Bonus Episode: Grifters are gonna grift 🤷🏻‍♀️

At some point, you gotta learn the important lesson that some of the people in the media are cons. They are paid corporate shills who are directed to push a particular narrative. They are controlled opposition designed to do whatever their corporate puppet masters advise them to do. If you listen to them, you are doing so at your own peril. ⚠️

"It has become more and more obvious that there is one political party in America and that is The Business Party." -Bill Hicks

Links:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_PavcYPcmc

https://app.hedgeye.com/insights/70141-remember-this-jim-cramer-bear-stearns-is-fine-do-not-take-your-mon

https://nypost.com/2023/03/10/cnbcs-jim-cramer-touted-silicon-valley-bank-stock/

https://fortune.com/2023/03/15/winner-silicon-valley-bank-collapse-bank-of-america-jpmorgan-goldman-sachs-deposits/


Links where I can be found: https://causeyconsultingllc.com/2023/01/30/updates-housekeeping/

Need more? Email me: https://causeyconsultingllc.com/contact-causey/

Transcript

Unknown: 0:15

Welcome to the Causey Consulting Podcast. You can find us online anytime at CauseyConsultingLLC.com. And now, here's your host Sara Causey. Hello Hello and thanks for tuning in. In today's episode, I want to make a statement of the obvious that apparently still bears repeating Grifters are going to grift con artists are going to con criminals are going to do criminal things. In the same way that haters are gonna hate. People who are bought and paid for corporate shills are going to say whatever their corporate puppet masters, tell them to say. Some of these people might be controlled opposition, they may be going against the grain criticizing the White House or criticizing whatever Neocons and Neolibs are in power at the time, whatever, whatever. Same stuff different day. And it's there to give you the illusion of choice. I'm remembering a Bill Hicks quote where he says something like, it's becoming clear in America that there's not really two different parties. It's just one big party and it's a corporate party. Yeah. But see, we have to continue on with the dog and pony show that you really do have at least two choices. And the two choices appear to hate each other. So like they must be totally different. Right? Wink. I think we have to understand that you'll know the tree by the fruit it bears. How often is someone proven out correct? If they come out on the airwaves, and they make a prediction? How often are their predictions accurate? Are they throwing darts at a dartboard with a blindfold on and they're not even hitting the board at all. They're just all over the place. But somehow, they continue to get publicity. See, to me that should be one clear sign. If someone's predictions are hit or miss, or they're just flat out never right. But somehow, they have millions of dollars. And somehow they're on TV all the time, or somehow they have a popular radio show or popular internet show. Here's your sign that should seem fishy to you. Because see in the real world, in a free market in the same way that in a free market. There's no too big to fail, too important to fail. Someone who's giving out bullshit information. And inaccurate predictions that don't come true would not be rewarded for doing that. They're being propped up by someone or something. At various times some of the news articles and I'm using news news articles in a pretty generous sense of the term there. When you go and look at who the paid sponsors are. It's just absurd. It's enough to give you a headache. Like okay, well clearly, there's an agenda behind this. Clearly, I think we can kind of see where this news is being manipulated to go. I will give you my standard disclaimer here. I am not an economist. I'm not a financial planner or advisor. I'm not a real estate expert. I don't sit on the web. I'm not a power broker. I am not a billionaire or a hedge fund manager for billionaires. I don't tell you what to do or what not to do. I don't give you money advice. I don't give you any type of advice. I sit here and I opine for your entertainment only. So nothing that I'm saying in here should be construed as financial advice to you or any other type of advice. I also want to be clear because I don't want to borrow trouble from people who are a hell of a lot wealthier than I am. I'm not saying that anybody I call out in this episode falls into the bucket of people who are paid corporate shills that are being paid to grift I want you to make up your own mind on that issue. You decide for yourself. You look at the evidence you read the articles that I linked to listen to the videos that I linked to and you decide for yourself what you think. Here's a little something something that you might recall, I've linked to this article before from hedgeye and I will do so again on March 11 2008. Mad Money host Jim Cramer, who believe it or not is still on CNBC told the viewer who wrote into his show, bear Stearns was fine, right before the stock absolutely collapsed. The stock was trading at $62 per share. Just five days later, the firm was mercy folded into JP Morgan Chase Reed bailed out at$2 per share. This is an embarrassment and it undoubtedly caused considerable pain for CNBC viewers who followed Kramer's advice. With financial advice like this, it's no wonder the network's ratings are hitting multi decade lows. Here's the transcript and the video, which they linked to I would encourage you to go and look at all of this for yourself. Do not take my word for it. But the quote reads, Peter writes, should I be worried about Bear Stearns in terms of liquidity and get my money out of there? No, no, no. Bear Stearns is fine. Do not take your money out. If there's one takeaway Bear Stearns is not in trouble. I mean, if anything, they're more likely to be taken over. Don't move your money from bear that's just being silly. Don't be silly, in quote. Now, that's going to sound an awful lot like another video that I'm going to talk about momentarily. But before I move on from old Jim Cramer, let's also dip over to the New York Post. In a much more recent article for March the 10th. CNBC is Jim Cramer urged viewers to buy Silicon Valley Bank stock last month. CNBC analyst Jim Cramer is once again being pilloried on social media after a clip resurfaced, showing the Mad Money host recommending viewers buy shares of Silicon Valley Banks parent company which owns the tech driven commercial lender that swiftly collapsed on Friday. The ninth best performer to date has been SVB. Financial, the bank's parent company. Don't yawn Cramer told viewers during during a February 8 episode of Mad Money, Cramer listed SVB financial among his biggest winners of 2023 so far alongside blue chip stocks such as Mehta, Tesla Warner Brothers discovery and Norwegian Cruise Line. This company is a merchant bank with a deposit base that Wall Street has mistakenly been concerned by Oh mistakenly has mistakenly been concerned by Cramer said in the clip, Cramer touted the fact that the bank was less dependent upon private equity and venture capital offerings. He said the stock was the fourth worst performer of 2022 though it was worth buying, because being a banker to these immense pools of capital has always been very good business. The stock is still cheap, Cramer said at the time SVB. Financial was trading at $320.40 per share. The Post has sought comment from CNBC. We'll wait on that till the 14th of never on social media critics of Kramer made sure to remind others of the now ill fated stock tip. Yeah. I mean, it's sort of like okay, if you didn't learn from what happened with Bear Stearns, and you still decided to listen to this guy, about SVB. I kind of feel like that's on you. You know, I've said before, I feel like this is the year of just raw authenticity, taking the gloves off. Not sugarcoating anything. And I've told you before, there are situations where it's like, if you're still listening to hot air, and hopium you're still listening to bullshit. You are doing so at your own peril. If you're being naive if you have normalcy bias, if you think well. Okay, so this event happened in California, you know, California is kind of granola, it's kind of crazy. It would never happen to me. Well, my bank just has little old ladies and the money from Timmies paper route. I mean, it would just never have been her. You're doing that at your own risk, in my opinion. And it also seems to me that there are people in the media being paid to make damn sure. That's what you think. Well, okay, Silicon Valley, venture capitalists, big tech, people that are just whoop, they've got tons of money, and they're speculative, and they're high risk, high reward. And so you know, sometimes that bites them in the butt. Sometimes rather than getting the high reward, you get the high risk and everything defaults. Like, that's kind of their own. That's their own thing, man. We don't operate like that around here. We've just got the money from Granny's social security check and Timmies paper around just the average john and jane Q Public getting their paycheck direct deposited, like, just doesn't happen around here. It seems to me that people are being paid. They're being encouraged to get out in the media and make you think that if you choose to believe that and it's certainly your prerogative to do so. In my opinion, if you listen to that, you don't make any kind of preparations and you don't at least keep a general eye on the news, you don't at least keep a general eye on what's happening in the financial sector, you are doing so at your own risk. You know, I recorded that episode about influencers can leave you broke. If any of these people give you bad financial advice, they give you a hot stock tip. And it doesn't pay off, they're not going to do jack shit for you. They're not, they're not going to show up at your house and buy your groceries, they're not gonna pay your utility bill. They're not going to buy your kids school supplies and school clothes next year, they're not going to make sure that you don't lose your house or you don't get kicked out of your apartment for non payment, they're not going to do any of that. They will go off and they will collect their check for from whoever they shield for. And that will be that the onus is on you. Caveat emptor, let the buyer beware, the onus is on you to make good decisions for yourself. On that note, remember I said when I was talking about Jim Cramer's hot stock tip there about Bear Stearns, and don't be silly, if anything, they're going to be rescued, your money is better being in there. Don't be silly. See, that's another tactic that some of these individuals use is if you're doing something that feels common sensical to you. If you feel like your anxiety is not just random, it's based in some sort of fact. But they want to convince you that it's not, that's part of the gaslighting. Don't be silly. Don't be foolish. Don't listen to other people out in the media. Just listen to me. Push, push my agenda, do what I'm telling you to do. And it's like, wait a minute, what? On that note, I would invite you to go to YouTube. I'll drop a link to it. And watch The great news about SBBs collapse, Dave Ramsey rant, I want you to pay attention to the language and the same kind of tactic. Don't be silly. Don't be foolish. Calm your butt down. Let's go through some of the things that he says in this video for one thing right toward the beginning, when he's there with his flunky, or whoever this guy is, I don't know. When he's sitting there with the guy. He says, I wasn't even going to talk about this. But people are freaking out. Other people in the media are talking about it, people are freaking out. So I felt like I had to bring it up. If you are claiming to be some sort of money expert or financial guru, and the second and then the third largest banking collapse in US history happened over like one particular weekend. Why in the EFF would you not talk about that? Why would that not be the very first thing that you would want to go to the airwaves with as soon as you recorded a new broadcast? That just that in and of itself makes no sense to me. But see, that's in my opinion, that's part of the emotional manipulation. I wasn't even going to talk about the it's not even really significant. But some of you morons are just buying into the hoopla from the media. You're watching too much news. So heavy is the head that wears the crown. I'm gonna have to get on here and opine about SVB for up yawns. That's that's how I interpret it. When he provides his little Hey, here's a quick and dirty summary. According to me of what happened. The very first thing he says is, the bank was mostly comprised of hedge funds, venture capitalists, and big tech is not like your average local or regional bank. He also goes on to remind us that this bank was catering to tech startups and venture capitalists it it's not the place where your granny CD is. This is not like the kind of bank where you go in and you make your deposit and it's FDIC insured. And they're going to cover like 75% of your money. This bank was not like those banks. This bank was risky. It was full of people that want that high risk, high reward, but it's nothing like your bank. He describes the depositors of SVB as having large sums of money way beyond the 250k that's supposedly insured by the FDIC. He describes them as players. He says it just like that, go watch the video. He describes them as players. And he says they done got caught, which Oh, Okay, I suppose what he's referring to there is they're playing the system, they're playing the odds. And the odds didn't go in their favor. And so when he says they done got caught, I assume that's what he means. He goes on to reiterate, this does not affect your local bank at all. It has nothing to do with your local bank. This is just Silicon Valley. It's hedge funds, its investors, but it has nothing to do with your local bank. Look at how many times in this video, he has to keep reiterating that I mean, to me, it really does seem like NLP programming. It would only be better. If instead of kind of being shouty and haughty and proudful it would be better if he were wearing pastel colors. And speaking in a gentle, more hypnotic tone. This does not impact grandma's CD. These people were high risk, high reward. They knew the risks that they were taking when they chose to behave in this way. But it doesn't impact you. It doesn't impact your local bank. Frankly, it has nothing to do with your local bank. But instead you know, his shtick is to be I'm gonna talk up here like this. It's almost like Ross Perot. And way y'all remember him? And I'm gonna talk up here, unlock nurse, I'm gonna round these thanks to our players. I don't not college. Okay. Sure. He also very bluntly says your bank is safe calming your butt down. That is an exact verbatim quote, go watch the video for yourself. Your bank is safe, calm your butt down. I really want to see how well this advice ages. Frankly, I hope he's right. I hope that for all of us today, for me sitting here recording this episode. For those of you listening, I hope that's the case. I hope that your bank is safe. I hope that where I bank, it's safe. But I have no way of knowing that. See, part of what he's doing here is creating this thesis that wherever it is that your banking is so different from Silicon Valley Bank. Well, how the hell does he know that? I don't know that have no idea who all has invested money at your bank or what the solvency is like at your bank? How many loans do they have out? You know, I was listening to a commentator the other day, I can't remember who it was. If I can remember, then I'll drop a link to it. But the person was talking about credit unions and saying that, unfortunately, credit unions sometimes get heavy on like upside down auto loans. And so that was something that he felt like was a potential point of concern that, you know, credit unions might not even be a safe choice, either. Because look at how many defaults there are right now on auto loans, and how heavily leveraged that a lot of credit unions are on auto loans, which I thought was interesting. But my point is, I don't know. I don't know what all investments they make where I bank. I don't know what investments they make where you bank. I don't know if some millionaire has a big wad of cash stashed in there on the on the slice lie on the shish shish. I don't know, how the hell does Dave Ramsey know either. He doesn't. He goes on to blame SBBs collapse on the bond market, that there was panic due to they had invested a lot of money in bonds, billions of dollars, I think he says in bonds. And when those bonds started to lose value, the rumor mill kicked in people panicked. And then the venture capitalists flew in and started trying to scarf up cash. He goes on to reiterate that you are fine, that your local bank is going to cover a vast majority of deposits, and that there are not play as as he keeps calling them at your bank. Again, I would ask you how the hell does he know that? How does he know who's banking at your bank and who isn't? Or what their solvency level is like that is? That's either a really high level of ignorance or a really high level of hubris. In my opinion. He tells us that the stockholders will not get anything. So I guess that sort of makes Jim Cramer's advice about buying Silicon Valley Bank stock even worse, if the stockholders don't get anything. And then Dave goes on to educate us that that's how capitalism works. If you screw stuff up, you deserve to lose your money. I was not aware that we had capitalism. To me it smells an awful lot like crony capitalism, which is quite different from anything even resembling the free market. But sure, in a free market, you don't get too big to fail too important to fail. Real People don't show up with their hat in their hand asking for taxpayer money. If something fails, it just fails. But okay, Dave, yeah, sure. The, the stockholders don't deserve to get anything because when you screw something up, then you deserve what you get. Okay? I think maybe he might have to eat those words one day, what do you think? He tells us that he is not worried one iota. He's not worried about one single penny. And you shouldn't be either grandma's money is safe, you've got nothing to worry about. Then he segues so he's brought up the bond market. And he segues into a pitch I shit you not go watch this. He segues into a pitch about how now because the market is doing what it's doing. Mortgage rates are going down. Around 525. He says if you were planning to buy a house run to your mortgage company, before the dust settles on all of this run, run to your mortgage company. Now I've been on the air saying for me personally, I don't tell you what to do. But for me personally, with banking failures, with the job market being an absolute train wreck right now, there's no way in hell that I would want to be on the hook for a new house. No way. Sorry, I would not feel safe at night doing that. I'm continuing to do what Orlando minor talks about, sit it out with purpose, be on the sidelines, collect your data, save some money, do whatever it is you need to do to feel financially solvent. But don't go and buy an overpriced poopoo house at a high interest rate. Right now I wouldn't want to buy an overpriced Kupu house that's a lemon is going to need a lot of work, I'm going to cause me a lot of headaches, even in low interest rate. I just I don't feel safe doing that. I think it's a terrible idea. This is not the time, in my opinion, to play games and make foolish choices. The environments just too risky. It's too volatile. Now, again, I don't tell you what to do. But I sure as hell would not get on here and be like Ron, Ron, to your mortgage company go now. What he says it's a great time to get a mortgage. And then he tells you to go to Churchill mortgage and lock in your rate today. I assume this must be a company that he does business with. Maybe it's one of his sponsors, I don't know. But go to Churchill mortgage today. And lock in your right. Okay, great. Don't worry about your money. Somehow he psychically knows who banks at your bank and who doesn't. He knows what the FDIC is going to do. He's telling you that you're going to get most of your money back a vast majority of your money back. So you should just run to the mortgage company and lock in an interest rate today. Get ready to buy a house. Okay. Right, Dave? Of course, we should also have bought Bear Stearns, like Jim Cramer said and we should also have bought Silicon Valley Bank stock like Jim Cramer said. I think it's also worth noting that before he signs off, he talks about most banks, even your local bank is invested in the bond market. So at the same time that he sort of lambasted what happened at Silicon Valley Bank and talking about how heavily invested they were in the bond market. And then when bonds went down and made their balance sheet look like trash, he's also letting the cat out of the bag that your local bank does that too. So which is it? Is it that Silicon Valley is nothing like your local bank with grandma's CD? Or is it that it's a lot like your local bank, make up your mind, but he makes fun of people who are buying gold and who feel worried about the economy. He says it's like they're living in the wild, wild west. So at the same time that he's trying to hawk mortgages and tell you to go get into real estate right now, this is going to be your month baby the same time that he's saying that. He's also telling you that if you are invested in precious metals, it's like you're in the wild wild west. It's like people don't understand FDIC insurance and that the whole federal government would have to fail for you to not get your deposit insurance. That's the world according to him. He also advises you to quit believing conspiracy theories. Quit listening to things that you hear on the internet, even though he is on the internet. Quit listening to things that you hear on the internet, quit making comparisons to 2008 You shouldn't be screaming, this is going to be like 2008 He enlightens us that 2008 was not a banking collapse. And he tells everyone to calm down and to turn off the news because some of you react poorly to it. information. So you get a bit of pejorative advice and condescension there, you're clearly not bright enough to understand news for yourself. So just turn it off. I guess instead of paying attention to this absolute dumpster fire that we're in and making your own judgment call, you should just listen to him. I pray to God that you don't you know, that's just my opinion. And I could be wrong, but I'm certainly not going to take a damn bit of advice from that guy. I think the concept of being debt free is great debt in the way that our system is structured debt is easy to get into and it is damn hard to get out of and it does hang over your head like the sword of Damocles. So anybody that saying you're better off being debt free than being indebted. I get that. But some of the rest of this crap that he's talking about in this video, I don't know what planet he's on. Before I sign off, one of the things that I want to mention, too, speaking of like a grifter is going to grift somebody who's going to be a winner and somebody who's going to be a loser. On fortune.com We find Bank of America one big from the Silicon Valley Bank collapse. I'm thinking again, of pink houses by John Cougar Mellencamp, well, there's winners and there's losers. The simple man baby is going to be the one who pays for thrills and the pills and the bills that kill Yep, somebody's going to win here. As startups and VCs scrambled to get their money into safe hands following the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, they've turned to a Wall Street stalwart Bank of America. SBB imploded late last week after depositors tried to withdraw $42 billion from the institution with the FDIC taking over the bank over the weekend. Meanwhile, the New York Department of Financial Services took possession of Signature Bank on Sunday, saying the Corporation had failed to provide reliable and consistent data creating a significant crisis of confidence in the bank's leadership. But as the saying goes from chaos comes opportunity. It's seems in this case, the opportunity has fallen into the lap of Bank of America, which brought in more than $15 billion in deposits as SVB sunk. Sources familiar with the matter told Bloomberg the inflows came from fearful customers moving their money to an institution, the second biggest bank in the states that is seen as simply too big to fail and is considered to be so by the Federal Reserve. Indeed, the business's latest annual report for 2022 reveals the company brought in 27 Point 5 billion after tax, and holds 3.0 5 trillion in assets. Bank of America isn't the only giant bank seeing an influx of new trade. According to reports from the Financial Times, JP Morgan is supporting its raft of new customers by shortening the wait time for opening an account is also speeding up the rate at which new customers can access funds in order to ensure they can pay staff this week, confirmed as source briefed on the matter. Citi Group has also reported ly scramble to onboard customers with all the large financial Institute's seeing a particular push from account holders with holdings above the tooth out. Excuse me. You know me with numbers sometimes holdings above the $250,000 threshold that is guaranteed by federal insurance despite the government pledging they would still be covered. One senior banker compared calls coming into the institution as akin to Chicago's O'Hare Airport on a sunny day as other sources confirmed staff had been reassigned from their roles to deal with the mass onslaught of inquiries in quote. Well, there's winners and there's losers. So I'm gonna do what Dave Ramsey tells you not to do. Don't be listening. Like thirsts, yeah, listen to me and spad knew what I tell you to do. Yeah, okay. Sure. Dave, I think I will not do that. One potential theory is that as these banks falter, you know, part of it could be an attempt to usher in the C, B, D C's. And part of that could happen by saying we're only going to have these huge banks that have been deemed too big to fail. These local regional, crazy, risky banks not going to happen anymore. We're just going to start consolidating all of these banks to huge banking conglomerates so that maybe when it all shakes out, there's five or maybe 10 mega banks and that's it. They are your choices. I mean, the huge players one big here apparently JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, and Bank of America. They made out like bandits here. Do you think that That's a coincidence. See, I don't. Now Dave Ramsey would tell me that I'm just a moron who can't understand information and I need to quit listening to the news and reading things on the internet. I'm just out here connecting the dots for myself. Okay, so somebody won here, and it was Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase and Citigroup. I don't think that that's coincidental. And I think it would be very easy as these banks continue to fail, and become insolvent and have to get bailed out. Or worse yet, if they start the bail ends, and they just say, well, we're sorry, we're not coming to bail anymore. He always asked us out, you're gonna have to bail the bank out yourself. People will clamor to go to these bigger solutions they will. That's the world we live in now. It is. Please be careful about who you choose to listen to. I'm never going to tell you to turn off the news. I'm never going to tell you to not think critically please think for yourself. And if you get advice from somebody who it sounds to you like they're probably a grifter, it sounds to you like they're probably a paid corporate shill that is being paid to push a very particular narrative and to encourage you to not think for yourself. I want you to think for yourself about that. In the meantime, please stay safe, stay sane. And I will see you in the next episode. Thanks for tuning in. If you enjoyed this episode, please take a quick second to subscribe to this podcast and share it with your friends. We'll see you next time. bla