Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it's behind the bastards. Jesus Christ. It was Awesomtha.
Speaker 1: Stop Samantha. Do you see how she treats me? Sometimes?
Speaker 1: Fucking it's two o'clock on a Tuesday when we're recording this.
Speaker 1: I don't I don't need the drama. I believe I
Speaker 1: have civil rights, Sophie. I'm sorry. Do I not have
Speaker 1: civil rights? What does that have to do with you doing?
Speaker 1: Quite like thin voice I've ever heard, well that you're
Speaker 1: taken away from you? That's like my rights are being violated,
Speaker 1: Samantha McVeigh. How are you? How are you doing? I
Speaker 1: am wonderful? How are Samantha? Is it true that were
Speaker 1: I listening looking for a podcast about things that my
Speaker 1: mother had never told me? That you could help me
Speaker 1: with that? Yes, as in fact, you can just put
Speaker 1: stuff mom never told you, and you will find my
Speaker 1: face and then some other faces as the host. And yes,
Speaker 1: you can come and listen about things your mother may
Speaker 1: not have told you. If you have a cool mom,
Speaker 1: maybe they did tell you. I don't know. That is
Speaker 1: extremely based. Um. I'm happy that we're talking today about
Speaker 1: why the rent is so damn high, But you know
Speaker 1: what else is too high right now, Samantha, help me.
Speaker 1: The Great Lakes they actually hit record highs this year,
Speaker 1: which is causing serious problems for all of the communities
Speaker 1: who live near those lakes. And Samantha, that's why we
Speaker 1: got a newcomb. This is his revenge for me telling him.
Speaker 1: Have you have you have you thought of feelings? Have
Speaker 1: you thought about how many nukes the United States has
Speaker 1: that are just sitting around doing nothing. We spent a
Speaker 1: lot of money on those nukes. I understand that there
Speaker 1: is a lot. And it's one of those that I'm like,
Speaker 1: I really hope I'm in the center of it. So
Speaker 1: I'm just decimated if it you know, this happens with
Speaker 1: want to be right there in the middle. We're gonna
Speaker 1: shoot those missiles right at Lake Superior, Lake, Ontario, the
Speaker 1: other ones take them out. Doesn't even know the names
Speaker 1: of the Great Lakes, but wants to nuke them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: may I ask why what have they done to you?
Speaker 1: For what I say? They're at record highs, which is dangerous.
Speaker 1: For another thing, you were listening to the Gordon Lightfoot
Speaker 1: song The Wreck of the Edmond Fitzgerald. No, well maybe
Speaker 1: you should, Samantha. It's about a bootful of brave men
Speaker 1: who are killed by the vicious Lake Superior during a
Speaker 1: storm that we could have nuked away. But what were
Speaker 1: they doing there? And they were trying, they were trying
Speaker 1: to take steel from someplace to some other place. They're
Speaker 1: just being good sailors. Well, we have a lot of
Speaker 1: we have a lot of Great Lakes sympathizers. This is
Speaker 1: not a bit, Sophie. This is a serious political exercise.
Speaker 1: I believe I have the right to advocate politics, Sophie.
Speaker 1: If I'm remembering, I never knew I needed if the
Speaker 1: company thing that we had to do recently. You are
Speaker 1: violating my civil rights by trying to force me to
Speaker 1: hold a political belief. You actually did you actually do
Speaker 1: that video. There's no way you did that on time.
Speaker 1: There's no absolutely not. I know there is a video
Speaker 1: and it probably says that you can't stop me from
Speaker 1: wanting to nuke the Great Lakes. Uh. I haven't seen
Speaker 1: it either. I haven't done the training either, so I
Speaker 1: can't could. That's good when you know I did it,
Speaker 1: it didn't count it and I have to do it again.
Speaker 1: Very upset about I'm upset about this, Samantha. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: play a little bit of politics here. I'm gonna play
Speaker 1: a little bit of politics. What if I add making
Speaker 1: us not have to do this thing to the bill
Speaker 1: that will nuke the Great Lakes? You know, you see
Speaker 1: a little bit of exactly exactly. This is how we
Speaker 1: this is how we make sausage. Baby. Sorry to the
Speaker 1: residents there, no, no, it's good for them. It'll get
Speaker 1: keep the lakes off their backs. Yeah, it'll be fine.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's good for them. I don't think
Speaker 1: they would say that water soaks up radio shoo in real. Well,
Speaker 1: so it'll be it'll be good. It'll just you know
Speaker 1: what it'll be like. It'll be like everybody's got a
Speaker 1: hot tub for a little while. That's gonna be nice. Anyway,
Speaker 1: today we are going to start by talking about a bastard,
Speaker 1: Samuel zel z e l l Now. He was born
Speaker 1: Schmooley Zilonka. I think I'm saying that close close enough
Speaker 1: to write on September ninety one. His parents, Rukla and Barrick,
Speaker 1: were Jewish immigrants from Poland. Um if he hadn't guessed
Speaker 1: that they were Polish by the last named Zelonka Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: his father had made good money as a grain merchant,
Speaker 1: and when Germany was gearing up to invade in nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty nine, he was one of those guys who was like,
Speaker 1: probably isn't gonna go well probably probably probably time to
Speaker 1: begin and yeah I think now yeah, yeah, time time
Speaker 1: to bounce. That was a great time to leave Poland.
Speaker 1: Um so zell are but our zel Samuel Zel schmooley,
Speaker 1: But Ammuel. He gets raised in Chicago, where his father
Speaker 1: takes up a new business. Oh good, okay, so you
Speaker 1: guys are both you guys both Chi town babies. You know,
Speaker 1: No I'm not no, no, no no, no, I just know Sammy.
Speaker 1: There's no show I think you said, Sammy, I thought
Speaker 1: you were saying that you're also grown up in Chicago.
Speaker 1: No that I'm not that cool. Well I don't know.
Speaker 1: Chicago is certainly a city, so um yeah, his dad
Speaker 1: and everybody, that's right, that's right. There's only one city
Speaker 1: we like on behind the bastards, and it's Pittsburgh, where
Speaker 1: I have never been. So his father takes up a
Speaker 1: new business as a jewelry wholesaler. From early on, Samuel
Speaker 1: was very interested in business. He's one of these kids
Speaker 1: who decides as a child, capitalism is the thing for him,
Speaker 1: which another warning sign. Right, Look, this kid is a
Speaker 1: refugee from war turned Europe. I have a lot of
Speaker 1: sympathy for that. But no matter what your background is,
Speaker 1: if at age, let's say twelve, you're talking about how
Speaker 1: you want to be an entrepreneur, we gotta slow those
Speaker 1: kids down. Maybe like put some wasps pray and like
Speaker 1: the school of ventilation ducks or something, but we gotta
Speaker 1: slow those kids down. They're not doing any good for us.
Speaker 1: That's what he's gonna do. I don't know, somebody, if
Speaker 1: you've just like gotten a little bit more lead maybe,
Speaker 1: or maybe a little less oxygen, maybe a little bit
Speaker 1: more CEO two in the house. Anyway, he doesn't, so
Speaker 1: his he things are fine for him. Um. He starts
Speaker 1: his first business at age twelve. He realizes that local
Speaker 1: kids in his upper class suburb craved pornography, but they
Speaker 1: couldn't purchase it in any of the stores that they
Speaker 1: could reach on their bicycles. So Sam found a place
Speaker 1: in the city where he could buy Playboy magazines in
Speaker 1: bulk for fifty cents each and then resell them for
Speaker 1: between a dollar fifty and three dollars each Holy crap,
Speaker 1: this kid. Okay, that's impressive. Well, it's impressive, but also
Speaker 1: that's that's a bad sign. So he later called this
Speaker 1: but yes, yes, it's a good grift, but it's a
Speaker 1: bad sign. He later called this his quote first lesson
Speaker 1: in supply into man Bracking into a two thousand and
Speaker 1: thirteen meeting of the Urban Land Institute. For the rest
Speaker 1: of that year, I became an importer of Playboy magazines
Speaker 1: to the suburbs. Now again, normally I think this is
Speaker 1: a good thing because the suburbs are desperately boring and
Speaker 1: they needed the mid core porn that Samuel, there's entirely good. Look,
Speaker 1: when I was a kid, my first pornography was porn
Speaker 1: we found in a little stretch of the woods in
Speaker 1: the middle of our suburbs that all of me and
Speaker 1: my cousins would like run to. And you could go, like,
Speaker 1: there's just like this box of playboys. Many people there's
Speaker 1: the alleged of Johnny Porno seed. You know, somebody seed
Speaker 1: it was from the woods. Thing. Okay, there's so many
Speaker 1: questions about I guess we don't have the time, but
Speaker 1: I don't I don't think well, no, I don't think
Speaker 1: gen Z has this because they've got the Internet. But
Speaker 1: like I encountered my first porn before the internet was common,
Speaker 1: and it was porn that was found, Like it was
Speaker 1: kind of like a little mooted area behind the housing development.
Speaker 1: You know, everyone had this Texas. Yeah, this is Texas,
Speaker 1: but I don't many where people have have have found
Speaker 1: woods porn wood porn, yeah, which at least nobody. I
Speaker 1: didn't have to pay for my woods porn. Sure it
Speaker 1: was kind of moldy and like crumbling, and all of
Speaker 1: the colors weren't clear, but I was pretty sure you
Speaker 1: could see some nipples in there, you know what I
Speaker 1: was like seven. It's because he would try to watch
Speaker 1: porn on static TV. Yeah, it's exactly like that physical TV.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, alright, let's goep going he is. He
Speaker 1: is peddling mid core pornography to the suburbs. Um Samuel
Speaker 1: graduates from Highland Park High School because again his parents
Speaker 1: are rich. That is a nice part of Chicago. He's
Speaker 1: accepted by the University of Michigan. He is less interested
Speaker 1: in his studies than he is in finding new ways
Speaker 1: to make a buck. His roommate mentions to him one
Speaker 1: day that their landlord was developing a new property, an
Speaker 1: apartment complex. Samuel thought it would be easy to manage,
Speaker 1: later saying quote, I had plenty of faith in my
Speaker 1: own what I call salesmanship. I could rent them. And
Speaker 1: most important of all, I was at and it was
Speaker 1: student housing. I thought I could relate in return for
Speaker 1: running and maintaining the building. This friend of mine and
Speaker 1: I each got an apartment. So number one for an
Speaker 1: idea of kind of how this kid works. He's able
Speaker 1: to talk a landlord into this arrangement, and then he's
Speaker 1: able to turn this arrangement into a business that's shocking size.
Speaker 1: By the time he graduates the nineteen sixty six, Zell
Speaker 1: had managed with his partner more than four thousand apartments
Speaker 1: and personally owned between one hundred and two hundred of them.
Speaker 1: This is a huge business. He's very good at this um.
Speaker 1: Now he sells his share of the property management business
Speaker 1: he had started to his partner, and he moves back
Speaker 1: to Chicago, where he passes the bar exam and he
Speaker 1: joins a law firm. Law was what he'd studied to do,
Speaker 1: and becoming a lawyer had been his goal for years.
Speaker 1: But like now that he sells his real estate business
Speaker 1: and he starts working as a lawyer. He's like, kind
Speaker 1: of fucking hate being a lawyer, this guy that sucks. Yeah,
Speaker 1: um so pretty much immediately he quits and decides to
Speaker 1: go back into real estate and make it his full
Speaker 1: time career. In nineteen sixty eight, he founded a company
Speaker 1: and brought in his old business partner and he started
Speaker 1: buying properties. Now he happened to get into the market
Speaker 1: right as it was hitting. It was on an overbuilding spree.
Speaker 1: Like again one of these times when like they're building
Speaker 1: way more housing than is needed because there's this irrational
Speaker 1: exuberance of investors and buyers and whatnot, which leads to
Speaker 1: a market crash. In nineteen seventy three, multi family residential
Speaker 1: real estate plummeted in value first, and a lot of
Speaker 1: commercial property loans went into default. So numerous properties are
Speaker 1: abandoned mid construction. Right companies like, suddenly we can't finance
Speaker 1: finishing this house. So there's just this lot with like
Speaker 1: a basement dug or some ship on it. And Zel
Speaker 1: sees this as an opportunity. He can buy up valuable
Speaker 1: real estate for nothing and cheaply put it into a
Speaker 1: portfolio that he can profit from later when the market recovers. Right. Um,
Speaker 1: tale as old as time. So he has other businesses
Speaker 1: as the years go by. He purchases an agricultural company
Speaker 1: that's closing, and then a nitrogen plant that's going into bankruptcy.
Speaker 1: Then he buys a potash plant and starts like making fertilizers.
Speaker 1: So he's buying these businesses that are failing and then
Speaker 1: he integrates them together into one bigger business that's able
Speaker 1: to succeed. This is a pattern that asserts itself over
Speaker 1: and over again. Samuel Zel looks for misfortune, finds a
Speaker 1: business or a property that's fallen on hard times, buys
Speaker 1: them up at a very low price, then repackages them
Speaker 1: and sells them for a profit. In an article for
Speaker 1: the New York University Reviews, l describe his strategy as
Speaker 1: dancing on the skeletons of other people's mistakes. Um, this
Speaker 1: earns him, yeah, I mean, yeah, it's what he's doing.
Speaker 1: And he gets the nickname Grave Dancer as a result.
Speaker 1: Oh he's bad. Oh yeah, yeah, I mean that's funny
Speaker 1: that that is kind of cool. Um, but it's not
Speaker 1: about to be so sometimes yeah, sometimes he has to
Speaker 1: make the grave to dance on it. So he buys
Speaker 1: a controlling interest in the Tribune Company, which owned the
Speaker 1: Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times. Um, and I
Speaker 1: want to quote now from a New York Times article
Speaker 1: talking about the guy that Zel brings into run the Tribune,
Speaker 1: a man named Randy Michaels. Quote. After Mr Michael's arrived,
Speaker 1: according to two people at the bar that night, he
Speaker 1: sat down and said, watch this, and offered the waitress
Speaker 1: a hundred dollars to show him her breasts. The group
Speaker 1: sat dumbfounded. Here was this guy who was responsible for
Speaker 1: all these people getting drunk in front of senior people
Speaker 1: and saying thus this to a waitress who many of
Speaker 1: us knew. Said one of the Tribune executives present, who
Speaker 1: declined to be identified because he had left the company
Speaker 1: it did not want to be quoted. I have never
Speaker 1: seen anything like it. So um, Mr Michael's denies this happen,
Speaker 1: saying the people who told the Times the anecdote, we're
Speaker 1: lying or mistaken. But boy, a lot of people have
Speaker 1: similar anecdotes about this guy who Zel brings in to
Speaker 1: run the Tribune. Now, Zel's plan seems to have been
Speaker 1: that he buys this company, and he finances the deal.
Speaker 1: This might sound familiar. So the Tribune massive media company.
Speaker 1: He's only able to buy it by borrowing heavily. Um, Like,
Speaker 1: that's how he finances it. He gets a bunch of
Speaker 1: banks to front the money that he put up front,
Speaker 1: and then as soon as he buys it, his plan
Speaker 1: is to engage in aggressive cost cutting that can make
Speaker 1: the venture profitable after like trimming all of the employees.
Speaker 1: It's almost exactly like what Elon Musk is about to
Speaker 1: do with Twitter, right, super familiar. Yeah, it sounds really familiar.
Speaker 1: Zel is doing this same thing. And when he buys
Speaker 1: the company, he allegedly tells the employees there's a new
Speaker 1: sheriff in town, which, like, you don't actually say that, Sam,
Speaker 1: you don't really say that. Nobody says that what So
Speaker 1: in buying and tanking the Tribune, Zell brought harm to
Speaker 1: a number of hugely influential local papers. In addition to
Speaker 1: the Los Angeles Times, UM and the Chicago Tribune, the
Speaker 1: Tribune owned the Baltimore Sun, the Hartford Current, the Orlando Sentinel,
Speaker 1: as well as the Tribune in the l A Times.
Speaker 1: So he has bought up the most influential local news
Speaker 1: sources in the country. Um, and he's about to run
Speaker 1: them into the ground. So as he buys them, he
Speaker 1: goes on like a tour through all of these different properties,
Speaker 1: these different newsrooms, giving speeches. He's famous for cursing a lot,
Speaker 1: and his speeches, Um, I think to try to be
Speaker 1: entertaining and stuff. Um. But over and over again, the
Speaker 1: thing he tries to sell his new staff on is
Speaker 1: the fact that he's going to make them rich with
Speaker 1: his new management skills. At one point, he writes to
Speaker 1: the Tribunes employees, I have said repeatedly that no matter
Speaker 1: what happens in this transaction, my lifestyle won't change. Yours,
Speaker 1: on the other hand, could change dramatically if we get
Speaker 1: this right. They're not going to get this right. So,
Speaker 1: for one thing, these are all newspapers, right, that's the
Speaker 1: that's the fairly large newspapers. Um. The team he brings
Speaker 1: in to take over management are all radio people. In particular,
Speaker 1: they're all shock jock DJs. So I know, yeah, Mr
Speaker 1: Michael's who's running it is a former shock jock. He's
Speaker 1: like a Howard Stern type. Um. And so that's the
Speaker 1: people he's like, you know, who can run a bunch
Speaker 1: of local newspapers is like drive time radio d j's
Speaker 1: who curse on the air. That's that's who will turn
Speaker 1: the newspaper business around. Um. Now, since Mr Michael's is
Speaker 1: a shock jock, the people that he brings in to
Speaker 1: help and run the company are also all former shock jocks.
Speaker 1: And one of the first things they do is they
Speaker 1: rewrite the employee handbook quote. Working at Tribune means accepting
Speaker 1: that you might hear a word that you personally might
Speaker 1: not use. You might experience an attitude you don't share.
Speaker 1: You might hear a joke that you don't consider funny.
Speaker 1: That is, because a loose, fun nonlinear atmosphere is important
Speaker 1: to the creative process. This should be understood and should
Speaker 1: not be a surprise and not considered harassment. Now, yes,
Speaker 1: of course, if you're working in a creative enterprise based
Speaker 1: around like writing, people should be aware that they're going
Speaker 1: to encounter things that are uncomfortable and stuff they might
Speaker 1: not like and being open minded and people being able
Speaker 1: to that. But if you're putting that in your handbook
Speaker 1: with specifically to lead to you shouldn't ever complain about harassment.
Speaker 1: That's because you want to sexually harass a bunch of people, right,
Speaker 1: That's that's why you're putting us. And then you're going
Speaker 1: to be racist. So all of those things are going
Speaker 1: to happen, So go ahead and expected pretend like this
Speaker 1: nineteen nineteen or nine. Essentially, Yeah, it's it's like everything else. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so they took this, Uh, don't call our harassment harassment seriously.
Speaker 1: Mr Michaels hired a woman named Kim Johnson to be
Speaker 1: his s VP of local sales. In the news release
Speaker 1: announcing her higher, he said that she was a quote
Speaker 1: former waitress at Knockers, the place for hot racks and
Speaker 1: cold bruise. Um. I think this was a joke based
Speaker 1: on a fake restaurant chain, but anyway, it's it's a
Speaker 1: weird thing to say about someone you brought on as
Speaker 1: a VP. But they can say, we have a woman,
Speaker 1: a woman exactly, we have a woman, and we only
Speaker 1: a little bit complimented her Knockers and the press release
Speaker 1: we announce we we put out in the press release
Speaker 1: announcing her higher press release. Yeah, so this is like
Speaker 1: what they're putting out publicly to the industry, like we
Speaker 1: hired this lady because of her tits. Like that's that's
Speaker 1: literally you're welcome. Yeah, this is not like people might
Speaker 1: have thought at first, like oh, this is just like
Speaker 1: a thing. He said it like an office party. That
Speaker 1: was inappropriate. No, no, no, yeah. So in his first
Speaker 1: tour of the company, Zel promise there would be no
Speaker 1: job cuts, but of course there were many of them.
Speaker 1: And what's whereas his business acumen appeared to lead him
Speaker 1: to try to like refocus all of these legitimate newspapers
Speaker 1: on cheesy game show tactics quote from The New York Times.
Speaker 1: The company introduced promotions that seemed to have been drawn
Speaker 1: from the radio handbook. At four of the company's television stations.
Speaker 1: An event called cash Grab and which the viewer was
Speaker 1: led into a bank vault and allowed to scoop up
Speaker 1: dollar bills, was inserted in the middle of the station's newscasts.
Speaker 1: At w p i X TV in New York, the
Speaker 1: viewers were cheered on by clapping Hooters waitresses, giving the
Speaker 1: station the appearance of televised shock radio. He literally, you know,
Speaker 1: like you were seeing RoboCop. Have you ever seen like Idiocracy? Nope, okay,
Speaker 1: both of those movies have like fake TV news that
Speaker 1: has like that's just like super trashy and gross and
Speaker 1: stuff because it's dystopian societies. He's just done that for real.
Speaker 1: He's just actually made that as it wasn't there an
Speaker 1: Eastern European station that actually had women stripping as they
Speaker 1: were telling news in order to engage viewers. But they're
Speaker 1: trying to do real news. I feel like I saw
Speaker 1: it a while a girl, what is happening? Thing that
Speaker 1: happened to be honest. Having just being like, hey, we're
Speaker 1: the news and also people will strip on the news
Speaker 1: is way less gross to me than hey, we're gonna
Speaker 1: split the news up with cash grab where people stuck
Speaker 1: in a bank fault have to grab dollars. That's much
Speaker 1: grosser to me than just like, yeah, um it's it's
Speaker 1: pretty clever good. So Zell hired a chief innovation officer
Speaker 1: who was like a maniac and would regularly right five
Speaker 1: thousand word type of riddle memos to and lists and
Speaker 1: editors that they would be forced to read, stuff like
Speaker 1: rock and roll musically is behind us, All caps news
Speaker 1: and information is the new rock and roll. This is
Speaker 1: like a corporate memo. Their director of innovation, the Rock
Speaker 1: and Roll. At one point in a meeting, they're talking
Speaker 1: about the war in Iraq, and somebody brings up that,
Speaker 1: like Los Angeles Times reporters are actually in Iraq, you know,
Speaker 1: covering the war like you do. And he shocked that
Speaker 1: this is allowed. He has no idea that this is
Speaker 1: how like journalism works, that reporters go to war. What
Speaker 1: this is the director of innovation for one of the
Speaker 1: largest newspaper companies in the country, or they one step
Speaker 1: away of just become a tabloid at this point. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that's what he's trying to do. He's trying to,
Speaker 1: like his ideas that we just make it profitable by yeah,
Speaker 1: turning it into a tabloid. Stick some tits on there,
Speaker 1: stick some game shows stuff in there. It'll be great.
Speaker 1: It's good. Yeah. I don't like this guy, you know
Speaker 1: what I do like though? Oh, I like that the
Speaker 1: fact that the Great Lakes, being the largest freshwater bodies
Speaker 1: on the planet, plenty of room for the US nuclear arsenal. Yeah, apparently. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I try to get it there, Sophie. Sophie, Sophie, I
Speaker 1: just like, don't care anymore. I care about your hometown,
Speaker 1: and I'm trying to stop it from being in l A. Well, no,
Speaker 1: just the lakes, just the lakes, Just the lakes. My
Speaker 1: hometown isn't there, So well, then everything's going to be fine.
Speaker 1: All right, here's some ads. Uh, we're back. Sophie agreed
Speaker 1: off screen that my political career has a lot of promise. Um,
Speaker 1: everything's good. Nuke the Great Lakes the middle of time.
Speaker 1: It'll stop it it'll, it'll, it'll, it'll make the world darker.
Speaker 1: You ever see snow Piercer the first two? I only
Speaker 1: watched the first. I only watched the first one and
Speaker 1: a half seconds of snow Piercer. But that's basically my
Speaker 1: idea each children to work. I didn't see any of
Speaker 1: those parts of the movie, but I assume all of
Speaker 1: those things were also positive, because it sounds like it
Speaker 1: started with a great idea, super positive. So um. James Warren,
Speaker 1: the former managing editor and Washington bureau chief of the
Speaker 1: Chicago Tribune. Instead of Zell's time running the company, quote,
Speaker 1: they wheeled around here doing what they wished, showing a
Speaker 1: clear contempt for most everyone that was here, and used
Speaker 1: power just because they had it. They used the notion
Speaker 1: of reinventing the newspapers simply as a cover for cost cutting. Now.
Speaker 1: During his time running the company's l also became a
Speaker 1: pioneer of click bait advertising quote advertising, yeah, oh yeah, no,
Speaker 1: he helps make this happen. Advertising has been inserted into
Speaker 1: the Los Angeles Times in new and unsettling ways. In March,
Speaker 1: and ad mimicking the front page for Disney's Allison wonder
Speaker 1: Land was wrapped around the first section, and in July,
Speaker 1: a fake version of the newspaper section for late breaking
Speaker 1: news called L A T Extra was wrapped around the
Speaker 1: real one, promoting Universal Studios King Kong Attraction with a
Speaker 1: lead story that read Universal Studios partially destroyed. In April
Speaker 1: of two thousand nine, and advertisement posing as a news
Speaker 1: article about NBC's new show south Land appeared on the
Speaker 1: front page. In July, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors,
Speaker 1: the governing body of the County of Los Angeles, sent
Speaker 1: a letter of protest saying the use of advertising disguised
Speaker 1: as news makes a mockery of the newspaper's mission. Some
Speaker 1: might argue that, yes, that's that's exactly what it does.
Speaker 1: But that's kind of the point. Um. Now, what's interesting, though,
Speaker 1: is that none of this makes the business profitable, and
Speaker 1: actually making all of these newspapers much worse um does
Speaker 1: not make people more likely to use them. Um Zel
Speaker 1: also had loaded the Tribune with so much debt by
Speaker 1: the deal right that bankruptcy was basically inefvitable. Was almost
Speaker 1: impossible for the company to ever turn a profit because
Speaker 1: of how much debt he'd loaded it up with. So
Speaker 1: I would assume with the clickbait that that he's getting
Speaker 1: money from the advertisers and that's how he was going
Speaker 1: to make money. That no, because people stopped visiting the
Speaker 1: website because it's ship. Yeah. Investors hurt by the local
Speaker 1: by the deal later accused him of basically loading the
Speaker 1: company up with debt and then sinking it on purpose.
Speaker 1: Um And I'm gonna quote now from the Chicago Tribune.
Speaker 1: Tribune Company, the precursor company, the predecessor company to Tribune Media,
Speaker 1: filed for bankruptcy and December two thou eight, one year
Speaker 1: after Chicago billionaire Zell took the company private and a
Speaker 1: heavily leveraged eight point two billion dollar deal. At the Times,
Speaker 1: Zell blamed a perfect storm of industry and economic forces
Speaker 1: the Great Recession but the bankruptcy case turned on charges
Speaker 1: leveled by junior creditors that the debt burden was unsustainable. Now,
Speaker 1: one of the things again I found interesting here two
Speaker 1: eights prior to the social media age taking off. Really, uh,
Speaker 1: it's when we have our last big economic crash. Local
Speaker 1: newspapers are the primary way people get news, and Zell
Speaker 1: absolutely crashes them in this multi But he gets to
Speaker 1: banks to back him this multibillion dollar deal that he
Speaker 1: could never make a profit on, and then he sabotages
Speaker 1: the companies that he's bought and destroys them and Fox
Speaker 1: over a bunch of people and then blames it on
Speaker 1: the recession. Elon Musk is currently carrying out at tens
Speaker 1: of billions of dollar deal on what is a lot
Speaker 1: of people's source of local news, um, right as we're
Speaker 1: about to have a recession, and has been talking about
Speaker 1: how he plans to fire Twitter staffers. It's cool, it's
Speaker 1: neat that these these billionaires get to just keep fucking
Speaker 1: with people's ability to get news because of their own
Speaker 1: egos when they want to. Yeah, they'll be fine, They're
Speaker 1: gonna have like a fun year of stories. And then
Speaker 1: a lot of people's lives will be worse and they
Speaker 1: will not suffer any consequences, which is good. Yeah, it's great.
Speaker 1: Uh So obviously legally, nobody ever accepts responsibility for anything. However,
Speaker 1: there's a bunch of litigation, like ten years of it
Speaker 1: over this. Zell starts to call it the deal from
Speaker 1: Hell because of all of the people suing him over this.
Speaker 1: Uh And eventually the litigation trust gets around two hundred
Speaker 1: million dollars to redistribute to creditors as long as no
Speaker 1: liability or wrongdoing is assumed by Zell and other defendants.
Speaker 1: So there you go. Uh Now, I want to read
Speaker 1: to you that above, or I read to you an
Speaker 1: above exerpt from the Chicago Tribune, which is a summary
Speaker 1: of the deal ten years on. I think it's interesting
Speaker 1: how this New York Times article, which actually focuses on
Speaker 1: the working people hurt by the deal, describes it more viscerally,
Speaker 1: because that one is just kind of like, you know this,
Speaker 1: they lost this amount of money and now there's a
Speaker 1: big bankruptcy. The New York Times quote is gonna be
Speaker 1: a lot grittier. Okay. Less than a year after Mr
Speaker 1: Zell bought the company, it tipped into bankruptcy, listing seven
Speaker 1: point six billion dollars in assets against a debt of
Speaker 1: thirteen billion, making it the largest bankruptcy and the history
Speaker 1: of the American media industry. More than forty undred people
Speaker 1: have lost jobs since the purchase, while resources for the
Speaker 1: Tribute newspapers and television stations have been slashed. The new
Speaker 1: management did transform the work culture, however, Based on interviews
Speaker 1: with more than twenty employees and former employees of Tribune,
Speaker 1: Mr Michael's and his executive's use of sexual innuendo, poisonous
Speaker 1: workplace banter, and profane invective shocked and offended people throughout
Speaker 1: the company. Tribune Tower, the architectural symbol of the staid company,
Speaker 1: came to resemble a frat house, complete with poker parties, jukeboxes,
Speaker 1: and pervasive sex talk. So they crash. This company, lost people,
Speaker 1: their jobs, caused the largest collapse in the history of
Speaker 1: American media. But they got to be playboys for a
Speaker 1: little while. Yeah, just they just paid seven billion dollars
Speaker 1: to have a house. Yeah yeah, a frat house where
Speaker 1: they also got to funk with serious people who were
Speaker 1: trying to report on important local news issues. Right. So
Speaker 1: Number one, this helps destroy local news nationwide. Like now,
Speaker 1: it is effectively dead as a meaningful force. Um. This
Speaker 1: is not the only reason for that, but it is
Speaker 1: a big part of it. Uh So that's pretty cool. Um.
Speaker 1: But obviously, for Zel, fucking with the Tribune was only
Speaker 1: ever a side project. His treat, his chief love remained
Speaker 1: real estate. And while all this is going on, he
Speaker 1: had very savvie sold his profile, or his portfolio of
Speaker 1: properties off to the Blackstone Group for thirty nine billion dollars,
Speaker 1: the largest leveraged buyout in history at the time. So
Speaker 1: he makes a funkload of money after this, and he
Speaker 1: sells off a bunch of these rental properties of his
Speaker 1: to Blackstone right before the sub prime mortgage crisis hit,
Speaker 1: crashing the real estate market and earning another feather in
Speaker 1: the cap of the grave Dancer. When the market was
Speaker 1: at its lowest point, he used some of the pile
Speaker 1: of cash that he'd earned to buy up more properties.
Speaker 1: He currently owns some seventy eight thousand apartments in San Francisco,
Speaker 1: Southern California, New York, all of these places where rent
Speaker 1: is surged over the last decade. He is a big
Speaker 1: part of that. Given what happened with the Tribune. You
Speaker 1: won't be surprised to learn that Sam Cell has decided
Speaker 1: to pour millions of dollars into spreading propaganda to stop
Speaker 1: the spread of rent controlled housing in any form. So
Speaker 1: again he destroys all these local news companies, and then
Speaker 1: he starts putting money in order to like back into
Speaker 1: it back in well, he starts putting money into basically
Speaker 1: like pushing propaganda that will lead voters not to select
Speaker 1: different ballot measures and stuff that will allow for rent
Speaker 1: like put caps on what rent increases, and ship like
Speaker 1: destroys the local media. Then Bright like bribes his way
Speaker 1: into trying to like push against any kind of housing
Speaker 1: justice or anything that will reduce the cost to renters.
Speaker 1: So was this a big like conspiracy for him to
Speaker 1: actually tank, as they said, news media so that he
Speaker 1: could go on and say if they actually do good
Speaker 1: research and come out with good journalism and say, hey,
Speaker 1: the housing market and all of this is not just
Speaker 1: because of these things in ordered for him to control
Speaker 1: the like, see they're lying, they don't they're not trustworthy.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to I'm not gonna say whether or
Speaker 1: not there was intention there because I I can't there's
Speaker 1: no evidence of it, certainly. Um, but um, I don't
Speaker 1: know that's what happens. Like that's the end result of it, right, Uh?
Speaker 1: Is that? Yeah? He like all this ship gets uh
Speaker 1: fucked up. Um, so it's it's good. Uh. Now, before
Speaker 1: we get further into this what Zell and other billionaires
Speaker 1: are doing to try to stop the passage of like
Speaker 1: laws that could actually make housing affordable, we should probably
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about rent control. This is a
Speaker 1: subject that is controversial today, largely because of landlords like Zell,
Speaker 1: who claimant cuts into their profits so much they can't
Speaker 1: afford to do stuff like handle basic repairs and maintenance.
Speaker 1: But rent control has a long history of helping people
Speaker 1: avoid disaster. During and after World War Two, federal rent
Speaker 1: control in Los Angeles froze rents and narrowed the scope
Speaker 1: of evictions so that housing construction could catch up to
Speaker 1: the population and make the city more affordable. Right. It's
Speaker 1: this thing where you've got, like, yeah, the population is
Speaker 1: growing by x amount, housing isn't keeping up, So you
Speaker 1: institute rent control and you reduce like the evict and
Speaker 1: you like make it harder to evict people so that
Speaker 1: folks can hang on until there's more housing. This is
Speaker 1: the piece that's always missing from those articles that's like,
Speaker 1: we need to increase the housing supply. Well, that's not
Speaker 1: all we need to do. There's other things that have
Speaker 1: been proven to stop people from winding up on the
Speaker 1: fucking street, and you're ignoring those in favor of just
Speaker 1: saying deregulate shit. Alyssa Cats, a researcher at u C
Speaker 1: l A, examined rent control and housing affordability in l
Speaker 1: A going back to the nineteen forties. She found that
Speaker 1: rent control successfully stopped people from becoming unhoused in the
Speaker 1: forties and then again in the late seventies when inflation
Speaker 1: rose again and rent spiked. That time, a rent a
Speaker 1: stabilization ordinance quote ended dramatic rent increases for incumbent tenants
Speaker 1: by limiting the rate which by which rents could be increased.
Speaker 1: When looking at California's modern homelessness epidemic, she put the
Speaker 1: blame directly on rent prices and urged a repeal of
Speaker 1: statewide rint control restrictions and the expansion of rent regulation.
Speaker 1: She isn't the only academic making these claims. Nicole Montoyo
Speaker 1: and Stephen Barton released a study through UC Berkeley looking
Speaker 1: into which of the different proposed solutions to the housing
Speaker 1: crisis were likely to bear fruit. They found quote, while
Speaker 1: other proposed remedies to the hows and crisis may take
Speaker 1: years before they impact housing costs, only expanding rent control
Speaker 1: can offer immediate relief to tens of millions of people
Speaker 1: in danger of being forced from their homes. Another rite
Speaker 1: up on rent control measures from l A Progressive goes
Speaker 1: on to add They noted that rent control can stabilize
Speaker 1: rents for existing tenants, improve affordability for tenants in the future,
Speaker 1: and preserve the existing affordability of housing that may otherwise
Speaker 1: become unaffordable. And the researchers found that claims that rent
Speaker 1: control has negative effects on development of new housing are
Speaker 1: generally not supported by research, and that rent control can
Speaker 1: provide a timely solution to a housing affordability crisis that
Speaker 1: the market will not. In a statement, Bartin further pointed
Speaker 1: out that quote when the housing market is as dysfunctional
Speaker 1: as it is in many parts of California, tenants are
Speaker 1: effectively subsidizing landlords with rent payments above what a fully
Speaker 1: competitive market would allow landlords to charge and what we're
Speaker 1: actually seeing here with stuff like these fucking program algorithms
Speaker 1: that allow landlords to jack up prices with guys like
Speaker 1: Zell put millions of dollars into propaganda to kill rent
Speaker 1: control ballot measures in the state, and he's been very
Speaker 1: active in that in California in particular. Is that the
Speaker 1: money that is being extorted out of people to keep
Speaker 1: a roof over their head is being used to fund,
Speaker 1: like to basically fund propaganda campaigns to stop any kind
Speaker 1: of rent control, right, Um, it's it's pretty cool. Um,
Speaker 1: it's pretty cool. I like that you use the term
Speaker 1: a lot in this episode. I find it fascinating with
Speaker 1: exactly what they're doing is just paying into a way
Speaker 1: to keep money in their pockets, but they're not keeping
Speaker 1: money in their pockets, as well as the fact that
Speaker 1: there's so many other conversations like you're keeping people in
Speaker 1: the house and you're still getting money. Yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: understand when you're using The thing that's most fucked up
Speaker 1: to me. I hadn't really thought about it this way
Speaker 1: is that And I like that l A progressive frames
Speaker 1: it this way, is that tenants are subsidizing the campaigns
Speaker 1: of the landlords. To stop housing reform, Like their money
Speaker 1: is paying to keep rent high, their money is paying
Speaker 1: to deregulate the system in order to like make it
Speaker 1: possible to continue to check on the rent. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: that's the whole scheme of renting it, Like you never
Speaker 1: get anything for it. You're just giving it to the
Speaker 1: landlords who have now by this time paid off their
Speaker 1: uh property. They have tax as sure, but there's still
Speaker 1: not anywhere near what you're getting in rent from your renters.
Speaker 1: So what the hell? And then you can as a renter,
Speaker 1: especially in this market, you can't save enough, as you
Speaker 1: said an episode one, save enough to get your own
Speaker 1: house and you don't technically own anyway for thirty years.
Speaker 1: What what what you're doing here, and what guys like
Speaker 1: Zel are doing is you're recreating feudalism. You're you're you're
Speaker 1: making peons, you know, like it's it's keeping. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: want to continue this quote from l a Progressive because
Speaker 1: I think it's good. Tenants subsidy is paid for extravagant lifes,
Speaker 1: lifestyles of many for many of California's largest corporate landlords,
Speaker 1: who spent tens of millions of dollars to kill rent
Speaker 1: control ballot measures in the state. Billionaire Sam Zel, for example,
Speaker 1: owns posh homes in Chicago, Sun Valley, New York, and Malibu,
Speaker 1: collects motorcycles and flies around the world in a private jet.
Speaker 1: Another billionaire, corporate landlord, Stephen Schwarzman, owns mansions in St. Tropez, Jamaica,
Speaker 1: East Hampton and Palm Beach and throws lavish parties for
Speaker 1: celebrities and high society friends. At the same time as
Speaker 1: sky hire rints force more people onto the streets. Nearly
Speaker 1: fift hundred homeless people have died in Los Angeles in
Speaker 1: the Los Angeles area between one so that's half a
Speaker 1: nine eleven in a year. Um, that's good. Now, when
Speaker 1: you start talking about yeah, I was gonna saying you're
Speaker 1: being too with pathetic. Stop it. Yeah, that's that's what
Speaker 1: our old buddy Roper would say when you're talking about
Speaker 1: rent control. Anytime you talking about rent control, you're gonna
Speaker 1: wind up talking about New York City. Rent controls started
Speaker 1: there too, as an emerging and see measure during World
Speaker 1: War Two. At present, around forty five thousand tenants in
Speaker 1: the city began there who began their leases before nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy one have rent controlled apartments. Some of these people
Speaker 1: are like children or even grandchildren of the people who
Speaker 1: started the least because you can pass it on that way.
Speaker 1: Their landlords are forbidden from increasing rent beyond a very
Speaker 1: mild rate, which means that many of these folks pay
Speaker 1: rents that are thousands of dollars a month underneath the
Speaker 1: present market rate. Rent control in New York has allowed
Speaker 1: for some peculiar situations where people will have apartments the
Speaker 1: size of small palaces for what amounts to peanuts by
Speaker 1: modern standards. It's also led to several murders. In nineteen
Speaker 1: Mark Glass, a landlord based out of downtown Manhattan, grew
Speaker 1: frustrated that his tenant, Bridget Marks, wouldn't leave her rent
Speaker 1: controlled apartment and a former tenement that he bought and renovated.
Speaker 1: He hired a hitman to kill her, but that turned
Speaker 1: out to be a scam, so he tried to kill
Speaker 1: her with the heroine to overdose that failed to Eventually,
Speaker 1: she realized he was trying to murder her and got
Speaker 1: the police involved, and they carried out a sting operation
Speaker 1: and he wound up put in prison for like seven
Speaker 1: to fourteen years. In two thousand to a New York
Speaker 1: landlord named Louis Hubrick grew enraged after trying to bribe
Speaker 1: and cadrole his tenants to leave. This worked on everyone
Speaker 1: but Miss Barbara Kinna, a sixty seven year old school librarian,
Speaker 1: so Hubrick shot her six times with a thirty eight
Speaker 1: caliber revolver. He was convicted of murder and sent to
Speaker 1: prison for the rest of his life. Two years later. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well got you got that red right now you can
Speaker 1: now you're now your your kids can fucking renovate the apartment.
Speaker 1: Get an extra couple of grand out of that place.
Speaker 1: So two years later, in two thousand four, one Bassia
Speaker 1: Guida pled guilty for hiring two of his tenants to
Speaker 1: murder two other tenants who lived in a controlled three
Speaker 1: bedroom apartment and his building. They've lived there since they
Speaker 1: were kids and had legally assumed his father's lease. This
Speaker 1: enraged Bassia Guida, so he hired two other tenants to
Speaker 1: break into the apartment and stab Broth brothers, who narrowly survived. Now,
Speaker 1: when don't you had to give him free red? The
Speaker 1: tennants he hired to murder, I think he was probably
Speaker 1: given them a break on their rent or something like
Speaker 1: you get like six months off of rent if you
Speaker 1: stab these like I'm gonna throw in water for free,
Speaker 1: if you'll murder these people. At the end of the day,
Speaker 1: it does not work out. Um. So obviously these are spectacular,
Speaker 1: but like not the only cases. You could find a
Speaker 1: surprising number of cases of landlords murdering or trying to
Speaker 1: murder tenants over rent control departments. Um, I mean that's
Speaker 1: my solution, murder, Yeah, murder. Well, there's actually the only like,
Speaker 1: that's the only real solution that any landlords use in
Speaker 1: stuff like this, because the landlords who go about things
Speaker 1: the proper way by like evicting stuff legally, are also
Speaker 1: killing a shipload of people. Um. And we can look
Speaker 1: at that in terms of like how being houseless, you know,
Speaker 1: raises the rate at which you're likely to die early.
Speaker 1: How being evicted makes it harder to get housing. Um.
Speaker 1: There's a number of different things that we could talk about,
Speaker 1: but because we're in the middle of like what you're
Speaker 1: three of the pandemic right now, I want to talk
Speaker 1: talk about that. So I'm gonna quote from a write
Speaker 1: up by Judd Ligam and test Num Zacharia quote a
Speaker 1: new study by public health researchers at Johns Hopkins, U
Speaker 1: c l A and other institutions looked at the impact
Speaker 1: of the expiration of state based moratoriums during the summer
Speaker 1: of twenty The researchers tested whether lifting eviction moratoriums was
Speaker 1: associated with COVID nineteen incidents and mortality. The results are chilling.
Speaker 1: The study concluded that lifting eviction moratoriums amounted to an
Speaker 1: estimated four hundred and thirty three thousand, seven hundred excess
Speaker 1: cases and ten thousand, seven hundred excess deaths between March
Speaker 1: thirteenth and September three. The infections and fatalities occurred across
Speaker 1: twenty seven states that lifted eviction moratoriums during the study period.
Speaker 1: In Texas alone, the study found that there were four thousand,
Speaker 1: four hundred and fifty six excess deaths after the state
Speaker 1: lifted its eviction moratorium on May eighteenth. The researchers accounted
Speaker 1: for stay at home orders, mass orders, school closers, testing rates,
Speaker 1: time trends, and other state characteristics to better isolate the
Speaker 1: impact of eviction moratoriums. Now that's four thousand, four hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty six deaths in Texas alone, as a result
Speaker 1: of the lifting of the eviction moratorium. UM, nationwide pandemic
Speaker 1: evictions alone have led to at least ten thousand deaths
Speaker 1: in the last couple of years. UM. So yeah, no
Speaker 1: matter what you're talking about, even if you're not shooting
Speaker 1: them with a thirty eight, you're still killing people. And
Speaker 1: the amount of of those people are marginalized women oftentimes
Speaker 1: and they are single mothers. It is so high. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we had a whole episode about housing and how it's
Speaker 1: affecting single moms more than it's marginalized Black women essentially
Speaker 1: more than anyone else, and how this has been impacting them.
Speaker 1: Let's not talk about the fact that the credit score
Speaker 1: is a racist system in itself, but all of these
Speaker 1: things have been impactable and racist as hell. And who
Speaker 1: they are trying to kill? I mean, and when you
Speaker 1: talk about credit scores too, because credit scores there's a
Speaker 1: lot of like racism in who like that system has
Speaker 1: a lot of problems with it. But also because an
Speaker 1: increasing number of apartments are owned by these gigant to
Speaker 1: corporations that are backed by like finance industry money by
Speaker 1: companies like Blackstone, that means that more often and often
Speaker 1: when I was younger, even if when you went with
Speaker 1: like a corporate you didn't have to do They didn't
Speaker 1: care what your credit score was. That's what you need
Speaker 1: for a mortgage, but that didn't matter for renting a
Speaker 1: fucking apartment. Now it does now score Yeah, yeah, it's outrage.
Speaker 1: I mean again, all of these are We're not trying.
Speaker 1: I hope nobody thinks I'm trying to give like this
Speaker 1: is all of the reasons that rent has gotten high.
Speaker 1: But these are some big ones. These are major factors,
Speaker 1: and these guys are major factors in it. And that's
Speaker 1: going to leave me to talk about Steven Schwartzman. Um.
Speaker 1: Now I mentioned him earlier, right when we talked about
Speaker 1: he's one of the billionaires in Los Angeles throwing money
Speaker 1: into stopping rint control ballot measures. Um. Schwartzman is not
Speaker 1: as interesting as zel Zel is at least a pretty
Speaker 1: entertaining piece of sh it. Um. Schwarzman is kind of
Speaker 1: a boring, soulless, corporate ghoul, but he's probably more influential
Speaker 1: and why your rent is raised. So Schorzman's dad was
Speaker 1: a dry goods store owner like sell Like. His family's
Speaker 1: kind of upper middle class business owners. He grew up
Speaker 1: in Philadelphia, but was inspired to become an entrepreneur when
Speaker 1: he traveled to Israel for the first time as a
Speaker 1: fourteen year old. In a recent interview, he said this quote,
Speaker 1: Israel has an incredible entrepreneurial community. Of course it had to,
Speaker 1: because when it started, there was almost nothing there. Everything
Speaker 1: had to be invented by somebody. Now you might you
Speaker 1: might be saying to that, wasn't there like a whole
Speaker 1: society of Palestinian people there, with like universities and businesses
Speaker 1: and like homes, And wasn't there like a lot of
Speaker 1: stuff there? Wasn't there in fact, communities where thousands and
Speaker 1: thousands of Jewish refugees fled to during World War Two.
Speaker 1: And we're able to survive because there was stuff there um,
Speaker 1: stuff including like wealthy Palestinian families who helped fund the
Speaker 1: construction of the first Jewish university and Alistine Anyway, wasn't
Speaker 1: all of that there anyway? Whatever? Fun like this is
Speaker 1: pretty normal, like shitty guy stuff like this is not
Speaker 1: not an abnormal attitude, right, but you get where this
Speaker 1: guy's coming from. So, like Zel, Schwarzman is also a
Speaker 1: child entrepreneur. Again, the worst warning sign. He started a
Speaker 1: lawn mowing business, where he very quickly stopped mowing any
Speaker 1: actual lawns. Instead, he got his brothers to do the
Speaker 1: work while he brought in quiets. Um. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: one of those. Again. Look, if you see a kid
Speaker 1: doing this kind of stuff, I don't know, you just
Speaker 1: gotta poison him a little bit, a little bit of poison,
Speaker 1: a little bit, a little bit of child poison as well. Well,
Speaker 1: it wouldn't be the worst thing. So anyway, I don't know,
Speaker 1: we can. I'm gonna. I'm still gonna. I still have
Speaker 1: to tweak my poison. Yeah, ambitious children plan. But I
Speaker 1: think there's a lot of future in it. I think
Speaker 1: it'll Sylvie, you were just I'm plaining about how how
Speaker 1: your rent is. You know what if we could have
Speaker 1: stopped that with a little bit of poison, not a
Speaker 1: lot of poison. Another book on this, you can do
Speaker 1: another book on this. Yeah, yeah, the poisoning Children driven
Speaker 1: life with me smiling in a suit. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: M Yeah, it's gonna be good, Sophie. This is gonna
Speaker 1: be what takes us into the mainstream. Fine, can you
Speaker 1: just do an adverb? You know, bit when it comes
Speaker 1: to poisoning children, Nobody does it like our sponsors at
Speaker 1: whoever our sponsors are. Ah, we're back and we're better
Speaker 1: than ever. So yeah, I think we're doing good. Sophie.
Speaker 1: I'm proud of us. Thank you, thank you. I'm glad
Speaker 1: that you at least can be positive towards me while
Speaker 1: Sophie is being so mean. So we're talking about Stephen Schwarzman,
Speaker 1: who has started a lawnbowing business where he mows no
Speaker 1: actual lawns because he is that kind of kid again
Speaker 1: poison His hunger to make a shipload of money did
Speaker 1: not run in the family. I find this really interesting.
Speaker 1: His dad is apparently a very different guy, as this
Speaker 1: right up from Fintech magazine makes clear. In an interview
Speaker 1: with The Washington Post in twenty nineteen, Schwartzman explained how
Speaker 1: his childhood taught him that not everybody was going to
Speaker 1: be the same. When pushed by a young Schwartzman as
Speaker 1: to why he didn't want to expand his successful business
Speaker 1: or open more stores across Philadelphia, Schwartzman's father answered, simply,
Speaker 1: because I'm happy the way I am. I thought that
Speaker 1: was sort of hard to take in Schwarzman told the
Speaker 1: newspaper his contentment is what made him a remarkable human being.
Speaker 1: Maybe you could have should have learned something from your dad,
Speaker 1: like the endless source to extract more wealth and resources
Speaker 1: out of an area is actually what's going to kill
Speaker 1: us all and not a healthy attitude. But anyway, I mean,
Speaker 1: this is why, you know, like is not always a
Speaker 1: nurtured nature. Seems to be like, look, I have I
Speaker 1: have a I have a thriving small business. We live
Speaker 1: a comfortable life. That's all I need. Everybody's happy, healthy,
Speaker 1: Let's move on. His kid is going to become highest order. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So Schwartzman goes to Yale, which is probably where a
Speaker 1: lot of the ghoul stuff comes in. He joins Skull
Speaker 1: and Bones. So he's one of those fucking kids. And
Speaker 1: then he goes on to do finance at a big,
Speaker 1: fancy firm after getting his m b A. His first
Speaker 1: major employer was Lehman Brothers, which he described as quote
Speaker 1: full of interesting characters x CIA agents, ex military strays
Speaker 1: from the oil industry, family friends and randoms. Uh. He
Speaker 1: rose on. Yeah, very quickly he becomes a managing unbelievable
Speaker 1: red flags. I know, like again. If there's a company
Speaker 1: like that, I don't know, again, poison poison them once again.
Speaker 1: Once again. If you looks in a dating app, you
Speaker 1: see somebody have their job listen at that company. No,
Speaker 1: it's just like, yeah, Sophie's giving all the realistic advice
Speaker 1: while Robbert's over here with his dreams. Just look if
Speaker 1: if if we had just poisoned the water and a
Speaker 1: Lehman Brothers company party in the late nineteen eighties, a
Speaker 1: lot of problems wouldn't have happened. That's all I'm gonna say,
Speaker 1: no comment, but yeah, look, look if the CIA s
Speaker 1: MK Ultra program had been about poisoning Lehman Brothers and
Speaker 1: other similar corporations with doses of random hallucinogens that destroyed
Speaker 1: people's minds, nobody would think of them as bad guys.
Speaker 1: Would be like, oh, yeah, those guys who get rid
Speaker 1: of the finance industry. Yeah, I like those guys. Those
Speaker 1: guys are chill. I'm just letting you know. People would
Speaker 1: still consider the guys, well, I don't know, less of
Speaker 1: less of the bad guys. Look, if the CIA takes
Speaker 1: out like m mackenzie, you know, yeah, yeah, whatever. Anyway,
Speaker 1: so he leaves he become managing director of Acquisitions at
Speaker 1: Lehman Brothers at age thirty one, but then he leaves
Speaker 1: the company to co found an advisory firm, which he
Speaker 1: calls black Stone. Quote it started, Yeah, he's the guy
Speaker 1: who founds Blackstone. Yeah, and co founds. But yeah is hyped.
Speaker 1: This is this is these are these are some bad dudes.
Speaker 1: So it started life as a boutique m and a
Speaker 1: advisory firm. Within a couple of years, Blackstone had launched
Speaker 1: its first private equity fund and later by nine had
Speaker 1: branched out into hedge funds using partners his own money.
Speaker 1: The time of Blackstones initial public offering in two thousand seven,
Speaker 1: the business head more than eighty eight billion dollars worth
Speaker 1: of assets under management. The i p O saw shares
Speaker 1: finish it over thirty five dollars each, valuing the firm
Speaker 1: and around thirty and nine billion and enriching the personal
Speaker 1: fortunes of both Schwarzman and Peterson. Peterson's the guy he
Speaker 1: starts the company with. So today Blackstone claims to have
Speaker 1: eight hundred and eighty billion dollars of assets under management,
Speaker 1: including two hundred and sixty billion in private equity and
Speaker 1: two hundred an eighty billion in real estate. Stephen A.
Speaker 1: Schwarzman is still the company's chairman and CEO, and has
Speaker 1: indicated he has no intention to retire. He has two children,
Speaker 1: the film producer Teddy Schwartzman and writer and podcasters Zimby Owens. Um,
Speaker 1: I'm just happy that his daughter is a podcaster. You
Speaker 1: know what, let's let's all learn something together. What does
Speaker 1: Zimby Owens podcast? I don't know, But did you just
Speaker 1: put us on a target list? Maybe you do, Sophie. Well,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't know what's good, you know what.
Speaker 1: I don't know much about this. But her podcast is
Speaker 1: called Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books? And No,
Speaker 1: but that doesn't sound great. But I'm on her website.
Speaker 1: It's a top it's a top literary podcast. She's an
Speaker 1: awful but um, yeah, she interview it seems like she interviews. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she's a book fluencer, which is a term. If you're
Speaker 1: a writer and you ever write the word book fluincer,
Speaker 1: you should not be a writer. Um, I'm gonna say
Speaker 1: that right now. Whatever. No, I think she's like reviewing
Speaker 1: books as like a mom book reviewer's doing. No, No,
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't think she's going to be a
Speaker 1: big fan of my book. Um, I don't. I don't
Speaker 1: think she's gonna Let's see what essays zim Right, there's
Speaker 1: a picture of her in her chair. Um, let's see
Speaker 1: this rabbit hole is Ye. These are mostly just lists
Speaker 1: of books people can read, so it seems a lot
Speaker 1: of it's like sco list. She's trying to make her
Speaker 1: own like Oprah magazines. She of course she's a book fluincer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she's very much like Oprah her. She's like interviewing Ralph Macchio.
Speaker 1: That's the karate kid guy. Right, there's nothing wrong with that.
Speaker 1: He wrote a book. Yeah, he just wrote a Book's
Speaker 1: just like a book influencer. Oh, she's hiring Zimmy Media
Speaker 1: is expanding their hiring superstars. She must be because she's
Speaker 1: in y c's most powerful book fluencer. According to Vulture,
Speaker 1: she's a book fluencer, Sophie. It's also just like if
Speaker 1: you're saying someone as an influencer, you can be an
Speaker 1: influencer in the literature industry. You don't have to call
Speaker 1: someone a book fluencer, which is a stupid that's not
Speaker 1: on Zimby. But she brags about it in every page
Speaker 1: of her website, so it is a little bit on her.
Speaker 1: Um wow, yeah, Zimmy Media is hiring a funkload of people,
Speaker 1: it looks like, so get on the zim train fast.
Speaker 1: Oh she does classes. She does classes. I don't know
Speaker 1: why we're attacking her so much. Her dad's the bad guy,
Speaker 1: but she's never mind. I actually there's nothing we're laughing
Speaker 1: about this. I can't find anything that's like offensive about
Speaker 1: her or anything like that. She just we know nothing.
Speaker 1: She could be a lovely she. She seems fine. I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: it's just a lovely individual. Just you know, you can't
Speaker 1: you know, people, if somebody, if you came to family,
Speaker 1: if you claim to love larger and somebody calls you
Speaker 1: a book fluencer, you do have a moral responsibility to
Speaker 1: the art of writing to say, no, you're not. That's
Speaker 1: not a term we're gonna use. Is not a word
Speaker 1: Robert as a blue book fluencer. Nothing is I'm really
Speaker 1: having I'm even saying the word. So I'm so angry
Speaker 1: about that. That's all. Honestly, Zimby has done nothing wrong
Speaker 1: but use that word. That one word which I've never
Speaker 1: heard of TikTok book something like that, which is book
Speaker 1: talk is fine, I think, because you're that makes sense.
Speaker 1: Book fluencer is fucking nonsense. I've never been angrier. I've
Speaker 1: never been angrier in my entire life than I am
Speaker 1: right now. This is so much worse than a lot worse. Well,
Speaker 1: but and then he doesn't use the word book fluencer.
Speaker 1: So most of you probably know what happened to Lehman Brothers,
Speaker 1: which was forced into bankruptcy after helping to cause the
Speaker 1: two thousand eight financial crash. Lehman had been a major
Speaker 1: driver of the fraudulent mortgage backed security business backed by
Speaker 1: subprime loans, and their collapse nearly took the global economy
Speaker 1: with them. Shortzman had been out of the company for
Speaker 1: quite a while by this point, and he and Blackstone
Speaker 1: did very well as a result of this procession. They
Speaker 1: lose a little bit of money upfront, but they're heavily
Speaker 1: invested in companies like Starward, Waypoint and Invitation Homes, which
Speaker 1: merge in two thousand seventeen and start buying up all
Speaker 1: of these fucking properties that like are suddenly farking. Bargain
Speaker 1: Ben a website for tenants of innovation of invitation homes.
Speaker 1: Invitation Tenants dot Com notes they have benefited from the
Speaker 1: deception and fraud that settled so many families of color
Speaker 1: with subprime and booby trapped mortgages, leading to foreclosures that
Speaker 1: disproportionately affected African American and Latino families. Lower post crisis
Speaker 1: home prices could have been an opportunity to increase in
Speaker 1: affordable homeownership, but too often, instead Wall Street buyers swept in,
Speaker 1: while neighborhood families were left out of the game altogether,
Speaker 1: unable to compete with cash buyers or denied access to credit.
Speaker 1: For these Wall Street speculators, with Blackstone being the biggest one,
Speaker 1: the recession of two thousand eight was not economically and
Speaker 1: emotionally devastating as it was for all the families that
Speaker 1: lost their homes. It was a market opportunity. Blackstone was
Speaker 1: one of the first private equity firms to begin buying
Speaker 1: up foreclosed homes in the wake of the financial crisis,
Speaker 1: fixing them up and renting them out. The firm, which
Speaker 1: began buying homes in Earnest in two thousand eleven, is
Speaker 1: estimated to have spent ten billion dollars and it's foreclosed
Speaker 1: home to Rinchell bet So that's cool. Uh. In the
Speaker 1: years since the financial crisis, Blackstone Group has more than
Speaker 1: doubled the assets under management from n indeed billion dollars
Speaker 1: to two eighteen billion dollars of real estate assets and
Speaker 1: its first five years after the financial crisis alone. As
Speaker 1: a result, Blackstone today is among the largest corporate landlords
Speaker 1: in the United States, and it reported its highest earnings
Speaker 1: ever this year on the strength of rising rents and
Speaker 1: its real estate portfolio. Here's courts quote on the January
Speaker 1: with investors, Blackstones executives explained rints for real estate sectors
Speaker 1: in their portfolio had risen as much as two or
Speaker 1: three times faster than the overall inflation rate. Relatively short
Speaker 1: leases on their properties have allowed them to raise prices quickly,
Speaker 1: capturing more value from rentors, even as the inflation rate
Speaker 1: in the US topped seven percent. Awesome, stuff really really good. Again.
Speaker 1: I don't know much about real estate, nor do I
Speaker 1: know much about the corporations, especially like black Stone, And
Speaker 1: it was been a recent thing that I'm like understanding
Speaker 1: all of these uh giant buyouts. And I do know
Speaker 1: they profited off the right for closing on families and
Speaker 1: leaving them homeless. And we know all of that and houseless,
Speaker 1: um and without houses. But what's Blackstone involved with all
Speaker 1: the military buy they wore profits years as well or
Speaker 1: is that just in the back of my imagination. Oh,
Speaker 1: I think you may be thinking of black Water. Let
Speaker 1: me do a check. Okay, I mean they did a lot.
Speaker 1: They manage a lot of investments, so it would be
Speaker 1: surprised if there's some degree to which they're involved in
Speaker 1: differ one sect. I feel like maybe again, yeah, I
Speaker 1: might be confusing that, like they had private organizations. I
Speaker 1: mean they're involved developing, they're involved, like they invest in uh,
Speaker 1: like they're private equity firms, So they have investments in
Speaker 1: aerospace and defense companies. Um. But I mean so you
Speaker 1: could call them they're definitely like profiting off of the
Speaker 1: defense industry, but that's not kind of their primary thing.
Speaker 1: It's just sort of a side effect of the thing
Speaker 1: they do, which is that they invest in businesses that
Speaker 1: have reliable rates of return, and that includes the defense industry. UM. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So I want to close by noting from a right
Speaker 1: up in the Atlantic in um, which kind of makes
Speaker 1: the point that the nature of black Stones business. Both
Speaker 1: its scale and its single minded pursuit of profits means
Speaker 1: that tenants nearly always come last. Quote. Some evidence suggests
Speaker 1: that private equity firms and contrast, are willing to engage
Speaker 1: in predatory practices to realize short term returns. Black Stones
Speaker 1: target properties in southern California suggest an investment strategy similar
Speaker 1: to flipping single family homes by old properties. Invest in
Speaker 1: cosmetic upgrades such as new appliances and facade improvements, and
Speaker 1: then increase the rents. Furthermore, some anecdotal evidence also indicates
Speaker 1: that private equity firms are less conscientious landlords in the
Speaker 1: single family rental market. Researchers and journalists have documented concerns
Speaker 1: about poor quality housing, difficulties raised by tenants trying to
Speaker 1: communicate with landlords when proper problems arise, and higher rates
Speaker 1: of evictions. And we can thank Mr Schwarzman for an
Speaker 1: awful lot of that. Um. Yeah, so that's it. That's
Speaker 1: some people who have made the rent high. Uh Stephen Schwarzman,
Speaker 1: that Zell motherfucker roper, all these assholes fun them all.
Speaker 1: So let me ask you, as we are looking at
Speaker 1: possibly repeating history in the next couple of years, where
Speaker 1: do you see Do you think we're coming upon a
Speaker 1: crash as well? I'm just, I mean, I mean everyone,
Speaker 1: everyone seems to say we're heading for a recession. That
Speaker 1: would make sense, I was just except for the fact
Speaker 1: that they're seemingly trying to hedge it off by again
Speaker 1: charging the individuals and homeowners and renters instead of actually
Speaker 1: trying to get the corporations to pay out with their
Speaker 1: billions of dollars and or stop well. Sounds like what's
Speaker 1: happening is they're trying to the FETE is trying to
Speaker 1: cut inflation by raising interest rates. UM and a bunch
Speaker 1: of companies are using inflation as a hedge for rising
Speaker 1: prices and making right record profits right now, in part
Speaker 1: because I think they're getting ready for what you might
Speaker 1: call an ugly winter, in which they're going to take
Speaker 1: those profits and can continue doling them out to their
Speaker 1: shareholders and executives while they cut staff and fire a
Speaker 1: lot of people in the unemployment rate rises. Like that's
Speaker 1: I think more or less what's probably going to happen.
Speaker 1: I don't know, we'll see how it is. Like was
Speaker 1: pretty ugly too, that was an early recession, but it
Speaker 1: didn't last very long. I don't know. I'm not an
Speaker 1: I'm not an economy guy. Um and I kind of
Speaker 1: I kind of think most of the people who are
Speaker 1: economy guys are just engaged in some kind of con
Speaker 1: or another. But yeah, it's probably gonna be pretty ugly
Speaker 1: in the near future, and these are the people who
Speaker 1: are going to make sure that a lot more folks
Speaker 1: wind up in on the street when it does. So
Speaker 1: poison poison is a good solution to keep an eye
Speaker 1: on kids who express an entrepreneurial desire. Don't trust that.
Speaker 1: Um yeah, and uh, I don't know. If you don't
Speaker 1: call yourself a book fluencer that I'm livid. Okay, So
Speaker 1: his his son, Teddy, not not the the other kid
Speaker 1: that he had, is the producer who made the imitation
Speaker 1: game Invitation or Imitation Imitation Sam. You lose some, you
Speaker 1: win some, you lose some. I guess I haven't seen
Speaker 1: that movie. But uh oh no, I have seen that movie.
Speaker 1: That's the movie about touring that came that was actually
Speaker 1: pretty good. Yeah, so you know what, Yeah, you win some,
Speaker 1: you lose some. Right, that's speaking of a film fluencer.
Speaker 1: He's a film fluencer movie apparently who produced at least
Speaker 1: one good movie while his dad was buying up all
Speaker 1: of the housing that was briefly affordable after the financial crid.
Speaker 1: You lose some and speaking of winning some, Samantha, do
Speaker 1: you have any plugables? Yeah, yes, come and visit me
Speaker 1: over stuff. Mom never told you nowhere near the same.
Speaker 1: Mom reads doesn't read things. I don't know. I'm not
Speaker 1: a book fluence, sir. I'm so sorry to say. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I can't. Oh, well, that's a new one. Um, And
Speaker 1: my Twitter is McVeigh Samantha, and then Israel McVeigh dot Samantha.
Speaker 1: So if you want to see pictures of my dog
Speaker 1: and me complaining about things, come visit me. Yep. Um,
Speaker 1: find Samantha on the internet. Find the kid in your
Speaker 1: neighborhood who starts a lawn mowing business where he doesn't
Speaker 1: mow any lawns and uh, I don't know it. Just
Speaker 1: like smoke around him. Smoke real close to that kid.
Speaker 1: Just hang out next to that kid and smoke a
Speaker 1: shipload of cigarettes. My god, it'll be good load of cigarettes. Anyways. Oh,
Speaker 1: we have a new podcast Uncolsonne Media. It's called Internet
Speaker 1: En and it's hosted by the one and only bridget
Speaker 1: Todd checking. Uh you know, yeah, I hit raded up
Speaker 1: APO podcast wherever you get your podcasts. I can't say
Speaker 1: that a lot. Yeah, fucking fucking do that. I also
Speaker 1: have a book called After the Revolution. You can buy it,
Speaker 1: you know what, which, by the way, my partner loved
Speaker 1: He just bumped up because he wanted to. Would you
Speaker 1: like the book? Oh? Thank you? Well, maybe he can help.
Speaker 1: Maybe you can help book fluencers, zippy. Yeah, so this
Speaker 1: is Joe. I hope you can get to say podcast.
Speaker 1: He really likes the book. He cannot hear you because
Speaker 1: I have an earpiece and oh you don't have it. Okay,
Speaker 1: thank you to sell him all smokes and meats, and
Speaker 1: thank you for that offer of a legal drugs. No, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: bring up, Samantha, bring him back on, bringing back on.
Speaker 1: I want to. I want to, I want to get up.
Speaker 1: I want to get it. I want to get a
Speaker 1: neutral opinion about this. Let me give him an earpiece. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: I get work, Joe, Joe, this is Robert. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say a word that a person is you
Speaker 1: thing to describe their job, and I just want you
Speaker 1: to give me the emotion that hearing this word for
Speaker 1: the first time inspires in you. Okay, nervous, tell me
Speaker 1: book fluencer. Oh no, I'm going to call her that intimately.
Speaker 1: I hope you do that. It's a horrible word, right,
Speaker 1: it's a terrible word. So do you get that often?
Speaker 1: Is that? No? No, that's what we're going to call Robert?
Speaker 1: Absolutely not. How dare you know? It's it's from all
Speaker 1: It's from a lady with the forbidding to come up
Speaker 1: to this podcasts again. You're coming back every week. You
Speaker 1: made me happy. I'm I'm happy that you added book
Speaker 1: fluencer to my vernacular, as it is not going to
Speaker 1: be your titles book fluencer. Al Right, everybody, why don't
Speaker 1: we all go some motherfucking books. I will come to
Speaker 1: it like all right, goodbye. Behind the Bastards is a
Speaker 1: production of cool Zone Media. For more from cool Zone Media,
Speaker 1: visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check
Speaker 1: us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcasts.