involved and, and the annual Rite of the proxy process voting on a minute. Voting on directors voting on pay, but but he just saying it, corrupts capitalism end of statement, right? So anyway, that's all. So, what's going on to, to support Vanguard basically part of this? This rational apathy of shareholders? Yeah, go ahead did. Did anyone mention to Andy that 40% of the show proposals last year were from Auntie wok? And it doesn't matter. I did not matter like look, said this, when the SEC guidance came out, And I love being right, but I wish somebody actually listened to the show and that we were right? We said Right out of the gate that the guy, the new SEC guidance was going to chill a shareholder engagement and shareholder. Proposals, we knew that the Trump Administration was going to do this anyway. But we said the antidote to this is the only thing they can't take away. You can vote against directors. If you had data on directors, you can vote on the data because you can't talk to them anymore. You can't, you're going to be accused of subverting shareholders democracy, and raising costs. If you like, look at a proposal submit a proposal, everybody needs to move off of the idea that you're holding proposals matter at all. Anyway, we are talking about proposals that lose 99% of the time. There are 80% to 20%, we call it victories, right? Like it's nuts that we spend so much fucking talking time on shareholder, proposals and I get the market signal. You want to send send it by voting against directors, vote against people. The people make all the decisions. They make all the money, they have all the incentives, the share of the proposals have accomplished like, like much less than we want to give them credit for its, the people that you're talking to year after year, those are the ones that matter. Vote them out, you have to overcome the, the Cheryl The Proposal conversation. You gotta focus on voting for directors. It's the only way because you're going to get every proposal you put up is gear going to be a left-wing lunatic. Now, it doesn't mean it doesn't matter if you're left or right wing and a minimum and a minimum, it's at least I haven't you to get involved. It's an Avenue to to express your your Content your descent. It's better than you. Can't just, you can't just stay on social media, all the time. Just coming out with like arguments and witty, thoughts and memes. And I mean it is, it's a direct Avenue of descent like get involved, seriously. I mean, and it's not that like, our sponsor Free Will, and Alex has a free database of directors on the web. It's free, it's not as hard. That's thinking, that's where I laugh at this. So called burden of the shareholders position to vote on all this stuff, free full analytics, we, we can help you with that in a second. I mean, like, literally, we can help you vote on all of your equities, almost instantly. I mean, I mean the cost of doing it. Like if two guys with like a desire and a database can come up with like a full Suite of performance metrics and and and shit to use, you have the time and energy to just Pick some threshold. Say, if someone underperforms on X, Y and Z were voting against them, we've been told it's too aggressive to vote against them. Well, is it is it, is it more aggressive to vote against a director? Or is it more aggressive to literally wait for every shareholder, right? To be taken from you by regulators and politicians who don't want you to express a shareholder opinion. Look, it's part of the reason why we continue to persist creating these insipid shows is because if you just Keep in the conversation, keep talking about, the companies, talk about the directors, talk about the CEOs, you will see that that maybe this, maybe the process can even be interesting to you. Maybe just getting involved with the companies that you own and voting on it. It doesn't have to be so cold and heartless and capitalists the way they explain it. There's actually the stories there's there's interesting threads to find. There's there's I mean, it's it's not just this monolith to be afraid of, you know what I mean? Like, this is why we try to treat just like sports radio, like it. These are real people. These are real stories get involved right now. All right. Now like because you're you're the someone up for people because we talked a lot of different directions. You take over. You've got Larry the David nepo baby number two by his Paramount. Daddy had a big week buys Warner Brothers. Yeah, and dad had a big week so nipple, baby can buy stuff. Yeah. I mean isn't that what it is? It's like literally like daddy came home with a new client or a big check. Let's buy our like the our 16 year old the new Corvette like oh that's the second largest Media company in the world. Yeah, cuz what's important here is is that when you when they calling it like he has a cushion, the vast wealth. Gives him a cushion to make horrible decisions for decades, right? I mean, like the cushion you're talking about, like, so right now, Warner Brothers, Discovery is trading at 47 billion dollars market cap, right? And that's up, like, 15% from yesterday before. This is so buying it, he's talking about buying it. So like let's say it was like 50 billion that's half of that of his new net worth from the Oracle jump. And even if it was 99 billion out of the 100 you could live on a billion dollars forever, you don't need another dollar for the rest of your life. Got a cushion. Oh yeah. So there's a Lachlan nepo. There's David Ellison. Nepo. There is a JP Morgan Epstein. Plus Trump, alt 5 board and Trump no sense. He's just and Vanguard and then Vanguard, I'm voting for Vanguard because Look this is going to be there's a little bit of like a foreshadowing of what's going to be on proxy countdown in the next two weeks where we like two weeks from now. We're gonna we're gonna look at the upcoming proxy season in the US. This is going to be the talking point of the proxy season, like these voter Choice, the focus on cracking down on the Texas law that stops like ISS and glass Lewis from giving any sort of advise against management. The like, this is a real problem because if you're an investor, a pension fund, you're terrified to do anything anymore, except you can cast a vote and you can have data to cast that vote. Very simple data, right? Like justify old data not like we just knowledge. How much is Just and I just gaining knowledge. I think the conversation desperately needs to shift around democracy. You know everything there is to know by now about the Detroit Lions so why don't you tune that out a bit and get some knowledge and other areas of your life? Let's go to good. Sorry tutorial lines. Actually, I have two good ones. I actually like I have one. It's actually relates to Vanguard, then you go first, you go. All right, so like in the Vanguard data that they published They found that young investors like sub, 40. ESG voting policy was, by far, the most popular choice. That's what they found. Oh, like by far. What can you quantify by far? So the younger investors 44 and younger were twice as likely to choose it. Then older investors. So 42% of them chose glass Lewis, ESG policy where 17% of 45 and older. Investors chose well glass, Lewis ESG policy, we're caught off like 45, is that what? I don't know why congratulations. CEOs. This is probably your fault, all of your like, all of your wealth, personal wealth generation, and horrible policies is probably why young people are turning to ESG voting. And the other thing that goes along with that is this, I didn't cover the story, but there's a new Gallup poll saying that us support for capitalism sings to new low mostly because young people are starting to wonder if maybe socialism is a better idea. But again, I believe I'm just bringing that up for this reason because I also blame all of you EOS, all the ellisons and musks because you're, you're all the hoarding of all this like inhuman. Hoarding of wealth is is I know for a fact is turning off younger Generations. Maybe it's not turning off your fellow Boomers and and whoever else who play golf with you, but it is starting to have a an effect. Like I think people are starting to to the more articles and headlines we have about CEO pay ratios and all these things. It's slowly kind of making a difference. I saw, I'm not surprised that young people would want an ESG, voting policy over the Eagan. Don't, what is it that he Jones managed? Well, well, I mean policy, they don't need any more focus on wealth and management believe. Well, I think young people recognize that they have to live in the world. Exactly, exactly. And they don't want to live in a world that has no trees and they want to go for their friend. If Six, three six people have all the maybe once in a while. Yeah like it's just it's not great. So like that headline, my two good list, my first one's kind of silly but I still like it Boone Electric Co-op members. Can cast drive-thru votes for directors? What? Wait, like a donut like getting, I guess it's Vanguard should do right? Like, why can't we vote for directors? Like right at the Duncan window, like, right? I love this great idea. The second one is actually good. This is weird. Like I can't find the angle that you would. You would be cynical about this one. First of all, I will say that the governor of New Mexico is a woman. Michelle Grisham So I guess guess this is what happens when women are in charge of things. We don't know in the corporate world because we just don't have any evidence. Is that new New Mexico will be the first state to make child care. Free. Wow, no. Zero dollars. Three saving families up to 12,000 dollars per year per 12,000 per child annually. That's incredible. I mean, that really, I'm just what, what more is there to say about this? I don't really know. I mean, what is New Mexico produced that they can afford to do this? Maybe they produce less well hoarding CEOs, I don't know. I mean, I don't, I don't understand like why everyone else can't pay this. Yeah, like that does, it doesn't make any sense. I tell the story all the time as a way of like demonstrating, how incredibly let's just say kind the leadership was when in Quebec, when I lived there but one of the things that they were angry about when I was living in Quebec, in, in Canada, was that they were threatening to raise the price of daycare to five dollars per day and people were angry about it. And I was like, wow, what a great cultural, like, what a great like that. Like that. You know what I mean? Like, this is amazing. Like, I I think this is got a win. I do like that. That this is, regardless of income. So, not much people can complain, I'm a little. Yeah, like that's true, right? Like, you know, at first, I was like, kind of bothered by this. I was like, let them pay their share, but I'm thinking this is the way to fight the anti Dei trolls, right? You say, hey, it's open to everyone, we're not open to everyone, this is not just against rich people, right? It's not like it's like she's one step ahead of me. She knows what she's I think. I think this is fabulous. That's my winner. I assume that's your winner because I mean look if it wasn't if she wasn't there this drive through votes for directors would have easily been my winner but but that's not. But this one this week of all weeks I gotta take the victories where they are. So yeah. All right, let's give speaking of where they are. Let's make it hard on ourselves. All right. For assholes this week, I wanted to do something different because I was just so hard to choose. I didn't asshole speed round. Jesus. Okay, so I'm going to throw out. There's eight options here. They're fast options. I'll give you like a headline, a person, or a thing that's an asshole, a like, a sentence or two about it, and then you're going to rate it on an asshole meter, from 0 to 10, 10 being the most asshole. I'm gonna do this right at the top of my head, okay? Sure. You write off the top of your head and and the outcome of this, whatever One's Gonna finding. Those are its binding like say, okay, it's a binding. This is a binding vote and the outcome of this will be determining who the assholes of the week are because I'm sure that they'll be sometimes. So we're what are zero to ten zero 10 being. Right? A big ass hole. Yeah. All right, let's let's get let's, let's get in the mood here. Okay. First Paul Atkins. Who's the SEC Chief Paul? Yes SCC. There's a headline SEC. Chief threatens ban on European accounting. Rules over sustainability. So the us is thinking of banning ifers. Yeah, entirely. Because they don't like the data that other countries want from their companies. This is actually this is so insecure. Yeah this gel is worth one of our predictions or this year that we're just gonna slowly get rid of data. Right? Basically all proxy days just like the fact that like the US has feet and miles and pounds and like we made up all our own ways to measure things that no one else in the world uses. Why not just have our own way to measure companies. We'll just measure every thing in and make believe yes language look Paul Atkins. The first one's always hard because you kind of you setting a you know it's coming up. So I this is bad but it doesn't doesn't break my heart. It's a sick. Sick got it? Yeah. All right. How about this? Sam Altman. Oh, Here's the here's the headline I haven't had a good night of sleep since chat GPT launched, Sam Altman. Admits the weight of AI keeps him up at night. Sam. Shut the fuk up close. It says, turn it off. He also said this week that people are starting to talk, like AI. I didn't like yeah, he said that too. Look, I mean, am I? Am I doing my thoughts of Sam Altman are just that quote. I mean, you're doing, is he an asshole of the week zero to ten just based on that? Quote, I mean, this is all like the founder Tech mode, bromo like billionaire talk. Like I I've been hearing this all unfortunately, for the last 20 years. So, you know, it's a seven. I mean, I don't. Okay. Okay, we're getting a little. Yeah, as holy How about journalists who don't understand dual class shares? Well, this is actually, this is important to me. This is, this is right, I'm getting right at you. Here's the headline. I'm just gonna give you the headline. You don't need any other context here. Oracle, CEO. One of the world's richest self-made. Women just got 412 million richer in 6 hours. Okay, tell me the dual-class part of this Larry Ellison is the founder and dual class owner of Oracle Safra Catz. Is his hand picked person to run it. Yeah, right. So Journal journalists Calling her one of the world's richest self-made. Women is almost demeaning because there's a guy who literally just made a hundred billion dollars in a day standing over her shoulder telling her what to do. I hate that. She's one of our few female CEOs. I hate that. It's saphir cats over there. That's the thing, the only come in to deal like the post. Bro. You know clean up party. Well, here's the part of the Larry Ellison Story that I didn't actually get to. This is from Barron's and hats off The Baron's for actually having like the the insight to cover it from this angle. The artist the headline is a key to Larry Ellison's, wealth, creation years of Oracle stock BuyBacks. So they went out to outline these. How aggressively Oracle bought back, its own shares that and that Larry Ellison's ownership percentage Rose from about 23% to around 41% merely just by buying back stock and And that his net. Well and his wealth generated from this doubled just by buying back. So the the way these guys are able to manipulate their own. Well, the stock market everything is just really quite incredible but Hats Off The Baron's. The only one who had like the courage to, to talk about something other than like, hey, look how rich is now. Look That's the number on this. Give me a number on. I don't know like a that's a five a five. Yeah, right. Say all right I mean assholes are very sure. Assholes are very strong word to me. I mean, you know, oh geez, Louisiana snowflake, how about Charlie sharp? Oh, um, here's the headline Wells, Fargo, CEO. Not named obviously, but it is Charlie. Sharp says, Trump is entitled to be vocal about the FED. I don't like this one. Sharp is also on the board of Microsoft and presided over the Enigma of success that was firing most of their employees while making more money. Hey ever made. This is a nine because like honestly and I wanted to be a 10 but I'm just waiting to see if I get really angry at someone. I don't think. But my my instinct was a 10 because here's why I'm gonna give it a 10, here's why corporations CEOs, you're suddenly super quiet on Dei, you're getting rid of DJI because you're afraid of trump and you're afraid of politics and all this stuff, then why? Do you also then? Get to kiss his ass? Yeah. Weigh in on the other, you should be weighing on anything. Like if you're gonna turn your mouth, if you're turning your back on people of color and women in this country, then you should be shutting your mouth when it comes to supporting the fat or Donald Trump's fat mouth about Fed. So chairs, Matt change it to a 10 which I'm okay with but go ahead. What else do you have? All right. How about Jamie dimon? Yeah, I love Jamie. Jamie dimon says, actually the headline. Yeah, Diamond says economy is weakening but he can't make sense of all the different data. Then, quote, maybe one day AI will fix the problem. Yeah. That's this is. Yeah, he also had one that's like Jamie. Diamond says, he kind of he's winking, but it, but it might become a recession, but I don't really know right now. This is like, a great. Thank you. Why are we listening to you? Let's hear about your ties to Jeffrey Epstein. I might be more. Yeah, well, that's the second part of this, right? This is the week that JP Morgan's, like, like the Jeffrey stuff came out where they processed over a billion dollars in Epstein like business. Despite the fact that they knew he was a sex offender, right? Like they knew it and they sent it to the business. Yeah. Voting 51 to 49 to not disclose the Epstein files. A good. Congratulations. Senate. That's a good work. Yes. So Jamie dimon, give me a number. I thought that was the one thing that we all As Americans agreed upon us, that we hated, like you again children, like sexual, abuse pedophilia all that stuff. That's the one thing that we see, always abuse, but that's what we always, we rallied behind that as a people, like, we always hated those types but now, I guess we don't. So Jamie Diamond. I don't know. I mean, I think that Charles Scharf thing is in some ways more damaging so I'm gonna, I'm gonna call this, like an AI. I mean, hey, I got it. All right, how about This reverse justification of zux automatically attend. I don't even care like years that line. Yeah. Meta CFO. Yeah explains CEO. Mark Zuckerberg's 600 billion pledge to the White House. Yeah. I don't attend in every direction. Imagine being this. Yeah, I actually feel bad. Yeah, you gotta like go into like a Press Room press conference. You got an issue statements. You got to say all sorts of shit at conferences, whatever, and someone's like what? What's Mark Zuckerberg's plan for that 600 billion. He said to Trump and you have to be like, oh well this was the plan. Meanwhile, it's on a hot mic that Zuckerberg had no idea. The question was coming was not prepared and made up a number to make it sound. Really good for Trump said to Trump, I'm not sure what number you wanted me to go with their right? Like said that to Trump, here's what I didn't capture this week that we could have talked about. First of all, the FTC is, is they're looking into a lot of social media and big and big Tech because of the way it's basically destroying our children, right? But then but then all so former seat, I think he was a CEO Jeffrey. Katzenberg was an evolved with Disney. Yeah, Disney. Yeah, he was talking about how it took 80 years to regulate like the use of seat belts. So we're never gonna get regulation. In this area of protecting our children as much as we need it. And then there was another report about how the metaverse and it's the how it targets how its ability to Target children like this. Like I was using the Oculus Rift. Yeah. And there's a there's a whistle bore reports about this and Mark knew about this and is not doing anything about it. I mean nobody cares Mark needs to go. That company needs to just disappear. Go away like not just quietly. Yeah, the CFO explain that had to explain. Oh, don't tell me another woman. On course, Susan Li The CFO is a woman on clean. I also saw that you know the snap CEO Evan Spiegel, he's another dual Clash shares Bozo, maybe a drop-off. I don't remember. He said that the snap needs to go into founder to save itself. Oh yeah. You know I think Evan I wish Kevin I wish you'd call me because you know I'd say walk away from snap, let it go bankrupt. We don't know. Need. Nobody cares by yourself. Nothing. Doing nothing for me. How about you start a company? That benefits Humanity. How about that? I'm getting a little tired option. Yeah, he's only two more Bros. That's a 10. I mean, Here's the headline. The gender pay Gap is getting wider, reversing progress, congrats to Emily, Peck from axios for actually picking up on this. The pay Gap is now back where it was in 2017 before the metoo movement, right? So while the two movement is essentially been nullified by the current Trump quirky and anti-diagonal talk about that anymore, right? I mean, are you allowed to openly support women? I mean, That was one of the band words for rights and I might get arrested for for not crying that. Kirk's been killed. But if I support women openly that's, that's, that's, that's definitely a no no, right? And and thank you to Emily Peck by the way, axio. She actually had covered of our bro iPod. She put out that article late last week, so if you want to Google axios, Emily Peck, you'll read all her stuff. We're big fans of Emily. Peck we did all, yeah. So that's a 10. That was a 10. That was yeah what else you got? Last one. Yeah, so now this one I don't we got ties for assholes know. There's three of them at a time for us. Okay. We can have three assholes this weekend, everything, Charlie Kirk. It doesn't Charlie. That's a ton of it, but go, I'm not gonna talk about Charlie Kirk. I think there are two ten. I think there are two things happening. Simultaneously, their probable root causes for political assassinations for the violence. Well, this is not new. First of all, political go ahead, let's not pretend it's new but like, like I don't care about Charlie Kirk at all right. Like I thought he was a blowhard and whatever Lord is putting it. Putting it lightly I for any of you don't know anything about this guy. If you want to ruin the next five minutes of your life, go read about everything. Oh, he is what he did. What he did, sorry to get all I know is that there are two things that do exist in our world and sort of the corporate world that Contributors, major contributor factors to political violence to somebody. Somebody had to feel away to get on a roof and shoot a guy, right? Like, and it's not the first and it's not going to be the last. Number one should be the last. Yeah, is hopelessness. That's a big one which like look, Elon Musk is currently proposing to pay himself 68% of all the wealth of the bottom, 50% of us healthy households. I mean, the bottom half. Yeah, of all us households and I'm talking every single household in the country. Elon Musk wants 68% of their money. You know, pay, you know, who's already supported? This is Morgan Stanley. They're already giving a big thumbs up as you guys because everybody sees like, oh well if he gets a point five trillion for shareholders, right? Like but like and we'll cover this in the proxy countdown. It actually isn't good for shareholders and I don't care, I don't care. Really bad for Humanity. Yes. Because if this pay package, is he If his pay passes, he will have as much worth as one quarter of everyone. Under the age of 40, every single person that's 266 million people that Elon Musk will have as much money as all of them together. Well, imagine that pay ratio. This is why 6 million to one but this is why I suspect there are Gallup. Polls saying that people are turning against couples. I'm a bit and and why like, young voters might go with the ESG policies. That Vanguard this. I expect it's because of people like, but if you like, we're convinced that because he bought a car company and borrowed money from the US to build rockets, that he's the singular genius and you've combined that fact like the incredible disparity and wealth. You look at these CEO pay ratios, there are absurd, combining that with the fact that there are four billionaire white men who basically control everything. We see everything, we read everything, we see and everything we see tells, Us every day that your life sucks and the reason is the other side, the reason some other guy doomscrolling they call. It's just like the reason why you're not getting over. Is, you're not a man. The reason why you're not getting over, is your your not a Democrat and it works on both over. It's just taking it from you, whatever. The thing is, the algorithm finds the thing and targets, you and says, there's your other, right? And you, you hear that every single day and capitalism is the support for is on the decline. People feel like there's literally no other option but to shoot someone anymore. Well, you get hurt none. This is this is a really weird tangent, but I, I just feel like sharing this when I was looking at the press release from the house on the financial services committee examining shareholder, proposal process. I the one thing I noticed is like, there are two options to share the article. One on Facebook and one on X, Elon Musk, you know, Elon musk's expedite, that's it. And I just thought to myself, like, even that to me is weird. Like those are the only two options to share this article is through these two empires controlled by these two billionaires like our world has gotten nutty like they control Communications, like it's weird. We feel, we feel and like look, we do the news every single day and this is like the this is the part where we can get. This is why we're sort of pressed. Like there is a there is a deep hopeless. Feeling we have like we have spent our time, building a database of how people perform effectively trying to understand Merit. Real Merit, like measuring the performance outcomes of individuals who we elect to run these companies that are everything we see, touch and smell and eat everything we do in life. Effectively is touched by these individuals. And we are told over and And over again, that those people don't matter, its aggressive to vote against them, it's aggressive to have a voice against them. You are left with the sensation when you read all this stuff and, you know, that every director on the Tesla board is going to get re-elected, every director on like meta, is going to get a lot. You feel hopeless? Like, well, that and you're right. That is, that is sort of a key part of what keeps people apathetic. I mean, they talk about voter app at the and I remember, yeah, I remember hearing an argument about why we can't get more consumers and investors to care about who runs their corporations and their policies. They're talking about like, say like like Target, like why we can't get more people because they're, they're, they're, they're overwhelmed by it, all right? Like they and and, and, and so, instead of getting involved that just rather buy something or watch, or consume more media because they're just, you're right there. There's a hopeless. There's a overwhelmed kind of Like they just they know they should be fighting back. They want to fight back it actually. They want to do things that aligns with their own set of moral or ethical standards, whether you're on your left or the right. But they're just overwhelmed, they're just over me every time we're apathy comes from right? If you like, if you as an individual if you listen to the show, the two people that listen to the show, right? Every time during the day, you have that that desire. You have a thought like I should blah. And then what you do is open up YouTube or open up tiktok or Instagram, or look down or distract yourself from that feeling. Sit in that feeling instead because or or send a check 100,000 dollars you can do venmo or a check to free flow. Like the other option, the other reason why? Because you the first is hopelessness, the other reason. Why is why what I've lost? I've lost track of what? Charlie Kirk everything Charlie Kirk? Yeah, that reason why what is men? Men like 99.9% of political violence is committed by men, although 10,000 public. Companies 93% are led by men. Let's not forget that. The reason why we had Prohibition in this country, get rid of alcohol is because women were sick of essentially, getting beat up by men. I mean, you know, all violence, basically leads on the rabbit hole Men. Let me let's be real 73% of all country level Parliament, seats are male right. Like, despite making up 50% of the population, there isn't a woman anywhere in sight. There isn't any realm of our world that women lead the majority nowhere. Now we can have a conversation about meritocracy are or, or all that kind of stuff and how That totally fucked up but the reality is you know who doesn't shoot people. Women actually don't engage in chest thumping gun toting nationalism in the same way that men do. Yeah, I was gonna say I don't I actually think that I have to do the math on this but actually think New England itself the Six States of knowing that I think they're kind of close to being led by women. That the Senators the governors. Anyway, I want to add this other thing to your point. There's a headline. I just captured this morning. Speaking of why we advocate for women in leadership and why everyone should there is this, like, the sense of America? One thing that they feel like we're all missing is bipartisanship. We're sick of everyone fighting. Just this morning, is a headline. Want the want signs of bipartisanship in the house look to women. So, even even in the house, women are, there are the ones who are crossing aisles and making deals conversations bipartisanship. I don't want like, like we're talking about ideological freedoms in this country. I want by gender ship. I want equal representation of. I want you to gender ship, I'm ready to give women. Complete control until 25th. How about would you 2050 for the women run? Everything until 2050 when you look at any single company? And this gets back to like how we analyze companies if you look at any single company, right? You want to analyze how they're going to perform, or what they're going to do, whatever you don't want to accompany? That's way over to you don't want to accompany that's like 90% debt, right? You don't want that because that's imbalanced because, you know, that that's just a ticking Time Bomb. I don't want imbalance in humans either. I don't want them all to be Tech Bros. I don't want them all to be economists. I don't want that. I want them to be fucking like, like, every everything else, like I want some balance, so, hopelessness, and men and who are the oceans, and we can move on. It's everything Charlie, Kirk was the asshole, and you don't want if you don't want to, yeah, this time, I don't give it a 10, 10. All right. So so that means we've got our assholes of the week. Our Charlie sharp reverse justifying sucks, feckless suck UPS Bros and everything. Charlie Curtis. Okay. That's Gonna headlines. Winners predictions. We can be quick on these. Yeah, we're quick. oh, I haven't heard that far this song before. This is the full version. I'm gonna there is a full version mine. You already alluded to so you stole my fire. My headline is the week. Hot mic catches Zuckerberg admitting his 600 billion dollar vow to Trump was a guess. As you already said, suck the Zuck is sorry. I wasn't ready. I wasn't sure. What number you wanted to go with, you, you meeting Trump, you know you, I didn't know you what your headline, my headline of the week is, Uber sued by doj for alleged discrimination against disabled dryer. Really are current doj is, that's what this Super Bowl you're going against capitalist America. I don't understand. I thought that was a great headline who winners of the week. I mean, mine's easy, every elephant ever. That's if you name is Ellison, you probably a winner. I actually I'm hoping that Larry Ellison mine was also Larry Ellison. I hope that no Minds every Ellison. Well you've got all the elephants. I hope that he He buys that razor to shave his facial hair. It's really he's not. What's the winner. There, that razor razors. Razors are the winner. What's your predictions? All right, bear with me here. David Ellison. Bye David. Allison buys Lachlan Murdoch's two younger half-sisters those are from Rupert's third marriage. Their name, Grayson Chloe and then he immediately trades them for 30% ownership in the Winklevoss twins. Cryptocurrency. Exchange company. Gemini, space station. Yeah. That's my prediction know. It's the wrong thing that one I think my predictions. Definitely. Coming true. What he got? I think your predictions better. My prediction was not a real prediction. I just think we're gonna, I think we're gonna move on to ideological purges in this car. I don't get dark on our way. So let's come on. We get it over with just. That's all we got. That's his float. We actually have a proxy countdown coming later today. We got a back-to-back long day for us, so check that out. We'll come back next week with shows. If you didn't catch her older Primacy this week, they talked about Tesla. We're going to drop some clips of that into our proxy countdown today, because we're so good and looked at some epic points in there. So catch Cheryl Primacy, otherwise, stay tuned until then good. Bye.