It's a re-release! Let's revisit Episode 45, where we talked about the financial crisis of 2008—what do you remember? Taylor worked at a hedge fund, and she remembers the yearly 'work trip' moving from the Bahamas to..... the Hamptons. How did we get there, and what can we learn from the experience?
It's a re-release! Let's revisit Episode 45, where we talked about the financial crisis of 2008—what do you remember? Taylor worked at a hedge fund, and she remembers the yearly 'work trip' moving from the Bahamas to..... the Hamptons.
How did we get there, and what can we learn from the experience?
Hi Friends! Our transcripts aren't perfect, but I wanted to make sure you had something - if you'd like an edited transcript, I'd be happy to prioritize one for you - please email doomedtofailpod@gmail.com - Thanks! - Taylor
Americans should ask not what their country can do for them, but what
>> Taylor: In the matter of the people of State of California vs. Orenthal James Simpson, case number BA096.
>> Farz: And so, my fellow Americans, ask not.
>> Taylor: What your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. I haven't talked yet today, so.
>> Farz: People want to hear is banter.
>> Taylor: I know. That's all they want to hear.
You're back in New York with just your husband and kids
No, I'm in New York City with just me and my husband. We got here on Thursday. Today is Sunday. We're going to a wedding tonight. I'm very excited. It's at the Bronx Botanical Gardens. We've had such good food. We've seen a bunch of friends, been really nice.
>> Farz: Your Instagram has been on fire.
>> Taylor: Thank you. Yeah, it's been super fun. I've walked like a bajillion steps. Yesterday we had a cocktail party for the wedding and then went to dinner. And then my friend was like, let's do something after dinner. And I was like, absolutely not. Have to go to bed. So I slept for like 10 hours because it's been a lot, a long trip.
>> Farz: But is it amazing being back in New York?
>> Taylor: Oh, it's so fun. I love New York. I know we talked about this, but it's great. We've, you know, we can walk everywhere. I mean, there's so many people. I've seen more people in the past two days than I've seen in the past, like six years combined.
>> Farz: Yeah.
>> Taylor: You know, like, number of volume of people walking on the streets. There's so many people here, obviously. But no, it's very nice.
>> Farz: Nice, nice. So excited that tomorrow's Labor Day. You can just be a chill.
>> Taylor: Oh, I know. Me too. Oh, I'm gonna have a long day tomorrow too. I have to go. Oh. So here's another thing that happened is on the way here. So my mom is watching the kids. She drove from Las Vegas to Joshua Tree to watch the kids. An hour into her drive, her car broke down. So she calls me on Thursday or Wednesday and she's like, I'm on my way, but my car just broke down. I'm in the middle of the desert. I don't know what to do. And so I was like, I'll come get you. So she called like, we can be there in three hours, like 6:00 at night. So I was like, I'm on my way. When I was like an hour on my way to get her, she got her car working again because she called her ex boyfriend who knows about cars. They looked at her engine together with over FaceTime, and he found There was, like, a thing that was disconnected. He had her reconnect it and tie it with a plastic bag, and she fixed it, and then she was driving, and then I drove, and we kind of met two hours in the middle, and then I followed her home. But it was a long. A long day to get here. But I'm really proud of my mom. Oh, my God.
>> Farz: How on earth would it take you less time than three hours to have gotten to her?
>> Taylor: She was in, like, the middle. She wasn't already there yet. Like, it was. You know what I mean?
>> Farz: Yeah. Okay.
>> Taylor: And then she drove two hours like we had. I ended up driving two hours, and I met her at a gas station.
>> Farz: Got it. Okay, so listen, you're gonna save that much time? You have bad luck with cars, man.
>> Taylor: I know, but it. But we're fine. She did a great job. I'm proud of her.
>> Farz: And you fly back when?
>> Taylor: Tomorrow. So we fly back tomorrow night, and then we have to drive home from Las Vegas because we flew out of Las Vegas. So we have a long travel day tomorrow, too. But today's a good day. We had brunch with family and then the wedding. Nice.
>> Farz: That's exciting. That's a really good, good little trip. And it's great that you all got to have a little romantic getaway together.
>> Taylor: And the weather's perfect, so that's also really nice.
>> Farz: And the brother's perfect.
>> Taylor: Cool.
>> Farz: Well, let's go ahead and record so we can get back to weekend Labor Day long weekend stuff and. And subsequent.
Welcome to Doom to Fail, the podcast about things doomed to fail
Welcome to Doom to Fail, the podcast where we cover two stories, one historical, one true crime, about things that we're doomed to fail. I'm forged, joined here by Taylor, who is in New York. Hi, Taylor.
>> Taylor: Hello.
>> Farz: That was effortless. I did so good on that one. I barely even.
>> Taylor: You did?
>> Farz: My words.
>> Taylor: I loved it.
>> Farz: I was made for podcasting, so I assume that I go first today.
>> Taylor: You do.
>> Farz: I go first. Okay, then why don't you tell us what you're drinking?
>> Taylor: Yeah, you know, I'm looking it up right now, and I cannot pronounce any of these things that I got. I wanted to find a drink from Indonesia. Oh, here. Here's one coconut water. Let's drink coconut water.
>> Farz: I love coconut water.
>> Taylor: That's what I'm drinking.
>> Farz: Yeah. That's awesome.
>> Taylor: I. I do. What? I don't. The last time I had it, I was. Had morning sickness when I was pregnant with Florence, and so it kind of makes me feel gross because it reminds me of that, but I used to it's fair. It didn't cause it, but it happened to be there when it was happening.
>> Farz: It's like me and tequila. The first time I got drunk, my cousins got me drunk on tequila when I was, like, 16, and I took it to, like, 20 years to drink tequila again.
>> Taylor: Totally. First one's always gross. Yeah.
>> Farz: Yep. Yep. So I'm drinking what's referred to as a dirty chai latte. This is not. I'm not familiar with this stuff. And so, you know, you're scared of coffee, but these are really good. If you haven't had dirty shrine latte, they're really good.
>> Taylor: It's definitely a second time you told me this.
>> Farz: I know I'm a broken record. So.
Last podcast on Left. Side was a Q and A with Dan Carlin
Okay, I'm gonna go into my story, and I'm going to start by shouting out our favorite podcast. Last podcast on Left.
>> Taylor: Oh, my God.
>> Farz: They did a special guest episode, a Q and A with the best podcaster ever, Dan Carlin, and it was awesome. Did you listen to.
>> Taylor: I haven't listened. No, not yet. I haven't had time, but I'm gonna listen to it on the plane ride home. But I definitely was listening to last week's episode, like, the question episode, I think. And they were. They, like, were like, yeah, well, the person we're interviewing next week, it's very special. And I was like, oh, my God, I know. It's got to be Dan Carlin. It's gotta be, you know, so I'm so, so excited for them. It's the best.
>> Farz: If y'all. If. If folks don't have never listened to it. Hardcore History and his Hardcore History addendum and Common Sense, the three podcasts that he runs, they're all. They're amazing. It's probably the most well researched, one, most articulate way of, like, describing historical events. And one thing that they asked. I'm gonna do a little bit of a spoiler. One thing that they asked him, I think it was Marcus or someone was. Somebody asked Dan why he's so obsessed with context. And that simple question spun into a conversation that I was like, whoa, this. It. It went in. In directions I didn't anticipate, but it was awesome. It was incredible, and it got me thinking about the topic of today. So the reason I thought it was so complicated and interesting, and I'm totally paraphrasing what his point was on this and putting my own spin on it, he's basically saying that, look, if you have all the context on any event that goes on, it would never end. It would never end. Like, one thing begets another, begets another, begets another. So you have to be. Even in the context of history, you have to be an editor in a way, because you have to have the cutoff point of. And then we start here, because otherwise it would just be like, it would be forever long. And, you know, I actually, really, really enjoyed that because it made me think about politics in particular, where I was like, if you actually go far enough back with people's political beliefs and their families and everything, it's like you can see that we're all, like, kind of the same. We're not actually terrible human beings. But that's aside, it got me going in that direction.
The most trending topic in 2023 is AI, according to Forbes
But I started thinking about that within the context of, like, our discussions here. And so what I looked up was the most trending topic in 2023, which is AI. And I was like, I wonder what is it in the context of everything, of, like, how we ended up at Chat, GPT and Bard, where. Where history kind of starts, that is with a guy named Luigi Galvani, who saw frog legs hanging at the local market from copper hooks, and it would start twitching. And this was in 1791. So that was like, the first guy that was like, electricity is the thing that's running through our system, that's making us. And then that segued into. That segued into cybernetics, which is a field that advance advanced control of electricity through networks, then to information theory, which goes into the storage of that information, then Alan Turing's theory on computation. And all that kind of culminated with this kind of concept of, like, mechanical brain, which is AI. But that's like a brief example of, like, context, like, going so far back sometimes that it almost even makes sense. Like, we're starting with this guy Luigi in Bologna, looking at frog, like, switching. And then we ended, like, the understanding of, like, AI and Chat, gbt. So anyways, I. I just want to put that as like, a little bit of an aside, but I want to go through another historical event that's kind of recent and people know a lot about it, but there's probably things that people don't know about. And so I'm going to go into the context of why this thing, this historical event, actually ended up happening.
Zachary: I'm going to discuss the 2008 financial collapse
>> Taylor: But before you start my. I want to let everyone know that my not number one Strength Finder is context.
>> Farz: What's strength finder?
>> Taylor: It's like a thing where you, like, do a quiz and you get, like, five top your top strengths minus context.
>> Farz: Interesting. Okay, cool. Good. So what I'm going to be discussing is the 2008 financial collapse.
>> Taylor: Oh, that's exciting because it's kind of.
>> Farz: True crime, it's kind of history and there's a lot of factors that played into it. And I literally just watched Margin Call by accident last night and I got obsessed with it again. Have you seen it before?
>> Taylor: Amazing. Can you. I don't think so, Zachary.
>> Farz: Jeremy Irons is the boss.
>> Taylor: Oh, I love Jeremy Irons. No, the one, I've seen the one. What's the other one about? The housing crisis. Yes, I seen the big short.
>> Farz: So I'm going to go into like the Great Recession itself, like very, very briefly because again I think that people mostly understand what happened. So I'll just frame it this way. Historically, housing prices have always gone up and the appreciation rate of a home over the course of seven to 10 years, for example, nationally is around 34%. So it's always a good. No, not always, obviously it's mostly a good investment.
>> Taylor: So it had been consistently a good investment for a long time.
>> Farz: Exactly. And the reason they go up is because there's always more people who want homes than there are homes available on the market or people who are credit worthy enough to acquire homes. And so the supply demand side of it's always like there's therefore that kind of growth and investors wanted to put their money in the safest place possible. So banks started creating mortgage backed securities to sell these mortgages at a more profitable rate given they were safe bet. So that's kind of like the initial start of all this. But the more of these mortgage backed securities banks started issuing, the more they needed to issue to keep growing. And so they dropped their requirements on credit worthiness to bring in a different class of folks to buy homes. And these are called MBS mortgage backed securities. And these were usually at rates that were, there were like teaser rates are called adjustable rate mortgages. And so they would go in at like a low, low interest rate and then the interest would adjust and then these people could not afford it. And because they were not super financially savvy, they didn't totally understand what was going to happen anyways and so ended up happening is that these people would get foreclosed on, they go into default and then the supply demand ratio of mortgages and homes and people buying homes totally flipped. And so people were now underwater on their homes. All those safe bets that people made on mortgage backed securities went away. Basically that was, those are just. It makes sense, right? Like it's, you know, it's not, it's not super complicated I would assume. Right, right. Okay.
>> Taylor: No, no, that totally makes sense. Yeah, yeah.
>> Farz: There's a lot more to it. There's another concept there called them credit default swaps, which is basically insurance taken on these mortgage backed securities, securities that also tank. Like a lot of horrible was kind of going on there. But anyways, so that's the gist of where we landed in 2008.
Dan Carlin: Let's start with Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan
I'm gonna go far back enough to hopefully provide the appropriate historical context per Dan Carlin and how we kind of landed here. And so it, this stuff is so crazy because you see, you see how it kind of plays out across like the political spectrum and you're like, okay, it's always been like this, like there is like, it's, it's all uniform. So I'm gonna start with Jimmy Carter. So In March of 1980, Jimmy Carter signed into law the Depository Institutions Deregulation and Monetary control act of 1980, which is abbreviated as DID MCA. Great name.
>> Taylor: Okay. And not, not too long. Perfect.
>> Farz: It's, yeah. Like they were not marketers who came up with this. So this bill had a ton of things in it and it's all like really, really dry and boring. So I'm not really going into it, but the main part of it is that it helped what's known as savings and loan institutions become more competitive in the banking industry. So are you familiar with what a. I didn't know what this was. Do you know what these are?
>> Taylor: It's like a more local bank, but maybe not.
>> Farz: It's a type of bank, it's a thrift bank is what they originally were called like the 1930s, which is just a place to put savings in. That's it. Like that was their job. And so back in the day, this was just for that. You could, you could get some personal loans here or there, but from a regulatory perspective, they're really boxed in in terms of what they could do and how they could possibly make money. And as a result, when interest rates would go up, depositors would withdraw their cash to put them into other investment vehicles that would earn more, more interest than a savings account.
>> Taylor: Right.
>> Farz: So when Carter passes law, it basically opened up an opportunity that provided for those the amount of deregulation that you're going to see the upstream effects of in 2008 because it opened the doors to savings and loan associations to start allowing people to take out traditional mortgages, like what we would consider today as a mortgage. It would allow them to do that. It Gets that on its own is irrelevant. Well, it starts to process, but it's somewhat irrelevant. Then in 1982, our old friend Ronald Reagan signed a bill called the Garn Saint Germain Depository Institution Act. They need marketing specialists on these names. He signed this thing into law and what this allowed financial institutions to do was to give them adjustable rate mortgages, ARMs, essentially. So the way an ARM works is that the interest rate on the mortgage fluctuates with the federally set interest rate. So for example, during COVID the Trump administration, the feds there were, they readjusted the, they adjusted down the interest rate. So for example, I think the interest rate was like 2.5% or something. It was something. I got my house like 2, 2.75% interest. It was like crazy cheap money back then. And, and I think now it's somewhere around 7%, like maybe 7 and a 7.3% or some. Somewhere around there.
>> Taylor: But you're, but you're locked into yours, right?
>> Farz: I'm locked in, yeah.
>> Taylor: But if you had an adjustable one, it would be seven now.
>> Farz: Yeah. Think about how much money that is, because if you look at your mortgages the first like 15 years, your mortgage is basically just all paying interest. And so when that interest rate adjusts 2.2.5% to 7% on the dollar, you'll never catch up. And so, and, but this was the start of it. Ronald Reagan signed this launch in 1982, was kind of the start of that. So.
>> Taylor: Give me a second. So in losing on Instagram where I'm obviously like, this pops off my feeder every once in a while where it's like, oh, is something terrible happening? Oh, guess whose fault it is? Ronald Reagan. Like you like go back to seeing it. It's operating fault.
>> Farz: Yeah, yeah. I mean that, this, this thing is weirdly deceptive. I wrote down here that to me this was probably the biggest factor in this, because if you look at who, who's taking out mortgages that they ultimately will not be able to afford, that banks aren't really regulating, it's going to feel that don't understand this s***. But they're not going to understand what federally set prime interest rates look like and where they fall along that. And so they don't understand that like a 2% swing one way or the other on your mortgage on a 300,000 or $4,000 house, a shitload of money. And so in my mind I'm like.
>> Taylor: Or like. Or they just don't. Yeah, yeah. Oh, they just like, don't. They don't even understand it, but like they don't think about it because they can finally afford a house.
>> Farz: Exactly, exactly that.
>> Taylor: Yeah.
>> Farz: And one thing. So I read a CNN article that was published in 2007 and what that was right before interest rates were about to reset. And what it was talking about was, it was, it was calling out what was about to happen. It was like, hey, like interest rates are about to reset. Like this is going to have a dramatic impact because 80% of those mortgages were ARMs, ARMs adjustment rate mortgages. And so it was a huge issue. So the article that I read went through a hypothetical that said that if you bought a house for $200,000 in 2005, which is when all this was going on, your monthly payments would be about 955 per month. When the loan resets, it'll be 13 $31 a month, 39% increase in your mortgage. And again, 80% of these were adjustable rate mortgages. And so that was, that was a big part of it. And again, again, to your point, we can kind of track everything back to ROM rate, which is, which is incredible.1% that kind of impact on things. To me, the arm is like the most deceptive side of this. There's a grosser part of this and we're going to get into here in a moment, but that's the most deceptive part because it is taking advantage of people's inability to totally understand what's, what they're signing up for.
>> Taylor: Is that what was the, was his reason to do it?
>> Farz: This all the way kind of boils down. Yeah, yeah. It all boils down to like the lobbies, the banking lobbies. Because this is, this is like an attractive thing to a bank because you can think about that. How cool would that be if I could sell you something today for like nothing? Because you'll buy because it's nothing. And then it's all upside on the, on the back half because I can just adjust the interest rate and then you have to pay me a little.
>> Taylor: Money, like you owe me more.
>> Farz: Yeah, yeah.
Bill Clinton signed the Graham Leach Billy act in 1999
And then we get to 1999, which is when Bill Clinton signed into law the Graham Leach Billy act, which allowed this, this one's the most, most f***** up one. So this allowed consumer banks, like regular depositor banks, to issue home loans and then also operate as a financial institution on the back end. So think if your credit union could take part in the same financial activity as Goldman Sachs. That's what this is. The reason I wrote this is like the most messed up Part of this is that if I'm the bank that is issuing you that mortgage and I'm also the bank that is selling that mortgage on the back end after you close, then I'm on both sides of that transaction, which means that I have no incentive in operating in any sort of like, like I'm always gonna make money on both sides of the transaction. So like, I don't really care if you're qualified for this mortgage because who cares? I'll make my money on the back end when we, when we sell the, the mobile, the mortgage backed securities. And so that was the biggest one. This was a repeal of what's called Glass Steagall. So in 1933, this bill called Glass Steagall was enacted into law. And what that was done, that was done specifically to break up the consumer side of banks from the investment side of banks. And then Bill Clinton just signed this thing and changed it back. It's gone. Yeah. And then, and then later on after this happened, the Dodd Frank was signing the law that put more protections around this and even that now Barney Frank is trying to get that repealed. So I don't know what's going on there, but that's kind of.
>> Taylor: Marty Frank is still alive.
>> Farz: Yeah, he's still alive. He's still alive. And so there is a daily episode where we're playing a lot of podcasts today. So the daily is the New York Times podcast. And that's like kind of how I start my mornings, most mornings is just listening to what they have to say. And they did an episode about a month and a half ago on Dodd Frank and they interviewed Barney Frank who is now, he was one of the main opponents, like we need to like punish these financial institutions and all that stuff. And he, he now is an advisor for a bank and is trying to get Dodd Frank repealed. So he's lobbying and advocating to Congress to get the bill that has his name on it repealed. So there we go. Government as usual.
>> Taylor: Well, he's, he, he's young. He's a young 83.
>> Farz: He's a young spry 83 years old.
The Trump administration reduced interest rates to 2 1/2 percent after 9 11
And so now I'm going to get to like the probably what seems like the least likely reason for why this ended up happening. 9 11. Is that weird? Right?
>> Taylor: Okay. No, go ahead. I'm not surprised.
>> Farz: So I gave the. So the reason the Trump administration reduced interest rates to 2 1/2 percent, like I mentioned earlier, is, is because they were trying to drive economic activity. When Covid hit. When Covid hit, everybody was scared. Everyone Was sitting at home, nobody wanted to go out and buy things. And the way you simulate the economy is you lower interest rates. People are like, oh, cheap money. I'm just going to go spend. Then things change. And now again like we're at seven and a half percent. So similar to what happened during COVID the Bush administration did exactly that during 9 11. So you know, obviously the entire country was gripped with fear and transactions were really flowing and all the terrible things that came out of came out. 911 happened. I didn't know this. When 911 hit the way Bush, the administration tried to simulate the economy, they dropped interest rates to 1%, which is, which I think I couldn't get the exact number on this. But from what I could see, historical records, you know, the charts show like the 30 year rates and it was like right after 911 it just like dropped to the ground and there was nothing that was lower than that. And so I think that that is the lowest interest rate the government has ever issued in the history of the US Was really interesting. So.
>> Taylor: Wow. Wait, wait, I'm sorry, I'm about to go to Dallas on, on 9 11. And I hate, hate having to say it over and over again because you're like, oh yeah, we have these meetings on the 11th and whatever. But then I just was thinking about, Remember the best September 11th ever? We went to see it in the movie theater.
>> Farz: Oh yeah. With Jay.
>> Taylor: Right. And I was like, this is a. Yeah, I was like, this is the best September 11th because we went and got burgers at that one place and then we went and saw in it.
>> Farz: H*** yeah. H*** yeah. Yeah, man. I think that theater got sold, right? Quentin Tarantino bought it.
>> Taylor: I don't know, but I know it used to be like the Hollywood of Babylon. There's a whole bunch of stuff like that. That specific pot of land is really interesting.
>> Farz: Yeah, no, no, he I think might have bought most Police three. That was the Egyptian. We saw the Egyptian.
>> Taylor: Yes.
>> Farz: I don't think. I, I can't remember if you bought that or not, but that was, that was a fun, that was a fun day. So, but, but basically. So in 2000, when, when 2001, when 911 happened, until 2003, interest rates stayed at 1%. And so obviously everybody was buying. So there was a huge bubble. There was a huge spike in the supply demand side of things in terms of people going out and trying to buy a house. And that resulted in these financial institutions saying we need to, we need more people buying. And so we're going to offer these adjustable rate mortgages and lower our standards. There was, I read these stories about how, how they didn't even look at people's jobs. They didn't confirm employment, nothing because there was so much money in reselling these things that like, they just didn't care.
>> Taylor: And so they expected them to fail.
>> Farz: Yeah, because, because, because that's the part of it is like in everybody's mind they were like, who gives a s*** if they do not, if they don't pay, hey, it doesn't matter because the, the house price is going to go up anyways and we'll just go ahead and sell that property.
>> Taylor: Right?
>> Farz: Like we don't, who cares? We're foreclosed on the seller. But it doesn't work that way because if there's so much property on, in the market, then the price and the value of that property is, it's underwater. You're never going to recoup your investment in that. So that was kind of like the historical piece of this.
You worked in finance when Lehman Brothers collapsed in 2007
And then it made me think of what upstream impacts were there to what ended up happening to. Do you remember what else was going on in 2000, in 2008?
>> Taylor: I graduated from my master's degree in 2007. Did that have a global impact?
>> Farz: That did not have a global impact. 2007, 2008 is when the presidential campaign of Barack obama and John McCain was running. And, and that, that little, little boondoggle. And it's worth noting that I went through, I did, I did a lot of research in terms of like, what was going on back things I don't remember. I mean, I was active in politics and stuff, but I wasn't like working in it. And so back in the day, John McCain's claim to fame had nothing to do with economics, had to do with foreign policy. Like he was a foreign policy guy. It had nothing to do with his acumen in economics. And so there was a lot of things that happened on that campaign that made Obama seem like super qualified to handle like an economic downturn. So for example, there was one interview I saw of John McCain being asked by a reporter how many homes he owns. And he literally tells the reporter, he goes, I'm going to have to have my staff get back to you with an answer to that. The answer back then was seven. They owned seven homes together. And Obama released a political ad called Seven just talking about how out of touch McCain was with the rest of the country. Well, well, one in 200Americans was being foreclosed on at that time. And this Guy was like, I don't know how many homes I own. The other thing that he did was he was. He was in Florida doing, like, a campaign stop when he said that the fundamentals of the economy are strong the day Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy.
>> Taylor: So I remember that day because I worked in finance that day. I. I worked. Yeah, I was in New York. I worked at a hedge fund. I knew people at Lehman. And then all of a sudden, all of our Lehman meetings were canceled. And it was like, what was it like?
>> Farz: Did you keep working?
>> Taylor: I did, but things were very different. Well, very different in that we used to go to the Bahamas every year. And then we stopped. You know, like, we used to, like, kind of spend with this, like, reckless abandon that you. My boss, was like, what do you mean, I can't fly first class to Asia anymore? And I was like, it's a $20,000 difference between a first class and a business class ticket. Can you justify that? And he was like. And then we made him five business class, you know, like, we were spending, like, just stupid amounts of money. And then we stopped.
>> Farz: Was it. Was it. Man, you've been. You've been part of so much of this stuff because you were there during 9, 11. You were there when this happened, too. In my mind, I was like, there's like, earth shifting moments. And those were two of them.
>> Taylor: We worked with Lehman Brothers, we worked with Bear Stearns was gone. Like, just like people that we knew were just gone in, like a day.
>> Farz: How long did you keep working? Did you stay in the finance sector?
>> Taylor: Yeah, I stayed there till I left for Nation Builders. I stayed a couple more years.
>> Farz: Wow. Okay. Yeah. Wild. Wild. But that was kind of the impetus of this. The impetus wind up happening, too, was that he. So Bush was the president back then. The Republicans were in power. And so generally speaking, when your party's a party in power, when things are really, really bad, you don't get elected. And so I looked up the old polling results for the 2008 election. McCain went from 37% negative media coverage, according to the Pew foundation, to 53% negative the day Lehman Brothers collapsed, and then 70% by the time the second debate came around. And the reason was almost exclusively the economy. He just seemed out of touch. He seemed like his party was the one that was responsible for this. And so maybe think of like, okay, so you have Jimmy Carter signing this law in 1979. It worked all the way up to this financial collapse in 2008. And then what ends up happening if this didn't happen if he didn't have the all. All that historical context building up to this. Would Obama have been elected president? Probably not. Probably not, because. Because he was, like, a young whippersnapper. Like, he was, you know, only two years in the Senate before he ran for president. Like, you have. McCain was like, obviously, like, if we didn't have Obama, do we have Trump? Like, there's so many things that, like, just stack on top of each other.
>> Taylor: Who did we talk about? Or I talked about the guy messing up. And then Obama got elected because, like, Jack Ryan brought him to the sex club. I gotta talk about something similar to that.
If the 22nd Amendment were repealed, Juan would have been in jail
But there's that couple things. One, I would like to officially repeal the 22nd Amendment because I want Obama to be president again. Because I love him.
>> Farz: I would be okay with that.
>> Taylor: I was supposed to bring that man back. We need him. Also, do you remember when, like, Mitt Romney was campaigning and, like, a kid was like, bought some ice cream or something, and Mitt Romney was like, oh, let me pay. Buy your ice cream for you. But he only had hundreds in his wallet.
>> Farz: That's awesome.
>> Taylor: He couldn't give the kid, like, a dollar, you know, he was like. He was like, oh. He tried to buy, like, a bar chocolate or something from a kid. He was like, oh, we only have hundreds in my wallet. Which is hilarious and like, very out of touch. And then a third thing is, we've been passing by the Trump Tower a couple of times. It's like, right. Kind of where we are. And my husband used to work on the Apprentice. Did you know that? And he knew Trump. He. He used to do, like, camera work on the Apprentice. And he had, like, you know, been around Trump before. And we're talking about, like, what if he had like. Like, if you go back in time, you know, and stop this person from being president, Juan would, like, be in jail. But he'd be like, I saved the world. People would be like, what is wrong with you? You just, like, did not save the world. He'd be like, yes, I did. He'd be like, taylor. Because, like, we wouldn't have been together. We wouldn't have had kids. I was like, but he would have saved the world. What does that look like?
>> Farz: So here she met him. Wow. That's. Wow. Interesting.
>> Taylor: Trump asked him to come.
>> Farz: You know what? Sorry.
>> Taylor: Oh, Trump asked him to come back to the office in his limo. And Juan said no. Who knows what would have happened?
>> Farz: He wanted. Why did he want Juan to come back to it?
>> Taylor: I don't know. It Was like, because I had to go back with the equipment or something. He was just like, you come with me. Mom's like, no.
>> Farz: So Juan thinks that he was gonna get.
>> Taylor: No, no. I don't know.
>> Farz: Sexually assaulted.
>> Taylor: Weird guy.
>> Farz: He's definitely a weird guy.
>> Taylor: Not one.
>> Farz: And we're definitely gonna have a repeat of the 2016 or no, the 2020 election in 24, it feels like.
One person actually went to jail for the 2008 collapse
But going back to the true crime side of this. Did you know this, Taylor? One person actually went to jail for the 2008 collapse. Did you know this?
>> Taylor: No. Who was it?
>> Farz: This poor b******. His name is Kareem Sarah Gelden. He is the only person to have served a jail term for his role in this. Apparently at the time he worked for Credit Suisse and he falsified records basically like overvaluing the prices of mortgage backed securities just to make like more profit off of them. And he ended up getting sentenced to 30 months in prison and having to pay back Credit Suisse $25 million. This guy made $7 million per year in 2008.
>> Taylor: Wow.
>> Farz: Like, what are we doing with our lives?
>> Taylor: That's incredible. I mean, we're not gonna go to jail. I don't think we're not going to.
>> Farz: Go to jail, but we could also be doing better. But yeah, so true. That's. It's kind of where I ended things because it was, you know, again, if you wanted to, you could keep tying this thread further and further back. I ended up researching the 1966 savings and loan crisis because that was also like a part of this is like this, the failings, the failure of all these cities loan institution because they couldn't compete, which led to the Jimmy Carter thing. You. It's just thing on top of thing on top of thing. And the end result is that America is a capitalist country. And the number one variation of capitalism in this country right now at the very least has to do with financial instruments and investment institutions. And so there's a lot of reasons why these things are not regulated. And we're constantly getting deregulated because that's what we want, apparently. So tbd, I guess.
In the movie Margin Call, Jeremy Iron's character lists every financial collapse
>> Taylor: What do you think's next?
>> Farz: I don't know what the bubble is going to look like because we already had a tech bubble, we had a housing bubble. I don't know. I don't know what's coming, but there's going to be something. In the, in the movie Margin Call, Jeremy Iron's character was like the main CEO of this financial institution. He lists every financial collapse and it's like, just. It's like every decade to, like, 15 years, like, something hits and, you know, we're kind of. We're kind of due for one, which it feels like we're in the middle of anyways. It feels like the economy is pretty s***** right now. Like, every week we read about tech layoffs, for example. And so, I don't know, maybe we are in it, but tbd, I guess. Yeah.
>> Taylor: It's a constant ebb and flow. But it's interesting that people make decisions and have policies that are, like, specific specifically to people over.
>> Farz: Yeah. I mean, that is the most obvious, transparent thing of, like, the rich eating the poor is you look at what these people make. Like, this guy's making $7 million a year issuing these s***** mortgages that he knows that these people can't pay, but he knows they're desperate for a house, and so they'll. They'll do it. And that is, like, the most predatory thing.
>> Taylor: Yeah.
>> Farz: And they don't care because they're like, it doesn't matter if you default. Like, if you foreclose. The models tell us. If you just sell your property and recoup. Recoup everything anyway. It's. I don't know. It's really. Yes. It's really gross.
>> Taylor: Totally. It's so gross. You're like a real person who's like, escalated House. It's terrible.
>> Farz: Yeah. Yeah. So that's my story for today. I do highly recommend Margin Call. It's. It's. If you. If you have YouTube look it up. Who doesn't? It's actually free on YouTube. That's how I started watching. I was, like, scrolling YouTube and it was, like, recommended as a movie to me, and it was free. And I was like, it. Let's watch it.
>> Taylor: And how you. How you accidentally watched it was that.
>> Farz: Yeah, it's with Kevin Spacey is with Jeremy Irons, Zach Quinto. It's really, really good. It's very moody. It's. It's essentially the gist of it is that it is the 24 hours before the collapse hits, and this one financial institution, whose name they don't reveal, discovers what's about to happen with, like, basically most of their assets. And, yeah, it was. It was shady and crooked and shows how the financial system works, which is not great.
>> Taylor: Yeah, it's not great.
>> Farz: But that's my story today. Sorry for making this a more stressful than usual call with Luna being a psychopath. The reason is that Mrs. Fars and her dog are out in that room and I'm in here and I need to keep the doors closed. And she gets crazy because she can't get to me. But if she got to me, she'd want to get to the dog. And so anyways, that's where. That's where all the barking comes from. So apologies, everyone.
>> Taylor: No problem.
>> Farz: Sweet.
Nadine emailed again about last week's episode about the Catholic Church
I'll go ahead. Is there any list for mail or anything?
>> Taylor: There is. Did you see that? I guess you're not getting the mail yet, huh? I think you have to do something in your. We need to look at our settings. Nadine emailed again and she is still listening up in Canada and had some positive things to say about last week's episode about the Catholic Church. Some stuff that, like, you know, people maybe are. Don't want to say out loud, but they heard me say it and I'm excited about that. So.
>> Farz: Wait, what was that?
>> Taylor: And she had some ideas, too. I'll forward it to you. No, no, just. Just that. Just that, like, you know, it's hard to. To be angry out loud about some of these things, but. So it's nice to hear it.
>> Farz: Nice. Yeah.
>> Taylor: And my friend Ben said. My friend Ben said. Baller takedown of the Catholic Church as well.
>> Farz: We showed them. Yeah. I don't know why I'm not seeing. I was getting them briefly and now I guess I'm not getting them. But yeah, I'd love to read that. Please write in thank you know us. Or if you don't know us, gmail.com, when we're rich and famous and everything.
>> Taylor: And we also have a thing on Instagram. If you share our Instagram post about our stickers, I'll mail you one. So just share it. I'll mail you one.
>> Farz: Wait, are you gonna mail me the stickers?
>> Taylor: I did. You didn't get them yet. Check him out. Have you checked your mailbox?
>> Farz: I'll go check my mailbox if. If I had the stickers. I'm gonna go to the coffee shops today and start hustling.
>> Taylor: I'm sure they're there. Just check the mailbox.
>> Farz: Okay, I'm going to go check. Sweet. I'll go ahead and cut this off. Taylor and restart here in a moment. Bye, all.
>> Taylor: Thank you.