Apes, we have a special special guest. Today we have carol roth. I mean i was doing a little bit of research on you and you're definitely defined as a woman who tells it how it is you're defined. As a national media personality, an author, you have some expertise in the investment banking world and you really caught the attention of the ape community.

When you were speaking with fox - and you were doing exactly that, you were telling it how it is and first of all thank you so much for coming on and right now, there's thousands and thousands of people who are just kind of interested in your. I guess. Let's call it your professional opinion of what's been going on in wall street, the kind of slanted nefarious nature that you're seeing the things that we can do to fight against that. Let's dive into it, i know you're an author.

You just came out with the book. I see it in the background right there um, so let's just dive into all of it. So if you just kind of want to start it off give people your background and kind of why we're talking with you today absolutely well. First of all, i want to thank you for this platform and for sort of highlighting some of the things that i've been talking about, um, as he said, i'm sort of known as the truth teller uh.

But i also want to say that i want to thank the ape community. I've just been sort of introduced to everybody. Uh. Not only are you just so gracious, but i want to let you know that i respect you and i respect what you're doing and i want everyone to be successful, and so, as i talk about my background and as we have this discussion um, i think that That the takeaway here is that we're gon na agree fundamentally on principle about capitalism, um being bastardized and things that are going out with main street being sold out to wall street.

We may not agree on all of the mechanisms and little details and i think that's. Okay um, but i just want you to know i'm coming from a place of transparency. Uh i've got nothing in this this game other than i'm just somebody who likes to be helpful and to tell the truth. Unfortunately, i'm in a financial position um where i'm fine and i don't need to worry about it, so i'm i work for myself, i'm not on anybody's payroll other than my own uh.

One of my clients, as you can see in the background, is a toy company. I actually, if you see here, have my own action figure um. So you know so so i just kind of want to get that out, and you know, as you uncover things about me and you say: oh well, she's an investment banker she's this and that will talk a little bit about that um. I just encourage you just feel free to ask a question because a lot of times people like to try to paint things into a corner that aren't seems there's a lot.

There's a lot of nuance that gets lost here, which, which is, i think, part of the struggle here so uh. My background is that i was born to a a family mom and dad who neither of them graduated from college. My dad was an electrician. My mom was a stay-at-home mom um, who eventually went into sort of like a hobby business, and i was really lucky to become the first person in my family to go to college uh.

Actually, matt was in your neck of the woods. I went to wharton undergrad paid my way, primarily through school came out with 40 000 in college debt, uh, which, for some of you may seem a little bit low these days, but that was back in 1995, so you know inflation and um. I was. It was able to get a job in investment, banking or quote unquote on wall street, even though i worked in sam chose to work in san francisco instead of new york, and i think sometimes we talk about these concepts like wall street and everything gets lumped in Together and there's so many different functions and a lot of very important functions that sometimes you aren't again nuanced aren't separated from the others.

So the part of investment banking that i worked in is that i help companies that were rapidly growing, raise capital. Everything from private placements to initial public offerings to secondary offerings and whatnot, and a lot of names of companies that you you've all been to the cheesecake factory, papa john's pizza, planet. Hollywood rainforest cafe like if you were a restaurant company in the mid to late 90s that got financing. I probably worked on it.

I also worked on tech deals and consumer product deals and whatnot um, and you know it was an important function. We helped those companies raise money so that they could expand and grow their businesses, which is you know, that's good capitalism. We all want that. We all want to see that happening, and that is part of wall street um.

But one of the things that i noted when i was an investment banker is that you, i would get a lot of calls from small businesses who didn't have the money to pay for the same kind of advice. The big businesses did and they were just getting terrible advice. So when i became more financially flexible so to speak, i did very well in investment banking and i had the ability to then kind of do what i wanted to do. I wanted to find a way to serve the people who weren't getting the the great advice and that's one of the things that drove me into media because i figured oh media is a great platform because i can reach.

You know tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of people with the kind of advice that they wouldn't get otherwise from somebody who is credible, so that's kind of background um. I am definitely somebody who's like on the move. Full of energy does a ton of stuff so like, as i said i you know, i work with a toy company as an outsourced chief customer officer. I said on boards.

I make investments i'm on television multiple times a week. I've been a judge on a reality. Technology competition show that was here for mark. I do all kinds of things because i'm interested in things, but you know the reason why this is also very personal to me is i go back to my dad both of my parents.

Unfortunately, our past and my dad was my best friend and he was so sort of invested in the american dream because he came from a really poor family and he found a way to work up and make a better life and create an opportunity. And he couldn't believe kind of the the opportunity that i have and where i became today and i believe in the the structure of free market capitalism. And i can, i believe everybody can be successful. And i want everyone to be successful.

But only if the rules of capitalism are in place so that we can have free markets and, unfortunately, uh, which leads into. I think the conversation you want to have is that across the board, whether it's with the retail investors versus big businesses within the markets, whether it's small business versus big business, sort of competing on main street and what we saw happen over the last year. That's been taken away. We have moved away from capitalism towards cronyism towards this centralization of power, and that's why i love what you guys are doing so much because it's taking this decentralized position.

It's all the individuals coming together and saying we have a purpose and we're strong and we're going to do something about it. And so it's incredibly inspiring to me and it's the same fight that i'm fighting, even though it may be we're. We may be in slightly different battlefields, but you know at the same time, but it's the same fight um and it's an important fight, because everybody should have the opportunity and in true free market capitalism. Everybody wins like it's.

You know a growing pie, it's not one versus the other, so we need to preserve that, so everybody can have the opportunity that they should have yeah. I i definitely agree with that across the board. I mean right now from what i've just seen like anecdotally speaking with people. I think this entire thing has taken on the i'd like to refer to it as a psychological wildfire of like the virality of what's going on, because the story itself just um.

It really resonates with people at such a deeply human level of what's going on right now, and even when i see the analytics on my social media, the age group is very, very interesting. I see the age group of people who are directly impacted by 2008 2009 or their parent directly was that's exactly my demographic and right. There i mean i even had those. I remember.

I have those awkward memories of 2008 and 2009. I was there with my family, family friends, and what happened was everyone was just discussing like what was going on and it's like. Well, it's just paper losses, but it was a lot of paper losses. It's just people that, like their 401ks, were disappearing into the ether and if you were retiring in that year, that couple year time frame, it was so incredibly brutal and like so that was kind of my first thing of like, and i remember learning about occupy wall Street i was a little bit too young and i think you were referring it to as this of like.

I was watching uh your clip this morning that you were posting and it was exactly that of just this is another form of occupy wall street. I think it's that exact same psychology. It's just now playing out in a different battlefield, and it right now happened. It was gamestop, it's still kind of gamestop, but we're seeing it a lot with amc.

The community is so so big and i think it's because of that of, like people are just so upset with how things have been going on and, of course we can get into the weeds of like shorting, naked shorting and all that. But i think why it's so popular right now is because on the big level, it's that narrative of david and goliath and that underdog story - and so many people are gon na fight for that, because of course, you're gon na fight. For, like fairness for me, i i want capitalism. I want free market capitalism.

So to me, this isn't a knock on what i believe. Capitalism to be it's a knock on, like i guess some of the ways people can take advantage of it and turn it into cronyism. I really liked how you define that, because that's what it is, it's a pay to play if you're in that elitist group. It works.

Super super well for you, but if you're not well that sucks, like you just like weren't in the position and like good luck, play like see you next time. You know i've got a perfect analogy at first the occupy wall street, because i never like to take credit for things that aren't mine um. That was actually one of the apes who responded on twitter came up with this sort of occupy wall street. That was happening online, so so i, like kind of slightly repackaged it but like that, came from your community, i'm just trying to lend a voice to us.

I just want to be clear about that, but you know here's a perfect example and again i use sort of the small business to big business analogy. The same way we talk about retail investor with some of the professional investors um, if you think about amazon. So when they were trying to find a new headquarters, they went out and had this beauty pageant and they went to all different cities across the country and said: what can you do for us? What will you give us? We want. You know we're going to locate here and, and they were like you could have the naming rights to our city.

You could have our first born kid. You can have like whatever, like imagine, you're a small business. I mean you're, an entrepreneur. Imagine you went to like the mayor of philly, like what could you give me like? You couldn't even get a return phone call and that's not right.

That's not capitalism. I have no problem with amazon being successful, even though they're bigger you're on the merits of being bigger, letting people choose convenience versus personalization. I have a huge problem when they start promising them special perks that you're not getting as a small business that has more risk and less access to capital, and those are the kinds of things that seem small, but they really add up, and that's gotten us to The point where we're having this huge battle of centralized power and control versus decentralization and the last 15 months, just accelerated that so much i mean we saw in 2020. You know small bit: 400 000 small businesses had shut down by june.

Millions more were affected. People are out of work. At the same time, seven tech companies gained 3.4 trillion in value. You had a record year for ipos.

You had a record year for specs, which we can talk about uh. So, like you know, how do you? How do you do that? And that's because the government's out there picking winners and losers and government big business, powerful people that triumvirate is, is consolidating that power, because they think us as individuals and small businesses are either too small to matter or too hard to control. I don't care what you think. I don't care, if you think it's intentional or unintentional.

I don't need to convince you of that, but you have to know the big, the big banks when they did bad things, we're too big to fail, but now out of no fault of our own, we're too small to matter or too hard to control. That's a power imbalance and the things that you guys are doing coming together. You know at you know, as this sort of decentralized group of people saying if this isn't fair like this is what it's all about, so so jazz about you guys. It's funny.

You brought that up. I was actually in the dc area when amazon was specifically shopping for like the next hq2 and that's where they ended up. Picking was like, i think, crystal city in uh, the dc air, and it was nuts the things going on like and, like the other, i guess, let's call medium tier businesses that can build off of that, even that, like leases, were going insane just on the exception That they were there like so much like, i guess, like you said it's the big players who are making these decisions of what's going on and if you're like a smaller entrepreneur like myself or a smaller business, just in general, it's just a completely different. It's not even a different playing field, it's a completely different league.

It's a completely different sport, like they just literally they've, said okay you're playing by this set of rules and then we're just gon na have this set of rules and they're the referees like it makes. No sense yeah, i mean it makes sense, but it's bad yeah, it's just ridiculous. So in in terms of business, and i guess what you saw with business and investment banking. What are some of the most egregious things that you would point to just in terms of uh more of wall street, of that type of thing of where it's just like? We are not playing the same game that we think we're playing the same game but, like i guess, with more of your professional background, i'm just like what are the things that we don't even know that we don't know.

So what i want to say is that the markets have morphed. So when i hate to tell you i know i look fantastic, but i'm old. So when i started out, you know like 25 6 7 years ago, whatever it is at this point in time, um they were different. It was a little bit more orderly.

It's it's like kind of gotten out of control on multiple levels. I would say one thing that would be really interesting for you guys to look into it's a fascinating story. It's one that i cannot believe that when i talk to people they don't know, but have you heard about the billion dollar whale story? No okay, so billion dollar whale which read the book. It's a phenomenal.

It's like, like you'll, literally go like how did this happen? It is the biggest financial scam that has ever been perpetrated and it was aided and embedded sorry guys by goldman sachs and they actually got. I think it was the biggest fine um in investment banking history. Finally, but it's been so quiet, so there's this guy, whose name was jolo and uh, he was from asia. Originally he went to wharton um and he kind of just played like oh.

I have all these connections and he was very kind of savvy at putting things together and he got into cahoots with the uh presidents at the time of malaysia and they were going to create this sovereign wealth fund called 1mdb, which yeah i've heard yeah. I've heard of that - and so you know he started getting all of these other sovereign wealth funds involved, and then he like started taking the money and he was like hanging out with leonardo, dicaprio and paris hilton. They finance the wolf of wall street which is like you know, like you, can't even make this stuff up, and you know they got goldman sachs to basically be an underwriter to help to continue to bring money in and the reason you know that goldman should know Better is that within investment banks and wall street firms, there's something called a commitment committee, and so, when you take on a client and you're going to do something like an ipo or an underwriting like you have a group of people and again when i was coming Up like it was really stringent, i mean there are certain companies, they wouldn't take public that were good companies, but they just didn't feel like they had those metrics. Now it's like yeah, whatever, like we're going to make fees, the fees that they were making for this raise were like exponentially higher than any comparable fee that they would ever make.

So you'd have to know sitting on that committee that there was something shady going on and they were just kind of like yeah whatever and to the things that you guys are talking about, like the fees that they had to pay versus what actually happened. A lot of times don't even out um. So that's just like one example that which again is just a wild story and um the the journalists who were at the wall street journal at the time who uncovered this did such a phenomenal job of like basically tracing the finances to these shell companies. And all you know all this stuff that, like everyone else, wasn't willing to do and so that you know that's it, that kind of that due diligence, piece that you guys are doing with some of these stocks.

You know they were doing this with okay, like where is this like sovereign wealth money going and how is like how is paris, hilton and you know, miranda kerr involved, like all these, like really weird things, but it's a fascinating and and fun and maddening read all Wrapped up into one, but that just kind of gives you a sense of some of the things that we're talking about and again it's it's like it's persistent, but it's not widespread. If that makes sense, so it's something that continually happens and you'll find you know things. Dif different places: it's not everything in the system, like the entire system, isn't 100 flawed, but it's got enough of it that it's really tilting that playing fields as we talked about. So i think that that's the things we don't want to throw the baby out with the bath water.

We don't want to go like we got to get rid of the whole stock market like it's important. We've got people's 401ks and pension funds invested in it and it's a great opportunity, but we have to make it fair, and i think that that those are the things that that we need to continue to talk about yeah just to drive into like one of those Points, i think you were mentioning of like. I do believe that there is a time and place for shorting right now, like you use the example of luck and coffee of like that was a faulty company. It wasn't like they just like were reporting false numbers.

It was a big lie, and sometimes you have these shorts and the short thesis that they come out and find it like. I am personally not against shorting at like just a theoretical level, because i think sometimes you find out bad actors. You see it a lot more in, like say, for example, the penny stock world. Like there's, been some stories.

I've read about penny stocks that, like they exclusively existed in paperwork, they had no product, they had nothing. They just filled out the paperwork to trade. On the otc market - and that was it - it was a complete scam, so i i'm not against it it's just more of when it's done abusively and to a degree to drive a stock into the ground. Beyond that and it's kind of funny, we see this a lot on mainstream media specif, specifically in this community.

Right now of, i think it's almost like an antiquated fundamental analysis of like oh, you can only be in stocks that you want to hold for 5. 10. 15 years, like whatever that's that's the thing of like fundamentally, where is amc going, and i think that's where mainstream media is really getting this movement wrong, because, right now we get it we're in it. For momentum play a swing play, we want to see what happens with the shorts yeah.

There is a time and place to discuss amc as a fundamental investment on the backside of this. For sure, i'm happy with that. But right now, like they'll, argue about that and like they'll, take words out of like context of like oh, like they don't believe in fundamentals like that's. Okay, like part of this, is don't tell us what to do with our money like it's our money, we want to put it where we want.

If i want to bet on the amc, i should be free to do that, but it's just like it's such a a pompous attitude of like no. No, no, like i have the degree i work on wall street. You should invest in what i tell you to and like agree with it, and then you have all these people who, like are frankly we're just hanging out on our couches, with like on our phone trading and buying and we're just causing such an immense headache. And like when i started this, i thought it was kind of a joke.

I'm, like ah there's no way like they're paying attention to me and when i'll say that. Just because, like i'm on youtube, i'm just i'm a 26 year old talking about these socks and then once in a while i'll get a dm from a cio they're like no. No, we bought amc too. I'm like you're watching me on youtube, like i'm like, like actual cio's chief investment officers from hedge funds, have been like no we're in it too.

We watch your youtube. This is so comically out of hand, and i love every single second of it. It's amazing kudos to you and i'll share a story when you talk about sort of the abuse of shorting, so um, as i mentioned on my piece with charles and charles payne guys, is amazing. He's one of my longtime friends.

I've known him for probably a dozen years he's, always been a champion for the little guy and he's really kind to kind of give a platform, and when he asked me it's like hey like what should we talk about in here and i said well, i think It's important to distinguish between you know: what's good shorting and what becomes abusive and i had a situation. Um. Probably my my dates are a little fuzzy like 2014 2015. Maybe it was 20.

No, no! No! Actually, this way, it was way before that. Sorry, maybe 20. 12. 23 - i don't know it was a long time ago, kids, anyway um.

So there was a company called herbalife and i don't know if you're familiar with herbalife, but it's this multi-level marketing company and like listen, you know, multi-level marketing is what it is. But i am a proponent of capitalism and i think that sometimes when people are trying to get into business, it's easier to try something out on a small scale and to see if they're good at it. If they see, if they're good at the selling before they dump their entire 401k into opening a business oh, which, by the way we learned in the last 15 months, could be just shut down at the women, the government so bill ackman, which may be a name That you guys know from pershing square, who is a very well-known hedge fund investor, and i have nothing against him. Personally, i think he's he's done.

Um have made a lot of very smart trades, and so you know i just again say this from a neutral position. Just on this specific set of actions is that he went after herbalife and he went after them. You know, as a short published all this research that he thought that they were a fraud which i didn't agree with and stayed my piece. But then i felt like and against my opinion that he was using people.

He knew in different investigative areas and what not to put pressure on the company to try to make this fraud narrative happen, and i spent a really long time all the way back in the day like this is kind of like reminiscent of when i, when i Was your age guys um that that i stood up and said this is bs like this is they're putting you know you don't have to like the company, but there's nothing. Fraudulent people are joining up for this and doing this because they want to do this. There's no gun held to their heads and i didn't like the tactics i felt. Those tactics were again, in my opinion, abusive and that's the kind of shorting that i wanted to stand up against, and i made a big stink and people were like who the hell like what are you talking about and ended up actually making people a lot of Money because i made the call same kind of thing when the stock was really depressed.

I said i think this is the stock of the year and lo and behold the next year went up and i rarely make a call like that. But it's just. It was so clear that that was going to happen and you know it's kind of fallen off. My radar - i you know - i don't really know, what's going on with the company today, but eventually he had to give up the fights like eventually he was just like yeah, okay, whatever, and so i think those are the kinds of things that we're talking about is Every once in a while, like somebody, gets a b in their bonnet about something, and then it goes from hey.

I'm trying to expose this or just this is we don't believe in the value? So this is like a personal vendetta against this company and - and you know, i think it is important to have people who are willing to stand up for that. So that's one thing i wanted to say about that um. The other thing about you know kind of valuations and doing what you want with your money. Part of the issue here is that the whole concept of valuations has been thrown out the window because the market has been completely disrupted by the federal reserve, and you know this is something i talk about in the book and one of the things i'm really proud About is talking about this in layman's terms, so people really understand what the federal reserve is, but if you think about the whole concept of naked shorting right, the whole idea that you're creating this share out of nowhere so usd is doing the same freaking thing, but Instead of doing it for millions of dollars or billions of dollars, they're doing trillions of dollars and they have injected trillions of dollars of naked short, fake money into the market that has made the stocks that you're investing in more expensive.

So, instead of giving you guys a fair shake to get in at a fair valuation, you're getting in at a higher valuation, they've, given companies that have absolutely no business raising money, the ability to stay alive, they're called zombie companies, companies that can't even service their debts. Little the interest on their debt, let alone their principal, the ability to stay alive, you at the expense of people, investing in innovation and they've thrown people like savers and retirees that count on fixed income under the bus and completely disrupted risk in the market. So if you really like, if you hate naked shorting, wait till you find out what the federal reserve has been doing, you know by the way they control the money supply and - and so you know it's that kind of disruption in the market. Also that enables the big guys to win and the little guys to lose and that's kind of the next level stuff that i'm fighting for, and you know one of the things that i can i talk about in this book this war on small business yeah, i Mean with that just for the listeners who haven't heard of this in 2008 2009 to get us out of that, the federal reserve has done this before.

I think it was about four trillion dollars to kind of backstock the backstop the economy get us going again to get us out of the most recent year of 2020 when, like everything, went belly up, it's exponentially more there's just more money in the system. So the way when i'm talking to all of you about when naked shorting you're increasing this supply demand stays the same. Obviously, the price drops what they're doing on like the bigger macro economic scale is even worse, because the way they're backstopping it they're increasing the supply. So the us trial adopts, but don't forget with stocks it's pushing all those higher.

So not only are they more expensive, but it's actually even more more expensive, because the usd is dropping so like it just for two like on a double level. It's very very bad and like what it is i get it they're doing the best they can to keep our economy going, but the can that they're, creating and kicking down the road is like a barrel of gasoline and the flame is not far behind they're. Not doing the best, so this is where i'm gon na disagree with you they're not doing the best they can. They are protecting their cronies, and this is this is the issue right there? The first thing that happened when we had covid it.

First of all, information leaked out to hedge funds before anybody knew on main street that there was going to be a problem with coveted in the u.s. And if you remember back in february 2020, there was this huge drop in the market, and that's because information was given to a select group of people who made the trades first, then the fed decided that they were going to come out and do these emergency rate Increases to or decreases to prop up the market, so they propped up the stock market before people on main street got dollar what you were getting your restaurant shut down, you're getting your gym shut down, but they propped up the stock market and they kept doing it. You know over and over and over again you're like okay. Well, maybe you know they needed to do some of that, but here's the thing it's just like food for thought.

If the stock market had felt some more pain, if amazon's warehouse wasn't deemed essential and had to close just like your small business, did i don't think the lockdowns would have lasted more than two or three weeks? What they did is that they said. Well, you big guys can continue on we'll just put the pain on these small guys, and so they basically let it go on forever because they weren't not only weren't they personally affected. They were actually getting the business and they were getting the stock from that and then, when they had these other emergency funds, they started investing in these etfs that owned the stock of big companies like apple and microsoft. So it's like you're, not supporting companies that are in jeopardy, like the amc's of the world right, that's that's something you shut down and said people can't go to the theater they were.

They were like investing in these like high growth companies. So if, if you're, really, if you're bought into the that the big the powerful people are taking care of the powerful people start following the money train on that one, so i guess with all of that, though, like it seems like at every level the massive level Of the federal reserve, i mean you were talking about people selling, there's that entire list of politicians who sold in february like are you kidding me like how dumb do they think we are when, like there's a list of politicians like i sold, because i thought it Was a good time and then two weeks later, one week later, there's like one of the most notable drops but like i guess with that at each level, the fed the government and then the middle level of institutions, wall, street's, hedge funds and then the smaller level Of like specifically, amc gme, if we see i get what you're saying that across the board, it's not 100 malicious, like there are good players, but we see these pockets of like nefarious illegal illicit actions. It's like we're currently in the fight to fight for amc gme to hopefully get the sec's attention like hey. What's going on, we think there's something suspicious here but like in your opinion, what's like, i guess, a useful way to fight back at all those different levels.

From like an individual stock, all the way up to like hey, this is not the free market. Capitalism. We were promised all right. So the first thing i would say, is build wealth, become successful right, become the people who control the game.

You know if we get good people who who are, because you know don't want to pull up the ladder behind them and believe in capitalism like build wealth, guys just just keep doing this the way. The way i will tell you that you build wealth is through ownership, so either you're building up your own business you're, going work to work for a company, that's private, uh, whether it's owned by private equity or vc. That's eventually going to go public and you ask for options or shares and you get an ownership stake of that business or you do what you're doing now. Is you start investing in companies and build your portfolio, and you know, i think, obviously we're talking about specific fights over a couple names but start building up a diversified portfolio over time build wealth, especially for those of you who are young um over time, even though You know things that things are going to go down, but they'll go back up again, and so just you continually develop that habit and build wealth and support each other in building wealth.

Right i mean one of the things that you guys have. That's so powerful. Here is you have a community that has each other's back, so if one of you makes chocolate bars like go, buy the chocolate bars from that person in your community and help them build well that help them hire more people. That then joins the community and has money to spend within it and like use your dollars to support each other and that that is capitalism right.

It's about it's voting with their dollars and supporting each other. So i think building wealth is one. I think the second um - and this goes like specifically to amc and gma and the changes you want and the market is, i think it's really helpful to be specific like like here, are like our three specific demands, because it's one thing to say your financial treason And this is bad or whatever, but it's much easier to affect change. If you have a couple of specific things, so i would say continue to work with people to build out.

You know what is it in terms of the transparency here, which i think is one of the biggest issues um, that you want to see change and i think, to have a free and fair market. There needs to be transparency. Everybody needs to know. What's going on, so i think that's a good one.

What i will caution against, though - and this is where you need to get some strategic minds here and i think, where things get bastardized, is that you have to think about all sides and the unintended consequences, because good intentions don't always lead to good outcomes. We'll go back to the last financial crisis so 708. They created all these rules that came out of there. Some of them were decent uh called dodd-frank, but it was meant to rain in big bigs right.

It was meant to reign in the action. What happened because regulation is so anti-competitive and it hurts small entrants and smaller players that don't have enough money to comply with like these owners regulation systems. Is it actually ended up hurting the number of small banks and the small bank lending? So there were fewer new small bank startups, a lot of small community banks went out of business and less dollars were lent to small businesses, while the big banks, prospered and big bank lending went through the roof, because now we've said hey, we need to reign in The big banks, but the legislation kept all the smaller players out and that happens over and over again. It's why you see mark zuckerberg, saying like hey, regulate the internet like it sounds good in theory guys, but remember that the reason they want this regulation is because they know it's going to keep that next competitor out of the market, and so, if you're, really rooting For the small guys - and you don't want this consolidation of power - you have to be really thoughtful about what you're asking for, so that it doesn't end up moving in the wrong direction.

That's one of the things that we're seeing and then once you have your list of demands, you know look what you guys have accomplished here as a group like imagine, if you all picked up the phone and called your representative, do you know how few people pick Up the phone and call their representative like nobody, does it if they get 15 or 20 calls let alone 100 calls. They panic, like their office, is like like what okay wait hold on. What like, what's going on here, like what's happening, so use your power of this, like amazing group and community, that you that you've connected with to say we have some really specific things that we think are gon na are important. We want more transparency, and this is specifically what we like to see and just start with a couple things you're not gon na, like fix the world overnight, but start with some small victories, come up with a couple of things that you think are important lobby for Those make sure there's no, like you know thing.

On the other side, that's going to end up screwing everybody else up, and this is where, like brainstorming with different people, is helpful and come up with like this is. What we think is is in the name of free, fair market capitalism. This is why we think it's important and it's so much easier to move the needle. That way than to just like put out the anger - and i think that's one of the reasons that occupy wall street the first time went wrong and why a lot of the protests go wrong because nobody like they cut people kind of understand, generally the concept.

But they don't know what people want and obviously, when you have a big community, you all want different things. So it's like coming up with just a prioritization of the things that would be the most helpful first, getting those done, tackling them and then moving on to the next things and sometimes just getting those couple like 80 20 rule right like so just getting those couple Things done solves 80 of the problems, so that's where i'd be focused. I would like what are the few things around. You know, transparency and um.

You know the market being slanted towards the big guys would be most helpful. You feel like give you a better chance to participate and be as successful as you possibly can, and then let people like me know i mean like like i as i'm, i'm always happy to be a mouthpiece at this morning. I was so happy. I pitched sinclair.

They own the national desk they've got morning shows you know all across the nation um on various stations that they own, and i said i want to come, and i want to tell the story of what's going on here with the ape army and why it make You guys understand why they're so mad and they said okay great and they put it on the first segment and we just tweeted it out, and then you guys reshared it, which was amazing but like we just got it like. You were able to tell me and communicate to me and i was able to send this accent into that sound bite and put it out for to play on like every syndicated station in america, like that's how these things have to happen. So look, that's. I don't know if you have any kind of feedback or concerns about their thoughts, about that.

No, that that makes a lot of sense to me of like we have to have a very coordinated, specific thing, because that's how you get things done. It's one thing like you said: if we're all sitting here saying like we want market fairness. Well, the next logical question for any lawmaker out there any politician is like okay. How do you specifically want fairness um? I think that, like really helps were a better definition of the movement.

I guess for like lack of a term that makes a lot of sense and also like to the first part that you said about just like building wealth. It's like well the more wealth in right now, especially in america, the more wealth, the more power, so it all kind of like runs together. So i see that and like i guess the other thing, your your note of caution of just like kind of be understand that, like whenever make waves, you're going to have wake, go out in every direction and like we saw that on a very small scale of Like the first time with gamestop, i'm not sure how closely you followed that but um roaring kitty kind of the the figure that was leading that he ended up getting brought in front of the sec for market manipulation. So that's like.

Sometimes there is caution because it was just one guy that thought he was participating in the free market and he just told people what he was doing like he was not telling people to buy, not telling people to sell, and yet the sec is like. Well now we need to look into him, it's like what that, which is by the way bs and again that goes back to the like. Oh that's, the inconvenient lucian. We can't have that happening because he's not the power center, so totally bs and like it.

That almost makes me feel weird, because when i thought of it i was like ha. I never have to worry about it and then even right now as we're talking, there's 50 000 people and i'm like man, i'm always here talking about amc and jimmy, and i love it and i'm in it. But like then, it brings up like legitimate legal government concerns for me. I was like i don't need to deal with that, like that sounds like i'm not i don't know, and this is the ongoing battle right.

I mean people said it to me. It's like. Oh, why don't you run for office? And i was like oh look because i want people like making up lies about me and my family 24 hours a day for everybody to hate me, because i vote against something called the fluffy puppy bill. That has nothing to do with fluffy puppies, but nobody's bothered to read it and say it's actually about murdering cats, whatever it is like people don't want the headache and the big powerful people like, which is why, when you have this decentralization, when you have all of You guys as an army, it's great because it spreads that risk out and it it makes it a lot of voices and they kind of don't know where to turn, which is exactly by the way why they hate you and why they hate small business.

And i, and i say that um you know again being in the middle of this situation, with you and advocating for the little guy and even though i've done very well for myself. I still always feel like i'm that, like blue-collar person outside like i don't, you know, go around and like eat caviar and drink champagne with like fancy people, even though you know probably could, if i wanted to it's just not kind of my thing yeah. Well, we definitely appreciate the support before we let you go. Could you tell us a little bit more about your book, specifically the title where to get it and like what it's all about? Yes, okay, so i just got off the press.

It's called the war on small business um. I will tell you they're available wherever small or wherever books are sold. But since again i i'm really like a big proponent of like support capitalism and support you want to support um, especially if you're in the u.s. There is a company called bookshop.org and what bookshop.org does is it takes the order and it fulfills it from a local small business bookseller.

So, instead of giving your business to the big guys, which again i'm a capitalist and if that's most convenient for you like great, do it. But if you want to like really have small business advocacy, then you go and you give it to bookshop.org and they'll fulfill. It from your local bookshop so that that stays in business. So that's just an idea uh, but you know what why this came about is.

I was approached by harpercollins very early in the pandemic, because you're right as things kind of heated up, i knew immediately that small business was going to get thrown under the bus uh as soon as they were kind of talking about aid packages and - and you know Maybe that some of the business is shutting down. I wrote an entire piece and i said: here's how you do it: here's, how you finance the small businesses to keep people on their payroll, so you pay people to stay home but be employed and you keep those businesses open and then you spend you know whatever It is a couple weeks, a month, two months to figure out your risk mitigation plan right because we knew we knew that you're not going to suppress a virus viruses or viruses, but you needed a risk mitigation plan that had some definitive end to it. So that would have cost by the way a fraction of what ended up happening and so when, when they, when harpercollins said hey, like take a look at this, i spent the pandemics or chronicling what happened. I kind of wrote three and a half different books during the time and at one point this last book was up to 160 000 words and my editor is like carol not like: we got ta, we got ta dial it back, so we got it down to Ninety thousand ish words, and by the way it has almost 500 sources.

So this isn't just like me making up off the top of my head new york times, washington, post wall street journal. All different kinds of sources in there so like everything is, is like deeply sourced, but the clear story was that there were decisions being made, in particular economic decisions that were not being made by science. It was being made based on who had economic clout and who had power. Okay, right, there's, no reason why my hairdresser couldn't do my hair.

Do my nails, but the large big box pet store next door could do a dog's nails like there's. There's no scientific reason for that. Um. You know the same thing.

You know why was amazon's warehouse deemed essential the entire time, but, like another, small business is shut down. So these kinds of things and as we talked about before, if we all shared in the pain, it probably would have lasted two or three weeks. So i wanted to explore that, but, as i was exploring that it really got into this bigger discussion of decentralization versus centralization or central power - and i think this is the battle that's going on right. So it's what you guys are doing.

Individual retail investors versus the big guys on wall street. It's what's going on in crypto, there's no faith in the fed or wall street, so we've got crypto and d5. That's trying to decentralize finance. We have small business who is like decentralization of the economy.

You have gig workers, who's, decentralizing, the normal corporate job. I mean that is the movement. People want that economic freedom and it's the reason why. Historically, people have come here from all over the world to try to take control and pursue whatever route it is to their objectives and by the way, not everybody's objective is financial all different kinds of objectives, but whatever it is having that freedom and choice to do What you want to do is important, but what i've seen and obviously coded with the big example, is that over like the past 20 years, there has been a concerted effort to move away from that decentralization to centralize power between the government and big businesses and special Interests because again, it's easier for the government politicians to deal with a few thousand big businesses than it is to deal with 30.2 million pre-cove at small businesses same thing on wall street budget of hedge funds.

That all know each other is great. Like millions of retail investors, well, that's kind of inconvenient, we don't know what's going on we're not in control, and i also think there's potentially some arrogance about it too. Right like we don't we don't want everyone to know that we're not the smartest guys and we just got lucky and anybody could have this opportunity. So we need to preserve this opportunity just for us, so other people don't find out that, oh, you can do it too and we're not that smart.

So i think there's a little bit of that there too but anyway, so i wanted to kind of explore. What's happened and how we've kind of moved away from free market capitalism towards the central planning and how that's so destructive for our economic freedom? And we are in america the only bastion of that we're. The only place that like stands up and protects the right of the individual and the individual's right to economic freedom. So if we lose that battle, then like we're completely screwed, i don't know what's gon na happen, so i wrote that as sort of this rallying cry for the small guy to really put attention - and so you know the fact that, like you guys, are having the Same battle, it's like there's just such alignment, which is it's that why i'm just so energized by everything you're doing that's awesome.

I'm definitely excited to read it myself, uh before you sign off. What's the best way for people to reach out to you, what socials do you want to plug? Where can people find you? Yes, so the so i'm mostly on twitter at carol j s, roth people always forget the js, but carol roth was taken and it was just too too much uh stuff, that's kind of been out their legacy. So that's the best place to find me and um. If you need to contact me personally, i will do my best.

I try to be helpful to people um. You know, obviously, i'm in book launch time. So it's a little bit crazy but, like i don't care, if you have a following of five people, and you want me to talk to you like i will. I will do my best to make time it may be a few months down the road, but like you're, no less important, just because you're starting out versus somebody who's got a you know.

A huge audience like like matt, does like you're all important, and so i want you to know that so go to my website carolroth.com and there is a contact form there and yes, by the way. I know it's super outdated, but i don't make money directly from that and we're super busy. So we just decided we don't care, which is also an important lesson in entrepreneurship. You can't do everything so if it's not directly contributing to revenue like you, just don't worry about it, um but reach out, and if there, if there's a way, i can be helpful.

I will always do my best to be helpful. I can't promise a result, but if there's something that you want like, i'm i'm an open resource and then, if you tweet to me also and like i don't see it um try again in a couple days because, like i get like thousands and thousands of people Who reach out and i'm just not on 24 hours a day? Thank god um, so i missed it. But, like you know, hopefully you guys have like gotten the vibe that i'm i'm here to be helpful and to be a resource. So if there's something that you know within reason that i can do, i will uh try to do that.

That's awesome! Well, thank you! So much for your time. I know the apes really really enjoyed it and we'll get this posted later, but i i really appreciate it enjoy the rest of your day, all right thanks so much man, hopefully we'll chat again, will do. Thank you have a good one. Bye.

You.