Transcript
Oh, what am I doing live live from inside the glass of delicious Starbucks fracking fluid. If it's a business pants Friday show here at August 15th Studios, featuring analyst whole, Matt mascardi house. On today's. Week wrap-up. Wyatt CEOs. A bank does a thing and fake giving you know what I sound like a cynical person. Yeah, I gotta take issue with quiet CEOs. We get more CEO says, now than we ever did. They're all quiet about like wait, stop contact. Matters of the story. Yeah, exactly. The context of the story, our show today is being sponsored by free, float analytics.com. That I love that only platform measuring Port power, connections and performance for free. I love them. Really good work. Have you seen their zine? Yes, it's really good. I like it. I like it. Yeah, it really brings me back. I mean, you don't have to be old to enjoy it because I know there is kind of like a growing Zayn movement again for young people. The local radio station here is there. They're putting out a Zine. I mean, it's it's really yeah to sing dealing. There's still have to be 800 years old, like me, I mean, you can you can enjoy things. Even if you're 20 years old, you can still enjoy life. All right. Story the week ready? I'm already hungry. I don't know why. I'm out on this week. Just out. Yeah. Oh yeah. I mean you don't know what's happening. You don't want to talk about it out. Meaning, it's everything is painful to think or talk about anymore. Well then you'll love the first or waiting directly into the pool, the Cesspool of politics, which we try not to do too often because there are 18 million other You know, versions of this show that do politics way better than us. But but the headline is, is Maga going Marxist in maoist? Wow. Yeah, Trump's assault on free market, capitalism. That's fine, right? That's from our friend. Jeffrey, son. Felt oh, cheers. Who has her article and Fortune. This is from Fortune, but doesn't really the one thing. I wish you would do is kind of hold the CEOs feet to the fire a bit more because he seems to be friend with every CEO. Yeah, I wish he would push them harder to say something. But anyway, here's some related headlines going on in the Trump World with CEOs Trump's risky role as the would be CEO of America. Trump blasts Goldman over Tara forecast. Tells David Solomon to focus on being a DJ Trump Administration, considering taking a stake in an Intel after saying that Intel CEO should resign Trump. Negotiated a little deal with Nvidia and AMD to get a kickback. 15% Kickback for all chips. Sold to China. Here's one. How CEOs deal with Trump. Praised FaceTime, remorse and Gifts made of gold all. Go a long way. Yeah. Trump is tightening the screws on Corporate America and CEOs are staying mom, blah, blah, blah blah. You know, actually. Blah though, praise FaceTime, remorse and Gifts, made a gold is actually how you deal with toddlers. All so yeah, that's Tim Cook Out of Apple. Who deigned it, a significant move as a CEO of a publicly traded company to give the president a gift made out of gold. Um, I like sure his shareholders and customers are thrilled with that move. I'm wondering actually Is there an investor anywhere who believes in fiduciary duty? Like Like right now, what do you know? Doug cha ya. shout out to Doug the the former Bob monks, but like the deceased, if you are a shareholder of Intel and the Trump administer Administration considers a socialist stake and a Publicly traded company, they're just gonna buy a socialist, it's it's socialism. It's their nationalizing Intel, a part of things we didn't, we used to laugh at like companies and Italy and France for this stuff like we used to think like, um, oh, it's so so European so socialists in Europe. This is literally what China does aren't we afraid of China? China owns, I have that, we're afraid of them unless we're making money from them. I don't really understand a really ship with China, but we talked about that a lot last week and in order because everyone's so afraid. In order to avoid, like, you know, I saw some report that Sam Altman was he, he referred to himself as because he criticized Trump at some point, he was remorseful because he turned himself into a non-player character and NPC which is like when you play a video game. It's one of those characters that walk around that have no point. They just They're just there to like look like there's a lot of people there, right? Like We were in capitalism was not predicated, it's pretty, it's supposed to be. The efficient allocation of capital to companies that need it in order to generate growth. Now, if you heard of a certain Club yeah, if you're part of the Bro, part of the Bro, white male club. Now it's you go to the White House came. Yeah, you have tea and crumpets with this but you talked about a white house but they take this lives in a country and you cash out, well, the government owns the companies. Now, what is this? Talking about? A guy who literally runs and lives in country clubs? I mean, he's the perfect embodiment of like six days this year so far. I like he's most of his time at golfing the classic Nepal baby of our times, all right? There's another one that I want to cover two. I don't like capitalism. What, but what about first socialism? Like, with a social safety? Net. What about Wal-Mart's version of kind of kissing their ring. Remember, Walmart Trump told Wal-Mart to eat the tariffs so while back, right? Yeah, they did. Yeah. Now they're doing something strange. I was trying to wrap my head around whether this is Is this good? Or is this a way of eating the tariffs? But they're, they've announced that they're giving employees a 10% discount that now includes most groceries. So okay, first of all, what I didn't know is that they had given their and this is like, a lot of employees, is over a million employees. Not that's a, it's yeah, the two two million. Yeah, it's a lot. One of the biggest employees Employers in the world, but especially at least our country. They are already had a 10% employee discount but didn't cover groceries. What kind of assholes are there? Walton friendly, they, they just use your disco on groceries, underwear and boogie boards. Yeah, but anyway, now they've pushed that over to letting it be grocery. But is that a way of eating the tariffs or they're still gonna raise the prices on everybody? But they're kind of giving their own workers a little bit of a kickback, come back. Right. Because that's one of my talks about that later. All right later, but that's the first story. And can I just say that? All this is going on with Trump and the CEO is the very quiet CEO. They're the giving gifts or they're giving parts of their company or they're giving part of their profits. It's not Be clear. That's the thing that makes me insane. This company, it makes me insane. If she doing you listen to this show regularly knows that there's two things I'm obsessed with. I'm obsessed with getting more women in leadership and I'm obsessed with this idea that we've let CEOs in America become monarchs. Yes, I am overwhelmingly angry at that, but here's something that was hidden in the headlines that probably only. We will really discuss this week. Is this crazy headline trip? Trump crypto firm announces 1.5 billion dollar digital coin deal. So, so this is what's happening with the Trump family. A publicly traded Tech firm all five Sigma. Is selling is selling 1.5 billion dollars of shares to fund. Its purchase of cryptocurrency created by World Liberty Financial which is controlled by the Trump family. Eric Trump is going to join all five board. And Zach, witkoff, a world, Liberty, founder, and the son of President. Trump's Middle East, adviser will serve as chairman of this board. So this I mean that the, the crony capitalism here, Is not so I mean, this is like not so world. I mean, I and C. So just for this alone, CEO should be like, wait, what do you what's happening here? I mean, at least, in this case this is like naked crony capitalism. I don't know. It's not so this world, none of us anymore. Is remember Hunter remember Hunter Biden? We're upset about because he sat on a board somewhere. Do you remember? We were upset about Obama's khakis one time like like I don't know, this is Yeah, I love you. Yeah let me just say one more thing. One more one, more thing about all five Sigma, this company that is buying all this Trump crypto is that they have four Executives, four directors, they're all dudes. And that's a segue to my next story. Okay, they okay, so they have all, it's all dudes. This is the new, you know, governance world we live in, it's all do it. So my second story, are you done talking about Trump and CEOs? Can I move on? I, well, I'm feverishly were just bored. I want to, I want to know who's on it. My second story of the week, the Bro IPO Market is bubbling again. So yeah, bro, pose, the kind of having a comeback, of course, because there's nothing more stock market, gambling, broy world and IPO is because this is just a bunch of bulshit. So the two headlines I was looking at first StubHub IPO was back on for September. After ticketing company, delayed plans on tariff concerns. I looked at the StubHub board and Executives they have Five, executive seven directors. They have one one woman director one, female executive. So I'm just painting a broy world CEO chair, Eric Bakker. Controls 90% of voting power because his class B shares are worth 100 votes each. So again, this is fake capitalism. I don't know what kind of capitalism you call this, but it's not real. You were talking about the allocation of capital, all these good things to me. It's it's not real. When the shares you own an accompanied are magically gifted. 100 times the voting power as to other shareholders shares, that's not real. Like that's not real life. We know for a fact and you can ask John Chevette and Jim McGee and not listed shares. We know for a fact that once you give them 100 x shares. First of all, never I've never seen that anyway. That's like an absurd number. But 10x shares is normal that we're this and this case over One X is not normal. In this case you're you, you're so insecure. Your penis is so small that you have to take a hundred X shares so that's fine. But we know for a fact that once you give those shares, they are not get backable, you don't, it's not like a kind of thing where, oh, well in five years eventually, you know, Sunset, Provisions. No Sunset Clause, no one cares about Sunset Clauses. No one has to follow them. They can just change the bylaws if they want to. Anyway, for the look, at the companies that have dual class shares. How many of them go to single class? What's the number? Actually have a number for that. Let me get to that. I actually have a number for that. Let me let me keep going here. It also infuriates me that StubHub basically. I mean they're getting StubHub is a is a successful company basically because of Taylor Swift and Beyonce, so that it so that's all men running. This place also makes me the same for other reasons but let me move on. There's another big IPO and the News professional scalpers, bullish, stock, Roars, and latest crypto IPO tripling offering price. I also looked at bullish two male Executives, six directors, only one woman. This one is by two crypto, bro, founder director who are suddenly billionaires. Okay so this is what it made me do this. It made me do some data hunting. I looked at 61 IPO related filing since August 1st. I don't know why I did this. It was a painful exercise. It took me many, many hours. I hated every moment of it. Here's what I discovered though, because I just wanted to, I wanted to see if there are actually facts behind my, some of my theories about this. Bro, world, but here's what I found. For these 61 different companies. I looked at this is just August 1st. Just it's August 1st, right? This is August like the last 15 days. Of the, of all the executives listed only, 11%, were women 44 of the companies have no women. Oh my God, that's Executives. And 13 only have one. As far as the board goes, only 12%, female directors. Forget about this like aspiration for 30% of the board to be women. I mean, we're down to 12% in these IPOs. Um, 30 half of them, half of the companies have no women on the board and then 24 have only one. So this means that only seven of the 61 companies. I have even have more than one woman. It's crazy. It's the other stuff I found is that to your point half of them have more than one stock of class. So there's a half of the Dual class. Yeah, our multi-class, the average kind of dictator at these companies controls. 47% of voting power. I did find one matte that you said 100 shares, per vote was crazy. I found one that had a thousand shares. Believe. In this IPO and his new IPO world, I actually did find a company called class over Holdings. All the women, all the executives are women all the directors were women. And it made me think like what the hell is going on at class over Holdings and I looked at it it's it's educational technology so it so it's actually a company that is attempting to do good. It's an educational space, mostly everything else. I look at is just pointless Tech crypto. Not it's just all nonsense to make men richer, I guess this. They didn't they didn't do any this. Not a Makeup Company mixed with education. Like isn't that all we let women do is I'm just, can I just jump onto? This might be the first company. I have ever seen were all the executives and directions for women were they all the head of Human Resources? Every single, one of them is that, but this is what I found out. So, so yes, my worst fears are true. Is that the, if anything we're going in the wrong direction, it's getting worse, like, the and there's no shame about it anymore. No one cares. Remember the whole Goldman Sachs thing? Remember although I think they've actually turned their back on this statement but remember they wouldn't even underwrite companies that didn't have some. Yeah. Diversity. They decided not that. That was primarily supposed to be in Asia. Okay, and they had already hit that when they, so that's giving announced it. So I think they said that that's been achieved. It's a lot like measles like, achieving diversity on boards is like measles. We set out these goals, we hit some of the lowest lying things and then we said A diversity has been achieved and it's been a cheap because I know literally, because because we've elected a fat misogynist racist as president, that's it. We've given up our ideals, I think they just give up. I think they didn't care about some of the first place on the boards. Anyway, this is what I've learned about the IPO world that and that's my second story of the week. I'm already my third story. Yeah, my third story of the week is, is I, and I'm actually, I'm actually sticking with the women in leadership topic because it was because, you know, it was just on my mind this week. And here. Here is example. Numbers, 18 million 27 and 18 million 28. Why we need more women in leadership? Two stories of the week here? Major companies are reframing, not abandoning Dei. This is according to a an article, here's the interesting thing, at least, for our company, in some of our listeners may be. The Republicans. Yeah, yeah. Well while companies have scaled back Dei language and commitments, 79% of S&P, 500 companies have disclosed that there is board committee. Oversight of Dei, that's up from 72%. And then Russell 3000, this figure jumped to 87% up from 48%. My point being is that, if you're still concerned about things like Dei diversity women, people call all this stuff. Look at the board members because the companies are self-reporting that the board is now in control of this. So that this is yet another reason to care who's on the world, am I wrong? So no, you're totally ready to Pollyanna about this. Yeah. No, you're totally correct about that. I am again cynical. That the jump is not related to interest in Greater diversity. The jump is related to Regulatory and legal like Arbitrage and concern around, diversity possibly, but you're totally right that. But if you're either, if you're concerned about it, you should be voting on that. You should be looking at the board members, see what they do about it, and vote them out, calling them up, voting them out, whatever it is. Yeah, I actually, in cases where we, we've already, I don't know if we have more than one. The one that we talked about a lot is Dimitri Stockton who sat on two different boards that got rid of Harley and Target. Yeah. Can you I cannot figure out why we won't vote out directors, directors last know this proxy season this season in the United States. Zero point, two percent of directors, got less than 50% of the vote. One of the people that's like a dozen, like total one of the people who got it j-hope. Stayed on the board. Anyway, right? Like and that's the second time he's been voted out. Why? Our investors petrified to vote again, the people they represent, I don't like you want and outcome at this company. You want to make more money, you wanted to, you know, care about at stakeholders. You've got a long vision of the company. She's not just quarterly. Why wouldn't you vote against? Like, like I, If you just took averages, you should be voting against roughly 50%, who are below, average. But we get 0.2% especially if this is the age of meritocracy, right? If you believe in that horseshit, I it's like Jack Welch's back. Like all these CEOs are now are like loud mouthing their way into returning into the office. John stanky's writing memos about sorry ladies, I know you have elder care and child care problems. Have them somewhere else if you can't deal with them, you know, if you need to be at home, to deal with them, like the Bros CEO, the CEO is back and loud, and cutting staff, and their Jack, welching everything except investors are not Jack, welching their own boards, they don't fire 10%. Even if the company is like underperforming against their peers and TSR like that would be a fine reason to vote at least any bro? He's all right. The Second Story I found, that is a great example of why we need more women leadership is. Here's this headline, God. Other of AI says tech companies should imbue AI models with maternal instincts to counter the Technologies goal to get more control. This is from Nobel Laureate. Geoffrey Hinton who said, AI will very quickly develop two sub goals. If they're smart one is to stay alive and the other is to get more control. Hinton said that developers should make AI more sympathetic toward people to decrease its desire to overpower them. And he says, the best way to do this is to imbue AI with the qualities of traditional femininity. Just his mother, a mother cares for her baby at all costs. AI with these maternal qualities will want to protect or care for human users, not going to control them. I mean, I can't find. This is this is from The Godfather of AI. I can't find a better example of why I yell every week about these man babies who were controlling our AI future with no guard rails, no regulation. They control all the voting power if they're coming. No women even know what exactly no women even when the board should get rid of them. This day, they're buying bunkers and Hawaii like that. Thank you. God, father of AI Nobel, Laureate, Geoffrey Hinton. You just said it beautifully. I I I'm not nearly smart enough to say it this way if you can't trust him. Who you gonna trust? There was a report that they some researchers created like there a social network just on like, local computer with AI chatbots and the AI chatbots, formed cliques, and there were a few dominant chatbots. And it was like, it was like because men, The Men Who do these things, like they were dunking on each other. What do we do? We're making sure the old voices were heard at that board table. Like, they were not like he doing all right. I need to wrap this up, I'm getting exhausted in my horrible stories. My fourth story of the week, I'm calling ESG data hell. Because now we're in this weird anti-esg world where it really is. Yes, I don't know. The Trump Administration is doing too, like ESG moves here that are making me crazy. First Trump's new Bureau of Labor Statistics appointees, suggests suspending jobs report entirely until methods of data collection, are quote unquote, corrected Yeah, so this is the guy, his he actually has a name. It's it's DJ, you know, it's EJ and Tony. This this chucklehead is an economist from from at all places, the Heritage Foundation, that's not. Yeah, we talked about the herd Foundation all the time in the shows. This guy's. He's so proud of his alma mater that I look at his bio. He all he said it was that he has a master's and doctoral degrees in economics. He wouldn't even list that he went to Northern Illinois. Talk about a weird like anti elitist fake, anti elitist move, like, I've never seen someone not list their college and their bio but anyway, Um then there are reports of course a day after this that he was at the January 6th Insurrection of course and the White House is already saying well, he's just an innocent bystander but but I just wanted to finish the story by saying that the Attorney General, Pam Bondi has already fired the Department of Justice worker who threw a sandwich. One of the new National Guard members in Washington. DC, have you seen this story? He threw a ice. I saw the story. So, I mean, part of the back in the January Direction, who assaulted cops, but if you throw a sandwich at a guy, you're fired immediately. Well, bam, Bondi said. That's the example of the deep state, right? Like, yeah, I'm just confused by all of this. But the takeaway here is that we're we're now, like doing what we want with data. There were two takeaways from that though it was, first of all, don't buy Subway sandwiches, they're not that good. Like, there's got to be a better prediction. I have a prediction about that later in the show and second of all like, what a waste of a sandwich you just wasted your lunch. Oh Subway sandwich. I think it's actually a perfect use, you know. Like and that's not even that's not even like that. Half of the data you know, truncation happening. Well okay let me get my other story. This is why I called this ESG data hell, week Energy, Secretary says past climate reports will be updated. This is the chucklehead Secretary of Energy energy Chris Wright? Who said he disagrees with the conclusions and pass National Climate assessments? So he's going to rewrite a bunch of it. This is the guy who was the CEO of Liberty Energy, North America's second largest hydraulic fracturing company. He said a couple of years ago, there is no climate crisis and we are not in the midst of an energy transition either. He's also the the genius who drank A fracking fluid to demonstrate that. It was not dangerous. So, this guy is a real buffoon and just so you to be, to be clear. He has degrees in mechanical, engineering, and electrical engineering, to disciplines that have absolutely nothing to do with the data in the, the National Climate assessment. A document that is 1834 pages. So this guy has no expertise to declare the original climate crisis. Or his only expertise is working at oil companies. Basically, here's what look in my mind. There one thing is is Like so the BLS data is data, right? Like that is data that they don't want to, they don't want you to see. Now for the most part the market has better data than the government has those data. You know points are collected via survey. Now we have like ADP and payroll agencies that actually have data about hiring and firing that. You know, they sell till like Banks and Market participants. So the market actually has bet some better data than the government offers. But the Energy Secretary like editing past reports. Mostly the thing to be afraid of is that that's a sheer. That's a pure dictator move, right? Like we're going to go back and change history. So it complies Up with what we wanted it to say. Like now what we would have liked it to say um also something that sort of like the liberal side of the aisle likes to do as we're doing sort of revisionist history about the way, you know, like Columbus Day, not a day anymore. It's indigenous people's day because The same thing. It kind of is because we're kind of like looking back and saying we did some really shitty stuff. We should change it and the people. Yeah. But I'm just saying in this, I'm just saying scope of what we're talking about is at the same thing. Oh, but there's no. First of all there's no data in their reports that anybody but you know at this point choosing who we honor and holidays is almost trivial compared to like rewrite. What I'm saying, rewriting a climate report is almost trivial at this point. We know climate change is here. We know it. Well, that's probably all dead. Like the date isn't just American data and no one's listening to this Administration. So this is purely propaganda, it's not data, right? Like yeah, there's, there's a report this week that Republicans are angry with Canada because of all the Wildfire smoke coming but they still not going to do anything to address climate change. It's causing the Wildfire, they're just angry. I mean, it's like the reason why I bring up Columbus Day, right? Like is because like in the South and this country they hated taking down statues of the Confederacy and they meaning the white people? Yeah. Most Like x white supremacist or currently because I don't I'm pretty sure the non-white people were fine with it. But but like and they thought of it as revising their history, right? Like this kind of thing, happens all the time we sort of change and revise history. And right now, a guy who drank fracking fluid is not exactly an authority. And like, you know, the history of climate science. We don't usually revised reports authored by compiled by hundreds of scientists and researchers. I'm just saying no one cares anymore that like, well, that's the that's the cynical point of your right. But, but that's again, that's but that's my final story that we is G data, hell? I mean, so I have four crazy stories for you to pick from me, like the the, the other, the Bro pose and the the Socialist takeover, the nationalizing of capitalism, right? Like is those are fascinating to me. mostly because like, where The hell are the investors. I, I know you're thinking, I think I found the answer. I think I found the answer the Wall Street Journal. Says, quote, nobody knows, like, what are you doing? Like what they're getting right? I guess they're getting richer and they're getting like, another buying another property on, maybe Nintendo. How much are you gonna get when he takes over your company, right? Like, like right now, it's like, you're like, oh, the Market's up, so, why do I care? You care. That's the other thing I didn't I didn't pick was that? Yeah, the mark, you're right, the market is thriving. The market, literally highs, like records are going to eat the poor. The tag, the bill in this country is going to eat the poor and the market doesn't care at all because they don't price those things immediately, they believe during Revolution during massive collapse, right? Like, when it's really, we're only six years away from the Business Roundtable. Proclaiming the, the urgent need for like, looking at like stakeholder. Capitalism. Is a real thing, wasn't it wasn't It, an urgent need a Jamie dimon says, like he said at WF that if we don't deal with income inequality, they're going to be storming the gates with pitch and the guardian just yes. It's, you know, left leading Guardian but Guardian had a report out saying that scientists are saying that, that could spell the end of humanity. If we don't take care of her inequality problem, and to your point, Matt, and this is why I always focus on CEOs, who are largely men, how much more money do you actually need? Like, how are you not satisfied? Can you not now? Like, go to the sink, wash your hands and now start to look at ways of like healing Society. I mean, you're set pretty Fortune. 500 CEOs, you're taking care of. I mean, even if you quit tomorrow, you gonna get a massive Severance. I mean, you're okay. I'm just waiting for what you now. Focus on the rest of the world. Now that we don't have fluoride in the drinking water, I'm waiting for them to put fracking fluid in the drinking water. It's so safe, right? Like, let's just but it's like, it's like, it's just a bizarre, like, idiocracy at this point. Well, because, you know, they're, you know, what they were relying on their relying on people not paying attention, so it's, it's the maoist Takeover of and I was capitalism and I was gonna say, story of the week. Here's what they're all serving on a story. I didn't even cover is there that we tagged is a group related to The Heritage Foundation. Is basically telling young people don't worry about going to job, just get a trade. I mean, we're seeing this all the time. Now basically, we're basically telling young people like, give up not worried about getting educated know it's about giving up. Just it's because they know what what college is in universities, teach they they teach things like the the data and research that exists in these climate reports, right? I mean, teach like things that actually happened in the past, not revise things that happen in the give you an ability to to critically analyze these reports and not just like Yell that it's part of a deep space state conspiracy, get a little angry at something like. So this is why we're seeing over and over again. These these these guys telling people like don't go to Elite universities, don't even go to college anymore. Like, let's not worry about crazy about it like like when like the majority of work in this country was like digging for coal. You were too tired. Too. Dirty too exhausted. Like two broken to fight back. It took like a concerted effort. Well, maybe people were too tired, putting their lives online. Going no to fight for some Monica of rights that we've utterly forgotten. Now, they're literally telling you. Why don't you just go back to the coal mines? And just just shut up. It'll be. Alright, I hate all. What you pick the mouse? Take over of capitalism. I hate it. All right, come on. Can we move on? Good things. Oh my God. I know. I mean, I haven't even got to as holiest. Tried. But that's all. I came up with. Let me go, I'm gonna go quickly and that's like way over to you and I'm gonna shut up for a while. I have two that you might like, Mark Cuban says, speaking of like CEOs saying, they always have to say it this way. I don't know why they can't present this information that didn't come from some, from some fake billionaire sage. Like, I can journalists, I can still interpret data and Analysis and ideas with. It doesn't have to be some like white, dude. Billionaire, like I don't kinda, I can't hear it if I know you, billionaire didn't, but Mark Cuban is saying something I agree with and maybe you'll agree with. Mark Cuban, says companies should be taxed more for buying back their own shares. There's a good idea. Okay and the second one is danske Bank, Cuts fossil fuel exposure. They're moving over 1700 fossil fuel-related companies from its investment Universe. Texas, must be really angry. I mean, that sounds horrible. I mean, I don't go bank is definitely not going to open up a Dallas, Texas office anytime soon. What Texas Republicans hate is when people get involved with pup with free market, when they make decisions on their own, about what they would like that at all, unless it's Trump making this decision, it's fine. But yeah, somebody else. Can you just get it has to be Trump? I got two. One, is not really a thing, but I saw it. I smiled vaguely Elon musk's America party is nowhere to be seen one month later. I don't like, I don't like that because I was kind of secretly, hoping he could achieve something and do this and it would siphon off their vote. I think it's just a race to more extreme. Them right? Like because you'd have extremists Elon over here and extremists from Nazi party. And then, like our choices would be like the basically, the Republicans from 1983, which would be the Democratic party, and George Will bow tie, and two different kinds of Nazis. Like I'm, I don't like it, what else? Yeah, the other one is Netflix Secours broadcasting rights for FIFA Women's World Cup. I like that. Yeah, there we go. There's nothing not to like about that. You can watch the Women's World Cup Netflix. So, I would, I would enjoy that. So, thank you. Reed Hastings, and Ted sarandos and the Seven Insiders on your board for making that we vote on good list. I always forget. We do vote on good list. Tell me the best. You tell me the best is FIFA World Cup. That's gotta be the best, right? All right, let's do assholes. Feminine and then I dunno. I'm gonna try to keep it short too. You only have three assholes, and I have three assholes and stole all the. I stole all the fire. Really, what I did was, I just did headlines for the most part. Good. Good. And the three assholes. The first one is takers, they're always kind of an asshole. Someone like, you know, like, you know, you're you're out in the sandbox and just Susie comes over and punches you in the face and takes your truck. And, and that was getting in trouble for crying about it. You know, I was thinking of some, like, it was stole the like, you know, the money, they you give during Christmas time and like a jar and people stealing that. Yeah. It's, it's like, you know, I grew up Catholic but they you'd go to church and they passed around the basket. And there's always like one person like takes a dollar out of that, that's true. Yeah, there's always somebody here. The takers musk says he's suing Apple for not featuring X and grock in must-have section of App Store, I didn't really understand. I don't, can you you can sue. You can sue you like we couldn't what like we put out an app and it wasn't in a must-have what we Sue apple and they laugh at us. But musk does it? It's like and everyone freaks out because he's like, he's got so much money that he could just keep the lawsuit going and drain our resources. It's such a waste, such a waste of time and energy Trump has made himself commander and chief of the chip industry. We already talked about that, it's taking 15% of AI chip sales. Now she's like a broad is over the cold, that's called extortion. Trump calls on Goldman to replace the economist over his over tariffs stance. He wants to replace the CEO and that their Chief economy. He said, DJ diesel should go back to being a DJ. That's our joke, and the US Chief Economist should be fired because their view is that tariffs are not good for the US economy. Heaven forbid, the chief economy that has an opinion, like that guy is probably Be like the most conservative person could attack the opinion that basically everyone in the country agrees with you. Every everyone like everybody. I mean while Also hit the newswire this week US national debt. Hit a record 37 trillion. So like yeah well The Economist doing the job doing. Yeah the work saying this is not good. Us steel plant. This one I felt like gross about. You know, we haven't covered this story. Us steel plant where two died will continue. Operating know, is this yo said, Is this the company us steel or is this is the, yes, the company us steel and the David Burt's the CEO. And he said, don't worry. Like this is, this is literally like two people just died. Don't worry, we won't close the plant, you all can keep working. Like, yeah, that You're you know that that's not what we want. Necessarily want to not die at our jobs, that's what we want. Well this actually reminds me that there's a Boar's Head story this week where they still have like mold and disgusting conditions in their factories but there's they're gonna reopen them, there's no FDA anymore, so, nobody cares. So now I just don't have to point now, I can't buy Boar's Head, I can't buy it. And meanwhile, in the last three days and I mean, three days. Like it is the 15th of August right now in the last the 13th, 14th, 15th, and just the last three days, you us insiders at publicly traded companies, and that's directors. And Executives. Sold, 463 million dollars worth of stock in, just the last three days. The biggest in the last three days was a guy named Harold Chen, who has 3% influence on the board of app, loving app, loving, what tell me what that is, the incredible value. That we all get as consumers. What was the societal value of apple? And tell me what they, their primary thing is, they use AI to direct ads on apps app. I mean, this is this is what I'm talking about, the worst, we are things, I hate it, we're in a crisis, we're in a crisis, he sold 182 million dollars of stock by himself. He was, he was actually the CFO of the company until 2023. He's been on the state on the board. He's a overall 477. Hitter he slightly below average on earnings in above average on TSR. So basically makes stock go up, sell 182 million dollars worth of stock because I was really good at delivering ads on your app, to annoy the shit out of millions of customers. like the berm. Up. Loving 4% of its Assets are Goodwill in intangibles. You can't even touch the assets, like, it's, it's nothing. There's nothing, it's ephemeral, it's nothing. And they inside. There's made a half a billion dollars in three days. That's who's taking your money, that's where it all goes. That's where it all goes. So number one is takers. Yeah, I gotta say, I don't really know how I if you go over to free flow, analytics.com. One of the other things I do now is I routinely tag. We tag most of the stories that we're talking about today, have not all of them. We tagged in our our database of news stories. I also tagged routinely now, Every director executive, every Insider who sells a minimum of a million shares a million dollars worth of shares. Sure. And that's a lot of them. So I I'm now tagging those stories now daily. So this, just for point of reference app loving is a totalitarian company. It's got a Founder with dual Clashers. So, shouldn't even be a question. Be a public Harold Chen, didn't even have any power at the company where he made 182 million dollars. What else, what else you got the number two, the companies that pretend to give back. So you got takers, oh, that's all of them. And then the ones, now, they're pretending to give back. This gets to your you get to. Yeah, I hope you get to the Larry Ellison Story in New York Times so well, you've got Walmart, you mentioned Walmart once ordered to eat the tariffs is giving employees a year round 10% discount to help them eat, which is great headline, right? Like, and really like, for all of you that's everyone. I mean, everyone in America knows how damn expensive it is not a, Philip, your grocery cart. I mean, that's not much of a Benefit. Let's just say, I mean, I don't even know if you're really even covering the, the the increase of consumer goods in the last, like, five years, but that 10%, I don't even know if you're touching it. Well, forget, just the increase in consumer goods. The, the employees themselves have not gotten raises to keep the pace of inflation since 1975. So like really you're giving them 10% off like so. So my thing of blueberries goes from four ninety nine to 4509 and you're calling that like a gift to me. Those blueberries that were like, 2:19, like 10 years. Like, it's unbelievable. Yeah, it's so fake and, and it's like, don't forget. They speaking of, you know, fake publicly traded companies in dictatorships. This is a company that is controlled by one of the richest families in the world, the Walton family. And you know that when you buy the blueberries from Walmart at a 10% discount, they still make money on those blueberries. Right? Like so they're incentivizing their own employees where they realized, they have two million people who will shop there all the time because they get a 10% discount, they still that's growth to them, that's still sales and money. Um, remember when Trump announced no tax on tips, it's part of the big, you know, big populist moment in the election campaign. Yeah, well, here's the headline from this week. Bad news for restaurant workers tipping in America is on the decline that that does not surprise me. I, I probably, first of all, I don't even go to restaurants anymore. In fact, most of the people I talked to Barely go to restaurants anymore. I don't know if that's because I live in a horrible city where the restaurants are too damn expensive, but I'm just saying, in general for it, I think in general people are not going and I think I, I think that's very real. I think that people are, that would be an area where you would probably cut back. You something that you are less generous, you just feelings about your own like funds, in fact, the report which came out of toast, you know, the app toast that you know like when you I don't really want to know what. Oh yeah you go and you can pay on post now because heaven forbid, you talked and toast takes and they take a cut of that. Of course we're doing nothing. Yeah, the tips on average were down. Not like a little bit like 19.1%. That's almost 20% down surprise me. Yeah, it's insane. It's of course, around here when they try to raise them in the minimum wage, just for service workers. Like City the only people who get angry of course are the business owners. They're just like outraged that you would raise the minimum wage of the service worker. I mean like because you could well if you're them right you can pay them like what is it a dollar fifty an hour at if you're a tipped employee and just be like, oh sorry tips are down. Well, yeah. It's your problem. Not mine, right Sam. How does this headline? Sam? Altman says gen Z are the luckiest kids in history. Thanks to AI despite mounting job displacement dread. You don't really get like what is he referring to? What are they looking about like because it's like a fun not lucky. They have all of these powerful Tools in order to be superhumans. Meanwhile, there's this headline layoffs 2025 companies have announced over 800,000 job Cuts so far here are the three no reasons. Why one of the big reasons why AI Do we know Tara and Doge do we have that figure from last year? Like, how much is that up a lot the 8000 do we know at this point in the year? I don't know and it's hard to get like like real numbers on this. I looked through some data Maybe The Economist from the Heritage Foundation can help and it's all missing because like, you know, like what's a layoff what's not a layoff here, you know. Uh you mentioned, the Larry Ellison one, right? Larry Ellison. This is the headline Larry. Ellison wants this too. Good. Do research and make a profit. Yeah, good luck with that. That Trio of thoughts. Yeah, meanwhile he's a dual-class dictator, Oracle still and his biggest individual Investments for doing good, are in Tesla. It was theranos before it crashed and X, he's actually Elon musk's single biggest backer like as an investor. So he's doing lots of good. More employees are giving workers money to buy their own health insurance. Now, you can't even get health insurance, they just say, go buy your own right, while the government is shutting off health insurance for you, okay, you're killing me with this one so pretending to give back. Yeah and finally my last one. And then we can get out of this horrible. Horrible part of the show distractions. So me, you got takers. That's an American classic. Yeah. You got pretending to give back and you've got distractions. These deadlines were great this week though, the distraction headlines were really good. Wendy's says it realized, it had too many promotions this summer, confusing customers what better distraction than too many promotions to go to Windows that one, that's that fabulous. White House will definitely host a UFC fight on July 4th. UFC head says that you have said, is Dana White whose on the meta board because he's highly qualified to be on the meta board. The US military is looking to buy Tesla cyber trucks to use as missile targets. Yeah, I don't really understand that one. Well, how do you bail out your friend, Elon Musk? You buy all of his flop car and you shoot them with Mrs and then it's cool. It's so broken man. Sure. Shoot it with a missile and then I saw this. You saw you pulled this headline. Tiktok claims is a hack to get bigger portions at Chipotle put men's names on your orders Tick. Tock, is there any proof of this? Now, it'll cares. Tick Tock. Yeah, you know, this is all a distraction from all. Do you hear the other things that were talking about like they would Trump when there was a threat to shut down? Tick? Tock People freak the fuck out. They were all up in arms about how dare you shut down tiktok. You're this is what you were missing a hack to get a little bit more Chipotle like three extra beans on your burrito because meanwhile like the US government is taking over Industries. Oh they're giving you 10% to buy food because you don't have enough money to buy food. Like what are you doing? Stop being distracted. All I'm gonna say is this if Trump has become Mao, you've become Chomsky this this episode, I know you are not wrong. Every single, like, over the distraction is, the keys distraction, is the keys. I've gone from the critic of ESG to a defender of SG. We live Ambassador Larry Fink to defended, Larry Fink, we made fun of ISS. And then I have to say, well, I assess, you can't tell them not to exist like everything that we have been basically making fun of we now have to defend because it's like, it's insane. So those are your three options, takers, pretending it back and distractions. This is a hard one. Because they're not like they're all things that exist routinely and taker's. I thought this week back was like, I was particularly triggered by the headlines this week of people. Like we're gonna give you that Walmart headline. Just did me in like yeah, we're gonna give you 10% discount so you can afford to eat because of the tariffs, right? Like yeah, as opposed to like just give them a fucking money. Give them the money. Let him eat wherever they want. Isn't the car, the Costco wages up to 30 dollars in real report on that. Unbelievable. Like I just at Costco is doing really well, too. As a company, get over it. You know, I do love the distractions. I mean, I have I now routinely put all stories about like, you know, Netflix type. I put them in the drugs category. Yeah, it's meant to just a big people fight. I'm going to go with. Oh boy. Is that what Walmart's doing? You think that a pretending to give back you think that's what they're doing? Yes, they have dual pressure, they're quad billionaires. There's no to give your employees. Why are you doing this? Have you actually read my head around it? You know what it's like it's like it's like when you you have some like office competition and they give you a coupon book as your your prize like you handed them and they claim that they claim the coupon book is worth like $100. But really it's really like three oil changes that you have to pay for you know like 300 dollars off a ten thousand dollar like cabinet or something. Like you know like like plus these there's the irony that the reason why you have to shop at Walmart for groceries because Walmart displaced, all the grocers in half the country. So now you don't have a choice but to go there. So now you get to get 10% discount on overpriced groceries as it is. I'm gonna I'm actually gonna vote for takers because I actually think the Walmart move is actually more of a kind of like, pleasing Trump on that move like there. I don't think so there. I don't think they're pretending to give back. I think they're just sort of refusing to they're basically acknowledge that we're like Foo. We're gonna raise prices. Anyway. I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go take her because most guys, that's this is the week of trump. In his extortion of it is a lot of extortion, this week. All right, come on. Let's wrap up and go headlines. Winners predictions. Oh my God. One thing I'm always amazed about this show. Is that it's full of us blowing about everything. And yet we still routinely are able to escape under an hour. I don't know how we do it. I don't either, and it does seem to have some sort of magic. I have two headlines of the week that just actually a third that I crossed up because you picked the same one, but these two, both of our recalls, just I just thought there just beautiful. Beautiful headlines hand, soap recalled due to potentially life threatening back here. So, Funny, it's funny. Right? In that they put it in the soap. I love it. And the other one don't drink this recalled. Instant coffee from Dollar General, it might contain something dangerous. I could be anything. That could be a, it could be like a piece of glass. It could be a shark. It could be. It could be headline. It'll be Pam Bondi, the new attorney general. I don't even it could be a lot of that. I mean, congratulations, that that's a Fast Company headline. Congratulations to Fast Company because that is the stupidest clickbaity has headline. Like yeah, the you didn't you, so you didn't say the name of the instant coffee or the something dangerous in the headline, you? Well, the click it that I crossed off that you all. So picked, I like this one, the best. Yeah. All right. So I've got two number one is Werner recalls. More than 100,000 letters over potential fall Hazard. Imagine that you, like you run Werner. And you're you're one thing is just making ladders and and isn't that the one thing, the only thing that happens on a ladder fall. That's it. That with the hand soap or classic, it's like you've you've screwed up your job. Like, basically, I also chuckled at this and It's not like this is like funny per se, but I just chuckled that this is the headline that they wrote. Public company, CEO. Resigns, amid another leadership shake-up. No Public, public company. CEO resigns amid, another leadership that, you know, what? You usually don't like the CEO. In this case, they didn't even name the company. I'm glad he's picked up this one because I actually tried to open this story and there was a, there was enough of a firewall that I couldn't even read this because the first paragraph was also loaded with like nouns and no, no proper nouns and I, I still don't know what the hell. The story is about. I don't know if it's a joke, like, because I'm gonna be reintroducing the ESG onion next week and I thought maybe this is a ESG onion troll, like, making fun of me like, because this is the kind of headline, I would write. It's a stupid pointless. It's the it's the CEO is the CEO Pet Meds Express, okay, and the her name is Sandra something, I can't remember. Now it's, I looked it up the other day. That's not important include that information, but I just like that it was so unimportant, they didn't even include the name of the company. Like, they were like, forget the name of the CEO who we already don't care about, but it's just, why would, you know? Yeah, okay, let's go on the week. Who won the week? Um, well, you go first. Uh, well, for me, it's very obvious. It's it's just it's the Subway sandwich that the now anti-fascist Subway sandwich. I mean I haven't had a reason to go to Subway for several decades now but I think that whenever you know a horrible president is now is using like the military to police the streets in your city I and a sandwich, the Subway sandwich, what a great protest tool if it's beautiful. If for whatever you guys need help that sends the National Guard to Hartford Connecticut. For some reason, you gonna drive right to side, I'm organizing everyone to go to Subway, we're gonna increase Subway, sales exponentially. For one day, we're going to get 500 sandwiches in, just hurled them at National Guard. That's my winner. My winner is Delaware. Oh, because I saw this headline Elon Musk called on corporations to leave Delaware. Delaware says, it's doing just fine. Yeah, well you'll probably like like three people left. Delaware, it says not seem to be a problem. All right, predictions and we got to get out of I'm sticking with Subway. Subway rebrands with a. Here's a new campaign, we know our sandwiches are gross. So throw them at your least, favorite fascist campaign, featuring Hitler, Stalin Trump and Zuckerberg made the cut. They're gonna have a big, they're gonna have a big Target on their on their walls. They'll have big Target. Like, posters like targeted sucks face in it. Trump shut the sandwich, Hitler. Yeah, you get it. You get a nice like turkey footlong with, with disgusting bacon in it and you just they do that in the store, like that's on the wall and they got like they can even do it in the New York City subway. They can just like have like targets down, there can be a lovely in the subway moment. Yeah it's fabulous prediction. We both predicted rebrands my prediction. Paramount now owned by nepo baby Daniel Ellison remember that that's right. Larry Ellison we just talked about Larry Ellison his son. Daniel bought this one goes full tread man. And rebrands itself as man, media, because it just bought the rights to UFC for 1.1 or 1 billion a year. The UFC is putting on their fight on the White House lawn Yellowstone and all the like those the Yellowstone's Western spin-offs. Kevin Costner show the man babies. Love that show South Park. It was just the ultimate, like Craftsman boy comedy, even though it's making fun of trump right now, it is very like, man, right manly, I think it's part of the Rebrand, man, media, they actually launched a new streaming service called cable to make men feel like, you know, it's 1993 again. All right. That's it. Well, that's something God. That Larry Ellison is doing good. He's just giving billions. It was the sun. That's great. We are free float. Next week, we'll be back with more of whatever. This is, look out for the scene. If you're not on freeflow analytics.com our sponsor and you're signed up for free there, just an email address. Sign up for free. You get the zine. You get the data, it's all good stuff. So go get that. Otherwise we'll see you when we see you till then, goodbye.