Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News.
Speaker 2: You're listening to Bloomberg BusinessWeek with Carol Masser and Tim
Speaker 2: Steneveek on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 3: JP Morgan announced a new program today. It's a venture
Speaker 3: aimed at expanding economic opportunity and local communities across the country.
Speaker 3: It's called the American Dream Initiative. It'll span six focus areas.
Speaker 3: It includes small businesses where the effort will focus initially
Speaker 3: on well housing and financial health.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and we really wanted to talk more about the
Speaker 1: American Dream and how capitalism in the economy can be
Speaker 1: more inclusive.
Speaker 2: It is a.
Speaker 1: Subject of a new book. It is by John Hopebriant.
Speaker 1: He is the founder, chairman, and CEO of Operation Hope.
Speaker 1: It's the nation's largest on the ground financial literacy and
Speaker 1: economic empowerment nonprofit. He's also the founder of Bryant Group
Speaker 1: Ventures and Bryant Group Advisors. Previously led the Promise Homes Company.
Speaker 1: He's also advised the administrations of both George W. Bush
Speaker 1: and Barack Obama in financial literacy and author of many books,
Speaker 1: including his latest Capitalism for All Inclusive Economics in the Future.
Speaker 1: Proofing of America really gets to the heart of I think, really,
Speaker 1: what is a problem here in America when we think
Speaker 1: about where we are today. John is here with us
Speaker 1: in studio, so nice to have you here. I was
Speaker 1: telling these guys I'm a fan too of how many
Speaker 1: conversations we had around the pandemic and coming off of
Speaker 1: what happened to, you know, the murder of George Floyd.
Speaker 1: Like we've just talked so much about diversity inclusive. Tell
Speaker 1: us a little bit about this book, because you've talked
Speaker 1: about this subject a lot. Tell us about what your
Speaker 1: mission was with this book and what you were looking
Speaker 1: to get at.
Speaker 2: It's not the morals message, it's the math message. My
Speaker 2: goal here, I'm going on tour starting tomorrow, and I'm
Speaker 2: going to go to black and brown urban I'm gonna
Speaker 2: go poor white rule. I'm gonna go from Main Street
Speaker 2: to Wall Street. I'm gonna go from the penthouse to
Speaker 2: no House. And I want people, I'm literally looking for
Speaker 2: people to start like.
Speaker 3: This, to be skeptical in the beginning.
Speaker 2: And then my gold for myself is within fifteen minutes
Speaker 2: they're doing this and their heads are little cocked in there.
Speaker 2: This is interesting, So I don't I'd rather respect me
Speaker 2: and learn to like me. They like me and never
Speaker 2: respect me. The math is the message. And if I
Speaker 2: can combin in the math with a narrative and then
Speaker 2: layer in a little bit of emotionalism about all of
Speaker 2: us giving people an excuse to come back to the middle.
Speaker 2: I mean, most Americans and most people in around the
Speaker 2: world are somewhere in the middle. They're not in these extremes.
Speaker 2: And I found the only universal color is the economic green.
Speaker 2: It's not about black or white, or red or blue.
Speaker 2: It's not about some partisan view of the world. When
Speaker 2: you start understanding that, the really the lesson in my
Speaker 2: book makes us very clear capitalism for all, the lesson
Speaker 2: of KKR that just got announced, where they bought built
Speaker 2: a company, bought a company and sold it and then
Speaker 2: provided profit sharing to the employees. Watch the story, read
Speaker 2: the story, listen to the story. Look at the faces
Speaker 2: of the employees and they explode with I'm part of this.
Speaker 2: And you say, that's that's America. That goes back to
Speaker 2: the early nineteen hundreds. So the Henry Fords and the
Speaker 2: rocket failures, and that's America. Look at look at what
Speaker 2: Walmart did and said, I'm not going to lay off
Speaker 2: an employees. We're going to train them in AI and
Speaker 2: upskill them. They're the largest employer in the world. Look
Speaker 2: At what Apollo's doing with some of its subsidiaries around
Speaker 2: employee stakeholder stakeholder ownership. Look at what what Delta Airlines.
Speaker 2: One of the forwards in the book is at bashing
Speaker 2: and CEO of Delta is doing with their owne hundred
Speaker 2: thousand employees and financial coaching. I was on a Delta
Speaker 2: flight last night and on the way to the flight,
Speaker 2: the Delta person talking my ear off about her new
Speaker 2: credit card and now she's just got a limit increase
Speaker 2: and she's managing finances. I didn't as say a word
Speaker 2: to her for twenty minutes. Yeah, she's wearing me out
Speaker 2: about her credit score. And people coming on the plane,
Speaker 2: the flight attendants talking about one thousand dollars Emergency Saviors
Speaker 2: account they got because they got financial literacy and how
Speaker 2: that changed their life. Now they're all in on Delta.
Speaker 2: They feel like their owners and they've profit sharing. Delta
Speaker 2: does a couple of billion a year every year. That
Speaker 2: weds them to capitalism and free enterprise. The last thing
Speaker 2: I'll say is in the book, I knew there'd be
Speaker 2: skeptics and critics and people making assumptions. I put right
Speaker 2: up front a fifty year impact study that's already done
Speaker 2: on why inclusion works. Is a fifty year study about
Speaker 2: women in nineteen seventy two. And just to make this
Speaker 2: really clear, it was white women. Just to be really blunt,
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy two, a woman, a white woman, your mother,
Speaker 2: your mother, and by extension, my mother not white. All
Speaker 2: couldn't get a bank account, not eighteen seventy two. And
Speaker 2: there was a whole debate in this country about women's
Speaker 2: roles and should they have did it. And women couldn't
Speaker 2: get alone unless her husband co signed it. So women
Speaker 2: were outside the economy because of Black's pursuit of affirmative
Speaker 2: action justice, which is Kennedy Johnson, Johnson, Kennedy Johnson and
Speaker 2: then honorary President doctor King. They opened that door. And
Speaker 2: then Nixon comes in as a reaction to Johnson and
Speaker 2: Kennedy and King, and he codifies of her reaction for women.
Speaker 2: By the way, he doesn't get credit because of all
Speaker 2: the other stuff he did a lot of good stuff. Anyway,
Speaker 2: it gets codified. Make a long story short. Come now
Speaker 2: to present moment. Women are a third of the US
Speaker 2: economy eight to ten trillion a year. I got to
Speaker 2: remind myself it's a t nott of b because it's
Speaker 2: such a big number. Eight to ten trillion dollars or
Speaker 2: GDP are women's participation in the economy. If we had
Speaker 2: not gotten that experiment, right, we also ran a country
Speaker 2: in the world today. And there's so many more examples
Speaker 2: of the math in two hundred pages of this book,
Speaker 2: but I make it so that it is really there's
Speaker 2: no other door to go through.
Speaker 3: You bring up a lot of examples of companies that
Speaker 3: are private, sharing with employees, or are doing well by
Speaker 3: doing good, and I think a lot of the folks
Speaker 3: who work for those companies are already a step ahead
Speaker 3: of a lot of other Americans who don't have the
Speaker 3: opportunity to work for those companies, who are worried about
Speaker 3: the cost of education, who are drowning in student loan debt.
Speaker 3: How do they How do they get included the ones
Speaker 3: who don't yet work at these companies.
Speaker 2: So this is the reason for the book and why
Speaker 2: I think there's a fierce urgency of now. If we
Speaker 2: were just talking about poor people, and with the question
Speaker 2: you raise, I wouldn't be sitting here, not because you
Speaker 2: don't care, It just wouldn't be relevant to your audience.
Speaker 2: But half of was seventy percent of the US economy
Speaker 2: is consumer spending. Right, seventy percent of all Americans are
Speaker 2: living from patrick to paycheck. Right. If you're making one
Speaker 2: hundred thousand dollars a year, fifty percent of those a
Speaker 2: living from patrick to paycheck. Okay, let me get closer
Speaker 2: to your viewer. Now, if you're making a quarter million
Speaker 2: dollars a year, a third of those a living from
Speaker 2: patient to paycheck. And that's before cost of living has
Speaker 2: gone increased with the oil prices popping and all the
Speaker 2: rest of this stuff. So now you're a fierce urgency
Speaker 2: of Now it's gonna it's gonna affect politics, it's gonna
Speaker 2: affect lifestyle, it's gonna act choices you make, and now
Speaker 2: we get to decide what kind of country you want
Speaker 2: to live in? Is this okay? When the reality is
Speaker 2: is the third, the bottom third have always come from
Speaker 2: the bottom up to the middle class. The middle class
Speaker 2: is always pushed that that's what's driving the US economy.
Speaker 2: We have a K shaped economy now with the top
Speaker 2: end when and really the market gains giving people I
Speaker 2: think a false sense of safety. That group is now
Speaker 2: almost half of the consumer spending. Not good because not
Speaker 2: good because when they turn off the faucet.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So we are at a in the two hundred
Speaker 2: and fifteenth anniversary of America. To answer your question, we
Speaker 2: have to figure out do we reward work? Are we
Speaker 2: giving up on the worker and saying AI has the
Speaker 2: end of jobs? That's a false I think that's a
Speaker 2: complete false narrative if I can prove it. So, Uh, it's
Speaker 2: gonna be tough because everybody's being thrown into brutal capitalism
Speaker 2: and free enterprise with no or and no trainings, no
Speaker 2: training wheels. But this is the time to teach financial
Speaker 2: literacy and have the and have a fierce urgency of Now.
Speaker 2: This is a time for this legislation like the right
Speaker 2: to vote, where where we say we demand we the
Speaker 2: people demand K through twelve that this is taught UH
Speaker 2: and embedded in our school system. This is a time
Speaker 2: where we get tax codes for that incentivized uh internships
Speaker 2: and apprenticeships, so you have tax breaks for that. This
Speaker 2: is the time I think everything gets reimagined in the
Speaker 2: in the fierce urgency of now so that you support
Speaker 2: those are too much money at the end of their money.
Speaker 1: We've a million questions we're talking about answer no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: do not extra time. We love it love. We just
Speaker 1: want to remind everybody we just kind of blew our
Speaker 1: break because we want to talk more with you. John O'Brien, founder,
Speaker 1: chairman and CEO of Operation Hope. So many other things,
Speaker 1: but we're talking about as newest book, Capitalism for All,
Speaker 1: Inclusive Economics and the future proofing of America. John, I
Speaker 1: remember one of these conversations during COVID and we talked
Speaker 1: about an individual and it was with regards to George
Speaker 1: Floyd and about we talk about having seats at the table,
Speaker 1: not everybody has seats at the table. And I feel
Speaker 1: financial literacy. I've been doing this for a long time
Speaker 1: and we've been talking about this a long time too.
Speaker 1: How do we really finally get there so that not
Speaker 1: just income generation but wealth generation. Right, we finally changed
Speaker 1: the conversation, hallelujah, But how do we then really move
Speaker 1: the needle on that because buying a home we've talked
Speaker 1: about this right, is also so important to creating wealth
Speaker 1: and generational wealth. How do we finally get there?
Speaker 2: So, as you know, since I've seen you last, we've
Speaker 2: had a reversal of our approach in this country. It's
Speaker 2: no longer safe just to be really blunt. It's no
Speaker 2: longer safe to bluntly support what people call I don't know,
Speaker 2: minority activities or black. To me, it's just greens, just
Speaker 2: emerging market customers. But it's more complicated now, okay.
Speaker 3: Fine, dea is a bad word now, yeah, And I.
Speaker 2: Don't care about d Just to be really clear, we're
Speaker 2: black people were fourth on the list anyway, right, women,
Speaker 2: by the way, we're first, and veterans, et cetera. But
Speaker 2: I could care less about a program. What I care
Speaker 2: about is when you look at the CEOs who call
Speaker 2: me fortune. If I've heard of CEOs, they're like, sh John,
Speaker 2: We're still in. We can't say it publicly. We don't
Speaker 2: want to get our head knocked off politically or in
Speaker 2: the public. But we this is good business, right, It's
Speaker 2: not just about it Max feel good.
Speaker 1: Some of that off air when we talk to people.
Speaker 2: Too, Oh, absolutely, And it's the same. I'm sure we
Speaker 2: could trade names either the biggest names in the most
Speaker 2: conservatively run institutions because these are emerging markets, not just
Speaker 2: a feel good look. I've already said a third of
Speaker 2: all customers, third of our economy as women. Okay, forty
Speaker 2: percent of this economy is black and brown. Forty percent
Speaker 2: of the country is black and brown. It's going to
Speaker 2: be a majority of minorities. Here's a shock here for you.
Speaker 2: Ten thousand baby boomers are walking out of the economy
Speaker 2: every day. Let that sink in for your audience. Ten
Speaker 2: not a year, not a month. Ten thousand a day
Speaker 2: are retiring. Bye, going to play golf. Everybody's going to
Speaker 2: play golf at the same time. Who's going to replace them?
Speaker 2: And even if you don't care about them, I mean
Speaker 2: the them. My rich friends need my poor friends to
Speaker 2: do better, if only to stay rich. Because it's a
Speaker 2: circular firing squad. You know, the way you're shooting, you're
Speaker 2: shooting your replacement. We have got to understand unless we
Speaker 2: want to speak Mandarin in twenty years Chinese and have
Speaker 2: them biggest, the biggest economy in the world. We are
Speaker 2: all we got. Here's another shocker for you. It's all
Speaker 2: this is in the book, and I have asked really
Speaker 2: smart people, these questions like what do you think the
Speaker 2: banking the traditional banking sector is what are you percentage
Speaker 2: do you think are non non immigrant foreign born people?
Speaker 2: What percentage of of the banking new account activity? Oh,
Speaker 2: five percent, fifty four percent, sixty eight percent. And people
Speaker 2: just shocked, what do you mean? Because ninety five percent
Speaker 2: of America is banked, ninety percent of traditional America has
Speaker 2: already has an account. So the new exectivity is coming
Speaker 2: to all the big banks. And I've seen the data
Speaker 2: from foreign born new to country. That's where the boosted. Well,
Speaker 2: that's what happened in the early twentieth century when the
Speaker 2: Irish and the Polish and the Jewish and whatever came
Speaker 2: to America. This is not a new story. It's just
Speaker 2: these folks look a little different, right. So I love
Speaker 2: the math to quote Melody Hobsing because it doesn't have
Speaker 2: an opinion. I think we had to push back, and
Speaker 2: now you're going to have to forget. Now the America
Speaker 2: is going to push forward, and the business plans, the
Speaker 2: balance sheets are going to push forward. Why you can't
Speaker 2: grow an economy by shrinking it, I'm gonna say that again.
Speaker 2: You can grow Can I grow GDP by making the
Speaker 2: economy smaller, and we have made this is not a
Speaker 2: political statement, it's just the facts. We have made the
Speaker 2: economy smaller because there's less people participating in it. The
Speaker 2: unemployment rate for after Americans has doubled the last year.
Speaker 2: Three hundred black women lost their jobs in the first
Speaker 2: two quarters of twenty twenty five. These are not These
Speaker 2: are not good signals for the economy. And these aren't
Speaker 2: lazy people are These are folks who want to work.
Speaker 2: So I think the City group reporting this in this
Speaker 2: book discrimination against black alone between the year two thousand
Speaker 2: and the year twenty twenty, twenty twenty call through UITs
Speaker 2: economy sixteen trillion dollars trillion, and if you just knock
Speaker 2: it off, it returns tree dollars a month. You add
Speaker 2: the twin dollars a month to the GDP. These are meaningful,
Speaker 2: big numbers.
Speaker 3: You were speaking our language when you're talking about these numbers.
Speaker 3: You're talking about GDP. You've advised a couple of presidents
Speaker 3: on financial literacy. Would you run for president?
Speaker 2: I've been asked a couple of times, never on air.
Speaker 3: Well ask me because when you said you were going
Speaker 3: on tour for this book, it sounded like the way
Speaker 3: you were approaching. It was almost like a politician approaches.
Speaker 3: And I don't mean that in a pejorative sense. A
Speaker 3: lot of people think, you know, that's a pejorative thing
Speaker 3: to say, but it sounds like the way somebody who's
Speaker 3: running for something approaches reaching everybody to get their vote
Speaker 3: or to communicate to them.
Speaker 2: So my model, I'm glad you actually said this, because
Speaker 2: this out of the way. My model is doctor King,
Speaker 2: not Johnny JFK, you know, or a president of Barack
Speaker 2: Obama or President Clint who I actually love. I think
Speaker 2: that guy is amazing what he did in reducing the
Speaker 2: deficit and increasing the economy for all people at the bottom.
Speaker 2: And but I know I have no interest in running
Speaker 2: for political office, and this is not what that is about.
Speaker 2: I am, though, moving a get it done party, not
Speaker 2: a party, but I am moving. I am moving like
Speaker 2: this is. I just told my team this morning, think
Speaker 2: of this as if it's a presidential national effort. I'm
Speaker 2: going on tour. I want to talk to everybody because
Speaker 2: if we need, we need to have a third way.
Speaker 2: We got to break this cycle of the far right
Speaker 2: and the far left going in their camps and just
Speaker 2: talking to their echo chambers when the biggest group in
Speaker 2: America are independents and they got to have a voice
Speaker 2: at all. And I just want, I want there to
Speaker 2: be a moment where the middle forces the edges back
Speaker 2: to the middle from both parties, because both parties, in
Speaker 2: my opinion, are out of sync with America. And if
Speaker 2: I can do that by not running, by not being political,
Speaker 2: by not being partisan. In fact, I said this morning,
Speaker 2: I'd rather I hope that the Mayor of New York
Speaker 2: and the mayor and the President of the United States
Speaker 2: in the administration steal every idea in this book. Don't
Speaker 2: you give me credit for it? Rip it off and
Speaker 2: use it because if they win, we win. If they lose,
Speaker 2: we lose. So I have no agenda personally other than
Speaker 2: continuing doctor King's unfinished work, the Poor People's Campaign when
Speaker 2: he's assassinated and Andrew Young my mentored Frederick Douglas's work
Speaker 2: one hundred years before that. I think this is the
Speaker 2: third reconstruction, is what I'm telling you. First reconstruction was
Speaker 2: after slavery, after Civil Wars.
Speaker 1: Does all the change happen in the private sector? And
Speaker 1: I'm just curious, you're really smart, by the way. To
Speaker 1: answer me that question, have you talked to mayor Mom, Donnie?
Speaker 1: Have you talked I have been asked a White House.
Speaker 2: I haven't asked if I would not debate, will not
Speaker 2: have a conversation with the mayor? And I said, yes,
Speaker 2: be happy to a public conversation. I have met last
Speaker 2: year with Secretary Bessont, who I've considered a friend. I
Speaker 2: like him. I don't think the environment was right for
Speaker 2: him to talk to me, and for this to have
Speaker 2: a bipartisan I called it a Lincoln Douglas conversation, Abraham
Speaker 2: Lincoln and Frederick Douglass to bring the country together through
Speaker 2: financial literacy. I don't think the environment was right a
Speaker 2: year ago. It's not still quite right. But I think
Speaker 2: it's warming up that the country is going to force,
Speaker 2: not me, but it's going to force this conversation because
Speaker 2: affordability is not affordable, because folks got too much month
Speaker 2: at the end of their money, because we've broken the
Speaker 2: promise that if I work hard, play by the rules,
Speaker 2: do the right thing, keep my nose clean, pay my taxes,
Speaker 2: I'll get a reasonable shot a success or failure on
Speaker 2: my own merit, and I'll say something about the administration.
Speaker 2: I don't care how smart you are, I don't care
Speaker 2: how well meaning you are. And I think most people
Speaker 2: are well meaning. But if you're a billionaire, for whom
Speaker 2: we all should aspire to be, okay, you can't do
Speaker 2: anything broke. If you're a billionaire or a cent a
Speaker 2: millionaire and you've got private planes and private security before
Speaker 2: you've got secret service, if you haven't been to a
Speaker 2: grocery store in twenty years, I mean, I don't care
Speaker 2: how nice you are. How can you possibly understand the
Speaker 2: pains of somebody who's got a red notice or cut
Speaker 2: off notice. And I'm not being pejorative or in any
Speaker 2: way political, It's just common sense.
Speaker 1: It's similar. We had a conversation with Peter Atwater, who
Speaker 1: is an economist or teaches economics at William and Mary.
Speaker 1: But this whole idea that people in terms of the
Speaker 1: k you know, the upper rung, need to spend some
Speaker 1: time with the lower rung to really understand.
Speaker 2: You know, a delta fighting coach for a week. Yeah, right,
Speaker 2: go go through the airport, through the terminal, stand in line.
Speaker 3: Those are still wealthier people, Those are the ones that
Speaker 3: can afford to fly.
Speaker 2: Go to a grocery store. Yes, by the way, still
Speaker 2: those are still middle class people. If you're a if
Speaker 2: you're at a decent grocery store, you're still middle class.
Speaker 2: I think we everybody just needs a dose of reality.
Speaker 2: I go to what I call the hood. I go
Speaker 2: to the community once a month. Just drive through it
Speaker 2: if I can. If I'm on the highway and I
Speaker 2: can get there and have some time. I get off
Speaker 2: the highway, I go through a working class neighborhood, and
Speaker 2: I'm nosy. I'm just looking around, and it's amazing what
Speaker 2: you see. Check Casher payday, long lender, rent own store,
Speaker 2: title lender as in car title, liquor store, forget your problems,
Speaker 2: pawnshop one block church down the street, trying to make
Speaker 2: you feel feel a little bit better once a week.
Speaker 2: That's your neighborhood therapist. Right in that neighborhood of five
Speaker 2: hundred to six twenty, you lived at sixty one years
Speaker 2: of age. We by the way, I've mapped every zip
Speaker 2: code in America by Credit Score with the data from Experience,
Speaker 2: thank you very much. In from the US the US Census,
Speaker 2: and we found you lived a sixty one years of
Speaker 2: age for every fifty point increase in your credit score.
Speaker 2: You live five more years, so fifteen minutes away from
Speaker 2: every five hundred credit score neighborhood when live sixty one
Speaker 2: years of age. You lived at eighty one years of age,
Speaker 2: and your credit score is seven hundred plus, and the
Speaker 2: economy is taken off.
Speaker 1: John, just forty seconds, if you could change one thing
Speaker 1: beyond reading your book and sharing the book and the message,
Speaker 1: what would you change?
Speaker 2: Just quickly, anger O the Bible says the house divided
Speaker 2: that cannot stand. It's also just good common sense. We
Speaker 2: have to all row the boat in the same direction.
Speaker 2: We have got to get out of our own way,
Speaker 2: our problems us. Everybody wants to be an American, but Americans,
Speaker 2: we've got to knock it off. We have to knock
Speaker 2: it off. Russia wants our way of life. North Korea
Speaker 2: wants our way of life, China wants our way of life.
Speaker 2: They can't win in a fair fight. They got it.
Speaker 2: They need us to destroy us and that we are
Speaker 2: helping them with. And so I'm hoping to shake up
Speaker 2: the debate and the discussion. So it it's so an outsider,
Speaker 2: maybe forceing people to come to the inside of the
Speaker 2: hearts and minds of the average person. Washing this in
Speaker 2: their head is nodding, saying my God, finally common sense.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. We know you're starting a tour
Speaker 1: with the book. When you circle around again, come back.
Speaker 2: I'll be honest anytime. We haven't talked about AI and
Speaker 2: I know, but but you've given a lot of time
Speaker 2: to unpack. And and one question I was never asked
Speaker 2: on air. I appreciate that.
Speaker 1: Running for president.
Speaker 2: Oh God, I don't any repeat it. I have no angel.
Speaker 1: We try to do here, John O'Briant, so great to
Speaker 1: have you here. The new book is Capitalism for All,
Speaker 1: Inclusive Economics in the Future, Proofing of America. John, thank
Speaker 1: you