CLASSIC: Foreign Investment and the Housing Crisis

Ben, Matt and Noel present a Classic episode: In cities across Canada, the US and other parts of the world, the cost of living continues to rise -- and housing becomes increasingly unaffordable. Rental rates outpace inflation. Owning a home becomes virtually impossible for millions. Economists have debated the usual causes of this crisis for years... but it appears there's a variable many people haven't considered, something a little stranger than domestic supply and demand. Investors from across the planet are pouring money into real estate, not for a home, but as a safe haven for storing cash.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Fellow conspiracy realist. We're returning to you with a classic episode,
and I was talking about this off air. I'm getting
increasingly weirded out by how prescient this stuff seems to
be and how things keep accelerating. Back in Oh gosh,
what was it twenty twenty, we looked at foreign investment

(00:23):
in the housing crisis.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
Yeah, Ben, I think you probably see some of the
same Instagram accounts that I do. But I follow an
account showing houses for sale in Japan and how incredibly
affordable they are, And boy, oh boy, I'm trying to
be that kind of foreign investment in real estate in
the other direction. But we're not talking about individuals coming
in and buying homes for their own personal use. We're

(00:47):
talking about real estate as a scaled business model with
the kind of money that absolutely trumps individuals who just
want to own a home for their family, you know,
and have some sort of thing to pass down to
their kids.

Speaker 1 (01:01):
It's really harder and hard to do.

Speaker 2 (01:03):
That when you got all this foreign money coming in
and buying up all these available properties.

Speaker 3 (01:08):
And baby, we're talking about the kind of profits that
have quarterly earnings where you get shares and then you
get a little bit of money on top of all
those shares you bought in those huge corporations.

Speaker 1 (01:20):
We've all rented from.

Speaker 2 (01:22):
You know, I think over the years, organizations that probably
are doing some things like this.

Speaker 1 (01:28):
I certainly have. We also know that even back in
twenty twenty, there was this immense generational divide, not just
in the United States, but also in places like Canada,
because homes were becoming increasingly unaffordable due to this vast
web of obscure financial corporate conspiracies and money laundering. You know,

(01:50):
one for all the so called boomers in the crowd,
houses were way cheaper. You know, I've heard the stories
where someone's like, why don't you just buy a house? Ben,
Back in my day, I had a part time job
as a short order cook, and I made a long
term investment in a house. It cost me three onions,
which was above market rate at the time.

Speaker 2 (02:11):
And Ben back to the whole buying a house in
Japan thing, like, I'm seeing some of these properties showing
up for like forty.

Speaker 1 (02:16):
Thousand US dollars.

Speaker 2 (02:18):
I would, however, argue that it ain't just as simple
as me swooping in and buying up that property. There's
gonna be some legal red tape that goes along with
being a foreigner coming in and buying a house in
Japan that maybe isn't quite as prohibitive on this side
in terms of like what we allow foreign investors.

Speaker 1 (02:37):
To do, especially now. Yes, but what if you're a corporation.

Speaker 2 (02:42):
Now you're a person and you deserve to be treated
as such.

Speaker 1 (02:47):
Let's roll the tape from UFOs to psychic powers and
government conspiracies. History is riddled with unexplained events. You can
turn back now or learn this stuff they don't want
you to know. A production of iHeartRadio. Hello, welcome back

(03:14):
to the show. My name is Matt Our, compatriot Noel
Is on Adventures they call me Ben. We are joined
today with our super producer Seth Nicholas, the Shadow Johnson.
Most importantly, you are you. You are here, and that
makes this stuff they don't want you to know. We

(03:35):
live in interesting times, ye, but some things are the
same no matter where you go. You know, if you
live in the US, right like, and if you live
in many other places, you're probably taught that owning a
home is one of those key pieces of the dream.

Speaker 3 (03:56):
Right, Oh yeah, that that is sold to us, at
least in the US, because that's the only experience I
have very early on in childhood.

Speaker 1 (04:05):
What is it?

Speaker 3 (04:07):
School, college, maybe marriage, depending on where you live, and
then a house and kids, and then what death? No job,
job comes in there somewhere.

Speaker 1 (04:20):
Yep, yep, there's a It's weird because there's a tremendous
amount of social pressure that tells us buying a home is,
at least in this country, a step along the path
of becoming a socially acceptable adult. That's what I would
call it. And you're right, Matt, it's up there with
other milestones, having children, getting married, graduating, and so on.

(04:43):
This is, of course not true. You can and should
live your life as you see fit. The thing is,
we're also susceptible to peer pressure. I do want to
point out, for anybody who may feel sore about living
in the and not owning a home, it is quite
common in many other parts of the world for people

(05:06):
to live in multi generational family homes. Like it's it's
kind of weird to have enormous pressure on an individual
to buy a home, especially before they can afford one.
It's it's even it's even stranger, Matt because a casual
glance at economic trends post World War Two show that

(05:29):
the American dream is increasingly mythical for many, many people.
We've got decades of skyrocketing costs, you know, stagnant wages,
accelerating inequality, a decline in livable circumstances. They've all contributed
to a slow burned crisis, a kind of macroeconomic dark

(05:50):
night of the soul. And you know, you and I
or are no different really from anybody else. We all
feel this pressure, right, you said from a young age
you were taught this as well. Oh, yeah, for sure.

Speaker 3 (06:05):
I mean I think it's put on an individual, especially
if their guardians or their parents own a home, or
you know, are paying off a mortgage, which we'll get
into and we've talked about before on this show.

Speaker 1 (06:19):
There's this pressure of.

Speaker 3 (06:22):
I should do what they do to be because I
want to be like them in some way, hopefully if
it's going well with your folks or your guardians or
whoever you're with. But then also there's that societal pressure
of I mean, think about the stories that are told
to us, the movies that we watch, the books that
we read. It is so so common to have an

(06:46):
individual start a family with a home being the cornerstone
of that thing.

Speaker 1 (06:51):
That unit. Yeah, because it's a legacy, right is the
place where you can play at a tree that you
will not be alive to see. You know, it's it's
it's it's fundamental, it's it's human. Uh. It's also and
plus equity and plus equity. Yes, but what's that line
from Oh Brother, where art thou ye ain't no kind

(07:12):
of man if you don't own land? Uh? And that
that reasoning, Yeah, that reasoning is you know, it's valid
in many ways. But there's another factor at play here,
and that's what our episode's about today. It's one that's
often unreported. They're not as widely reported as it should
be amid all the think pieces and the allegations and

(07:34):
the blame games and speculation and scapegoating. And our question
is this, why do houses cost so much? Who's buying them? Well?
Here are the facts, and Matt, I'm gonna defer to
you on this because you know, for a long time,
I've just been too sketchy to commit to buying a home.
I didn't know where I was going to be in

(07:57):
six months or a year, so I i you've got
some kind of freedom of movement. I've got. Uh. All
I'm saying is that I understand intellectually the process, but
not experientially.

Speaker 3 (08:16):
M Now, well I can. I can certainly speak to that.
I can speak to this. Any homeowner can speak to this.
The process of buying a home, especially for the first time. Oh,
it's it's a mixed bag of emotions. Let's say you're

(08:36):
and it's not. It's not easy. It's not a casual
thing you can do.

Speaker 1 (08:41):
It is a.

Speaker 3 (08:44):
It's a process that is at times exciting. It's thrilling,
Oh my gosh, a home. We're gonna We're really gonna
do this be I mean that's mostly because of how
expensive it is and you realize that you're putting all
of your money into something. And other times it's really tedious.
You go through, like good Lord, the amount of documents
you have to sign to purchase a home. It's mind boggling.

(09:05):
And I don't care. I don't care if you're the
kind of person that reads every terms of service document.
When you go through the process of buying a home
and signing all those documents, you skim and and you
have to do it unless you are blessed and wealthy
enough to have an attorney do so for you. But
in the end, it's just an exhausting process and it

(09:28):
is cavernous in a way, in a way I think
as a barrier to make it not I think it's
purposefully made.

Speaker 1 (09:38):
Not an easy process at least for the lay person
or the regular old person like you or I to
make a purchase.

Speaker 3 (09:47):
But in the end, if you have the money for it,
you whoever you are, however you got that money, can
buy a home inside the United States at least that's right.

Speaker 1 (09:58):
And this may be so thing that Seth the Shadow
may speak to as well as Seth off air. Off air,
we were like, hey, Seth, do you have do you
have recording equipment? If the spirit moves you jump in
so please feel free to share your war stories here
if you wish, any excuse really to see that magnificent

(10:22):
pandemic beard you've grown pop up on the zoom chat.
Yes there is.

Speaker 3 (10:29):
Oh yeah, do you give us permission to use your
likeness on the video?

Speaker 1 (10:36):
Yes? Yes, nice, Okay, we'll send the contract over as well, Seth.
But the point holds, and it's a very important point
in the US anybody with enough cheddar can buy a house.
There are various laws. There are many laws actually that
are meant to prevent unscrupulous hoas or unscrupulous real estate

(10:58):
magnates or politicians from stopping someone from buying a house.
Right if everything goes well, it rarely does. If everything
goes well, the process looks something like this, and please
you guys jump in and let me know your experiences.
And if you're listening along and you're in the middle

(11:19):
of a home buying process now while fighting COVID nineteen,
the hats off, you know what I mean. Power through.
First you have to figure out what you can afford.
And then usually, unless you're doing an all cash transaction,
you get pre approved for a sort of financial face
tattoo called a mortgage. This is going to depend on

(11:42):
the decision of a bank. The bank's going to ask
you a bunch of questions and they're all questions that
are well as long as they're scrupulous. They're all questions.
They're due diligence. The bank wants to know how much
you can pay each month, and the main things they're
looking at or stuff like how much you are in
an income versus how much you wowe in debt and

(12:04):
what kind of debt.

Speaker 3 (12:06):
And how much liquid cash you have to put down
on a home before the mortgage even comes into it.
That becomes a big thing.

Speaker 1 (12:15):
Yeah, ten percent down versus twenty percent down makes a big,
big difference in your life and maybe the lives of
your children and your loved ones. Second, and it's called
mortgage insurance. Second, and this is something that I think
is familiar to you guys. This is the part where
I see a lot of hilarity coming in. You have

(12:37):
to determine your needs, either by yourself or with your
family unit. And that's when you learn very quickly that
some people have different ideas of what a need is
versus what a want is. One example from real life,
a friend of mine, he was very very sold on

(12:57):
getting this cool house that no kidding, had a secret
passage in the living room slash library, like like a
fake shelf that would turn on one side and open
up and it held real books and then inside you know,
it's just like a smaller I'll be honest, not a
super impressive room, but it's a secret passage that's so cool.

(13:20):
Completely worth it, completely worth it, right, I know, I
was very pro secret passage too. The problem is, as
his spouse gently pointed out, that this house was in
the middle of nowhere. It was about three hours away
from this guy's job, and he had somehow convinced himself,

(13:42):
at least for a time, that he would be okay
with a six hour commute. So you have to be
brutally honest about what you and your family members or
the people you want to live with you actually need
versus what they actually want. Do we need an indoor pool, Yes, yes.

Speaker 3 (14:06):
But we cannot have one because we can't get one.

Speaker 1 (14:12):
Yeah. I wonder Seth, like.

Speaker 3 (14:16):
I wonder about this next part with you, because the
home searching process when I was doing it back in
twenty twelve twenty thirteen, it took months and months and
months to find something that met those criteria what we
were looking for and what we could afford kind of
in the same thing, the same home, and a place

(14:38):
where we could actually get to work from and not
you know, be angry at ourselves every two hours that
we have to spend in the car. What was your
detective process like in identifying a home.

Speaker 4 (14:50):
I am very very lucky that my wife at the
time was a librarian and also has a master's degree
in the library sciences. Because of that, she's an extremely
organized person and it's wonderful. It helps my life in
you know ways, I'm sure I don't even realize. And
she had the most amazing chart that you know, blocked

(15:12):
out every single benefit that we were looking for, every
single benefit that could exist, whether that be you know,
something as simple as an air conditioner, all the way
up to you know, walkability in the neighborhood. You know,
just like every single possible thing. You know, what restaurants
are nearby, what school districts are you in, all everything
that could possibly be imagined. So it just became a
logic puzzle at a certain point, and that was the best,

(15:36):
you know. But however, it took us years because my
wife and I moved here to Atlanta, and then we
knew we couldn't find a house remotely because we were
moving from Los Angeles, and so we were just like, okay,
what are we going to do? And very quickly we realized, well,
we're just going to move into the first apartment we
can find, and then we will spend what we know

(15:56):
will be a year looking for an actual house to buy.
And that's what ended up happening, was we knew that
we had a year to find a house because that's
where we signed up for an apartment and it worked out.
But you're right, it's it's a ridiculous process that takes
so much time, so much energy, and it is treated
like this big momentous occasion, much like a having a

(16:20):
child or graduating college. It's like this like life, you know,
stepping stone, a big hallmark of life. And yet it's
it's it's just a house. Should it be this difficult?

Speaker 3 (16:32):
You know?

Speaker 1 (16:33):
Right? Why is it so byzantine? You know? Why is
it purposefully like navigating a labyrinth or a mine field
or a labyrinth with minds hid you in it? I
would say, yes, Mina Tours, No, we're keeping it, Minuaurs. Yeah,

(16:55):
I would argue, because I am very much a grinch,
would argue that at least part of the reason it's
so complicated is because it benefits, It benefits various industries
for it to be complicated. Also, you know, it shouldn't
be easy because it is a big deal. That's why

(17:16):
we call the pros. Right, the vast majority of people
when when they're buying a house even the very the
very very organized, like you seth and your spouse. You
guys probably called a broker, right, or an agent of some.

Speaker 4 (17:33):
Sort, yes, correct, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (17:35):
And they're the ones who will be ideally again, this
is all ideal. They'll be bloodhounds. You set them on
the case, this is what we need, secret passage, air conditioner,
indoor pool walkability nineteen seventies, asque, conversation pit, all of
these things, and then the agent will say, okay, let's

(17:57):
talk turkey. What's the price, and they'll try to work something. Now,
let's say you find that dream home right picture the
you know, the trumpets and the angel farts. You first
see the house, you make an offer. That offer comes
with all sorts of caveats, which you guys can speak
too better than I could, things like a home inspection.
What comes with the house? You know what I mean?

(18:19):
Do we get to keep the oven because we love
the oven? Things like that, and well.

Speaker 3 (18:23):
Yeah, and what other offers are already on the table,
Because there's always one, no matter what, Always there's another
counter offer on the table immediately, and you have to
get yours in right now. I'd swear there's a conspiracy
with realtors.

Speaker 1 (18:39):
I swear it's the hard cell right act. Now you know, uh,
not every place has this shag carpet, my friends, you know.
So so let's let's say to your point, mat that
that's an enormously crucial part of this process. And it's

(18:59):
you're gonna see in a second, folks. But let's say
the fortune favors you, the wind is at your back,
as they used to say back in the day, and
everything works out home inspections a breeze, boom boom boom.
You close on the house and you look around at
your backyard and you're thinking, holy shit, I have a backyard. Now,

(19:23):
look at all this stuff I'm gonna do with it.
And you know, you probably don't end up doing most
of that stuff because you know people, but it's it's
beautiful and you and your bank live happily ever after. Obviously,
that is a best case scenario. That is something that
happens in an ideal world. And as anyone who has

(19:43):
been paying attention can assure you, we do not live
in an ideal world.

Speaker 3 (19:48):
That is very true, especially when it comes to just
what we have to do, each of us individually, what
we have to make on a yearly or it's really
monthly basis, in order to have a mortgage, to pay
a mortgage, to be in a home. Hey maybe you
don't even have a home, you still got to pay

(20:09):
rent of some kind. You got to make that much money.
And the overall cost of living, which includes the price
of a home, like that final price tag that you
end up getting a mortgage for, that is just rising
all over the place across the world, really faster in
some places than in others. But here in the US

(20:31):
there's a big thing that's fighting well, there are several
things that are fighting us as individuals when it comes
to this process. But ultimately, the buying power of a
single US dollar is not what it used to be
twenty years ago, let's say. And it really just means
that that one dollar that you make isn't going to

(20:52):
go quite.

Speaker 1 (20:52):
As far as it once did. And that's a huge problem.

Speaker 3 (20:57):
And if you take it to the governments to tasts,
they really do show that while let's let's call it
household income, the stuff that you and everybody else in
your house makes, whoever those people are, all of that combined,
is steadily increasing. Like that's nice, that's good. However, that increase,

(21:20):
that increase of of all you and your folks is
going like this, but the inflation is like this if
you're watching the video component of this. If not, let's
just say that inflation is outpacing the increase in household income.

Speaker 1 (21:36):
Matt did a really cool graph with his hands. That's
what that's part of what you're missing. We can't describe it.
YouTube dot com forward slash conspiracy stuff for I was
gonna try not to do that. No, no, we got
we gotta keep doing it. This is like when you
hear a stand up album and the comic does a
visual bit, so get the full experience and again, check

(21:59):
out that's awesome Beard. You're right, You're absolutely right. And
this is like, this is the moment so common in
Twitter and Internet tropes today, where like previous generations shout
at the youngsters in their yard saying, you know, I
never went to college. My first job paid twelve dollars

(22:22):
a year and two pigs, and with that I was
able to start a family of sixteen and move into
four houses, one of which had a witch barn. And
then someone and they say, you know, rightly, it makes
sense from that perspective, to say, you make you know,
thirty thousand dollars a year, I would be I would
be living like royalty with that. And then someone has

(22:45):
to come in and say, well, thirty thousand dollars a
year in twenty twenty is maybe not as much as
twelve dollars a year and three pigs back when you
were in the game, my friend. Like, that's a cartoonish
look at it, but the point is true. I mean specifically,
like it irritates me because people don't know how fast

(23:08):
this happens. It's not like just a slow thing from
nineteen thirties on. No, no, no, no, no. As of
January this year, what a long time ago. Something that
would have cost twenty bucks in nineteen ninety nine now
costs nearly thirty one dollars. And you're not you know,

(23:29):
if you're the average person, your wage is also properly
kind of stagnant. And how and with that lower purchasing
power of the dollar, we see that other big purchases
are likewise expensive. College tuition, I mean, student loan debt
is crippling this country. That is not an I mean,

(23:49):
it is a conspiracy, I would argue, but it's definitely
not a conspiracy theory that that dog is going to
come back to bite and already has. And this means
that cars are more expensive in a very autocentric country.
They are all the price of those things also outpaces
the rate of inflation.

Speaker 3 (24:09):
And just quickly to talk to that, I want to
give a concrete example, just this concept that the prices
of homes is rising far more than inflation and leagues
more than the increase overall in our wages, like the
individual wages that people are paid.

Speaker 1 (24:30):
When we bought our home in twenty thirteen.

Speaker 3 (24:33):
It costs X. Okay, let's just say that it cost
X amount of dollars. We've only been here in this
home that we purchased what seven years now, and the
cost of the houses are in my neighborhood. They were
all they all cost roughly the same. I mean it
was very very close a close range. They all now

(24:55):
cost way more than my wife and I could ever afford.
And it is not It is not because this is
an amazing up and coming place. It's because the prices
of homes overall in the United States has been skyrocketing.
And part of the part of the reason behind this

(25:15):
episode is why the heck is that doing that? Why
is that outpacing everything else?

Speaker 1 (25:21):
Yeah? Yeah, exactly. And like we said, of course, this
is an effect that we see across many financial aspects
of people's lives. It's just profoundly exacerbated when it comes
to buying a home. Another concrete example for the automobile
would be that the price of the most affordable new

(25:44):
car in the US has risen about three hundred and
eighty percent since nineteen ninety, which you know, granted was
thirty years ago, but still three hundred and eighty percent.
It gives you, that's more than one hundred percent a decade.
It gives you, it gives you calls. Yeah, and this

(26:05):
These are two examples of these these troubling trends. So,
the Bureau of Census reports that the average price of
a new home in January of two thousand was one
hundred and ninety four thousand, eight hundred dollars. So, according
to what we know about inflation, if we go to

(26:26):
the handy dandy inflation calculator, that price in January of
twenty twenty should be something like two hundred and ninety
seven thousand, seven hundred and five dollars. But the actual
price in January of twenty twenty was more like four
hundred and two thousand, four hundred dollars. That is more

(26:46):
than thirty five percent higher than it should be if
we're just counting inflation, which means that someone is making
tons of cash. Here, someone is making tons of Cheddar
is compounded again by the very important fact that you
mentioned earlier, Matt, which is that people who are trying
to buy homes are working just as hard as their ancestors.

(27:07):
Did you know what I mean? They're just doing more
for less and for many people, this means that home
ownership becomes an increasingly distant goal. You know what I mean,
The finish line keeps moving. So what gives I mean
supply and demand obviously, right, you can't sell houses that

(27:27):
don't exist, so you have to build more, or people
have to sell the ones they have. But there's something
else afoot here. There is perhaps an infiltration of which
many people are unaware. Remember how we said that anyone
can buy a house in the US. That's true. It's

(27:50):
more true than you think. Anyone means anyone anywhere in
the world.

Speaker 3 (27:56):
Yeah, and recently there are a lot of people who
have been taking this seriously, these issues that we've been
discussing here, experts looking at this stuff very concerned that
maybe the individuals buying up a lot of the property,
including you know, condominiums, houses, even just renting, the renting

(28:20):
of apartments. People who are buying up this property and
driving up the prices aren't actually human beings that live
in homes because they need a place to live and
grow and maybe start a family.

Speaker 1 (28:33):
Who are these entities?

Speaker 3 (28:36):
Are they individuals? Are they companies? And where are they located?
If they are not here in the United States?

Speaker 1 (28:43):
And when you know what you're thinking, folks, it's the
same thing we thought too, What the fuck?

Speaker 3 (28:47):
And we're going to learn about that right after a
quick word from our sponsor.

Speaker 1 (28:58):
Here's where it gets easy. There are multiple factors leading
to any housing crisis, but for an investment does play
a huge, often undiscussed role. Let's let's picture it this way.
Let's say let's say you Matt Frederick are I don't know,

(29:21):
let's do you want? Let's okay? All right, so we'll
give you We'll give you an alias Seth so you
can really get into character. The shadow, yes, that is,
the shadow knows Okay, we're gonna call you seth Ory
the Shadow for this one. So all right, so let's say, uh,

(29:46):
let's say seth Ory is a well to do individual
in a not so well to do part of the world. Seth,
Seth the Shadow has made Scrooge mcnuck money. But every day,
every day, Seth, you're waking up haunted by by the
fear that the government may do something either incompetent or corrupt,

(30:09):
rendering the fruits of your labor and your financial hoard worthless.
You start panicking, right.

Speaker 4 (30:17):
Yeah, absolutely, I've worked hard for my giant money vault,
and I need to ensure that my hard work was
not in vain. I need to Uh, maybe I'm more
competent than my government. Maybe that's the way it is.

Speaker 3 (30:31):
And in this, dude, you're right on the money there,
you feel that way, and it's true.

Speaker 1 (30:35):
You really do.

Speaker 3 (30:36):
Just have a giant tower of coins and various other treasures.

Speaker 4 (30:40):
So he got of it just like Scrooge mc duck.
I worked hard for it. I didn't. I wasn't born rich,
Scrooge m no way, Yes, that's correct. Has literally been
reading a bunch of Scrooge McDuck comics recently. He was
not born rich. He worked hard. He earned that money.
I'll get you guys more details later. I'm not done
with the book yet.

Speaker 1 (30:58):
But thus right, thus right, Lotty with.

Speaker 4 (31:05):
A silver spoon in his in his bill, he he
had earned it.

Speaker 1 (31:09):
Okay. So Seth through the Shadow is also a duck
in this scenario, a humanoid uh tycoon duck, and has
these real concerns. Seth, you're saying, quack, quack, I need
a place to put all this cash. I need some
something uh some kind of some other kind of money vault,

(31:33):
and it needs to be tucked away from the potential
disasters ahead in my country. Now. Not to be boys, yes, yes,
no not to uh not to point uh duck duck
tails at anybody, but you may even have been have
made some of your fortune uh by contributing to the

(31:56):
instability of this country, and you don't want to be
there for the fallout. That's not that's not a good
look for a smart duck like you.

Speaker 4 (32:04):
If we're being practical, If I'm this wealthy, I'm pretty
sure I did some bad things. Not to not to
smirch anyone, but if you get Scrooge McDuck rich. She
got some Scrooge McDuck problems. That guy, I'd say at
least once a week he had some sort of adventure
of someone causing problems in his life that perhaps he
contributed to.

Speaker 1 (32:24):
It's very true. It's a very good point. So what
happens next, Matt, what happens to set the shadow?

Speaker 3 (32:32):
Well, here, here's the best part. The shadow has friends,
and he's had people who've been helping him out in
all of these pursuits. Some of them he may consider employees, others, partners, others,
maybe even fixers, who knows. But he's got some friends
and they're in a similar bind. They've made a lot
of cash, they need a place to put it, and

(32:54):
every one of them is hearing the same thing. It's
a it's a distant call. I'm across the pond. Let's
say it says, put.

Speaker 1 (33:03):
Your money over here, it's safe over here, be smart,
invest abroad. And the best thing that the whisper does
is it says, you don't even have to leave. You
stay right where you are. Just ship us that cash
and we're good to go. No plane hopping, right, you
don't have to don't have to ride on a jet

(33:25):
with the commoners. I mean, of course, Seth, you already
have a private jet in this scenario.

Speaker 4 (33:30):
But you and a private pilot Launchpad mcquack.

Speaker 1 (33:33):
And a private pilot. I love that we're painting this
universe out and giving it. We're going to have to
return to this example. Yeah you can. You can give
old Launchpad a break that weekend, because, as you said, Matt,
Seth can do this all online. Not he doesn't have
to leave his country, he doesn't have to leave his house. Yeah,

(33:54):
he can't do it all online.

Speaker 3 (33:55):
But really it's preferable if you actually ship the cash
somehow to to our country. Just the cash, like just
cold hard boxes of cash.

Speaker 1 (34:06):
And or or in sacks or in suitcases with a
dollar sign on them. Yeah, oh for sure.

Speaker 3 (34:15):
Or just you know, start an LLC in Delaware and
put all your money into that and then buy the
house through that.

Speaker 1 (34:22):
Oh gosh, remind me to tell you guys one day
about the brilliant financial moves of Ika. It's not Machabelian.
It is so evil. But anyway, anyway, uh, we are
we are taking a lighthearted approach to a very real problem.
So let's continue this. Uh, Let's let's say that our Seth,

(34:48):
the shadow is based in is looking at property that
he could buy somewhere in the world and looks at Germany,
and he looks at Thailand, and he looks at all Australia,
and then he says, oh, Canada. That was unintentional, and
I apologize.

Speaker 4 (35:06):
A serious, very funny.

Speaker 1 (35:08):
So there are a lot of people who have made
the same decision that our fictional av and Seth has made.
And we know this because there have been some pretty
damning case studies about it. Beginning back in the late
twenty tens, foreign investment and real estate speculation in many

(35:31):
major cities of Canada caused this boom, this seismic shift
in the real estate market. It led to a massive
increase in not only the price of buying a home,
but the price of renting one.

Speaker 3 (35:45):
And it was also seeing a very steady drop in
interest rates. Right, So that's that's how much you when
you get a mortgage, how much you actually have to
pay back That is not a part of the principle,
like what you the loan that you took out, just
extra money you got to pay the bank for the bank, Yeah, exactly,

(36:06):
So so that was dropping, right, But then the price
of the homes is rising, and that's been happening since
in the nineteen nineties. It signaled to consumers, just the
everyday person, including the shadow there, that the real estate
market had become the perfect stable place to invest your money,

(36:28):
no matter where it came from.

Speaker 1 (36:29):
Yeah, and there was this there was this act now
feeling right for many many investors. So they said, hey,
this is a good thing. Don't know how long it's
going to be, it's going to last and no, I
wou'd hate to be late to the game here. So
they poured into the market, and you shall also mention
they're poured into a market that is full of young,

(36:52):
well intentioned Canadians who are thinking, this is going to
be the year. This is going to be the year
when we get our own home. And that's why in
March of twenty seventeen, the cost of owning a home
in Toronto alone in the greater Toronto area, so not
even like downtown or whatever the Arts district is, just

(37:13):
the suburbs of Toronto, it had grown thirty three percent
in the course of a year. Even the even the
homes that a lot of people wouldn't necessarily think too
much of like the semi detached kind of townhome stuff.
Those are passed a million dollars in asking price. And
this problem is not unique to Canada, because let's say,

(37:37):
and Seth, I hope you don't regret allowing us to
use you as an example here fictionally okay, Well, let's okay.
So let's say let's say you look at this and
you're like, wow, it's Canada. Is not for me. Too
many people found out about the greater Toronto metro area,
and too many people somebody blew up the spot in
Vancouver or whatever, and so you turn your gaze south

(38:04):
and you look at the US. Statistically, you're probably looking
at California. That's going to be the most popular place
for a duck in your position. And that's where we
run into the problem with the US. This is an
ongoing thing, and to explain the situation, we're going to

(38:24):
need to introduce you to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network.
They're a unit of the Treasury Department with a very
cool short nickname FINCIN. That's right.

Speaker 3 (38:36):
We talked about them not long ago, didn't we been yep,
good lord, I can't tell you the topic, but we
just discussed them in another financial problem that we were
dealing with. I think it had something to do with
money laundering and drugs. I think who knows you know
better than me?

Speaker 1 (38:56):
Whoever you are out there listening, I'm sure email us
that tell us we did, But yes, fin send.

Speaker 3 (39:05):
In twenty seventeen, they put out a press release and
they found that one out of four, one out of
four residential real estate purchases were all cash transactions.

Speaker 1 (39:20):
Do you understand what that means?

Speaker 3 (39:22):
One in four That is a quarter of all hundred
we're talking minimum hundreds of thousands of dollars, unless you're
talking about a home that's in foreclosure that for some.

Speaker 1 (39:34):
Reason is below one hundred thousand dollars.

Speaker 3 (39:36):
And even if it is in foreclosure, depending on the
institution that owns it, it may be well above that
benchmark number. And that right there just makes you go, Okay,
so who's got that kind of money? What are we
talking about here? When an individual or a family is
upgrading a home and I'm giving you some quotation, so

(39:58):
there with my fingers. Generally, what's gonna happen is even
if you've got if you've paid off your mortgage completely,
you've got the entire equity of your home that exists.
Let's say two hundred and fifty thousand. That's so low
for nowadays, three hundred thousand dollars. God, I can't believe
it's that high. But let's say you've just got that

(40:19):
in cash essentially sitting there that family unless they are
downgrading because of you know, they need they need a
smaller space, they don't need as much room there. There
are a couple, you know, other situations. Generally there's going
to be an upgrade because you would take that money
you've already invested and get a bigger investment. So you're

(40:40):
not going to be able to pay for the entire
home purchase with just that money, even if you've got
all of that, because you're probably upgrading to four hundred,
five hundred, six hundred thousand dollars home.

Speaker 1 (40:52):
Yay. That that's why the cash purchase feels so strange.
That's a lot of money baller, dude, And I know
that that's a very crude way to describe it. But
this is also part of what I would argue is
a newer version of the American dream to come in

(41:14):
with the suitcase, to come in with the blank check,
and to say to you know, to power move Tony
Starkett and say something like okay, yeah, no, I just look,
just tell me what we need to sign. I want
this by this afternoon because I have a lunch thing
that's similar to what's happening. And it's not as cartoonish

(41:38):
as you think. Thanks to the Bank Secrecy Act, which
is anti money laundering law created in nineteen seventy, Finnsen
is able to learn who owns a lot of these
all cash transaction properties. A ton of them are in
very expensive metro areas, you know, New York, San Francisco,

(42:02):
La Miami, all the hits, you know, all the good ones,
all the postcard cities. In those cities. They found that,
in addition to to having quite a large amount of
all cash home purchases, thirty percent of those purchases were
automatically flagged as suspicious transactions. There's a little bit of

(42:23):
true crime here. We don't want to exaggerate it too much,
but there's a great look at this from Reveal, which
is part of the Center for Investigative Reporting. In this
they have an interview with a guy named James Wright.
James Wright is an attorney and more importantly, he used

(42:45):
to be, once upon a time a bank examiner for
the Treasury Department. He indicates that, in his opinion, there
are multiple conspiracies to buy real estate not as a
legit investment, but as a means of laundering money. Think
about it like a similar to the car wash bit.
In Breaking Bad No Spoilers, he did something really interesting.

(43:10):
He talks about the what went down in Moldova after
the fall of the Soviet Union, and he said that
at that time oligarchs were running wild and they were
stashing their gains in buildings. You know, hard assets, tangible.
It's hard, it's difficult to move buildings, right. And he

(43:31):
has this line where he says, back in Moldova at
the time, you would walk down the street and people
would point at a certain building and they would be like,
that's a washing machine, and everybody knew what it meant.
In today, yeah, this should bother you if you're in
the US, because today, Wright says America is not that different.

(43:52):
As of twenty nineteen, the Census Bureau has reported that
nearly three million US homes and thirteen milli billion apartment
units are owned not by like Jane and John from
down the street. They're they're owned by LLC's or LLPs

(44:13):
or shell companies. That's really what they are. And I
know it's like an impolite term, but they're shell companies.
They're meant to hide true ownership. That's nuts thirteen million apartments,
three million homes, and the proportion of residential rental properties
owned by individuals, you know, actual families, has fallen drastically.

(44:37):
In nineteen ninety one, it was ninety two percent, and
then just by twenty fifteen it was down to seventy
four percent, and the trend continues today in twenty twenty.

Speaker 3 (44:45):
Yeah, and all of that already sounds troubling on the surface,
but then you realize, like, well, I mean, with the
numbers you just quoted, they're down to seventy four percent
of individual families actually owning and renting these properties. You
realize that they're humans that are trying to to get
these places and to live in these places, and to
afford them, and they're competing with limited liability partnerships from somewhere,

(45:12):
probably incorporated in Delaware, and who knows where they're coming from,
and they're able to buy these things outright just immediately,
like that you got a house. Hey, you got a
whole subdivision. Oh well, here's a whole. Here's a whole
three floors of this awesome apartment building in San Francisco.
It's downtown. You're gonna love it. It's just it's so

(45:34):
intense because the individual person, the family that is trying
to buy this thing or live in this unit, they
are vulnerable. Not in the same way they're they're they're
they're vulnerable to the risks that an LLC or whatever,
this other shell corporation they're not going to be vulnerable to.

(45:56):
It's the biggest financial decision of your life outside of
having a child. Actually, wait no, it's the biggest financial
decision of your life.

Speaker 1 (46:06):
How do you treat your kids? I mean, he's expensive,
but he's nothing like this place.

Speaker 4 (46:13):
So I'm guessing too that your mortgage is longer than
eighteen years probably too, right, it's.

Speaker 3 (46:20):
Yeah, usually thirty if you don't have a ton of money.

Speaker 4 (46:24):
So if you are following the strict rules of you're
only raising your child till eighteen, then your mortgage will
be with you longer than your child.

Speaker 3 (46:32):
Technically, it's true, but I'm going to raise him until
he doesn't want me anymore.

Speaker 1 (46:37):
Right, Yeah, it's true. That's why I only halfway jokingly
call a mortgage a financial facial tattoo, Like it stays
with you and it will affect your future in not
entirely negative ways. I mean, you have a place to live,
but you are also bound in some very serious and
lasting agreements. And we're going to for a moment and

(47:01):
explore this further, assuming that a shell company does not
buy up our podcast. While we're doing ads and we're back,
just got some text from Illumination Global Unlimited. So we

(47:21):
are going to change some of the things that we
plan to talk about. Oh I wish it were not true.
Oh yeah, yeah, Well we love them. They're our first
sponsor and our primary one, so you're right, right, guys.
These homeowners can be vulnerable. This is a huge decision,

(47:42):
and often these folks are doing everything right, everything by
the book. They're very organized, they have a realistic timeline,
but they are denied the opportunity to buy an affordable
home with a mortgage because maybe even after they've put
that offer in, somebody else shows up with an offer
that may be higher, it might even be lower, but

(48:03):
it's all in cash and it's all in like, forget
about the home inspection blah blah blah. We don't need
to bring a bunch of too much paperwork into this.
Don't worry about where this money is coming from. Tell
you what, bro, you can keep the suitcase with the
dollar sign on it. That's the situation. And this hits
renters too, because, look, you don't know who your neighbors are.

(48:28):
That if you live in a major city, sure that's common,
but you should be able to know who your neighbors are.
I don't think that's unreasonable. And when you are renting,
this lack of transparency can be difficult to traverse as well.
Tenants can't figure out who they should complain to if
something goes wrong. Local officials want to hold someone responsible

(48:52):
for violations of code and so on, but they don't know.
They don't know where the buck stops because one company
is owned by another company, is owned by another company,
is owned by another company, and their fingers On the
same hand, it's we found a hilarious example of this,
or I think it's funny, just just so you know,

(49:16):
just so you get an example of how how weird
this stuff can get. It took an investigation from the
Guardian and the Washington Post to figure out this problem
of anonymous ownership or hidden ownership, and they found one.
They found one example that's just funny.

Speaker 3 (49:37):
Oh yeah, in the South, several states down here, you
know where we are, there were there were residents living
in all of these different properties, in different apartment complexes.
And they all learned at once when when the Guardian
of the Washington Post were doing their thing, they all
shared a secret landlord. And oh the name was spmk

(50:03):
x GA LLC and other really great LLC names of
just you know, a couple of different letters smashed together.
And here's here's what the news outlets found out. And
all of those people who lived in buildings owned by
these LLCs, the actual person behind all of them was

(50:24):
a legendary Fox News reporter and personality, Sean Hannity and
iHeartRadio host.

Speaker 1 (50:33):
I believe. How does he have the time, But yeah.

Speaker 3 (50:36):
Well he's made a lot of money. Well, and here's
the thing he's not. He's not a you know, a
foreign company, a foreign investor, or somebody who's coming from
a different country who's going to launder money or something.
He is just He's an example of something unexpected within
this realm, where there's someone with a ton of money
that's able to leverage that money for their own personal

(50:59):
gains and to get an investment in something that all
of us kind of need collectively, a place to live.

Speaker 1 (51:08):
Record scratch. Hold up, you might be saying, hold up,
seth Reie the Shadow, mcdoc, hold up, hold up, Matt,
hold up Ben. Didn't you guys just talk about finsin.
Isn't it their job to figure out stuff like this?
You're right. You'd also be correct if you guessed that

(51:29):
Finson has routinely fought journalists seeking information about the true
owners of these various properties in cities and sometimes communities.
Freedom of Information Act requests have been filed on multiple occasions,
and they all seem to just sort of teeter off
like a coin, down an impossibly deep well into some

(51:52):
bureaucratic abyss. And so cases have gone to court.

Speaker 3 (51:56):
Well, they've yeah, they've gone to court a bunch and
they get shut out. And the crazy thing is that
FinCEN has all of this information about these LLCs and
these companies that own all this property, but they will
not share it with the public, and many times they
cite that nineteen seventy bank law that essentially states, we

(52:19):
don't got to tell you, We don't have to tell
you who who actually owns these things, these corporations that
are making these financial transactions, And it's really protecting the banks.

Speaker 1 (52:33):
It's protecting the banks. It's also, of course protecting to
a degree personal information. Right. You're not supposed to publish
people's social Security numbers, for example.

Speaker 3 (52:44):
Sure, but it goes back to that thing you're saying, Ben,
it would be nice to know who your neighbors are.
That's one of my favorite things about living where I live.
I know all of my neighbors, and I really like
all of my neighbors. I can't imagine not being in
that situation.

Speaker 1 (52:58):
I think you're across the street. Neighbor is my favorite,
somewhat eccentric fellow. He's awesome. I do not speak ill
of him. He has he has an MTG cube and
he's the best.

Speaker 4 (53:11):
Again, the name of the llct.

Speaker 3 (53:17):
Ll uh.

Speaker 1 (53:19):
Let's pitch it. Yeah, and let's let's see if we
can pitch it in another country. Guys. You know, maybe
somebody already blew up the spot in US city. So
we need to take a page from uh Seth's book
and look abroad. Turns out the rest of the world
is aware of this phenomenon. It gets a lot more

(53:41):
news coverage in other parts of the planet. The US
is pretty much is lagging behind. So everywhere from Australia
to Israel, to the Netherlands, et cetera, they've all passed
laws or enforced laws I should say, shout out fence,
and they've all in force laws that better empower the

(54:04):
population of the country with knowledge. So Argentina, Australia, Israel, Netherlands,
any member of the public can request information about property
ownership in Russia and Ukraine. You don't have to request it,
it's already online. Public disclosure is even if you believe
the official story coming to some tax shelters. So watch

(54:27):
out Cayman Islands. If you are listening to this show
and you're saying, guys, that's just how business gets done.
I'm being smart about it. All my money's in the Caymans.
We'll get it out before twenty twenty one.

Speaker 3 (54:42):
Or didn't they already get exposed on one of these
leaks back in the day. The Cayman Islands wasn't it them?

Speaker 1 (54:49):
I think it was, Yeah, Cayman Islands a couple of
other tax shelters too. There's another side to this, there's
an extreme side. There are some countries that make it
ver actually impossible for foreigners to purchase property. Thailand is
one of the most well known examples of this because
it has quite it's got a high expatriot population, or

(55:11):
it's you know, like people will go from Europe or
the US or Australia and they'll live in Southeast Asia, Vietnam, Thailand,
et cetera. But they have to go through proxies often
to purchase property, which is when the rubber hits the
road in court. That's not the same thing as owning
it yourself. So other countries might be following in this direction.

(55:37):
In twenty sixteen, people in Vancouver put a ton of
pressure on the government of British Columbia and so they
started saying, look, if you buy a home in this area,
you have to disclose your citizenship on the sales paperwork.
And when they when they put that in play, they

(55:58):
found that ten to fifteen percent of houses sold all
the time, we're not going to Canadians. And they were
not going to permanent residence. They were being owned by
someone else. And so in response to this, they put
a fifteen percent tax on all sales to foreign home buyers. Discriminatory, yes, necessary.

Speaker 3 (56:19):
Maybe, yeah, but you know, the Shadow just said, an
extra fifteen percent, no worries.

Speaker 1 (56:28):
Oh, what they really enjoyed about this episode is watching
is watching seth just like very generously chuckle along with
them with our scenario that we're not letting go of No.

Speaker 4 (56:41):
I like this scenario. I like to pretend that I
have a bank vault the size of like a skyscraper
full of money. That that's something I will never achieve
except in this podcast.

Speaker 3 (56:53):
But actually I'm being I was incorrect and I'm being
facetious there. The Shadow would say, while why would I
spend an extra fifteen bucks for this investment in this
money laundering?

Speaker 1 (57:04):
Don't call it that?

Speaker 3 (57:06):
Why would I do that? Why don't I just buy
it somewhere else, like in Seattle. Let's let's do that instead.
And the result of this fifteen percent tax increase to
foreign purchasers of homes, dude, Vancouver, the.

Speaker 1 (57:23):
Average is it the average? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (57:25):
The average price of homes dropped about twenty percent.

Speaker 1 (57:30):
In just a few months.

Speaker 3 (57:31):
Yeah, it wasn't like over a decade. No no, no, no, no, no,
this was almost immediate. How crazy is that?

Speaker 4 (57:39):
Uh?

Speaker 1 (57:39):
Yeah, And that's specifically single family properties. So think of
like for a lot of people, that's a starter home,
right and my house right, I mean, that's that's a
great house to buy. Now it's twenty percent less of
a pipe dream, which is a beautiful thing. Until in Vancouver.

(57:59):
In Vancouver, I was gonna say, until we consider the
ripple effects this has, because yes, our sethree the shadow
McDuck says, Okay, well, why am I going to pay
fifteen percent tax in Vancouver? You guys are crazy. I'm
going to check out Toronto. As a result, At the

(58:20):
same time, the prices are dropping in Vancouver, they are
rising in Wow, that's a message is definitely well now
it's a burd So they were they were rising in
other cities because investors still wanted to stay in Canada
and it didn't really matter which city they had a

(58:41):
piece of.

Speaker 3 (58:42):
Well, and think about that. The reason why there's such
a strong feeling that this is money laundering is because
it doesn't matter if you're paying more like if those
prices continue to rise and you keep buying them. It
doesn't matter if they cost more. It's where your money
is going. If you're money is going into the investment
of the equity of that property, and in the hopes

(59:05):
that it's going to continue to increase, rather than just
paying a bribe to the government fifteen percent of whatever
that cost is, you're going to make the decision to
just put more money, or launder more money into that
other property somewhere else.

Speaker 1 (59:21):
And of course this is not to say that this
is a situation in which all foreign investors are all
foreign buyers of homes are automatically criminals. Right. There are,
of course compelling reasons, but the money laundering thing is
a huge loophole. It's naive and indeed insulting to pretend

(59:44):
that that's not happening. It's just like the private art
dealers in the world. Right, there's some spooky financial stuff
going on there, and we're whistling in the graveyard if
we pretend that we don't know what's going on. So
something else happened as well. You may have heard of it.
The coronavirus pandemic COVID nineteen the US for this and

(01:00:09):
other reasons, had often been seen as a very stable
place to make an investment. That is not so much
the case anymore. Again, not just because of COVID, several
compelling reasons. So it seemed for a little bit that
in twenty nineteen the problem might start to mitigate itself.
Foreign purchases of homes in the US plummeted by thirty

(01:00:29):
six percent in July of twenty nineteen, and this was
largely due, according to the experts, to the fact that
Chinese nationals were not so hot on the US market.
They weren't trying to buy homes at exorbitant all cash prices.
I think the total value of stuff that non US
residents overall bought in twenty nineteen was seventy seven point

(01:00:52):
nine billion, which sounds like a huge number because it is.
It's a cartoonishly huge number. But that was down from
the year before. In twenty eighteen, non US residents or
foreigners bought about one hundred and twenty one billion dollars
worth of property.

Speaker 3 (01:01:10):
And the big thing there is that it was almost
one hundred thousand fewer properties in total in there were
purchasing twenty nineteen compared to twenty eighteen.

Speaker 1 (01:01:22):
And this happened for a number of reasons. Partially, the
US had some still has some difficult domestic conditions affecting
its housing market. And also, to be less US centric
about it, the government of China was tightening currency controls.
They were paying more attention to the laundromats basically, and

(01:01:45):
of course coronavirus affected everything. It's the breakout star of
twenty twenty. Yet this practice continues today. You might be
surprised to learn who your neighbors are. And there isn't
a clear cut answer here because think about it. Okay,
I'm a country, I want outside money coming in. It

(01:02:08):
makes the whole Ponzi scheme of the economy continue to run.

Speaker 3 (01:02:13):
In.

Speaker 1 (01:02:14):
These investors aren't automatically doing something illegal. This stuff is remembered.
Nothing is illegal until somebody writes a law about it.
So now we can see the side of the person
who says, you know, I'm not a criminal. I want
to stay. I want to safeguard my future somehow, you know.

(01:02:36):
And we can also see the side of the people who,
like many folks listening today, live in cities affected by
this trend. Not only do they live in these cities,
but they would also like to live in a house
in these cities, and they have a perfectly reasonable desire
to know what the hell is going on, who actually

(01:02:58):
owns what? And the problems compounded because it is very real,
but it can be skewed by racism and nationalism in
any conversation because I don't know about you, guys, but
I find it intellectually lazy and even worse, uninteresting when
people start saying, well, you know, China is coming in

(01:03:21):
and they're buying up all this stuff, and it's like, really, like,
look at Jury's twelve people have a hard time working together.
Are you telling me that one point three billion people
all agreed on some sort of coordinated plan. No, these
are individual actors. These are smaller groups. Sometimes they're very
large corporations. But that's still not like a monolithic thing happening,

(01:03:44):
and we can't be we can't fall into that trap.

Speaker 3 (01:03:47):
That would be a great long term plan, though, buy
up all the property in major cities and just let
it go to blight.

Speaker 1 (01:03:54):
Then just be like mmmm, sorry, I love that voice.
It sounds like one of the shadows friends too mad.
So that's that's where we are now. We also have
to consider that there's a limited amount of existing housing.

(01:04:17):
As we mentioned at the top, it's not as if
this problem never existed before, for investors conspired and got evolved.
We also have to consider one thing that I think
a lot of people have been considering recently, which is this,
If you want to get residency in another country, it
can be tremendously difficult, but there is one huge loophole

(01:04:38):
that most countries have, and that is an investor visa.
You can just pay a country to let you live there.
It is expensive. Yes, the dream country that you probably
pictured just now as we describe this is expensive. I
assure you, what were you thinking, Seth, what was your
dream country?

Speaker 4 (01:04:58):
I was thinking Canada?

Speaker 1 (01:05:00):
Really, I love Canada.

Speaker 4 (01:05:02):
I grew up in the Pacific Northwest and I would
go up to Vancouver specifically all the time for concerts
and man, oh man, great country. Love that place.

Speaker 1 (01:05:11):
Nice.

Speaker 3 (01:05:12):
I was immediately drawn to Australia. I don't I don't
know why. I just I just want to be over there.

Speaker 1 (01:05:19):
That would be awesome. Yeah, let me crash at you
guys houses.

Speaker 4 (01:05:23):
We'll ben don't leave us hanging here. If you had
an ideal country, Oh, what would yours be.

Speaker 1 (01:05:28):
My reasoning is weird and not practically north No, I
just want to visit without supporting the regime. It's tough.
But I've always dreamed about checking out Bhuton, but that
may be more of a visit place. I don't know.
I don't want to live in one country forever, which

(01:05:50):
are hopefully words that I don't come to regret later.
Canada is dope, for sure. I'll remote island would be nice.
Maybe maybe just find it out of the way, place
high enough to survive the rising sea levels and just
pretend that just do like a castaway situation. I'll do
a castaway situation with Wi Fi or.

Speaker 3 (01:06:12):
Something that's an excellent idea, and you know, you come
up with one point five million and just buy three
homes in three different countries and then you'll be.

Speaker 1 (01:06:22):
Good to go. Just use those visas all over the place. Oh, Okay, Scandinavia,
Turkey minus the crazy guys. I don't know, and I
admire you for being so focused and having this articulated vision. Okay,
they do have visas, and they are investor visas. They
are expensive. In the US, we have something called the

(01:06:43):
EB five visa. This gives green cards to people who
invest five hundred thousand dollars in a US business. So
think about it. If you buy an expensive enough home
and you set it up as a rental and you
set up a business or a show company that is like,

(01:07:04):
you know, totally legit rental Properties LLC. And all you
do is rent that one home. Haven't you just started
a business? Did you just buy a house and get
sit and get residency thrown in like the same way
you get a free cooozy if you buy a car
or something.

Speaker 3 (01:07:24):
I don't know now, hold on, we're recording this on
November fourth here within the United States. I wonder how
many people listening right now. It's probably not November fourth anymore.
A lot has happened, I'm assuming since today. But you
may be thinking, hmmm, property somewhere else. It might be nice.

(01:07:46):
It might be a nice thing to have just in case.
I don't know what's happening right now. Maybe everything's great,
hopefully everything's great. But you're welcome for this intel.

Speaker 1 (01:07:59):
South Now. I don't know this is gonna haunt me.
I have a book I have to share with you guys.
I think I've mentioned it before, but I know Matt
you've seen it in seth I think you would dig it.
It's called The Atlas of Remote Islands. It's probably one
of my favorite books. They're pretty easy. Well, once you

(01:08:21):
get there, it's pretty easy to stay. I don't know.
I promise you both, I'm going to figure out a
country that would be a dream country, and then I'll
commit to the bit. But look, I have so many
commitment problems. I can't even get a temporary tattoo, you
know what I mean. That's like all afternoon and I
may come to regret it. But but you guys, you're

(01:08:43):
absolutely right, And Matt you are as always astute and
profoundly so. Here many many things are in flux right now,
and many many people have been at least doing cursory
research in what am it is? How it works? Is
there an ancestry loophole I could use? Did that tiny

(01:09:10):
rural island in Ireland really mean? US residents are welcome
to visit their Facebook page get overloaded by the way
with request. There are a lot of questions to answer,
but the fact is most people in the US are
probably not going to move to another country, and a
lot of investors are not planning to move to the US.

(01:09:32):
They're just fighting to preserve their financial stability, and we can't.
You know, we can't throw stones like it's there's something
so dangerously tempting and satisfying about saying it's not our fault.
You know, it's all these liertal factors. We're doing the
best we can. But the fact of the matter is this,

(01:09:55):
It was a problem before all this stuff happened. Our
country and men countries have an affordability crisis. The majority
of the human population lives in urban areas, and that
means that many of the jobs that would pay a
livable wage are in those urban areas, and that means
that housing ends up being more expensive, and that means

(01:10:18):
I'm very give them house a cookie here. That means
that we find ourselves in a catch twenty two. You
need to live in a city so you can find
a solid job, so you can afford a house, but
you can't live in the city because you can't afford
to live there and find a job, because it's too
expensive to get your foot in the financial door. And
that's like, I don't know what's the answer. What should

(01:10:38):
governments do? Matt, Can you solve this? Yes?

Speaker 3 (01:10:41):
The answer is the suburb. Oh, the suburb. If it
weren't for amazing schools in out in your areas, you
wouldn't be so expensive. And yet you are, but you're
so far away about approximate leave forty five minutes to
an hour and a half. Oh, suburbs the answer to

(01:11:05):
all things.

Speaker 1 (01:11:07):
I hope it's okay that I hype baned you a
little with that music. That was great. The spirit moves us.
I saw seth get a get a little tier. But
it is true that was the answer for so long.

Speaker 3 (01:11:22):
It was you know, a city center, and then literally
you go a diameter of however many miles, like a
driving distance of forty five minutes two half an hour
and a half, and you make city centers there and
they thrive because it's it's cheaper there. And then because
there are so many people investing in those areas, you

(01:11:45):
get more investment in the infrastructure and things like schools,
and then those thrive and thrive, and then you got
to drive forty five minutes from that place to start
the next one to make it affordable, and it just
goes on and on and on.

Speaker 1 (01:11:57):
Oh and the future of the suburbs, APPS is an
episode for Different Days what I very much want to
explore with you because I've yeah troubling stuff about them
in the future. No, I totally agree with you.

Speaker 3 (01:12:13):
What about the future of the isolated mountain cabin. That's
what I want to know about because that's where I'm headed.

Speaker 4 (01:12:19):
Did you guys ever see Blade Runner twenty forty nine. Yes,
I loved there's a very subtle suburb joke in Blade
Runner twenty forty nine where you know, Ryan Gosling arrived
in San Diego and the chiron on the screen said
San Diego just outside Los Angeles, And I thought that

(01:12:39):
was a very good joke because that makes sense. The
urban sprawl of Los Angeles will eventually get so big
that San Diego, which is very south, if you guys
don't know your geography, will just be a suburb. A
suburb of Los Angeles will be San Diego, you.

Speaker 1 (01:12:55):
Know, lord, And that's where this is a question we
want to pass on to you all. I Seth would
love to have you back for our exploration of the
suburbs and some of the things on the possible horizon
for that kind of living situation. Should governments do anything?

(01:13:17):
How do you write a law that does this that
is not a laughably discriminatory. There is a bipartisan anti
money laundering bill that passed the House of Reps in October. Actually,
this would require banks to disclose the true owners of
shell companies to finsin, but still would keep the public

(01:13:42):
in the dark. So the question I think here that
everyone is wrestling with with these conspiracies aside, and they
are conspiracies, especially if they're money laundering, the question is this,
how do we square that American dream, the idea that
all should be welcome, when it seems that pursuit of
that dream by one party may render the same dream

(01:14:04):
impossible for others. Isn't that how it's always been. Yes,
no one has figured this out yet, just.

Speaker 3 (01:14:12):
The way it's I think that's the way the American
dream is supposed to be. You gotta fight over it.
You can't have your dream because I got mine. Like
I know, I'm sorry, that's that's a messed up, and
that's not true necessarily. I think maybe it feels that
way sometimes.

Speaker 1 (01:14:28):
I completely agree with you, man, I'm one hundred percent
on board. In fact, I would expand that and say
it's it's a programming flaw of the species in general,
like a motto like humans. The tagline would be like humans,
I got mine.

Speaker 3 (01:14:45):
Uh And that sounds like that sounds like a like
a slogan for the robot overlords humans, I've got mine.

Speaker 1 (01:14:54):
Right, Uh yeah, let's do an episode just for future
robots about about systemic inequalities in the human owning market.

Speaker 4 (01:15:05):
Oh god, yeah, I could see humans basically being the
puppy of the of the robot overlords. Like I think
I'm okay with that life, honestly, Like if that was
presented to me as an option, you know, yeah, my
puppies live very well, so who knows.

Speaker 1 (01:15:25):
Yeah, yes, as long as it came with a collar
and a water bowl, I guess would be fine. And
is it a cool robot? You know what I mean?
Like does it do interesting things? I'm sure it will
teach you tricks and you'll be like reciting pie to
the polite board applause of the robot friends who came
over for dinner. Anyhow, Anyhow, this stuff aside, we do

(01:15:47):
want to know what you think right now. One of
the most important questions is why isn't Finson releasing the
info that it has. Is there an incentive not to
do so, and if so, what is that incentive. We
hope that we have been very clear that we don't
want to mischaracterize this. The problems are domestic, but the

(01:16:11):
Ford investment thing is something that hasn't hasn't really been
talked about, and we don't want it to lead to zenophobia.
But again, it just we've reiterated it before. It is
not crazy to want to know who your neighbors are.

Speaker 3 (01:16:25):
That's right, And if you do want to reach out
to us, we are all over social media.

Speaker 1 (01:16:30):
You can find us on.

Speaker 3 (01:16:31):
Twitter and Facebook where conspiracy stuff on Instagram or conspiracy
stuff show. If you don't want to use those things,
you can give us a call. Our number is one
eight three three STDWYTK, and we're especially interested to hear
from anyone out there who has at one time worked

(01:16:51):
for the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. Do you want to
blow a whistle or maybe not that you don't have
to do, You don't have to go that far, just
call us and explain some of this a little bit further,
because it's difficult to understand why things are as they are.

Speaker 1 (01:17:07):
And we'd also like to hear from folks who have
relocated permanently from one country to another. Tell us who
are circumstances? Tell us what led you to this decision,
and tell us if all things being equal, you would
do the same thing. Again, We're very interested in this story.
We can't wait to hear from you. As Matt said,

(01:17:27):
you can find us on the phone. As you said earlier,
you can find us on YouTube, YouTube dot com, slash
conspiracy stuff, And if you have been entranced by the
dulcet tones of our super shadow producer Seth Nicholas Johnson,
we have more good news for you. Seth. You don't
just drop in and help out with this show, right,

(01:17:49):
You're a man of many interests. Where can people learn more?

Speaker 4 (01:17:52):
Well, mostly I have a record label and I like
to deal with all that stuff. I don't really have
any personal social media accounts. You can find my record label,
which is me Haunted Birthday Records. You can find on
Instagram at Haunted Birthday, go to Haunted Birthday dot com.

Speaker 1 (01:18:07):
That's me.

Speaker 4 (01:18:09):
Also, I'm hosting a new show here on the iHeartRadio
network one month from now, starting on December eleventh. There's
a brand new show coming out on this network called
Record Store society. It's a virtual trip to the record store.
You hop on in, you visit with your friends, you
thumbed through some forty five's, and you have a grand

(01:18:29):
old time. And yeah, you know, it's a great way
to get out of the house and visit your local
record store virtually in these times when it is perhaps
a bit difficult to do so.

Speaker 1 (01:18:39):
Analog record stores a perfect place for the shadow to
put his money. And that's our show, folks. Maybe Matt
and I will be able, we'll be able to swing
by that record store as well. We hope that you
do and check it out December eleventh. In the meantime,

(01:19:00):
if you have some responses to this, if you want
to tell us more, but you hate social media, we
get it. You don't quite get the dopamine rush some
people experience from a phone call. Totally cool. We've got
you covered. You can send us a good old fashioned
email wherever you are right now.

Speaker 3 (01:19:19):
We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com. Stuff they don't

(01:19:43):
want you to know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.