Speaker 1: Welcome The Money and Wealth with John Hob Bryant, a
Speaker 1: production of The Black Effect Podcast Network and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, Hey, is John Hope Bryant. We're going to get
Speaker 2: into a topic today that's really important. It's called how
Speaker 2: banks work. Now, this may seem obvious to many folks,
Speaker 2: but truth be told, people don't know how banks work.
Speaker 2: They assume. They presume based on comments that I feeled
Speaker 2: on social media all the time, and people who are
Speaker 2: honest enough to have a real conversation with me when
Speaker 2: they're not embarrassed and they just tell the truth, they
Speaker 2: actually don't have much of a clue how the system works.
Speaker 2: And we for lack of knowledge, we then make a
Speaker 2: lot of assumptions. Some of the assumptions are correct, and
Speaker 2: many of them are incorrect, and they can be detrimental
Speaker 2: to your financial health and your wealth building success. You
Speaker 2: cannot build wealth in America. The banking system was created
Speaker 2: so long ago. It's probably it's arguably one of the
Speaker 2: well it's the first or second earliest businesses in the world. Yes,
Speaker 2: I can't tell you what the first business was. You
Speaker 2: can maybe guess it was one of the vices of mankind.
Speaker 2: And it's been joked that banking was created to finance
Speaker 2: the first business. That's a joke, but not far from
Speaker 2: the truth. And given that barter and trade in its
Speaker 2: earliest forms, I'll give them that a minute. Really, we're
Speaker 2: tied to what we now call the banking system or
Speaker 2: a banking system, and it is global. This is a
Speaker 2: global system. You cannot today build a community without banking.
Speaker 2: The only time Jesus got upset was when he overturned
Speaker 2: the tables or the money changers in the temple, and
Speaker 2: that shows how insidious that bad banking, bad capitalism, bad
Speaker 2: finance can be. I'm here to talk about good capitalism
Speaker 2: and good banking, but also to explain the history of
Speaker 2: bad banking because there's a good reason why people are
Speaker 2: hesitant about it, why minorities don't trust banks and us
Speaker 2: soon are presumed that banks are racist and discriminatory. And
Speaker 2: I'm going to really get into this because there's no
Speaker 2: question that there's a history of banking that is discriminatory
Speaker 2: and even racist. I'm going to walk you through how
Speaker 2: I believe that there are different realities in place today. Yes,
Speaker 2: racism and discrimination still exists, of course they do. Racism
Speaker 2: is like rain it's either fall in some place or
Speaker 2: it's gathering. So you might as well get out of
Speaker 2: an umbrella and the color you like and start strolling
Speaker 2: through it, because it's not going to change, so you
Speaker 2: must over the rounded through it. We're going to get
Speaker 2: to it. But the modern is again. I love math
Speaker 2: in facts because they don't have an opinion, and particularly math,
Speaker 2: and I'm going to just walk you through the math
Speaker 2: and show you for yourself, unpack this for yourself. You
Speaker 2: see that today is the best opportunity you've ever had
Speaker 2: to chart your own course of financial liberation. Before I
Speaker 2: get into literally walking you through how banks work and
Speaker 2: where banks came from, and walk you back through where
Speaker 2: we are today, let me tell you very quickly my
Speaker 2: own personal story with banking. Some of you have read
Speaker 2: this in my book Financial Literacy for All. If you've
Speaker 2: not gotten that book, it's the best seller on business
Speaker 2: finance in the country today, the number one best seller.
Speaker 2: Go get your copy. It has almost a five star review.
Speaker 2: You on Amazon, you can get a Walmart. You can
Speaker 2: get it at Black Bookstores. By the way, you can
Speaker 2: get it at Barnes and Noble. Globally, the book is available.
Speaker 2: I walked through the story. But for those who haven't
Speaker 2: heard the story and the founder of Operation Hope, by
Speaker 2: the way, I'm about to bring that into this whole situation.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna give you a short version. My mom and
Speaker 2: my dad went to the South, came from the South
Speaker 2: to Los Angeles. Again, the details are in my books.
Speaker 2: I'm wanna bore you with that. I want to cut
Speaker 2: to the real meat of this very important podcast this week.
Speaker 2: They built wealth together, generational wealth. I would argue they
Speaker 2: owned a gas station and an apartment building and eight
Speaker 2: unit apartment building, and they bought for eighteen thousand dollars
Speaker 2: that was ultimately worth in the time that my mom
Speaker 2: and dad were married, well it was. They could make
Speaker 2: the payment for two hundred and that's in two hundred
Speaker 2: and fifty dollars a month. They lived in one unit,
Speaker 2: rented out too well, they rented out two units. I
Speaker 2: would pay the mortgage. The rest of it was profit
Speaker 2: today be worth about six million dollars. We lost it.
Speaker 2: We lost the gas station worth millions dollars. We lost it,
Speaker 2: We lost the home that we were in, et cetera,
Speaker 2: et cetera, et cetera. Because my dad could make the
Speaker 2: money but couldn't keep it the more money he made
Speaker 2: because he was financially illiterate. He was brilliant in many
Speaker 2: ways of natural hustler. Johnny will Smith. I got my
Speaker 2: business bones from him. He got his business bones from
Speaker 2: his daddy, my grandfather Arby Smith, who was a sharecropper
Speaker 2: born in Mississippi in eighteen seventy one. My second great grandfather,
Speaker 2: George Young, was in the Civil War fault for Abraham
Speaker 2: Lincoln's Union cause for freedom even though he was enslaved
Speaker 2: and protected Memphis, Tennessee. He was part of the Black
Speaker 2: Troops Regimen, one of seven thousand officers in the Union
Speaker 2: Army during the emancipation proclamations. Where getting my social justice
Speaker 2: bones from going Coming back to this this story, Mom
Speaker 2: and dad built a little empire and confused. My dad
Speaker 2: confused making money with a profit and didn't know that
Speaker 2: my mother was a great saver and she was a
Speaker 2: financial genius in the family, and they could have worked
Speaker 2: together and built something, but they didn't. My dad didn't
Speaker 2: see my mother as an asset as he should have.
Speaker 2: He just thought she was cute, and well, that was
Speaker 2: my dad's failing. My mother wanted to Smith was a
Speaker 2: financial genius and died passed on to glory, promoted last
Speaker 2: year with a million dollar cumulative net worth, meaning if
Speaker 2: you'd added up all her assets, including when she distributed
Speaker 2: to her kids and homes that she'd built in bought,
Speaker 2: and so she had had a million dollar net worth
Speaker 2: working an hourly job with a credit score that at
Speaker 2: that time would be eight fifty four. I believe it was.
Speaker 2: It was over eight to fifty back when the credit
Speaker 2: score model went over eight one hundred eight to fifty
Speaker 2: went over eight fifty, and she lost well, they lost
Speaker 2: it all. My mom actually did very well. But when
Speaker 2: I moved with my mother and again, I'm like, I'm
Speaker 2: jumping over a bunch of the stories here, because I
Speaker 2: had a bunch of run ins about money in this
Speaker 2: story that were tragic. The guy who saved my life
Speaker 2: was murdered in front of me over money, and my
Speaker 2: best friend was murdered down the street over money. All
Speaker 2: be fourth nine years olds, Okay, now I'm nine years old.
Speaker 2: This is the crux of this story. I go to
Speaker 2: my classroom in this banker who happened to be Caucasian,
Speaker 2: and I'm pretty sure he was from Bank of America,
Speaker 2: was teaching financial literacy. It was in a beautiful suit.
Speaker 2: It was a white shirt, a red tie, and a
Speaker 2: blue suit is beautifully stitched. And I make note of
Speaker 2: that because the only white man I saw growing up
Speaker 2: wearing a suit back in those days was a detective.
Speaker 2: And it was not a good suit. It was a
Speaker 2: bad suit. I don't mean a bad suit, I mean
Speaker 2: like a really horrible suit, like a cheap suit, like polyester.
Speaker 2: And this dude was smooth man. He was classy, he
Speaker 2: had he was wealthy, he was obvious. His car was
Speaker 2: in the parking lot, didn't and it had tags on it,
Speaker 2: license plate. He was brand new. He was there in
Speaker 2: the middle of the day. I didn't know what a
Speaker 2: salary was, but my mother was on an hourly, hourly,
Speaker 2: hourly rate. He had a business cards at sixteen floor.
Speaker 2: The heck is that there was nothing in Compton that
Speaker 2: was that high. The tallest building in Compton was the
Speaker 2: Compton Courthouse. He lived in the neighborhood, not my own.
Speaker 2: He came in wentness. He pleased. He was on again.
Speaker 2: He was on a salary. He was a corporate executive,
Speaker 2: and so the first week we didn't talk much like
Speaker 2: he was adversary of us. He didn't want to be there.
Speaker 2: We didn't want him there. And he was there because
Speaker 2: of the because of the beginning of the Community Reinvestment Act.
Speaker 2: Think that was the first year or it was there
Speaker 2: was there was a concern that was coming into law
Speaker 2: the next year, I believe it was, and so his
Speaker 2: bank sent us there, sent him there to teach us
Speaker 2: financial literacy home economics class, which doesn't exist anymore. We
Speaker 2: didn't want him there. He didn't want to be there.
Speaker 2: He came in once a week for six weeks, for
Speaker 2: forty five minutes. The next week he came in. He said,
Speaker 2: you know, you kids aren't so bad. Yeah, he said,
Speaker 2: you're not so bad for a white dude. So we
Speaker 2: started to be a little bit of a rapport. He said,
Speaker 2: you remind me of my children, and so we started
Speaker 2: to build a rapport. Right became a human interaction. I
Speaker 2: don't know, third or fourth session. I started modeling the banker.
Speaker 2: I started listening to what he was saying. It was
Speaker 2: fascinating me. And by the you know, third or fourth session,
Speaker 2: I believe it was a fourth session, I asked him,
Speaker 2: what do you do for a living man? And how'd
Speaker 2: you get rich legally. He said, I'm a banker and
Speaker 2: I finance entrepreneurs. I said, sir, I don't know what
Speaker 2: an entrepreneur is. I never heard that word my entire life.
Speaker 2: French word. Build something out of nothing, create value, whatever
Speaker 2: it is. If it is legal and you're financing it,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna be one. That's the moment I became an
Speaker 2: entrepreneur again. The story of that and what I did
Speaker 2: with that is a soul's another parallel stories. You check
Speaker 2: that out of my book Financial Literacy for All, or
Speaker 2: my book Up from Nothing, or one of the videos
Speaker 2: that are leble online that chronicle this story is a
Speaker 2: source of inspiration for yourself. Up from nothing. I'm from
Speaker 2: the bottom of the economic pyramid, both income and wealth,
Speaker 2: to the bottom of the top one percent in this country.
Speaker 2: Legally paying my taxes, you know, working hard, hustling, working
Speaker 2: by the rules, playing by the rules. No shortcuts, no
Speaker 2: government grants. There's the wrong with the government grants, but
Speaker 2: that was just not my part of my deal. No inheritance,
Speaker 2: nobody hooked me up, no legal activity. I did it
Speaker 2: all by the books, and I didn't do it. I look,
Speaker 2: I love my brothers and sisters and entertainment in sports.
Speaker 2: But I didn't do it through entertainment in sports. I
Speaker 2: didn't do it through the government. I didn't do it
Speaker 2: through through any of the traditional routes that you hear
Speaker 2: of African American succeeding. And hopefully this is again is
Speaker 2: an inspiration for you that you can go right down
Speaker 2: the middle and kick the door in like this. I
Speaker 2: believe in the James Brown version of affirmative action. Open
Speaker 2: the door. I'll get it myself. I want you to
Speaker 2: be dangerous, as my friend Tim Bird has said, not
Speaker 2: just famous. Someone should be dangerous. I mean, don't you
Speaker 2: be intelligent from the neck up and win because you
Speaker 2: have earned your seat at the table. So this banker
Speaker 2: told me he was a banker, he's an end's entrepreneurs.
Speaker 2: I said, I don't know what an entrepreneur is. It
Speaker 2: is legal. I'm going to be one. That's who I
Speaker 2: am and what I am today. Again, the rest of
Speaker 2: that story you could read about. And then I asked
Speaker 2: him this other question, and I start wearing a suit.
Speaker 2: The next week they came in dressed like him and
Speaker 2: got beat up every day. But that made me an
Speaker 2: individual that began the process of being an eagle and
Speaker 2: Eagles on flying packs. The road Less Travel Scott Peck's
Speaker 2: book The road Less Doctor Scott Peck, The road Less Travel.
Speaker 2: That books probably thirty years old, forty years old by now.
Speaker 2: I would recommend that it recommended reading for you. When
Speaker 2: folks are going to the left, you often have to
Speaker 2: go to the right. If folks are going to the right,
Speaker 2: you may take the road less travel to the left
Speaker 2: the left and find your own pathway, just like I did.
Speaker 2: People you know, derided me and teach me about financial
Speaker 2: literacy and all the stuff my entire life. Now everybody
Speaker 2: wants to know. Help me explain to him how does
Speaker 2: this system works. We got to make smart sexy again.
Speaker 2: We've been making dumb sexy for way too long. We
Speaker 2: dumbed down and celebrated it to start. It's time to
Speaker 2: make smart sexy again. So I tried. I asked this
Speaker 2: banker another question. Okay, banker, I now know what my
Speaker 2: vision is. But you mean to tell me your job
Speaker 2: is to loan poor people money. Yes, that's my job.
Speaker 2: I mean, you got to prove you can pay it back.
Speaker 2: But my job as a loan people who are striving
Speaker 2: with money and all I got to do is all
Speaker 2: I gotta do is to have a plan and to
Speaker 2: prove I can pay you back that I'm credit worthy. Yes,
Speaker 2: and I don't get dead if I don't pay that
Speaker 2: money back. He laughed. He says, no, I'm not gonna
Speaker 2: kill you. Why wouldn't we want to kill you. You're our
Speaker 2: prime asset. We're loaning you money. We want you to
Speaker 2: be alive. But my neighborhood, if you didn't pay the
Speaker 2: money back, you got dead. Like you were in the wrong,
Speaker 2: wrong street, did the wrong things, said the wrong thing,
Speaker 2: and did pay somebody's money back. You just you were
Speaker 2: a zero zero zero. I remember I borrowed money for
Speaker 2: an inner one of my enterp I was selling clothes
Speaker 2: Fila and less A Sportswear, remember those for those old
Speaker 2: enough to know about FeelA in the less A Sportswear.
Speaker 2: I'll tell that story one of my podcasts. But I
Speaker 2: was selling it out of my this point, at the
Speaker 2: back of my trunk of my car, and I had
Speaker 2: to borrow some money from the wrong dude. And all
Speaker 2: these people who saved my life I could have took
Speaker 2: my life. I really remember their names and could go
Speaker 2: back and say thank you to them for cutting me
Speaker 2: a break. This is one of the brothers black man
Speaker 2: who cut me a break. He was a gangster for
Speaker 2: my neighborhood. I brought money from me. It wasn't a lot,
Speaker 2: but when I went to go pay him back after
Speaker 2: I sold some goods, he said, no, man, you can't
Speaker 2: pay me back. That's not the way this deal works.
Speaker 2: You might you indebted to me for life. I had
Speaker 2: no idea what he meant. And he and I and
Speaker 2: clearly look at my face. He knew that I didn't know.
Speaker 2: And he's like, man, you shouldn't be here. He said,
Speaker 2: you just shouldn't be here. You've got potential. Like I'm
Speaker 2: gonna let you pay me back, don't ever come back
Speaker 2: here again. And I learned a number of valuable lessons right,
Speaker 2: And that black man saved my life. There's another black
Speaker 2: man who literally saved my life. Oc I was dying,
Speaker 2: I was swallowing my tongue all My mother saved my life.
Speaker 2: You know, told me she live me everyday in my
Speaker 2: life and invested me in every way possible. And this
Speaker 2: white man also helped to give me direction in life
Speaker 2: when he talked to me about banking and how this
Speaker 2: system works when you look at Operation Hope today. So
Speaker 2: when I listened when he told me that, and I
Speaker 2: said to them, you know, are there more bankers like you?
Speaker 2: He said, there's got Yeah, there's got to be hundreds
Speaker 2: of thousands of bankers, maybe a million of bankers. There's
Speaker 2: ten thousand banks back then, forty five hundred banks today.
Speaker 2: There's got to be ten thousand bankers in America, he said,
Speaker 2: banks in America. There's got to be at least, you know,
Speaker 2: a few hundred thousand, maybe a million bankers, and all
Speaker 2: of us have the same mission. And I'm like, wait
Speaker 2: a minute, All my struggling friends, if they figure out
Speaker 2: what I've figured out, they can access capital, get a loan,
Speaker 2: get a relationship with somebody who's got some wealth, and
Speaker 2: get some relationship capital and come on up. Yes. So
Speaker 2: if you look at Operation Hope today, the large financial
Speaker 2: literacy coaching organization in America, essentially that's what we're doing today.
Speaker 2: Is that this is one of my five divisions of
Speaker 2: John O'briyant Enterprises or John O'Brien Holdings. But it's a
Speaker 2: thing I'm most known for, so proud of it. Operation
Speaker 2: Ohe probably one C three nonprofit which is the biggest
Speaker 2: of the country four point five billion dollars of capital
Speaker 2: directed to underserve neighborhoods and partnering with a rate corporations
Speaker 2: and all that stuff and government. But yes, banks, we're
Speaker 2: the only nonprofit allowed in history to operate inside of
Speaker 2: a bank branch, an FBIIC insured bank branch. So if
Speaker 2: you're just clicking in, you're at minute sixteen. We're about
Speaker 2: to get into the depths of how banking work. If
Speaker 2: you are want to refer this to a friend, they
Speaker 2: have limited time, then they just telling to go to
Speaker 2: a minute sixteen and start this conversation with me on
Speaker 2: how banks work. Let me now get into it. Banks
Speaker 2: are and I mean this is the most positive way possible.
Speaker 2: It's going to sound a little ratchet, but I mean
Speaker 2: it seriously. Banks are gangster and I don't mean that
Speaker 2: in a negative way. I mean this is people sleep
Speaker 2: on banking. This is one of the most incredible business
Speaker 2: models I remember seen in my life. Check this out.
Speaker 2: You're starting a bank, if you're lucky enough to start
Speaker 2: a bank, and for every dollar that the depositor puts up,
Speaker 2: you're responsible either a depositor puts up or you have
Speaker 2: assets right in the form of loans that are credit
Speaker 2: worthy or assets on your book. For every dollar on
Speaker 2: your balance sheet, you're responsible for about seven cents. Now
Speaker 2: it varies. It could be as low as six cents.
Speaker 2: It could be a little as four and a half
Speaker 2: cents in some cases, but with the different buffers and
Speaker 2: things in place, it's going to be about six seven
Speaker 2: cents minimum. It's called Tier one capital and a little
Speaker 2: bit of buffer, and then more like ten cents on
Speaker 2: the dollar on average for all of the things that
Speaker 2: a bank's responsible for and reserve, et cetera. So with
Speaker 2: bank regulators, don't get nervous. But check this out your
Speaker 2: private business, your private shareholders. Your mission is to make
Speaker 2: a profit, okay, and you only have to put up
Speaker 2: ten cents, seven to ten cents for every dollar that's
Speaker 2: on your balance sheet. But you get the benefit of
Speaker 2: that whole dollar when that loan that you're going to give.
Speaker 2: And I'm gonna break this down in a minute, pays
Speaker 2: you back. And it's guarantee. Your enterprise is the only
Speaker 2: business in America. I can't do this, say this without smiling.
Speaker 2: Guaranteed by the full faith and creditor of the federal
Speaker 2: US federal government, the biggest government in the world in
Speaker 2: facting the beggar's economy and the only, the only flight
Speaker 2: to quality economy, the only money center economy, the biggest
Speaker 2: GDP economy, the most credible economy in the world. The
Speaker 2: United States of America, the federal government, the FDIC, Federal
Speaker 2: Deposit Insurance Corporation. Did you know what that meant? FDIC
Speaker 2: guarantees every bank and the Maria. There used to be
Speaker 2: ten thousand when I was growing up, is more like
Speaker 2: forty five hundred banks today. And so they were the
Speaker 2: only business that's it's the only business backed by the
Speaker 2: full faith and credit of the federal government. Check this out.
Speaker 2: Think about this. This is wild and and that model
Speaker 2: only requires you to put up seven cents of the dollar.
Speaker 2: And these bankers walking around, you know, in these very
Speaker 2: conservative suits and living burger sertive lives. But they really
Speaker 2: have the slickest, most amazing business model on the planet.
Speaker 2: And I applaud them. I want them to do well
Speaker 2: because their job is to empower entrepreneurs like me and others.
Speaker 2: And it's a dynamic tension between that entrepreneur and that banker.
Speaker 2: The banker's job is keep you on the road. You walking,
Speaker 2: you know, roll into a ditch if you're an entrepreneur,
Speaker 2: a small business owner, or drive into a ditch. And
Speaker 2: the entrepreneur's job is to drive, drive, drive forward toward
Speaker 2: growth or profitability. So you've got this entrepreneur that's sort
Speaker 2: of scares the banker, this business owner whose dreams scare
Speaker 2: the banker. But the banker's job is to be sober
Speaker 2: and sort of disciplined and and and responsible and sort
Speaker 2: of uh, make sure that that this bank, that this
Speaker 2: entrepreneur business makes sense. There's an old joke, the bank
Speaker 2: will lend you money you could prove you don't need it.
Speaker 2: I'll get to that in a minute. It's a joke,
Speaker 2: but it's not far from the truth. You've got to
Speaker 2: look like you're not a big risk. Stop thinking that.
Speaker 2: You go to go to a bank and and and
Speaker 2: looking like you got to risk all over you low
Speaker 2: credit score or high debt, no money in the deal, whatever,
Speaker 2: and think the bank is out of venture capitalists. A
Speaker 2: bank is again fd I c ensured the bank, the
Speaker 2: government will take them over they screw up. So here's
Speaker 2: the fundamentals now, and basically, just to cut to the chase,
Speaker 2: the bank makes their money by the difference in the
Speaker 2: interest expense between what they're going to pay on your deposits.
Speaker 2: So you're putting in money in that bank depositing, and
Speaker 2: you're depositing because you know it's backed by the full
Speaker 2: faith and credit of the federal government. And let's just
Speaker 2: say the government banks are chart gonna pay you two
Speaker 2: cents two percent for your money. I'm just making this
Speaker 2: up two percent three percent for your money. Okay, maybe
Speaker 2: a little bit more different kind of account whatever. And
Speaker 2: the banks that have loan that money back out at
Speaker 2: let's say the current interest rates at seven, nine, ten percent.
Speaker 2: The credit cards might be in the teens, but there's
Speaker 2: a lower as a higher default rate for credit cards.
Speaker 2: But let's assume that they're got to loan that out
Speaker 2: for at ten percent, just to make this simple, and
Speaker 2: they're charging and they're charging you three percent, sorry, paying
Speaker 2: you three percent four percent. Uh, And there's an administrative
Speaker 2: cost for them to run the bank. Let's call that
Speaker 2: two percent two to three percent. So now the cost
Speaker 2: is about six percent. You follow me, they're charging you
Speaker 2: as a loan for your range Rover or your car,
Speaker 2: or for your mortgage loan, or for your whatever it
Speaker 2: is your you know, your your indebtedness to them, they're
Speaker 2: charging you ten percent. In this example, their profit is
Speaker 2: three percent. Fair exchange is no robbery. My friend Rob
Speaker 2: McGrew would say, why you're hating on the bank for
Speaker 2: making three percent. They made sure that you had the
Speaker 2: capital in place so that you could get whatever it
Speaker 2: is you needed. If the case of a business, a
Speaker 2: business loan, where you're gonna make multiples more than they're
Speaker 2: gonna make by the way money's made on top of
Speaker 2: capital and assets, than it is you just making a living.
Speaker 2: That's a whole other video for another time. But if
Speaker 2: you're a business owner and you're taking this money putting
Speaker 2: it to work, you're gonna make you know, ten x
Speaker 2: hopefully what that banker is gonna make. You're not freight
Speaker 2: concerned with the banker make it three percent because because
Speaker 2: of the banker wasn't there, you'd make you have no
Speaker 2: access to capital at all. Maybe in this example, here's
Speaker 2: core functions of banking. Okay, begin to write this down,
Speaker 2: and we're gonna get into discrimination and all the stuff
Speaker 2: and why it didn't work for people of color and
Speaker 2: women also in a minute. But I'm just giving you
Speaker 2: the functions here. Accepting deposits, savings accounts, checking accounts, certificates
Speaker 2: of deposits. Okay, I remember I was starting operation show
Speaker 2: about break CDs, certificates of deposits all the time. Twenty
Speaker 2: five thousand dollars CDs. I break them to meet payroll.
Speaker 2: I handed CD to Rachel daff I mean, back then
Speaker 2: it was physical. These were physical instruments, you know, documents,
Speaker 2: you had to fill out everything. It's digital now, checking accounts.
Speaker 2: I remember the joke was, I can't be broken. Still
Speaker 2: have checks left? Anybody old enough watching and listening to
Speaker 2: this know what I'm talking about? Can I get a name? Man?
Speaker 2: Remember floating checks? Remember that, you know, you send a
Speaker 2: check and then run around for two or three days.
Speaker 2: You write a check, run around two or three days,
Speaker 2: try to cover that check before you hit you. No, No,
Speaker 2: I never did that. Of course I did, and I
Speaker 2: honored all my obligations. You can't do that stuff now.
Speaker 2: Money is digital. It's immediate, right, all right? And then
Speaker 2: so that's accepting deposits. That and then the bank pays
Speaker 2: you an interest return on those deposits providing loans. All right,
Speaker 2: this is where the gets starts to get interesting personal laws.
Speaker 2: Unsecured loans for various personal needs, typically unsecured mortgage loans.
Speaker 2: These are loan secured by for personal real estate secured
Speaker 2: by the property itself. Call it real property. Okay. Business
Speaker 2: loans loans to businesses for expansion operations or other needs.
Speaker 2: Credit cards revolving credit lines that allow customers to borrow
Speaker 2: up to a certain credit limit. And this is the
Speaker 2: biggest way to impact your credit score is to reduce
Speaker 2: your consumer credit card debt to debt to limit ratios. Again,
Speaker 2: the best way to get your credit score up. The
Speaker 2: number one way to get your credit scred up, per
Speaker 2: my financial coaches and Operation Hope, out of everything else
Speaker 2: you're doing, is I mean, my credit card fluctuated recently
Speaker 2: by like thirty points because one of my credit cards
Speaker 2: went up because a member of my family was using
Speaker 2: it now and I wasn't aware of it, even though
Speaker 2: my rest of my balance sheet is incredibly large. But
Speaker 2: that thing, that one element called a disproportionate impact on
Speaker 2: my credit score me John O'Brien, right, And so I
Speaker 2: had to pay that credit card down. And because the
Speaker 2: ratio of what I owe to the limit of what
Speaker 2: I could charge was too high. You want to get
Speaker 2: that down to twenty thirty percent of your limit to
Speaker 2: get the bet credit score of your Yeah, so if
Speaker 2: you have a limit of ten thousand, you want to
Speaker 2: be no more than two or three thousand dollars to
Speaker 2: get the best credit score impact. Even you know, ten percent,
Speaker 2: fifteen percent great, you know, fifty percent the limit is
Speaker 2: not bad. You don't want to be at seventy eighty
Speaker 2: ninety percent of the limit. That starts making the bank's
Speaker 2: nervous that you're, you know, living beyond your means or
Speaker 2: living through your credit cards, which a lot of people
Speaker 2: are doing, by the way right now, So I'm not
Speaker 2: picking on anybody. Point number three Payments and settlement services.
Speaker 2: This is another is that banks are in money transfers,
Speaker 2: facilitating the movement of money between accounts and across borders.
Speaker 2: There's individual companies that are in this business too, Western
Speaker 2: Union and other companies that are in this business. But
Speaker 2: banks do this check clearing, processing checks and ensuring the
Speaker 2: transfer funds between accounts, and this is aided by the
Speaker 2: Federal Reserve. That's what one of the things the Federal
Speaker 2: Reserve system does is help with the check clearing process.
Speaker 2: And you have companies that a lot of companies in
Speaker 2: Georgia are the backbone of the financial services system that
Speaker 2: are helping with this process. You never remember the check
Speaker 2: systems growing up. You didn't want to be on check systems.
Speaker 2: That was not a good thing, that made you bounce checks.
Speaker 2: That's not owned by banks. I don't think for investment services,
Speaker 2: brokerage services buying and selling securities on behalf of customers.
Speaker 2: This is not this this activity is not guaranteed by
Speaker 2: the fdi C. Hello, just because you're at a bank
Speaker 2: does not mean that all the functions of that bank
Speaker 2: are guaranteed by the FDIC. Did you know that most
Speaker 2: of the investment functions are not fully guaranteed? Like your
Speaker 2: deposits are you know up to excellent X dollars for
Speaker 2: your deposits? And a bank wealth management providing financial planning
Speaker 2: and investment advice, mutual funds and ETFs offering pulled investment products.
Speaker 2: These things I just mentioned you investment services typically are
Speaker 2: not covered under FDIC insurance. Check with your banking and
Speaker 2: financial services provider. Five safekeeping and Custodio services Safe deposit boxes,
Speaker 2: secure storage for valuable items, custodial accounts, to managing assets
Speaker 2: and securities on behalf of clients. Think about trust activities. Trust.
Speaker 2: You've heard of trust, bank of the whatever. Okay, so
Speaker 2: that's you know, that's a whole other part of banking.
Speaker 2: But I don't want to get into it. I don't
Speaker 2: want to get into a whole sidebar of another size
Speaker 2: of type of banking, a state discipline. So I get
Speaker 2: through this in one Let me know if you want
Speaker 2: me to go deeper in another podcast into any one
Speaker 2: section of this banking and go down the rabbit hole.
Speaker 2: I'm happy to. By the way, get back focused again.
Speaker 2: How banks make their money? Interest rates spread again? This
Speaker 2: is what I said earlier. The primary way banks earn
Speaker 2: their money is through the difference between the interests they
Speaker 2: pay on deposits and the interests they earn on loans.
Speaker 2: This is known as the interest rates spread. This is
Speaker 2: why people's you know, brothers like yo, man, I don't
Speaker 2: want no mutgage or no house. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: You know what I'm saying. I don't know what you're saying.
Speaker 2: I can't understand you buy a house. I don't own
Speaker 2: the house. The bank owns a house. If you don't pay, Yes,
Speaker 2: that's true. In fact, if I borrow, if I loan
Speaker 2: you money, I said this several times. It music. If
Speaker 2: I loan you money, you're a friend of mine, you're
Speaker 2: a family member, I love you. But if I own you,
Speaker 2: loan you money the Bank of Bryan and you don't
Speaker 2: pay me, I'm going to own your house. Real talk,
Speaker 2: because business is not personal. Can I get an amen?
Speaker 2: This is the church of what's happening now and what
Speaker 2: have you done for me lately? Right? So the interest
Speaker 2: rate spread is different between what they're earning banks are
Speaker 2: paying on deposits, the money you're putting on deposit at
Speaker 2: the bank, and the interests they're earning on loans. So
Speaker 2: they want to get the highest rate they return they
Speaker 2: can on these interest rates on these loans, which is
Speaker 2: which will come into discrimination here. Conversation in a second. Fees,
Speaker 2: accounting fees, monthly maintenance fees, overdraft fees, and other service charges.
Speaker 2: This is a way that banks can make money. Transaction
Speaker 2: fees fees for wire transfers, foreign currency exchanges, and ATM
Speaker 2: usage fees. When you go to the ATM machine, it
Speaker 2: doesn't mean all the money. It means something else, right,
Speaker 2: And when you go to that machine and you pull
Speaker 2: that money out, you'll see it says depending on the
Speaker 2: bank you go to, it says two dollars used to
Speaker 2: be a dollar. By the way, then with a dollar
Speaker 2: fifty you see now it's two fifty three fifty three
Speaker 2: ninety five is going up again? Fair change, no robbery.
Speaker 2: What is it worth for you to get that money
Speaker 2: from on the run when you needed that moment? You
Speaker 2: don't have to take it. You can see that fee
Speaker 2: and say, no, I sit the word. No, I'm not
Speaker 2: going to pay that fee, and I'm going to go
Speaker 2: get money from my mother, my sister and my father,
Speaker 2: my wife or husband and i'll i'll you know, no,
Speaker 2: I'm cool. But if you hit that button, you're paying.
Speaker 2: If you're pulling out two hundred dollars and you're paying
Speaker 2: that three fifty three ninety five fee, well that's the
Speaker 2: cost of doing business. That's one of the ways that,
Speaker 2: in this particular case, banks can make money. What else
Speaker 2: is there? Investment income banks, investment securities, bonds, and other
Speaker 2: financial instruments to earn profits, returns, advisory and brokerage services,
Speaker 2: fees for providing financial advice, investment management, and brokerage services.
Speaker 2: The regulatory environment they're regulated by, as I said, the
Speaker 2: FDI c EOCC officers, the control of the currency, the
Speaker 2: Federal Reserve System in some cases CFPB to Consumer Financial
Speaker 2: Production Bureau, in some cases state regulatory agencies. Every state
Speaker 2: as a banking regulator, the Federal Reserve System. You know
Speaker 2: already mentioned that most banks, national banks regulated by the OCC,
Speaker 2: the Office of the Coupture of the Currency, which regulated,
Speaker 2: by the way, the Freedman's Bank, which was created in
Speaker 2: eighteen sixty five, charted to teach free slaves about money.
Speaker 2: That's the bank that I the building I helped get
Speaker 2: renamed in twenty sixteen by Secretary Jack lou thankumus Secretary
Speaker 2: renaming the Treasury Annex building the Freedman's Bank Building in
Speaker 2: honor of former slaves put every dollar they had in
Speaker 2: a bank that ultimately failed after Lincoln was assassinated. And
Speaker 2: that's one of the reasons that bank. The black folks are,
Speaker 2: you know, wary about banks. Wary about banks is because
Speaker 2: that bank duped them. If Freder Douglass trying to save
Speaker 2: that bank, by the way, types of banks. Commercial banks
Speaker 2: offer full range of services to individuals and businesses. Investment banks,
Speaker 2: it specialize in underwriting, facilitating mergers and acquisitions, and providing
Speaker 2: other investment services in many ways. Operation Hope is a
Speaker 2: nonprofit investment banking organization. And the way in which we
Speaker 2: do things. We take all these disparate assets and opportunities,
Speaker 2: we structure them together so the whole is more than
Speaker 2: the parts, and we create solutions for the government, community
Speaker 2: and the private sector. And you were the America's first
Speaker 2: nonprofit social investment bank or I started that thirty two
Speaker 2: years ago. Four point five billion dollars invested so far,
Speaker 2: millions of clients, three hundred physical office, fifteen hundred satellite offices.
Speaker 2: That's Operation Hope in most banks in the country. We're
Speaker 2: getting the bank out of the no businesses back into
Speaker 2: the yes business at scale. I'll get to that in
Speaker 2: a second. A lot to get in on the second
Speaker 2: half of this podcast, but I wanted to break this
Speaker 2: down people have been asking me for this. Retail banks
Speaker 2: focuses on individual customers, offering savings and checking accounts, personal loans,
Speaker 2: and credit cards. That is where most of you are
Speaker 2: doing your business. For the retail bank, and there are
Speaker 2: good retail banks today and they have an incentive not
Speaker 2: to discriminate against you. Again, I'm going to get into
Speaker 2: the when they did and why they probably are not
Speaker 2: trying to do that now. And if it is, it's
Speaker 2: probably some individual of the bank that's hating on you,
Speaker 2: not the institution itself. Again, I'm gonna tell you why
Speaker 2: in a minute. Central banks national banks that manage money,
Speaker 2: monetary policy, issue currency, and regulate the banking system. I
Speaker 2: EI the Federal Reserve in the US, the big baller
Speaker 2: of all banks, the biggest baller of all ballers, the
Speaker 2: biggest bank of all banks. The only one that can
Speaker 2: print money is a Federal Reserve. And I know a
Speaker 2: lot of the Federal Reserve presidents. We have a black
Speaker 2: Federal Reserve president right here, right in Atlanta, Georgia, Georgia,
Speaker 2: Rafael Boston, a very good guy. You had a black
Speaker 2: man who was vice chairman of the Federal Reserve when
Speaker 2: ninet eleven happened, by the way, because green Span, then
Speaker 2: the Fed chirman was out of the country. He was
Speaker 2: in charge of stabilizing the biggest economy in the world
Speaker 2: and did a great job during during nine to eleven.
Speaker 2: Great guy, and he's a friend of mine as well.
Speaker 2: The role of technology. Modern banks are increasingly relying on technology,
Speaker 2: and I believe that that modern banks are going to
Speaker 2: move into this area of emerging markets, which is people
Speaker 2: of color, which is a far cry from where they started.
Speaker 2: So now let's go into discrimination by US banks in
Speaker 2: the banking system, and then I'll come back to sort
Speaker 2: of the timeline of how banks got to where we
Speaker 2: are today and where we are today. So discrimination by
Speaker 2: US banks was significant one hundred years ago, I mean
Speaker 2: like horrible, like disgusting, Like a bank was one hundred
Speaker 2: years ago owned by the family of Races, Inc. Or
Speaker 2: the family of Joe Blow. It doesn't mean they were racist,
Speaker 2: but that but that does mean that bank, if that
Speaker 2: family was racist or they had backwards views, they could
Speaker 2: write policies that completely, wholly, completely, without question discriminated against
Speaker 2: people of color. This is called the segregation of the
Speaker 2: in the Jim Crow laws of You don't even need
Speaker 2: to go back to the eighteen hundreds, which was horrible,
Speaker 2: you know, the nineteen twenties, this was Jim Crow era.
Speaker 2: During the nineteen twenties, the racial segregation was legally enforced
Speaker 2: in many states under Jim Crow laws. Legally it was
Speaker 2: the law of the land. This institutionalized racial discrimination and
Speaker 2: created significant barriers for Black Americans in particular, including banking. Again,
Speaker 2: when I tell you can't grow without having a good
Speaker 2: banking system in your community, it's really hard to build
Speaker 2: a community or wealth. And one of the reasons that
Speaker 2: black people have less than tempers of their white counterparts.
Speaker 2: Will hold on for a minute, really read my books,
Speaker 2: then introducer Frogs. It deals with land and a bunch
Speaker 2: of other stuff. But I'm gonna give you the banking
Speaker 2: side here in a second. And it really wasn't banking's fault.
Speaker 2: This particular part lack of access to banking services. Black
Speaker 2: Americans had limited to no access to What I mean
Speaker 2: by that, it's redlining. So for anybody listening to this,
Speaker 2: what do you mean, John, it wasn't banking's fault. You
Speaker 2: just said it was banking's fault. Okay, if you were
Speaker 2: a racist bank, yes you can distribute against blacks. But
Speaker 2: the biggest problem the blacks hole had with red lining
Speaker 2: wasn't the banks, it was the government. So hold on.
Speaker 2: Lack of access to banking services. Black Americans often had
Speaker 2: limited access to bank stream banking services. That's why the
Speaker 2: Freedman's Bank was so important. That's why the bunch of
Speaker 2: black banks that were started were so important. And you know,
Speaker 2: there was a time where black banks really thrived, and
Speaker 2: it could have been the black banks could have been
Speaker 2: multi billion dollar banks today, but they were hated on,
Speaker 2: discribuinted against, and held back. And now that banking has
Speaker 2: taken off like a rocket, is hard for small banks
Speaker 2: to become big, irrespective of their cultural heritage, particularly particularly
Speaker 2: with the culture however, it's hard for them to get
Speaker 2: into the billions and tens of billion dollars of assets.
Speaker 2: So I think we've got one or two banks now
Speaker 2: that are black control that have a billion dollars technically
Speaker 2: billion dollars in assets. Milton Jones is one of the
Speaker 2: few black men used to be with Bank of America
Speaker 2: who created a billion dollar institution, and he wasn't supported.
Speaker 2: The institution was dismantled. And there are a couple of
Speaker 2: banks a day again have the bing dollar thresholder that's
Speaker 2: a very small bank in today's banking environment. And I'll
Speaker 2: explain why that's important. Discrimination discriminating toory lending practices, even
Speaker 2: when black Americans could access banking services, they often face
Speaker 2: discriminatory lending practices. Banks routinely denied loans black applicants or
Speaker 2: oft are offered loans at much higher rates to their
Speaker 2: white counter parties just because they could. Redlining, this is
Speaker 2: really important. Redlining was rampant in the early twentieth century,
Speaker 2: and it was endorsed by the government. The government. It
Speaker 2: literally took a map and they took a pen, and
Speaker 2: they put a red line around what they call dangerous
Speaker 2: and risky neighborhoods. Now, these are the same neighborhoods where
Speaker 2: former slave people came from the South try to migrate
Speaker 2: north for better life, and because they weren't given opportunities
Speaker 2: and could get jobs and access the capitol and blah
Speaker 2: blah blah, they concentrated in the areas that became higher
Speaker 2: in crime. Blah blah blah. It was it was property
Speaker 2: by design. And so they said, oh, that's a rare
Speaker 2: risk area. We're not going to guarantee mortgages, we the
Speaker 2: government in those areas, We're gonna red line a gam
Speaker 2: And what do you think bankers did? Bankers, even the
Speaker 2: best banker, even the nicest person in the world is
Speaker 2: that is risk averse. What did I tell you? They
Speaker 2: cannot go out of business, the government will take them over,
Speaker 2: and they have very thin capital to assets, so they
Speaker 2: can't make many mistakes. They can't make many bad loans.
Speaker 2: So you could be a complete saint, but your capital
Speaker 2: is a coward. Capital is trying to find a safe
Speaker 2: place that it wants to be a safe place to
Speaker 2: sit at the highest return with the lowest risk. Listen
Speaker 2: to me, banks with the highest return, the lowest risk,
Speaker 2: and a safe place to sit. That's what every provider
Speaker 2: of capital wants, even if you're a saint. And so
Speaker 2: here you have these neighborhoods and governments that are red lined,
Speaker 2: and the government's not going to guarantee a mortgage. So
Speaker 2: where did the capital go. It went to the places
Speaker 2: that were green green lit, which were white suburban neighborhoods,
Speaker 2: and banks made loans there. So they could have been racist,
Speaker 2: they also could have been a saint, but they just
Speaker 2: were like, I don't want to I don't want to
Speaker 2: lend over there. I'm gonna lend over here. Where's low risk,
Speaker 2: high return or guaranteed return near guaranteed return, And I'm
Speaker 2: not gonna be taken over by the banking regulatories agencies
Speaker 2: animal get my loan guarantee, which you know means that
Speaker 2: the loan was danged near risk free in those cases.
Speaker 2: So little known fact it was not the banks themselves
Speaker 2: that instigated redlining. It was a US federal government. The
Speaker 2: government did a lot of bad stuff to incite inequality,
Speaker 2: and uh, I've just say now they're trying to make
Speaker 2: it right. Economic inequality, you know, became embedded, and you
Speaker 2: know there were legal protections that were put in place
Speaker 2: to help you out. The Civil Rights Act of nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty four, with my hero and asked for Andrew Young
Speaker 2: and his friend doctor King helped to put in place
Speaker 2: my sheerro. Doctor Dorothy Heyd and other women also helped
Speaker 2: in this movement. The Fair Housing Act of nineteen sixty eight,
Speaker 2: which was passed when doctor King was assassinated in honor
Speaker 2: of him. Really, President Johnson did that in honor of him,
Speaker 2: and the Community Reinvestment Act of nineteen seventy seven, which
Speaker 2: is the law that I really wrapped myself around CRA
Speaker 2: the Community Reinvestment Act. Everybody write that down and research it.
Speaker 2: It's about five hundred billion dollars a year. That's right,
Speaker 2: B five hundred billion dollars a year that is directed
Speaker 2: to investment lending in service, investment, equity, lending debt. Both
Speaker 2: of these are forms of capital. Debt and equity are
Speaker 2: both capital lending and service volunteers. I'm like the banker
Speaker 2: who came in my class froom to teach financial literacy.
Speaker 2: So now you know why that banker came in my
Speaker 2: classroom because the bank got credit for teaching financial literacy
Speaker 2: in my neighborhood. You want somebody teach financial literacy your
Speaker 2: neighborhood for free. Go to your local bank. They'll be
Speaker 2: enthusiastic if they have half a brain, come and teach
Speaker 2: a class for your your your club, your links chapter,
Speaker 2: your boys and girls club, your nonprofits, your school, whatever.
Speaker 2: That's exactly what happened, and you hat a bonus. You
Speaker 2: get a role model that's coming so you can model
Speaker 2: what you can see because people people want to be
Speaker 2: what they can see. And I saw this banker and
Speaker 2: a suit on, and I end up wearing a suit myself.
Speaker 2: I'm not a banker, I'm an entrepreneur, but I end
Speaker 2: up suited and booted, just like that banker. Was, so
Speaker 2: you have legal protections increase access to banking services. This,
Speaker 2: this legal infrastructure is made it harder for banks to discriminate.
Speaker 2: UH and banks and like corporations and every other capitalists
Speaker 2: and every other free enterprise entity respond to incentives and penalties,
Speaker 2: and so the penalties are hire to do wrong and
Speaker 2: incentives are hier to do right. The pendulum has shifted
Speaker 2: right in the last let's say forty years, fifty years now,
Speaker 2: there's been significant progress in providing equal access to banking services.
Speaker 2: Many banks that I actively seek to serve underserved communities,
Speaker 2: minority communities, often spurred by regulatory requirements like CRA and
Speaker 2: community advocacy. Now, while a vert discrimination is illegal, sobtle
Speaker 2: forms of discrimination and bias still exists. All right, So
Speaker 2: I'm not crazy, I'm not naive. I get that financial
Speaker 2: literacy and economic conclusion. Someff that I'm really specialized. Again,
Speaker 2: I call it silver rights from civil rights in the streets,
Speaker 2: the silver rights in the suites that I think is
Speaker 2: a great level of the playing field. And I love
Speaker 2: credit scores, as anybody listening to me, you know, I
Speaker 2: love credit scores because again, I like math because it
Speaker 2: doesn't have an opinion. I love computers, and I love
Speaker 2: what artificial intelligence and computing and technology is going to
Speaker 2: do this because when my mother went to the computer
Speaker 2: at midnight and said she wanted to get an auto loan,
Speaker 2: the computer wasn't some lady looking over her and trying
Speaker 2: to discriminate, looking at her and saying do I like
Speaker 2: you or not? It was a computer. And my mother
Speaker 2: put in her credit score and her income, and as
Speaker 2: long as her income was satisfied, she could afford to
Speaker 2: prove she could afford to pay for it the car
Speaker 2: she wanted, and her credit score was satisfactory. Anything over
Speaker 2: seven hundred, you're a star. Seven to fifty eight hundred,
Speaker 2: you're a superstar. The computer just said yes, approved her
Speaker 2: at great rates. The computeritess here is black or white.
Speaker 2: Computer star is green, the color of us, currency of prosperity.
Speaker 2: Follow me. And now here's a sad fact. And this
Speaker 2: is again, this is not our fault, but it doesn't
Speaker 2: matter what's your fault. Now. I believe in the James
Speaker 2: Brown version of affirmative action. Open a door, I'll get
Speaker 2: it myself. I want you to understand that this is
Speaker 2: where we are today, and I want you to improve
Speaker 2: yourself versus harping on two hundred years of history that
Speaker 2: you know more than that. As you're here, man, you
Speaker 2: can't change with recent history. Let the legislators and civil
Speaker 2: rights leaders and historians and policymakers change that. I want
Speaker 2: you to change your life. Half of black folks have
Speaker 2: a credit score below six to twenty today. Now poor
Speaker 2: whites aren't much better. They're about the same. Latinos are
Speaker 2: just above that. But the lowest credit score in the
Speaker 2: country on a average are people the people who've been
Speaker 2: discriminated against them, in my opinion, the most in this
Speaker 2: country actively, which are African Americans. It makes sense, but
Speaker 2: that means that half of us wake up in the
Speaker 2: morning and we're locked out of the free enterprise system. Hello,
Speaker 2: you can't get a good mortgage below seven hundred. You
Speaker 2: can't get a small business loan. Certainly below seven hundred
Speaker 2: is risky credit. It's considered risky credit. You can't get
Speaker 2: you know, good credit cards. You can't can't get it
Speaker 2: all alone at five hundred credit scores. I've said on
Speaker 2: another podcast, that's not a five hundred credit score. It's
Speaker 2: not a Mercedes is Mercedes payments. So the number one
Speaker 2: thing you can do is to work with a whole
Speaker 2: financial coach, because I know the criteria why bank's going
Speaker 2: to turn you down. Now, let me deal with this
Speaker 2: whole discrimination thing you're like right now, I mentioned one
Speaker 2: hundred years ago. Yes, racism was real and it was
Speaker 2: rampant in banking because the Bank of Hoosy What's was
Speaker 2: owned by the Hoosy Whats family in the city of
Speaker 2: Who's He What's Okay, and they just didn't like black
Speaker 2: people and they said, we're not lending to you today.
Speaker 2: Wells Fargo, Bank of America, you know, City Group, you
Speaker 2: know who else? US Bank, I'm just picking it out now,
Speaker 2: Bank of the West, they just were bought pn C Bank,
Speaker 2: Region's Bank, so Novah's Bank. I can't go on and
Speaker 2: on and on and on on First Horizon Bank. These
Speaker 2: are publicly traded institutions that you and I own stock in.
Speaker 2: Now you may say I don't own stock in them.
Speaker 2: If you have a four oh one K plan, that's
Speaker 2: your employer and you and they invest in a broad
Speaker 2: basket of investment in investment grade stocks. Yes you do, right,
Speaker 2: So you can't say that's a white bank anymore. That's
Speaker 2: your bank. If black folks own stock, white folks, latinos
Speaker 2: a Asians, Indians, everybody owns the corporations, governments, pension funds.
Speaker 2: If you're a teacher, your pension fund manager may have invested,
Speaker 2: meaning the people who manage your pension fund or your
Speaker 2: an investment accountant there as a teacher, they may have
Speaker 2: invested in these major institutions. Right, So, the job of
Speaker 2: the CEO of a major bank's publicly traded is to
Speaker 2: make some money. And if they're discriminated against you because
Speaker 2: you're black, they're not. You may be the best of
Speaker 2: them performing a loan they've got and they, by the way,
Speaker 2: they can't overcharge you like they used to because now
Speaker 2: the big brother, the federal government, their biggest partner, is
Speaker 2: looking at them, looking over their shoulder. They're highly regulated today.
Speaker 2: It's a highly advantageous business model, has a lot of
Speaker 2: leverage and a lot of profitability for the banks. Again,
Speaker 2: if you have seven cents of your own money ten
Speaker 2: cents of your money in a loan, but the loan
Speaker 2: is paying a dollar, as long as that whole loan pays,
Speaker 2: that bank is getting multiples of their seven cents in profit.
Speaker 2: A dollar turns into a ten dollars turns into a
Speaker 2: one hundred dollars, turns to one thousand dollars, and loan
Speaker 2: size to a million dollars to a billion dollars to
Speaker 2: ten billion, twenty billion dollars of loan portfolio. Just imagine
Speaker 2: the compounding effect of that owner, a group of owners
Speaker 2: of that bank, how much money they're making. By the way,
Speaker 2: we're the shareholders, we're the owners of that bank. So
Speaker 2: a bank today, my rich friends eat, my poor friends
Speaker 2: do better if only the stay rich. In the model
Speaker 2: I'm talking about now, even a racist wins of black
Speaker 2: people do well because the GDP, the economy, economy rises,
Speaker 2: loans are performing. If your credit score, if you raise
Speaker 2: your credit score to seven hundred, there's nothing more powerful
Speaker 2: than God or love and the moving your credit score
Speaker 2: to seven the credit score is seven hundred, one hundred
Speaker 2: and twenty points to seven hundred, nothing more powerful. So
Speaker 2: to move your credit score from five point fifty where
Speaker 2: the bank says no, you're declined. You may think it's racism,
Speaker 2: but they're decline to you because your credit score stinks.
Speaker 2: Your debt to income ratios are out of way. Needs
Speaker 2: you have more debt to income than the Irish person
Speaker 2: and you have low savings, and it's not your fault
Speaker 2: if you again, you come from the environment I talked about,
Speaker 2: But that's not Getting a loan into you today is
Speaker 2: not about somebody's fault. It's about a qualifying for credit,
Speaker 2: and I mean good credit. I don't want you qualifying
Speaker 2: for the homeboy, chefing network, shopping network credit with these
Speaker 2: high rates and bad terms. I don't want you to
Speaker 2: doing a check cashing, payd the loan lending, rental, own stores,
Speaker 2: title lending, liquor stores, financing, hood financing, and a five
Speaker 2: hundre credit score. Neighbor I grew up in. I want
Speaker 2: you to get seven hundred credit score. I want you
Speaker 2: to get rich people money, Okay, I want you to
Speaker 2: get seven hundred credit score, seven tifty credit score, eight
Speaker 2: hundred credit score money, which is best rates, best terms.
Speaker 2: They treat you like a king, like your private banking client.
Speaker 2: I'm your private banker at operation Hope. Are you getting
Speaker 2: what I'm saying. It's a lot of information in a
Speaker 2: short period of time. So if you can get your
Speaker 2: credit score up, a computer, not a person, is trying
Speaker 2: to say yes, and the bank needs to make a
Speaker 2: profit and they make a profit by making a loan,
Speaker 2: but the bank is forced to be in the no
Speaker 2: business because your credits may be tow up from the
Speaker 2: flow up as my credit my dad used to call
Speaker 2: it wasn't credit, it was credit. He said his credit
Speaker 2: was bad growing up. So Operation hobest job working in
Speaker 2: these banks right, working with the only nonprofit allowed to
Speaker 2: operate inside of a bank branch in UNS history. Operation
Speaker 2: hopest job is to get the bank out of the
Speaker 2: no business. I'm sorry you declined for a loan and
Speaker 2: back into the yes business. Yes you're approved, and not
Speaker 2: just approved at market rates, at prime rates in terms.
Speaker 2: That's what I want. I want you approved at prime
Speaker 2: rates in terms. And I love going through airports and
Speaker 2: the TSA agents in the airport are like yo man,
Speaker 2: Joe yo s John O'Brien, Hey man, I'm six ninety.
Speaker 2: Hey I'm six seventy. I'm seventy ten, showing me their
Speaker 2: credit score right as I'm going through, and they patted
Speaker 2: me down going through security. I absolutely love it people
Speaker 2: shopping me. Hey. I became a homeowner because of you. Hey,
Speaker 2: I started a business because of you. Hey, I got
Speaker 2: that I got a great personal loan or line of
Speaker 2: credit for my business because of you. You know, hey,
Speaker 2: I started your one million Black Business Initiative program, which
Speaker 2: has over forty thousand participants now our partnership with Shopify.
Speaker 2: And as I was doing that programmer didn't realize I
Speaker 2: didn't even need a loan I got. I just had
Speaker 2: some sales, and Shopify gave me an advance on my
Speaker 2: next sale for my former sale, and I've been fueling
Speaker 2: myself through that and so on. So I love these stories,
Speaker 2: but you've got to understand how this game works, and
Speaker 2: I want you to use a good good debt. There's
Speaker 2: good debt and bad debt. Right. Good debt is where
Speaker 2: where you're loaning against assets that have the ability to
Speaker 2: appreciate go up in value. You know, businesses, you know,
Speaker 2: mortgage on your house, you know, anyway, and you're even
Speaker 2: your education can I think appreciates because you're smarter and
Speaker 2: you can earn more of the college education than you
Speaker 2: were with the high school education. You get a return
Speaker 2: on investment even on a student loan. So good debt
Speaker 2: is against something that will appreciate or can appreciate, and
Speaker 2: bad debt is financing. I don't know clothes, jewelry. You
Speaker 2: know most jury has an eighty percent profit margin on it.
Speaker 2: You know that's not if you ever need to sell
Speaker 2: that jury, you get your heartbroken on what the on
Speaker 2: what the pawnshop or whoever will buy it back for?
Speaker 2: So bad debt depreciates. Good debt finances things that may appreciate.
Speaker 2: Did you get to understand that we do something just
Speaker 2: on debt? Let me know, I will. I want you
Speaker 2: to get good debt. There's no billionaire, it's ever become
Speaker 2: a billionaire without good debt. Did you hear me. There's
Speaker 2: no government, there's no growing economy in the world ever
Speaker 2: that didn't get there without good debt and guests, who's
Speaker 2: financing the good debt banks? All right, this is one
Speaker 2: of the most incredible models in the world banking, and
Speaker 2: I'm trying to break it down for you something I've tried,
Speaker 2: I've tried to master and tried to really understand. I
Speaker 2: find I signed the loan facility for two hundred million
Speaker 2: dollars on one of my tied to one of my
Speaker 2: private companies, a recapitalization. Actually I didn't sign it literally,
Speaker 2: I didn't have to sign it. It was non recourse debt.
Speaker 2: I sold that company, but it was nice to be
Speaker 2: a black man. And I have to asked for a
Speaker 2: personal guarantee for ten thousand dollars loan, which happened to
Speaker 2: be my entire life. And nosebleed rates meaning very high streets.
Speaker 2: This was very low rates, very good terms, so on
Speaker 2: and so forth. And we have about four point seven
Speaker 2: four four point eight billion dollars of capital that we've
Speaker 2: commulated and deployed through my entities over thirty two years,
Speaker 2: most of that in the last fifteen years. And it's
Speaker 2: just growing, growing, growing, and again prime rates is what
Speaker 2: I want for you. Okay, here's in the last time
Speaker 2: we've got left. This has been helpful to you, by
Speaker 2: the way, I understand how this game works and how
Speaker 2: you can master it, and why even somebody's excriminated against you,
Speaker 2: we can make sure that that bank treats you well.
Speaker 2: We've got a great partnership with Wells Fargo. They had
Speaker 2: some drama in the past. I was there when the
Speaker 2: drama unfeled it. By the way, I was in the
Speaker 2: room years ago when I think people make really bad
Speaker 2: DESI visions and those were people that was not the
Speaker 2: institution itself. Again, you know, the federal government depends who's there.
Speaker 2: Like the Biden administration is different from the former president's administration,
Speaker 2: is different from the Clinton administration, and the Obama administration,
Speaker 2: the Johnson administration, the Regular administration, the Bush administration, and
Speaker 2: the Bush Fathers different from the Bush the Sun administration.
Speaker 2: Even though it's the US presidency, it's the US federal government,
Speaker 2: but it's different because of who's in the seats at
Speaker 2: the time. So if you have bad people running a
Speaker 2: good institution, then it's a badly run good institution, and
Speaker 2: it'll be pimped, it'll be manipulated, it'll be taken advantage of,
Speaker 2: and that culture will perpermeate. So there have been times
Speaker 2: where these institutions will run well. There's been time when
Speaker 2: these institutions will run badly and it shows and reflects
Speaker 2: in their stock value, that profit or the lack thereof
Speaker 2: the regulatory oversight, public criticisms. And I love the group
Speaker 2: that's there at Wellesbarugo. Now I love the groups there
Speaker 2: Bank of America. There there's people of color at the
Speaker 2: higher ranks. These intitutions. They build those in situtions of order.
Speaker 2: Over one hundred hope inside locations. And our mission is
Speaker 2: to get that bank out of the no business and
Speaker 2: back into the yes business. And I deal with the
Speaker 2: CEO Brian morning Hand and Bank of America, Charlie Sharf
Speaker 2: at Wells Fargo. I deal with Jane the CEO at
Speaker 2: City Group, who's a partner with us. It's kids accounts
Speaker 2: with Mayor Andrea Dickens and City of Atlantic. Every kid
Speaker 2: gets a kid gets an account in kindergarten and the
Speaker 2: City of Atlanta the child's savings account through Operation Hope
Speaker 2: and City Group, and in the Mayor Dickens in the
Speaker 2: City of Atlanta. And the statistics show that a kid
Speaker 2: who gets an account a bank account at kindergarten, it's
Speaker 2: fifty percent more likely to go to college. Hello. And
Speaker 2: if you're put any money in that account, and we're
Speaker 2: putting fifty dollars into each of those accounts and now
Speaker 2: asking banks to match it. The money money visual money
Speaker 2: comes from the city and we're asking banks to match
Speaker 2: it to our network of partners. You put twenty five
Speaker 2: fifty dollars in that account, the kid is seventy five
Speaker 2: percent more likely to graduate from college. Hello. Talking education
Speaker 2: to aspiration, we have ten percent of first Horizon Bank
Speaker 2: branches in Tennessee. The largest bank in Tennessee. Brian Jordan,
Speaker 2: great guy who runs that banks. The Novus Banks put
Speaker 2: up one hundred thousand dollars to match the money in
Speaker 2: the kids account that was just recently. That's their CEO
Speaker 2: Key Bank, their CEO Chris Gorman's a great guy. The
Speaker 2: CEO of City National Bank. The Kelly Coffee she just
Speaker 2: joined our Hope Global Boarding directors. We haven't done anything
Speaker 2: with her, but we hope too. They've had some rough patches,
Speaker 2: but they're trying to come back strong. You know, never
Speaker 2: let a crisis go to waste. People make mistakes, but
Speaker 2: that doesn't mean they are a mistake. You know, if
Speaker 2: an institution is tripped and fall and made some mistakes,
Speaker 2: help them get up and do good. Help them do
Speaker 2: good for your community and show that they are a
Speaker 2: good institution. And you can you know, all this stuff
Speaker 2: is sort of it's transparent. Now. You can see who
Speaker 2: has a good CRA rate community reinvestment, who is a
Speaker 2: bad one, who's been sued a million times and has
Speaker 2: all these fines and penalties, how long ago that was,
Speaker 2: and who's corrective action, and then see what their manager
Speaker 2: team looks like, see who's on their board of directors,
Speaker 2: See who their managers are, who their leaders are, Are
Speaker 2: they living their values? And again I've been there. Ain't
Speaker 2: no perfect, but I've been remarkably impressed with the trajectory,
Speaker 2: the trend line of progress. We're still waiting to see
Speaker 2: a black CEO of a money center bank or even
Speaker 2: one of these super regional banks. You have money center banks,
Speaker 2: which is the top you know, four or five banks,
Speaker 2: and you've got super regional banks, which are these behemoths
Speaker 2: like P and C and US Bank and et cetera,
Speaker 2: et cetera. I've already named the money center banks with
Speaker 2: those who are systemically important, most systemically important to the
Speaker 2: system of freederprise and capital and commerce. And you've got
Speaker 2: you know, regional banks, they're still big, one hundred billion,
Speaker 2: you know. And then you've got the community bank, said
Speaker 2: community that could be fifty billion dollars a day. That's
Speaker 2: why I was saying, a black bank with a billion
Speaker 2: dollars is really out gunned in many cases. Now, if
Speaker 2: you want to put your money in a black bank,
Speaker 2: knock yourself out. I have money in a black bank
Speaker 2: that black bank, though may not on their own be
Speaker 2: to give you the best terms that you're looking for,
Speaker 2: no matter how much they love you. It's not personal.
Speaker 2: They've got a higher capital ratio, they have less capital available,
Speaker 2: less assets available to lend, they can take less risk.
Speaker 2: They're going to ask you if they're going to be
Speaker 2: more conservative. In most cases, they're going to ask you.
Speaker 2: And let's they have a partnership with a major bank.
Speaker 2: By the way, they might they're going to ask you
Speaker 2: for probably more down payment. They may have to charge
Speaker 2: you a higher interest rate because they need to pay
Speaker 2: for their overhead. It's not personal, so you may end
Speaker 2: up because by doing the right thing, you may end
Speaker 2: up paying a slightly higher interest rate, slightly more cash
Speaker 2: down cash down slight less best slightly less than premier terms,
Speaker 2: even though you qualified, which proves it. That is not
Speaker 2: just race that's in there. If you want to support
Speaker 2: a black bank, and I encourage you to, I do
Speaker 2: it right, then then put your money on deposit at
Speaker 2: a black bank you have good credit, give them a
Speaker 2: good loan and credit card or you know, the personal loan, whatever,
Speaker 2: and pay it back and see if they have a
Speaker 2: strategic alliance with a bank or have some kind of
Speaker 2: federal guarantee or something that will allow you to get
Speaker 2: access to big bank pricing at a small community bank.
Speaker 2: Feel right, so you can find you can you know,
Speaker 2: two things can be true at the same time. You
Speaker 2: can I do business with a bunch of institutions. I
Speaker 2: do business with banks, money center banks, regional banks, community banks,
Speaker 2: credit unions. I do do business with a broad range
Speaker 2: of institutions, and those will give me the best deal
Speaker 2: for what I'm looking for gets the business. At the
Speaker 2: same time, I'm conscious and I make sure that I
Speaker 2: give back to my own community, and I make sure
Speaker 2: that i have money on deposits. And I'm doing business
Speaker 2: with black banks, and we have hope and site locations
Speaker 2: at black banks, including you know, supporting Citizens Bank, which
Speaker 2: is bank that doctor King's father, Daddy King, served on
Speaker 2: the board of in Atlanta, Georgia. Did you know that?
Speaker 2: All right, We're getting long in the tooth for this podcast.
Speaker 2: I hope you've enjoyed this. Let me tell you real quickly.
Speaker 2: I've covered a lot of ground here and I've had
Speaker 2: no notes, so I hope that I did a good
Speaker 2: job of covering banking for you. By the history of banking,
Speaker 2: here's the history, the chronology starting three thousand years before
Speaker 2: Christ was born. Yes, in ancient origins Nesopotamia, that's the
Speaker 2: earliest trace origins of banking. It was records of clay
Speaker 2: tablets showing the loans were made and interests were charged.
Speaker 2: That's banking. Ancient Egypt, two thousand years before Christ. Similar
Speaker 2: to Mesopotamia. Ancient Egyptians. Some black people won't argue. Maybe
Speaker 2: all black people, who knows. I don't know what they
Speaker 2: look like back then, but you know it was hot.
Speaker 2: These dark people, they were brilliant. They used granaries and
Speaker 2: temples as storage and lending facilities. The concept of interest
Speaker 2: bearing loans was well established. That's banking. The ancient Greece
Speaker 2: and Rome. That was eight four hundred years before before Christ.
Speaker 2: And Greece, money lenders operated in marketplaces and some temples
Speaker 2: provided loans. In Rome, banking was more sophisticated and official,
Speaker 2: with professional bankers and deposits and credit facilities. That's definitely banking.
Speaker 2: They also developed the concept of checks and promissory notes.
Speaker 2: That was five hundred, four hundred, eight hundred years before Christ.
Speaker 2: Medieval period five hundred to fifteen hundred years after after Christ,
Speaker 2: with the fall of Rome, banking activities diminished a little bit,
Speaker 2: disnet disappear. They then re emerged in the night templars
Speaker 2: and folks actually in places of faith play. The Catholic
Speaker 2: Church later on became a very big player in the
Speaker 2: banking monetary scene. Italy and the birth of modern banking
Speaker 2: that was the twelfth and fourteenth century. The Renaissance period
Speaker 2: saw the rise of powerful banking families in Italy, such
Speaker 2: as the the Medicy family in Florence. They developed new
Speaker 2: banking techniques, including double entry bookkeeping, bills of change and
Speaker 2: letters of credit. Their early modern period the Bank of
Speaker 2: Amsterdam that's nineteen oh six, the Bank of England at
Speaker 2: sixteen ninety four. We don't have time to get into
Speaker 2: details here. I'm giving you the high watermark here. The
Speaker 2: eighteenth and nineteenth century expansion of commerce banking. During the
Speaker 2: eighteenth and nineteenth century, commercial banks proliferated, especially in northern
Speaker 2: North America and Europe. These banks provided a wide range
Speaker 2: of services including deposits, loans, and investment products. And let's
Speaker 2: just say this, they also financed slaves. Some of these
Speaker 2: banks and bank Bank was operating in the eighteen hundreds,
Speaker 2: earlyteen hundreds. They took slaves as collateral. The banks that
Speaker 2: actually show on their records. By the way, one of
Speaker 2: the banks didn't mentioned that we partnered with is true
Speaker 2: as banks a good institution. Their CEO, Bill Rogers, great
Speaker 2: guy who's one of the people who took me and
Speaker 2: made and scale my operations up. He acknowledged that the history,
Speaker 2: the long history of his bank, you know, involved in
Speaker 2: slavery and financing plantations who put slaves up as collateral.
Speaker 2: You know, JP Morgan Chase has history of slaves being
Speaker 2: collateral for loans going back one hundred and fifty years.
Speaker 2: Any bank that's that owed has history of financing plantations
Speaker 2: in the slave trade, and they financed and sometimes took
Speaker 2: his collateral human beings. Yes, it happened. That doesn't mean
Speaker 2: the people who are running today are races. They could
Speaker 2: be the nicest people in the world. They can't, you know,
Speaker 2: help what happened one hundred and fifty years ago. But
Speaker 2: these institutions have, you know, rainbows follow stores. You want
Speaker 2: again try to find ways to let them come up
Speaker 2: and prove they're good for your community. To Truis is
Speaker 2: one of those formerly sun Trust, it's one of those
Speaker 2: situtions that it has proven that. By the way, the
Speaker 2: head of Banking and Truist is Doctae Wilson, a black man,
Speaker 2: and operation opens in eight hundred satellite locations and fifty
Speaker 2: real locations physical locations at Truis. Of their two thousand
Speaker 2: branches were in almost half. I commend them, and they're
Speaker 2: doing a really good job. O was I talking about Truist, Oh? Anyway,
Speaker 2: I was just talking about the fact that the bank,
Speaker 2: a bank that's at ode, has a history in the
Speaker 2: slave trade. So that was the seventeen hundreds and eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 2: The Industrial Revolution period overlapped with this development of the
Speaker 2: stock market. Banks were involved in that period. The twentieth century,
Speaker 2: the Great Depression and the banking reforms of the nineteen
Speaker 2: thirty the Great Depression, that's where the FDIC came from.
Speaker 2: All bank regulatory agencies came out of crisis. Okay, So
Speaker 2: the FDIC came up because the banking system collapsed during
Speaker 2: the Great Depression in people's confidence went away. I've already
Speaker 2: told you that the Freedom's Bank preceded this in the
Speaker 2: eighteen hundreds, and that was a bank created by Lincoln
Speaker 2: to teach free slaves about money, financial literacy, and down
Speaker 2: it's how they're savings. By the way, two months after
Speaker 2: forty Acres of the Mule. It's another podcast for another time,
Speaker 2: but that's also my book for financial literacy for all
Speaker 2: post war expansion nineteen forty five nineteen seventy that's when
Speaker 2: everything took off. Deregulation and globalization nineteen eighty to the
Speaker 2: two thousands, financial crisis and reforms two thousand and eight,
Speaker 2: that's a big mortgage crisis, present day digital banking and fintech.
Speaker 2: And I would argue artificial intelligence is coming and I
Speaker 2: think ethical banking is coming back. I think emerging markets
Speaker 2: what I think that Financial cra Community Reinvestment Act is
Speaker 2: about to mean emerging markets in America. That's my I
Speaker 2: think the d E and I I think the title
Speaker 2: has been so abused. It's that that top. That title's
Speaker 2: probably gone. But diversity is key to the business plan
Speaker 2: for America. And I believe that banks are one of
Speaker 2: the unities that will lead the effort to say, hey,
Speaker 2: we need new markets to conquer, new places to make
Speaker 2: a profit, and I want them to make a profit.
Speaker 2: By the way, and I was doing this deal with Shopify,
Speaker 2: the one me and Black Business Initiative. I was on
Speaker 2: a Roland Martin show and one of the callers said,
Speaker 2: why is shopify doing this? Why they putting up one
Speaker 2: hundred and thirty million dollars over ten years help black
Speaker 2: blacks become business owners and what was the right thing
Speaker 2: to do? Told me, Luky, the founder is a good
Speaker 2: guy friend of mine. But also pause pause, pause, they
Speaker 2: want you as a customer, right, they want to do
Speaker 2: well and do good And don't you want to be
Speaker 2: a customer or do you just want to hand out?
Speaker 2: Do you want to hand out or hand up? They're like, oh,
Speaker 2: we want to hand up exactly right. So this is
Speaker 2: a James Brown version of affirmative action or or get
Speaker 2: it myself. And in this case, Shopifi was also acting
Speaker 2: like a quasi bank because they financial sales as you
Speaker 2: increase your sales through the technology platform. So I think
Speaker 2: that that commun need reinvestment act, that people of color,
Speaker 2: communities of color, diverse places are going to be as
Speaker 2: we train these communities up and get them experts at
Speaker 2: capitalism and free enterprise and financial university and get them strengthen,
Speaker 2: get their hustle strengthened so they have a business plan
Speaker 2: behind their great idea and their and their work ethic,
Speaker 2: which we have because when the rules are published and
Speaker 2: the plane fools level, we kill it. We absolutely succeed.
Speaker 2: When the rules are published and the plane fills level.
Speaker 2: Look at the arts, look at the look at professional sports,
Speaker 2: look at frankly, government service, look at the faith area
Speaker 2: rules of published plainforce level. We absolutely succeed, and we're
Speaker 2: going to do it free enterprise and capitalism too. And
Speaker 2: I believe that emerging markets in America will the regulatory
Speaker 2: environment of Community Reinvestment Act CRA is going to morph
Speaker 2: into emerging markets in America. The D E and I
Speaker 2: is R and D research and development for future GDP
Speaker 2: gross domestic product. I hope this has been helpful. GDP
Speaker 2: is the incomfortation, by the way, I hope this has
Speaker 2: been helpful you much. This is John O'Brien, This is
Speaker 2: Money and Wealth. I didn't do the trending topics and
Speaker 2: I didn't do a fan question this time, but I
Speaker 2: hope you enjoyed this podcast as I break down banking,
Speaker 2: love and light. Go to Operation Hope. Subscribe to this podcast,
Speaker 2: get my book Financial Literacy for All. Sign up on
Speaker 2: to all my social media platforms. Tell your friends and
Speaker 2: let's change the world. It's time to make smart sexy again.
Speaker 2: Making dumb sexy for way too long, dumbed down and
Speaker 2: celebrated it. It's now the time to make smart sexy again.
Speaker 1: Money and Wealth with John O'Brien is a production of
Speaker 1: the Black Effect Podcast Network. For more podcasts from the
Speaker 1: Black Effect Podcast Network, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
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