November 4, 2025 • 35 mins
In this episode of Lead-Lag Live, I sit down with Father Emmanuel Lemelson, activist investor and Orthodox priest, to discuss the intersection of faith, finance, and speculation in an era of market excess.
From calling tops in gold and silver to exposing fraud on Wall Street, Fr. Emmanuel argues that modern markets have become spiritually and ethically unmoored — a “Wild West” driven by greed, memes, and misplaced faith in AI. He shares his candid views on what true stewardship means, why hoarding gold is spiritually toxic, and why investors need humility more than hype.
In this episode:
– Why “stacking” gold is spiritual hoarding, not investing
– How AI mania mirrors the dot-com bubble of the ’90s
– The moral hazard of speculation and market idolatry
– Where Fr. Emmanuel still finds real value in equities like Adobe and Flower Foods
– Why faith and finance don’t have to be at odds
Lead-Lag Live brings you inside conversations with the financial thinkers who shape markets. Subscribe for interviews that go deeper than the noise.
#LeadLagLive #FrEmmanuelLemelson #FaithAndFinance #Markets #Investing #Gold #AI #WallStreet #Economy
Start your adventure with TableTalk Friday: A D&D Podcast at the link below or wherever you get your podcasts! Sign up to The Lead-Lag Report on Substack and get 30% off the annual subscription today by visiting http://theleadlag.report/leadlaglive.
Youtube: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLgB6B-mAeWlPM9KzGJ2O4cU0-m5lO0lkr&si=W_-jLsiREjyAIgEs
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/75YJ921WGQqUtwxRT71UQB?si=4R6kaAYOTtO2V
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_02 (00:00):
NVIDIA is a great company, tremendous margins.
A lot of these companies arelike NVIDIA is truly great.
But it's it's really quite,let's just say it's at least at
a minimum fairly priced.
So if you're a value investorand you're trying to find a
price value dislocation, you'renot going to find it in NVIDIA
or any of these companies inthat Halo.
You know, if you saw a block ofgold for all the gold that's
been mined in history in theworld, it's actually not that
(00:20):
large, believe it or not.
It's smaller than most peoplewould think.
And a very, very small amount ofthat's used in electronics.
I believe what's driven thatmania, if I can call it that, is
uh a lack of trust in thegovernment and in the fiat
currencies.
SPEAKER_00 (00:43):
I'm your host, Melanie Shaper.
Welcome to Lead Lake Live.
Now, sentiment in the market isturning decidedly cautious.
Big tech is laying off tens ofthousands of workers this week,
sparking fresh worries aboutgrowth.
Meanwhile, gold and silver aregetting a bid, not just as
hedges, but as outright plays.
In other words, investors arebracing for the worst, even as
(01:05):
stocks struggle to rally.
My guest today is FatherEmmanuel Lemelson, known for his
work as an activist investor andhis track record calling winners
like Kohl's Big Five SportingGoods, Nike, and Lululemon.
He's also been publiclyconnected as an advisor to
actors and high net worthinvestors, including Mark
Walper.
(01:26):
Father Emmanuel, welcome to theshow.
SPEAKER_01 (01:28):
Melanie, thank you so much for having me on the
show.
I absolutely love your show, andit was a privilege to get the
invite.
SPEAKER_00 (01:34):
Thank you.
Now, I wanted to start uhtalking about its sentiment and
how it seems to be bad.
Uh the flight to gold andsilver, fueled maybe by anxiety,
is how you put it.
What exactly are you seeingright now underneath the
surface?
SPEAKER_01 (01:49):
Uh widespread fraud.
Uh, the markets seem to me to beuh just unhinged.
SPEAKER_02 (01:55):
And um, you know, it's a very lax regulatory
environment.
In some ways, it's good.
I mean, under the Trumpadministration and the new
leadership at the SEC.
Uh the SEC before this time hadgone too far in the other
direction.
Uh, you know, it's a veryideologically driven um uh, you
know, arm of the government, butnow I'm afraid we have no
oversight and it's just uh thewild west.
And so we're seeing assetbubbles form everywhere, in my
(02:17):
opinion, certainly preciousmetals recently, until they
pulled back and aggregate about15% off their highs.
Uh you know, we startedcriticizing precious metals as
an investment in mid-October, sothat timing was really very
timely.
I think it was about one or twodays before the peak for most
metals, and then they just sortof came crashing down.
Uh, but you know, uh, you know,we can't say that sentiment's
totally negative because theindexes obviously are reaching
(02:37):
new highs every day.
So um, but there's a lot offear, and I think people are
wondering when is this gonnaend?
When is the cycle gonna end?
The SB is very, very expensiveby historical standards.
SPEAKER_00 (02:45):
Yeah, and I mean you've also raised the question
can value still be found rightnow as investors prepare, you
know, maybe for the worst.
Uh in your view, which pocketsare still underpriced and and
maybe being overlooked?
SPEAKER_02 (02:57):
Well, you know, the good news with all this
volatility, Melanie, which is,you know, largely
algorithmically uh driven, it'ssomething like 75% of market
value, is that uh the mistakesare made on the downside as
well.
Like we publish a Substack, forexample, um, where you can read
some of our articles and we willtrack some of our interviews,
like interviews like yours, forexample.
We frequently will appear onother podcasts and we'll talk
(03:17):
about what we're doing, with theidea being to uh give people an
academic framework or a clearphilosophical framework to
allocate capital, uh, to be sortof good stewards, as it were.
Um, it's not really abouttrading.
Um, it's just about you knowmaking wise decisions in a
market that is often chaotic.
And so you mentioned some ofthose names.
You know, we if you were to gothrough our Subsack and read
some of our other articles onappearances we've had on David
(03:39):
Lynn uh report.
I don't know if you know hisshow.
We talk often about what we'vedone with Kohl's or Guess uh or
Nike, and and a lot of thosenames are really pretty beat up
after the tariffs wereannounced.
So you can see even in anoverall, in a market generally
rising, you know, there weresome value to be found and names
that were unpopular.
And that's really what value uhinvestors do is they look for uh
(03:59):
an area where the price they'repaying presumably is fair or
better than fair, less than theintrinsic value of the stock
market.
So those deals can still befound.
And we're still allocatingcapital to those names.
So whether or not the market ishigh or expensive, it's gonna
pull back.
Nobody really knows.
I don't have a crystal ball.
I'm sure you don't either.
Uh, but it doesn't mean youcan't find value in certain
sectors uh and be a good stewardover that capital and allocate
(04:19):
it wisely.
SPEAKER_00 (04:20):
So getting a bit more into that, uh themes,
memes, and dreams, you've usedthis phrase to contrast height
with fundamentals.
How do you distinguish between ashort-lived meme and a lasting
uh well?
SPEAKER_02 (04:32):
Yeah, you can definitely recognize a meme.
I mean, did you follow theBeyond Meat uh craziness?
What was it, uh, last week?
I went up, I think, 950%, I wantto say in three days.
Uh clearly a meme.
There was no underlying buy.
The company's, you know, itsfinancial centers are just
bleeding red everywhere.
Uh, they had a slightly improveduh marketing arrangement with
Walmart.
Obviously, good news for thecompany, but it could be
(04:52):
otherwise was uh on a trajectoryfor you know bankruptcy, it
looks like.
Um, so that's clearly a meme.
And then it came crashing downagain.
Um, but but generally, you know,I would just say, Melanie, that
so psychological or social, ifeverybody's doing it and it's
all you're reading about onCNBC, like there's a good chance
that there's a speculativefervor.
And and just keep in mind thatfor the speculator, really what
(05:14):
they're doing, right, is thatthey're saying they can see the
future.
And it's not the most humbleapproach.
If you if you're gonna say, Ican pay uh you know$3 for Beyond
Meat today because tomorrow'sgonna be worth four, you well,
you don't really know that.
It might happen.
Your chance it might be$50-50.
But the speculator alwaysbelieves, whether it's housing
or precious metals or commonequities, bonds, whatever, they
(05:35):
believe they can see the future.
That's a very different activityuh intellectually than the value
investor who says, I don'treally know the price tomorrow,
but if I can allocate thiscapital with a margin of safety,
uh where, you know, but beyondme might be worth$3 a share, but
I need to buy it for$1.50because in case I'm wrong, I'll
I'll be protected.
Now, when you're a fiduciary andyou're overseeing other people's
assets, this is so much moreimportant that you that you
(05:58):
really think is a true investorbecause you shouldn't play games
with other people's capital.
And so if you're really asteward over other people's
capital, if you're working inthe industry as a professional,
uh, I think it's reallyimportant to be forthright with
your clients about what youryour philosophical framework
actually is.
And my experience, Melanie, hasbeen that like 95% of market
participants are reallyspeculators, maybe more.
(06:18):
And it's not a choice, actually,is what I've learned.
I've learned it's it's apersonality type.
And I, you know, I didn't reallybelieve this.
Um, but you know, I wrote somelike 200 articles on security
analysis over the last 15 years,and I was trying to prove myself
wrong, but I found thatspeculators can't help
themselves.
They just want to speculate, andit it just the results are not
good over the long run.
SPEAKER_00 (06:40):
Yeah, and I want us to get into that next.
Your style is veryevidence-based, and uh your the
track record uh in terms of thethe companies that you've
flagged that we've mentioned,Coles, uh Big Five Sporting
Goods, Nike, etc.
Give us one stock that you seedoing well right now and and
also walk us through why youlike it.
SPEAKER_02 (06:59):
I'm gonna give you a stock that's doing bad right
now, Adobe.
It's down today.
It's actually the largestholding in our portfolio.
I don't normally disclose thismuch.
By the way, this is notinvestment advice, obviously.
Do your own research, but Iwould bet 50 bucks it's gonna do
better than the SP 500 over thenext year.
I mean, tremendous margins.
It's not participating in the AIbubble.
(07:19):
I think we can all agree thatthere's some real fishy business
going on in the AI names withall the, it's really what you
call round-trip transactions,where it's just, you know,
there's all this exchange ofequity and capital, but there's
no real proper exchange of goodsand services for pay.
You know, it's it's becomingquite incestuous.
And on a level, I'm not, I maynot actually have a parallel,
not in modern markets.
Uh, and so a lot of companiesare in that halo.
(07:41):
And you can look at second andthird tier players that are
being brought along for theride.
You know, the rising tide liftsall ships, as um, John F.
Kennedy once said.
But if you can find companiesthat appear to be not
participating in that, and Adobeis one of them, in my opinion,
but has this long track trackrecord of extraordinary
earnings, uh, no losses, and uhhas a legacy business that
(08:02):
people are pretty much showing awalled garden.
And they're they can easilytransition into AI like any
other company.
They're just not writing thememe and and selling their
company every day.
I think it's gonna doextraordinarily well.
And then, you know, we're buyingsome food stocks that are could
not be more boring.
I probably put most people tosleep.
Like we own a steak in flowerfoods, they make Dave's killer
bread.
(08:22):
I don't know if you know thatproduct.
I happen to love that product.
Uh, but it pays like an 8%dividend.
And then um, you know, we haveanother big food name we've been
buying up that we think is very,very attractive, pays a good,
healthy dividend.
And you we just discussed it onone of our recent Substacks.
But, you know, even if themarket comes down, like you do
remember a few weeks ago the Dowwent down like 900 points.
On that day, Flower Foods wasup.
Now the stock has gone nowheresince then, but we're collecting
(08:44):
an 8% dividend.
And I'm pretty sure over thelong run they're gonna be just
fine.
If the market goes down becausepeople worry about the
excitement coming out of the AIuh boom, do you really think
that they're gonna sell offflower foods?
And if Adobe's already beat up,it's near a 52-week low, and
it's got this, it's like a moneyprinting machine, forgive me for
being such a crude example, butyou know, they really are doing
(09:05):
well by their shareholdersbecause they're compounding
their return on equity.
Uh uh they might go down if themarket crashes, but it can only
go down so much before theprice, uh before the metrics
become insane.
So yeah, that's a couple ideasright there.
SPEAKER_00 (09:18):
So talking a bit more about the AI uh boom, how
should investors be playing thisboom?
And is there a buff?
SPEAKER_02 (09:25):
Well, I would say first of all, don't play.
It's not a game.
Um I mean, if you want to play,you can go to Las Vegas and have
a nice meal and see a show andthen lose your money.
Wall Street is more efficient.
You don't get to do those thingsbefore you lose your money.
Um, I would just stay away.
I mean, uh NVIDIA is a greatcompany, tremendous margins.
A lot of these companies arelike NVIDIA is truly great.
(09:45):
Uh, but it's it's really quite,let's just say it's at least at
a minimum fairly priced.
So if you're a value investorand you're trying to find a
price-value dislocation, you'renot gonna find it in NVIDIA or
any of these companies in thatHalo.
But there's insanity.
I mean, if you listen to uh, youknow, OpenAI's founder, um, you
know, it just Sam Aldman's justcraziness coming out of his
(10:05):
mouth.
He's saying things like, I don'tcare how much money we throw at
it.
I mean, you're talking aboutthese hyperscale data centers,
which they're they're gonnahappen, but we don't really know
the long-term economiccharacteristics of AI, how it's
gonna be monetized.
And I would wager that at somepoint people will ask those hard
questions, it's it's bound tocome down, I would think.
And then over the long run, willbe probably all these things
that we think it's gonna be,which is this revolutionary
(10:26):
technology.
It already sort of is.
Uh, but right now it's in thisearly stage and it's really,
really hyped.
And you know, again, there's alot of secondary and tertiary
players that are they're sellinggarbage, frankly, but they just
have the word AI in it.
It's like bringing dot com inthe name, like in 1998, you
know?
And uh that creates a lot ofexcitement.
So when no price is too high,when no amount of money to be
(10:47):
thrown af a business is toohigh, that's you should ask
yourself the question.
I mean, if it's it's acapital-intensive business,
first of all.
It's not like Google during thedot com boom years, where you
know, yes, there was capital putinto the business, but not at
the scale of these AI companies.
And usually that's sort of anegative thing.
And it has to be done, theupfront investment.
(11:07):
But technology also changes veryquickly.
And in the news, which wasn'tthat long ago coming out of
China, that you know, they wereable to produce these uh LLMs,
large language models at apittance, a fraction of the
cost, we forget that so quicklyand easily.
So, you know, it's I don'tconfuse, I wouldn't obfuscate
the issue of is the technologygoing to be transformative?
Yes.
Do large, you know,hyper-skilled data science
(11:28):
feeling, yes.
Like all these things are true.
But like if you're an investor,the purpose of a business is to
get a return on the capital forits shareholders.
That has yet to be seen on mostof the players in the AI space,
what that's gonna be.
SPEAKER_00 (11:38):
Yeah, and what what is the relation then to precious
metals?
And you said that you had calledthe top um right near when when
gold started to drop.
But there there is a connectionbetween AI and metals, right?
In terms of um the metals beingneeded to make the data centers
run.
Um with with the metals rallyand gold you know being at
(11:58):
record levels and silver youknow, catching tons of bids, are
these still safe haven?
Uh is it still a safe havensector or is it a contrarian
value play at this point?
SPEAKER_02 (12:07):
Well, I I you know it's hard to speak for a large
group of people what they'redoing.
I can't speak for all of them.
But my impression, Melanie, isthat the the utility that comes
from gold or silver inelectronics is a very, very
small part of the amount of goldthat is in existence.
You know, if you saw a block ofgold for all the gold that's
been mined in history in theworld, it's actually not that
large, believe it or not.
It's smaller than most peoplewould think.
(12:29):
And a very, very small amount ofthat's used in electronics.
I believe what's driven thatmania, if I can call it that, is
uh a lack of trust in thegovernment and in the fiat
currencies, which is to someextent understandable that
people are very concerned aboutwhere the government's going.
It's the national debt, uh,which is out of control.
Um but even if those underlyingreasons are very meritorious, it
(12:50):
doesn't change the fact thatthere's been a sort of madness
of crowds taking place.
And you have these people, Iguess they call it stacking,
that's their vernacular.
Now, I would say it just let mespeak as a priest for a moment,
Melanie, if that's okay.
I'm gonna turn off the investorside.
I'm sorry.
There's healthy work and there'sunhealthy work spiritually.
In my opinion, the healthiestwork is physical work.
You know, if you're outsidedoing something under the blue
(13:11):
sky, building something withyour hands, that's healthy work.
Then you could move into workthat is like security analysis,
right?
Like we've been talking aboutprice value dislocations,
reading financial statements,understanding margins.
That's maybe has more riskspiritually because greed could
sink in, right?
And while it has an academiccomponent, an intellectual
component, and you couldcertainly think of it as
stewardship.
(13:32):
There's arguments to be madefrom the New Testament for being
a good steward.
I mean, Matthew, for example,parable of talents, it's very
clear.
But there's a lot of risk.
We see that people succumb tothe sort of their darker angels
in Wall Street, right?
But when you get to justhoarding precious metals, which
is what stacking is, it's aeuphemism for hoarding.
You have to ask yourself, howhealthy is that?
(13:52):
I mean, you you the people digit out of the ground, they melt
it down, then they dig anotherhole in the ground and they lock
it up there and they pay tostore it and insure it.
Why?
There's not a single example inthe New Testament where gold and
silver are advocated as holdingthem.
And, you know, you can see inthe Old Testament sort of this
idea that, you know, KingSolomon had all this gold and
silver, but it was usually usedfor sacred vessels.
(14:14):
And then when the people get ahold of gold and so, what do
they do?
They build a false idol with it.
That should tell you a lot.
And then you move into the NewTestament, and the very first
thing that we learn, Christ isborn in this manger, right?
The very first thing they bringhim is what?
Frankincense, gold, and myrrh,right?
The three wise men.
So they're giving it away to theLord.
And so while we have examples ofbeing a good steward over
(14:36):
talents and getting a return oncapital, there's no example of
hoarding precious metals in theNew Testament.
And so I guess what I'm tryingto say is there's this sort of
third like area of work thatbecomes really spiritually
unhealthy, which is you, youknow, you'd almost have to be
like a saint to do it and nothave it negatively affect your
soul.
And that is stockpiling what youthink is going to provide some
security for you.
You know, incidentally, I was ona at a funeral on Sunday.
(14:59):
I was uh conducting the funeralservices, this beautiful woman I
knew.
She was a foreign parishioner ofmine in Boston.
And I was right, I was readingthe prayers, the Orthodox
prayers of the funeral service,by the way, very, very
beautiful, the Orthodox prayers.
And right there in the prayers,it refers to you, you can't take
your gold and silver with you.
Like I have yet to see a hearsewith luggage racks.
So if you're gonna stack it,what are you gonna do with it at
(15:20):
the end?
And you don't even know how muchtime you've got.
So I just find it kind of aworthless activity.
I think it's very much aspeculative mania.
I said that on a couplepodcasts, like three or four, in
the middle of October.
I thought people are gonna comeafter me with pitchforks because
the people who do this activity,they're really, really have
convinced themselves.
They have a they have aconfirmation bias that they're
doing the right thing and thegovernment's gonna collapse.
And maybe that will happen.
I don't know.
But you know, governments docollapse and and empires end.
(15:41):
But this this activity of justowning gold, which is totally
unproductive.
It's actually a it costs youmoney to own it, is ridiculous.
And nobody can tell me theintrinsic value of gold.
Yes, there probably is somecalculation for its use on the
shops, but it's just so deminimis, Melanie.
You couldn't use it to justifyownership.
Like if you were gonna buy Adobeor Flower Foods or some of these
(16:02):
other stocks we've talked aboutin our our Substack, uh I could
tell you, based on the financialstatements, what the actual rate
of return on the capital isgonna be, what their return on
equity is, what their return oninvested capital is, what their
gross margin are, what their netmargins are, and their growth
and their shareholder uhearnings and their their owner
earnings.
How do you do that with gold?
You can't.
So math is an immutable science.
It's perfect.
But where's the math for goldand silver?
(16:23):
It's really only worth whatsomeone else is willing to pay,
which has sometimes beenreferred to as the greater fool
theory.
I don't like saying that becauseI don't want to insult anybody,
but it sort of is accurate.
SPEAKER_00 (16:31):
And do you feel the same way about all uh metals,
copper, graphite?
I mean, there's a mess.
SPEAKER_02 (16:36):
Well, some of them have more utility for sure.
Copper is a little differentbecause it's widespread use.
And you probably could do asupply-demand equation, and and
it it's a little bit differentthan gold and silver, these the
precious metals.
So copper, you know, obviouslyhas widespread utility.
SPEAKER_00 (16:50):
In terms of um portfolio allocation, is there a
role for uh metals in uh anadvisor's court or an investor's
portfolio right now?
SPEAKER_02 (16:58):
You know, you're probably subtly alluding,
Melanie, to this idea ofdiversification.
And I see this a lot whereinvestors are like, you know,
you gotta have some emergingmarkets and some bonds and some
treasuries and precious money.
I'm like, why?
Why don't you just find the bestdeal you can where you have the
biggest margin of safety, wherethere's the biggest price value
dislocation, the biggest pricingerror, and concentrate your
(17:20):
capital there.
I mean, I I I never understooddiversity for diversity's sake.
Like if I can't understand itsvalue, how can I put a price on
it?
And if I can't do that analysis,I don't know that calculus, the
price versus like price is whatyou pay and value is what you
get, right?
So like if I can't figure thatout, what's diversity for
diversity's sake?
I don't get it.
I mean, look what happened.
(17:40):
I I criticized precious metalsin mid-October.
We're on all this podcast, weput out this substack, everyone
wants to kill me, and then thinkthey all crash across the board
15%.
And everyone's like, oh,father's so dumb, he's finally
gone off the rails, you know,whatever they were saying.
I don't know what they weresaying.
But like, still, we don't know.
It's come down 15%.
Is it still a bubble?
Who knows?
It's only worth what the nextguy's willing to pay for it.
You know, the bottom line is,I'm sorry, Melanie Dangrew, but
(18:02):
like the thing is this ourcurrency clearly is based on
trust in the government.
In fact, the currency said, inGod we trust.
Obviously, I think we need toour security comes from God.
That's my position.
Needless to say, everything elseis a footnote.
But if the empire is going tocollapse, maybe it's collapsing.
Uh, I don't have a crystal ball.
But at some point as a society,we have to have trust, right?
(18:25):
I mean, the British Empire,which you you lived in the UK
for a number of years, you know,it was at one time it was in the
last hundred years, it was agreat and sprawling empire, and
then it wasn't, and now it'slike a little island that's
almost inconsequential.
And uh but the b bottom line iswe as people uh living in
society, are we gonna distrustone another so greatly that we
(18:45):
have to uh store these preciousmetals along with what, our
guns, I guess?
Uh I I don't understand.
Like, what's it gonna look like?
So the government's gonnacollapse and we're gonna be out
hunting, could be, I guess, andthen we're gonna transact in
gold and silver.
We're gonna like some of thesepeople you talk to who stack
gold, they're like, that's howthey think.
They're survivalists and stuff,and they're like this is like a
mania.
And then when you turn on everypodcast, and every podcast,
(19:07):
there's an advertisement forgold and silver to own physical
gold and silver.
That should tell you something.
That there's a lot of peoplemaking money off it.
It's it's a gold rush,literally.
But in the original gold rush,where people went out west to to
uh prospect for gold, who wasreally consistently making all
the money was the guy sellingpickaxes and shovels.
There's a lot of guys sellingpickaxes and shovels right now
in the form of advertisement onpodcasts.
(19:27):
So people are making money offit.
I don't know if the the peoplebuying it up and stacking it, I
don't know how they're gonna doit in the long run, though.
And if you look at the aggregaterates of return, forgive me for
talking so much, but if you lookat the last 50 years, the
aggregate rate of returnadjusted for inflation on on
gold is 1.8%.
During that time, the SP 500returned 8%.
Do you know the enormousdifference over 50 years that
made?
Because the SP representsproductive assets.
(19:48):
They're dynamic, they'recompanies.
So, I mean, if we were to goback to math, you'd say, okay,
Father Emmanuel's lost his mind,but let's look at the math.
Uh, history doesn't bear out anargument for owning precious
metals, certainly not for thesake of diversification.
SPEAKER_00 (20:00):
Yeah, I I and it's really interesting.
I I have it's a different umviewpoint than uh a lot of the
podcasts or interviews that Ido, but it's definitely
something to think about.
But I I just want to pivot a bitnow and uh talk a little bit
more about the advice that youhave.
Uh and that's for people whomight be thinking of getting
into finance.
How do you think someone shouldbuild a career in this business
(20:23):
today?
SPEAKER_01 (20:24):
Don't.
SPEAKER_02 (20:26):
Unless you really feel a calling.
You know, I mean, and I wouldsay that starts with a love of
accounting.
You're not really in thebusiness unless you're doing
accounting.
You know, it's a it's a what isit,$13 trillion, channel with a
$15 trillion has probably grown.
My numbers are probably out ofdate.
But the thing about thisindustry, Melanie, is that
everybody can make money,regardless if they have talent
in this area.
(20:47):
And that makes it unique.
Like great doctors, like they gointo medical medicine, they feel
a calling, they're they havetalent, they're identified.
So many people do so well inthis industry, even though they
don't have one bit of talent.
They're good salespeople,essentially.
And that doesn't end up workingout very well for the owners of
the capital.
(21:07):
So um there's so manytemptations.
I mean, unless you really aresound spiritually and grounded
and and you really feel a deepcalling to stewardship, to
account, and there are somemanagers out there, I think for
sure.
I'm not saying everyone on WallStreet's bad, they're not, just
almost everybody, um, because ofthe temptations.
Uh but otherwise, if if you'renot really grounded in a fear of
God, if you don't have a deepfaith, you know, just do
(21:29):
something else.
It's the devil's lair, WallStreet, frankly, in my opinion,
most of the time.
Not always, but most of thetime.
Uh, you know, there's a sayingin the gospel that uh the love
of money is the root of allkinds of evil.
In my mind, that's the word ofGod.
And prove me wrong.
Every time you find evil in theworld, there's a money trail.
So why do people go to WallStreet?
That's where the money's at.
That's not a great calling.
(21:50):
Like if that's why you're going,that's not a good reason.
You can make money other waysthat if you're great at what you
do and you put your heart intoit, you make money any way you
want.
That's what my father used tosay.
You know, you don't have to workin Wall Street.
Uh, but unless you really feel acalling to that and you want to,
like, in our case, most of ourwork has been about declining
against fraud, exposing fraud,uh, which we paid a huge price
(22:12):
for, teaching, you know, almostall of our work has been free.
Uh that's where most of our workis at, because I'm aware of
those temptations.
SPEAKER_00 (22:20):
So I I I think our listeners will agree with me
when I say that I want to uhknow a little bit more about how
you got involved in both uh thechurch and in finance.
And then if you could just giveus a little uh a bit of
background on that and then tolet us and the listeners know
where they can find uh your youryour thoughts, where they can
(22:42):
read your Substack and wherethey can go to connect with you.
SPEAKER_02 (22:45):
All right, wonderful, Melanie.
Uh, if I talk too much, just cutme off.
But I'll give you the reallyshort version if you have
questions or not today.
So I grew up in the Seattlearea.
Uh, well, I was there for about10 years.
I didn't really grow up there, Igrew up all over the world, but
I wound up being in Seattle forabout 10 years.
And during that time, it was avery fertile area for
businesses.
There was Boeing, Microsoft,Starbucks, Amazon, and the like
many other companies.
And I I saw wealth creation andI and I was sort of mystified by
(23:07):
it.
I didn't really understandcapital markets, but I saw
people growing very wealthy andcreating amazing uh companies
through stock ownership andstock options.
And uh I kind of left a mark onme, and I was had a uh a
peripheral interest in markets,but then my life took a
religious turn around the age of18.
I was baptizing OrthodoxChristian as a child, uh, but
didn't really grow up going tochurch.
(23:29):
Um, my mother was a uh is adeeply devout person, but my
father was not, and so we didn'treally go to church.
But around the age of 18, I metmy mentor who was a priest, and
I just felt an overwhelming callto serve the church.
Wound up studying theology fornine years, loved it, went to
the seminary, but always had towork uh for financial reasons,
uh, some of which I inherited,most of which I inherited.
Uh and then when I graduatedfrom the seminary, I didn't get
(23:50):
ordained.
I spent eight years actuallybeing a businessman.
I built some companies.
Um, I didn't really feel worthyto be a priest.
Um and uh during that time, I Iactually stumbled during the
Great Recession, I stumbledacross the work of Benjamin
Graham, the great um investmentthinker who was a mentor to
Warren Buffett.
He wrote two some of the works,uh, The Intelligent Investor and
Security Analysis.
(24:10):
And when I found those books, umI was just curious.
I'd been watching an interviewwith Warren Buffett one day or
something like that.
The world was like collapsing,that seemed to be collapsing,
banks were crashing.
And I just remember WarrenBuffett looked really calm.
And I was like, you know, it'sinteresting, you know, he
doesn't look stressed out.
He doesn't look like he'sworking too hard either.
So, I mean, how hard could it beto do what he does?
So I went to the bookstore and Ijust, by God's grace, come
across Ben Graham's book andlike right on the cover of the
(24:31):
Intelligent Investor is a quoteby Warren Buffett that says, the
greatest book on investing everwritten, something to that
effect.
So I take him home, read likefive pages and put it down.
I'm like, oh, I know everythingthis book is about.
I'm like, that is so arrogant.
Like, I mean I knew I wasn'thumble, but that was so arrogant
to think I knew everything thatDina Wall Street, Warren
Buffett's mentor, had said inlike a 500-page tome after
reading like 10 pages.
I didn't touch it again for sixmonths.
(24:53):
Eventually I went back and readthe whole thing cover to cover,
like just a couple nights.
I was blown away becauseeverything he was talking about
was already in my mind, but Ijust nobody put words to it.
Like the framework wasn't clear.
And eventually I went out toread all the essays of Warren
Buffett.
And then there's this greatessay.
I would encourage your listenersto read it.
It's called The Super Investorsof Graham in Doddsville.
It's like a 10-minute read.
You got to read it.
It's published by ColumbiaUniversity, which is Ben
(25:14):
Graham's Aleman matter.
And if you look at the resultsand you're intellectually
honest, you got to tellyourself, like, where are the
speculators on the Forbes 400?
I mean, Buffett's returned 20%through Berkshire over 50 years.
What speculators have done that?
None.
So, like, the math is there thatlike they've got a better
mousetrap.
The catch, Melanie, which Icouldn't believe, is that you
can't learn it.
(25:35):
I'm like, that cannot be right.
Buffett's like, it's like, andmaybe it was Munger said it.
Either Buffer might say, it'slike an inoculation.
Either you get it in the firstfew minutes or you never get it
at all.
So if you're in that category,that small percentage of people,
like right away, it's like aEureka moment, you're like, oh
my gosh, that makes perfectsense.
A dollar bill for 50 centsprotects principal and gets
better than average rates ofreturn, which is the antithesis
of what everyone on Wall Streetis going to tell you.
(25:56):
Like your wealth advisor or JPMorgan or wherever Credit Suisse
is gonna be like, oh, do youwant to get higher rates of
return or can you take morerisk?
Nonsense.
It's the inversion of thatthat's true.
You take less risk to get higherrates of return.
So the whole world's been soldon this lie, right?
That's the key myth, the key lieof Wall Street, because the guy
selling the products don't havethe ability to do what Munger or
Buffett do, and they didn't getit, learn it at school.
Yes, Buffett had the benefit ofbeing in a classroom with Ben
(26:17):
Graham for many years and aswarm of years.
But the fact of the matter is hewas born that way.
So is Munger.
So if you're it sounds like apopular culture song, right?
Uh born that way.
But really, you have to havethat personality type.
You can't just be like, I'mgoing to Harvard, I'm getting a
master's in business, and I'mgoing to be having all these
acronyms after my name, and thenI'll be able to do it.
It just doesn't work that way.
So you either think that way oryou don't.
Uh, and and you don't have to beLady Gaga to think that way.
(26:39):
Um, so you know, when when Irealized that, again, it was
like an epiphany, and again, notprobably not being the most
humble guy in the world.
I turn over, I look at my wife.
By the way, I'm Orthodox, we'reall married.
It's not like the Catholicpriests.
I looked at her, I said, youknow, I think I'm gonna be one
of the greatest investors of alltime.
Totally humble statement,obviously.
So she laughs, and I'm like,look, let me put some of the
essays out there.
And if I'm wrong, then I'll beouted as just another arrogant
(27:03):
guy working on Wall Streetbecause Wall Street's not where
you go to find the next motherTeresa, right?
I mean, where nobody's there tobe humble.
And I certainly thought I'm justin that camp.
So I'm like, I'll just publishmy work.
I kept publishing, publishing,publishing.
And they just turned out not tobe wrong, let's say.
And so that's how I got intoFrance.
Now I'm a couple years intothis, and the bishop calls me.
He's like, Father Emmanuel, it'sbeen eight years since you
(27:24):
finished the seminary.
Are you ever going to getordained?
Like, I mean, even Christstarted earlier than you.
I was like 33 at that point.
He's like, you're getting kindof old, you know, like what is
this?
Like I wasn't the turtle in thehair, I was like a three-toed
sloth.
So I knew at that point, uh, ifI had said no again, because I
said no after I finished theseminary, I'm like, I'll
probably never serve the church,which is really what my heart
desires.
And I told him, I said, look,I'm doing all this work now,
(27:45):
like in security analysis, I'mpublishing these articles, I'm
helping people out with theirportfolio.
I'm like, what do you think?
He's like, well, you know,you're what churches you serve?
I told him the church, I said,Well, do they pay you?
I'm like, no.
They're the poorest churchesaround.
He's like, well, just keepworking, then you got a family.
So I'm like, okay, I'm I'm gonnahold that to you.
I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonnahold you to that.
So he never bothered me again.
(28:05):
But it got a little crazy afterthat because you know, people
come along and say, well, whatwould a priest be doing working
on Walsh?
It's just terrible.
And the first reason, the firstthought that comes to mind,
right, is it's gonna be like oneof these televangelists with
their huge mega churches, youknow, living in their gigantic
mansions.
But if you read my work, youlisten to my podcast, that's not
what we're doing here.
We're trying to get people to bea little bit more intelligent
(28:26):
about what they're doing withtheir capital.
And uh, I certainly think withinthe context of ecclesiastical
circles, you know, we can't justput our hand out and tell the
prisoners, like when we pass thebasket, like put 20 bucks on
their 50 or something.
If we can't tell them they'regonna do something intelligent
with it that builds up thekingdom of God.
So whether or not Christiansshould be involved or not, you
know what, I I can't answer thatquestion.
But the fact of the matter is,everyone already is.
(28:48):
Look at all these Catholicuniversities and hospitals.
You think they don't haveinvestment committees?
And you know, what is FatherEmmanuel doing?
You think they're on priestshistorically on those
committees?
Of course they are.
But they just don't know whatthey're doing, frankly, which is
why the returns are often pooror set bar.
So really that was all I wastrying to say.
So that's sort of the long andthe short of it.
And in terms of where you canfind our work, we've got this
Substack now.
I think the handle's justLemelson, my last name.
We've got a podcast we run.
(29:08):
It's mostly religious content.
You can find it on YouTube.
It's a very visual podcast.
Again, the handle's Lemelson.
Same thing on X, Facebook, andso forth.
Um, but if we do some episodeson business, some episodes on
fraud, but mostly it's justcultural issues and religion.
But you might enjoy it anyways,even if you're not a
particularly religious person.
So uh check it out if you can.
SPEAKER_00 (29:25):
And just uh before um we say goodbye, can you just
talk a little bit about how umyou work with these high net
worth uh individuals or MarkWalt Waltberg, etc.?
SPEAKER_02 (29:34):
Uh well, you know, really, gosh, it it it's kind of
started with Donald Trump,actually.
He in in 2015, he had asked mefor a blessing, and he had never
asked a priest for a blessing.
He he came to Keene where myparish was located.
And uh there's a picture, kindof a a well known picture online
of this.
And uh that was before he'd wonany primaries.
Everyone thought he was justkind of a joke, he wasn't gonna
(29:55):
win.
And he asked me to give thistalk at one of his rallies.
And after that, a firestormstarted.
Um, the government just cameafter me.
And I spent 10 years fightingthe SEC because I had criticized
the pharmaceutical industry.
Uh, and two a company inparticular called Ligen
Pharmaceuticals, in my opinion,total fraud.
And they had birthed this othercompany called Viking
(30:16):
Therapeutics, in my opinion,also a total fraud.
And uh I declaimed against, Iput out 56 pages of reports and
hundreds of allegations offraud.
And uh the company quietly hadco-opted the SEC and certain
players in the government.
Actually, this guy, Brad Bondy,is the brother of the sitting
attorney general Pam Bondy, isthis sort of shadow operator.
He's, in my opinion, the epitomeof a deep state operator.
(30:37):
Anyways, that's another story.
You can read about it on theMuslim Capitol's history page.
I don't want to talk too muchabout it, but getting back to
Mark, um, that fight became moreand more high profile because
everybody settles with the SEC,like everybody.
But I wasn't gonna settle withthem.
I'm like, there's no way I'mgonna settle with you because
the same people I go to thehospital and minister to are the
ones you're preying on, thesepharmaceutical companies.
You know, they're completely theexact example of corruption and
(31:01):
greed and dehumanization.
It's the worst of Wall Street.
It's everything I've beendeclaiming against.
So at this point, it's like thepharmaceutical industry and the
Wall Street ganging up on me.
And, you know, it was kind of anunfair fight, you know, for them
because I was on the other side.
So despite all of that, I thinkthey blew through something like
14 million in taxpayer dollarsto try to quote unquote silence
(31:21):
me for good.
That's actually what they saidin an email they had to quote,
silence Father Man for good.
At any rate, Mark had seen aclip of me speaking.
He invited me out to Hollywoodto say, why don't you come out
uh have dinner with me?
We went out of dinner.
Really good guy, Mark.
You know, he gets a he gets someflacks sometimes for his early
life, but he's a good person,very intelligent, uh, actually
very humble, believe it or not.
And um he he just asked me tohelp out on some things he was
(31:44):
working on, and and that one upbeing part of an HBO Max uh
docuseries called Wall Street.
Uh that's W-A-H-L.
You can watch it, season one,where it sort of goes into uh
the work we do.
Now, it's a little bit editedhow we actually met.
They changed things up a littlebit, but um, in fact, I was just
with Mark on Sunday and uh he'sshooting a film in Boston.
I think for Apple, it's gonna bea tremendous uh movie, uh a
(32:06):
brilliant movie, and uh when itcomes out, everyone should
probably watch it.
But he's uh a great person andit's been a privilege to uh be
asked for help from people likeTrump or from uh from Mark and
so forth, and uh and hopefullyto make some sort of a small
positive contribution.
SPEAKER_00 (32:20):
Yeah, that's great.
Well, I hope that the visitorsare gonna spend the next five,
10, 15 minutes even um addingthemselves to all your social
media looking up the movie onthat Mark.
SPEAKER_02 (32:30):
Yeah, we'd be grateful for that, Moni.
Thank you.
SPEAKER_00 (32:33):
Yeah, well, and and thank you, Father Emmanuel.
Thank you so much for your timeand for your insight, and thanks
to everyone for watching.
Be sure to like, share, andsubscribe for more episodes of
Weeklight Live.
SPEAKER_02 (32:43):
And again, Melanie, we love your show and thank you
so much for the invitation.
I hope that people keep watchingthe show because I certainly do.
SPEAKER_00 (32:49):
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
NVIDIA is a great company, tremendous margins.
A lot of these companies arelike NVIDIA is truly great.
But it's it's really quite,let's just say it's at least at
a minimum fairly priced.
So if you're a value investorand you're trying to find a
price value dislocation, you'renot going to find it in NVIDIA
or any of these companies inthat Halo.
You know, if you saw a block ofgold for all the gold that's
been mined in history in theworld, it's actually not that
(00:20):
large, believe it or not.
It's smaller than most peoplewould think.
And a very, very small amount ofthat's used in electronics.
I believe what's driven thatmania, if I can call it that, is
uh a lack of trust in thegovernment and in the fiat
currencies.
SPEAKER_00 (00:43):
I'm your host, Melanie Shaper.
Welcome to Lead Lake Live.
Now, sentiment in the market isturning decidedly cautious.
Big tech is laying off tens ofthousands of workers this week,
sparking fresh worries aboutgrowth.
Meanwhile, gold and silver aregetting a bid, not just as
hedges, but as outright plays.
In other words, investors arebracing for the worst, even as
(01:05):
stocks struggle to rally.
My guest today is FatherEmmanuel Lemelson, known for his
work as an activist investor andhis track record calling winners
like Kohl's Big Five SportingGoods, Nike, and Lululemon.
He's also been publiclyconnected as an advisor to
actors and high net worthinvestors, including Mark
Walper.
(01:26):
Father Emmanuel, welcome to theshow.
SPEAKER_01 (01:28):
Melanie, thank you so much for having me on the
show.
I absolutely love your show, andit was a privilege to get the
invite.
SPEAKER_00 (01:34):
Thank you.
Now, I wanted to start uhtalking about its sentiment and
how it seems to be bad.
Uh the flight to gold andsilver, fueled maybe by anxiety,
is how you put it.
What exactly are you seeingright now underneath the
surface?
SPEAKER_01 (01:49):
Uh widespread fraud.
Uh, the markets seem to me to beuh just unhinged.
SPEAKER_02 (01:55):
And um, you know, it's a very lax regulatory
environment.
In some ways, it's good.
I mean, under the Trumpadministration and the new
leadership at the SEC.
Uh the SEC before this time hadgone too far in the other
direction.
Uh, you know, it's a veryideologically driven um uh, you
know, arm of the government, butnow I'm afraid we have no
oversight and it's just uh thewild west.
And so we're seeing assetbubbles form everywhere, in my
(02:17):
opinion, certainly preciousmetals recently, until they
pulled back and aggregate about15% off their highs.
Uh you know, we startedcriticizing precious metals as
an investment in mid-October, sothat timing was really very
timely.
I think it was about one or twodays before the peak for most
metals, and then they just sortof came crashing down.
Uh, but you know, uh, you know,we can't say that sentiment's
totally negative because theindexes obviously are reaching
(02:37):
new highs every day.
So um, but there's a lot offear, and I think people are
wondering when is this gonnaend?
When is the cycle gonna end?
The SB is very, very expensiveby historical standards.
SPEAKER_00 (02:45):
Yeah, and I mean you've also raised the question
can value still be found rightnow as investors prepare, you
know, maybe for the worst.
Uh in your view, which pocketsare still underpriced and and
maybe being overlooked?
SPEAKER_02 (02:57):
Well, you know, the good news with all this
volatility, Melanie, which is,you know, largely
algorithmically uh driven, it'ssomething like 75% of market
value, is that uh the mistakesare made on the downside as
well.
Like we publish a Substack, forexample, um, where you can read
some of our articles and we willtrack some of our interviews,
like interviews like yours, forexample.
We frequently will appear onother podcasts and we'll talk
(03:17):
about what we're doing, with theidea being to uh give people an
academic framework or a clearphilosophical framework to
allocate capital, uh, to be sortof good stewards, as it were.
Um, it's not really abouttrading.
Um, it's just about you knowmaking wise decisions in a
market that is often chaotic.
And so you mentioned some ofthose names.
You know, we if you were to gothrough our Subsack and read
some of our other articles onappearances we've had on David
(03:39):
Lynn uh report.
I don't know if you know hisshow.
We talk often about what we'vedone with Kohl's or Guess uh or
Nike, and and a lot of thosenames are really pretty beat up
after the tariffs wereannounced.
So you can see even in anoverall, in a market generally
rising, you know, there weresome value to be found and names
that were unpopular.
And that's really what value uhinvestors do is they look for uh
(03:59):
an area where the price they'repaying presumably is fair or
better than fair, less than theintrinsic value of the stock
market.
So those deals can still befound.
And we're still allocatingcapital to those names.
So whether or not the market ishigh or expensive, it's gonna
pull back.
Nobody really knows.
I don't have a crystal ball.
I'm sure you don't either.
Uh, but it doesn't mean youcan't find value in certain
sectors uh and be a good stewardover that capital and allocate
(04:19):
it wisely.
SPEAKER_00 (04:20):
So getting a bit more into that, uh themes,
memes, and dreams, you've usedthis phrase to contrast height
with fundamentals.
How do you distinguish between ashort-lived meme and a lasting
uh well?
SPEAKER_02 (04:32):
Yeah, you can definitely recognize a meme.
I mean, did you follow theBeyond Meat uh craziness?
What was it, uh, last week?
I went up, I think, 950%, I wantto say in three days.
Uh clearly a meme.
There was no underlying buy.
The company's, you know, itsfinancial centers are just
bleeding red everywhere.
Uh, they had a slightly improveduh marketing arrangement with
Walmart.
Obviously, good news for thecompany, but it could be
(04:52):
otherwise was uh on a trajectoryfor you know bankruptcy, it
looks like.
Um, so that's clearly a meme.
And then it came crashing downagain.
Um, but but generally, you know,I would just say, Melanie, that
so psychological or social, ifeverybody's doing it and it's
all you're reading about onCNBC, like there's a good chance
that there's a speculativefervor.
And and just keep in mind thatfor the speculator, really what
(05:14):
they're doing, right, is thatthey're saying they can see the
future.
And it's not the most humbleapproach.
If you if you're gonna say, Ican pay uh you know$3 for Beyond
Meat today because tomorrow'sgonna be worth four, you well,
you don't really know that.
It might happen.
Your chance it might be$50-50.
But the speculator alwaysbelieves, whether it's housing
or precious metals or commonequities, bonds, whatever, they
(05:35):
believe they can see the future.
That's a very different activityuh intellectually than the value
investor who says, I don'treally know the price tomorrow,
but if I can allocate thiscapital with a margin of safety,
uh where, you know, but beyondme might be worth$3 a share, but
I need to buy it for$1.50because in case I'm wrong, I'll
I'll be protected.
Now, when you're a fiduciary andyou're overseeing other people's
assets, this is so much moreimportant that you that you
(05:58):
really think is a true investorbecause you shouldn't play games
with other people's capital.
And so if you're really asteward over other people's
capital, if you're working inthe industry as a professional,
uh, I think it's reallyimportant to be forthright with
your clients about what youryour philosophical framework
actually is.
And my experience, Melanie, hasbeen that like 95% of market
participants are reallyspeculators, maybe more.
(06:18):
And it's not a choice, actually,is what I've learned.
I've learned it's it's apersonality type.
And I, you know, I didn't reallybelieve this.
Um, but you know, I wrote somelike 200 articles on security
analysis over the last 15 years,and I was trying to prove myself
wrong, but I found thatspeculators can't help
themselves.
They just want to speculate, andit it just the results are not
good over the long run.
SPEAKER_00 (06:40):
Yeah, and I want us to get into that next.
Your style is veryevidence-based, and uh your the
track record uh in terms of thethe companies that you've
flagged that we've mentioned,Coles, uh Big Five Sporting
Goods, Nike, etc.
Give us one stock that you seedoing well right now and and
also walk us through why youlike it.
SPEAKER_02 (06:59):
I'm gonna give you a stock that's doing bad right
now, Adobe.
It's down today.
It's actually the largestholding in our portfolio.
I don't normally disclose thismuch.
By the way, this is notinvestment advice, obviously.
Do your own research, but Iwould bet 50 bucks it's gonna do
better than the SP 500 over thenext year.
I mean, tremendous margins.
It's not participating in the AIbubble.
(07:19):
I think we can all agree thatthere's some real fishy business
going on in the AI names withall the, it's really what you
call round-trip transactions,where it's just, you know,
there's all this exchange ofequity and capital, but there's
no real proper exchange of goodsand services for pay.
You know, it's it's becomingquite incestuous.
And on a level, I'm not, I maynot actually have a parallel,
not in modern markets.
Uh, and so a lot of companiesare in that halo.
(07:41):
And you can look at second andthird tier players that are
being brought along for theride.
You know, the rising tide liftsall ships, as um, John F.
Kennedy once said.
But if you can find companiesthat appear to be not
participating in that, and Adobeis one of them, in my opinion,
but has this long track trackrecord of extraordinary
earnings, uh, no losses, and uhhas a legacy business that
(08:02):
people are pretty much showing awalled garden.
And they're they can easilytransition into AI like any
other company.
They're just not writing thememe and and selling their
company every day.
I think it's gonna doextraordinarily well.
And then, you know, we're buyingsome food stocks that are could
not be more boring.
I probably put most people tosleep.
Like we own a steak in flowerfoods, they make Dave's killer
bread.
(08:22):
I don't know if you know thatproduct.
I happen to love that product.
Uh, but it pays like an 8%dividend.
And then um, you know, we haveanother big food name we've been
buying up that we think is very,very attractive, pays a good,
healthy dividend.
And you we just discussed it onone of our recent Substacks.
But, you know, even if themarket comes down, like you do
remember a few weeks ago the Dowwent down like 900 points.
On that day, Flower Foods wasup.
Now the stock has gone nowheresince then, but we're collecting
(08:44):
an 8% dividend.
And I'm pretty sure over thelong run they're gonna be just
fine.
If the market goes down becausepeople worry about the
excitement coming out of the AIuh boom, do you really think
that they're gonna sell offflower foods?
And if Adobe's already beat up,it's near a 52-week low, and
it's got this, it's like a moneyprinting machine, forgive me for
being such a crude example, butyou know, they really are doing
(09:05):
well by their shareholdersbecause they're compounding
their return on equity.
Uh uh they might go down if themarket crashes, but it can only
go down so much before theprice, uh before the metrics
become insane.
So yeah, that's a couple ideasright there.
SPEAKER_00 (09:18):
So talking a bit more about the AI uh boom, how
should investors be playing thisboom?
And is there a buff?
SPEAKER_02 (09:25):
Well, I would say first of all, don't play.
It's not a game.
Um I mean, if you want to play,you can go to Las Vegas and have
a nice meal and see a show andthen lose your money.
Wall Street is more efficient.
You don't get to do those thingsbefore you lose your money.
Um, I would just stay away.
I mean, uh NVIDIA is a greatcompany, tremendous margins.
A lot of these companies arelike NVIDIA is truly great.
(09:45):
Uh, but it's it's really quite,let's just say it's at least at
a minimum fairly priced.
So if you're a value investorand you're trying to find a
price-value dislocation, you'renot gonna find it in NVIDIA or
any of these companies in thatHalo.
But there's insanity.
I mean, if you listen to uh, youknow, OpenAI's founder, um, you
know, it just Sam Aldman's justcraziness coming out of his
(10:05):
mouth.
He's saying things like, I don'tcare how much money we throw at
it.
I mean, you're talking aboutthese hyperscale data centers,
which they're they're gonnahappen, but we don't really know
the long-term economiccharacteristics of AI, how it's
gonna be monetized.
And I would wager that at somepoint people will ask those hard
questions, it's it's bound tocome down, I would think.
And then over the long run, willbe probably all these things
that we think it's gonna be,which is this revolutionary
(10:26):
technology.
It already sort of is.
Uh, but right now it's in thisearly stage and it's really,
really hyped.
And you know, again, there's alot of secondary and tertiary
players that are they're sellinggarbage, frankly, but they just
have the word AI in it.
It's like bringing dot com inthe name, like in 1998, you
know?
And uh that creates a lot ofexcitement.
So when no price is too high,when no amount of money to be
(10:47):
thrown af a business is toohigh, that's you should ask
yourself the question.
I mean, if it's it's acapital-intensive business,
first of all.
It's not like Google during thedot com boom years, where you
know, yes, there was capital putinto the business, but not at
the scale of these AI companies.
And usually that's sort of anegative thing.
And it has to be done, theupfront investment.
(11:07):
But technology also changes veryquickly.
And in the news, which wasn'tthat long ago coming out of
China, that you know, they wereable to produce these uh LLMs,
large language models at apittance, a fraction of the
cost, we forget that so quicklyand easily.
So, you know, it's I don'tconfuse, I wouldn't obfuscate
the issue of is the technologygoing to be transformative?
Yes.
Do large, you know,hyper-skilled data science
(11:28):
feeling, yes.
Like all these things are true.
But like if you're an investor,the purpose of a business is to
get a return on the capital forits shareholders.
That has yet to be seen on mostof the players in the AI space,
what that's gonna be.
SPEAKER_00 (11:38):
Yeah, and what what is the relation then to precious
metals?
And you said that you had calledthe top um right near when when
gold started to drop.
But there there is a connectionbetween AI and metals, right?
In terms of um the metals beingneeded to make the data centers
run.
Um with with the metals rallyand gold you know being at
(11:58):
record levels and silver youknow, catching tons of bids, are
these still safe haven?
Uh is it still a safe havensector or is it a contrarian
value play at this point?
SPEAKER_02 (12:07):
Well, I I you know it's hard to speak for a large
group of people what they'redoing.
I can't speak for all of them.
But my impression, Melanie, isthat the the utility that comes
from gold or silver inelectronics is a very, very
small part of the amount of goldthat is in existence.
You know, if you saw a block ofgold for all the gold that's
been mined in history in theworld, it's actually not that
large, believe it or not.
It's smaller than most peoplewould think.
(12:29):
And a very, very small amount ofthat's used in electronics.
I believe what's driven thatmania, if I can call it that, is
uh a lack of trust in thegovernment and in the fiat
currencies, which is to someextent understandable that
people are very concerned aboutwhere the government's going.
It's the national debt, uh,which is out of control.
Um but even if those underlyingreasons are very meritorious, it
(12:50):
doesn't change the fact thatthere's been a sort of madness
of crowds taking place.
And you have these people, Iguess they call it stacking,
that's their vernacular.
Now, I would say it just let mespeak as a priest for a moment,
Melanie, if that's okay.
I'm gonna turn off the investorside.
I'm sorry.
There's healthy work and there'sunhealthy work spiritually.
In my opinion, the healthiestwork is physical work.
You know, if you're outsidedoing something under the blue
(13:11):
sky, building something withyour hands, that's healthy work.
Then you could move into workthat is like security analysis,
right?
Like we've been talking aboutprice value dislocations,
reading financial statements,understanding margins.
That's maybe has more riskspiritually because greed could
sink in, right?
And while it has an academiccomponent, an intellectual
component, and you couldcertainly think of it as
stewardship.
(13:32):
There's arguments to be madefrom the New Testament for being
a good steward.
I mean, Matthew, for example,parable of talents, it's very
clear.
But there's a lot of risk.
We see that people succumb tothe sort of their darker angels
in Wall Street, right?
But when you get to justhoarding precious metals, which
is what stacking is, it's aeuphemism for hoarding.
You have to ask yourself, howhealthy is that?
(13:52):
I mean, you you the people digit out of the ground, they melt
it down, then they dig anotherhole in the ground and they lock
it up there and they pay tostore it and insure it.
Why?
There's not a single example inthe New Testament where gold and
silver are advocated as holdingthem.
And, you know, you can see inthe Old Testament sort of this
idea that, you know, KingSolomon had all this gold and
silver, but it was usually usedfor sacred vessels.
(14:14):
And then when the people get ahold of gold and so, what do
they do?
They build a false idol with it.
That should tell you a lot.
And then you move into the NewTestament, and the very first
thing that we learn, Christ isborn in this manger, right?
The very first thing they bringhim is what?
Frankincense, gold, and myrrh,right?
The three wise men.
So they're giving it away to theLord.
And so while we have examples ofbeing a good steward over
(14:36):
talents and getting a return oncapital, there's no example of
hoarding precious metals in theNew Testament.
And so I guess what I'm tryingto say is there's this sort of
third like area of work thatbecomes really spiritually
unhealthy, which is you, youknow, you'd almost have to be
like a saint to do it and nothave it negatively affect your
soul.
And that is stockpiling what youthink is going to provide some
security for you.
You know, incidentally, I was ona at a funeral on Sunday.
(14:59):
I was uh conducting the funeralservices, this beautiful woman I
knew.
She was a foreign parishioner ofmine in Boston.
And I was right, I was readingthe prayers, the Orthodox
prayers of the funeral service,by the way, very, very
beautiful, the Orthodox prayers.
And right there in the prayers,it refers to you, you can't take
your gold and silver with you.
Like I have yet to see a hearsewith luggage racks.
So if you're gonna stack it,what are you gonna do with it at
(15:20):
the end?
And you don't even know how muchtime you've got.
So I just find it kind of aworthless activity.
I think it's very much aspeculative mania.
I said that on a couplepodcasts, like three or four, in
the middle of October.
I thought people are gonna comeafter me with pitchforks because
the people who do this activity,they're really, really have
convinced themselves.
They have a they have aconfirmation bias that they're
doing the right thing and thegovernment's gonna collapse.
And maybe that will happen.
I don't know.
But you know, governments docollapse and and empires end.
(15:41):
But this this activity of justowning gold, which is totally
unproductive.
It's actually a it costs youmoney to own it, is ridiculous.
And nobody can tell me theintrinsic value of gold.
Yes, there probably is somecalculation for its use on the
shops, but it's just so deminimis, Melanie.
You couldn't use it to justifyownership.
Like if you were gonna buy Adobeor Flower Foods or some of these
(16:02):
other stocks we've talked aboutin our our Substack, uh I could
tell you, based on the financialstatements, what the actual rate
of return on the capital isgonna be, what their return on
equity is, what their return oninvested capital is, what their
gross margin are, what their netmargins are, and their growth
and their shareholder uhearnings and their their owner
earnings.
How do you do that with gold?
You can't.
So math is an immutable science.
It's perfect.
But where's the math for goldand silver?
(16:23):
It's really only worth whatsomeone else is willing to pay,
which has sometimes beenreferred to as the greater fool
theory.
I don't like saying that becauseI don't want to insult anybody,
but it sort of is accurate.
SPEAKER_00 (16:31):
And do you feel the same way about all uh metals,
copper, graphite?
I mean, there's a mess.
SPEAKER_02 (16:36):
Well, some of them have more utility for sure.
Copper is a little differentbecause it's widespread use.
And you probably could do asupply-demand equation, and and
it it's a little bit differentthan gold and silver, these the
precious metals.
So copper, you know, obviouslyhas widespread utility.
SPEAKER_00 (16:50):
In terms of um portfolio allocation, is there a
role for uh metals in uh anadvisor's court or an investor's
portfolio right now?
SPEAKER_02 (16:58):
You know, you're probably subtly alluding,
Melanie, to this idea ofdiversification.
And I see this a lot whereinvestors are like, you know,
you gotta have some emergingmarkets and some bonds and some
treasuries and precious money.
I'm like, why?
Why don't you just find the bestdeal you can where you have the
biggest margin of safety, wherethere's the biggest price value
dislocation, the biggest pricingerror, and concentrate your
(17:20):
capital there.
I mean, I I I never understooddiversity for diversity's sake.
Like if I can't understand itsvalue, how can I put a price on
it?
And if I can't do that analysis,I don't know that calculus, the
price versus like price is whatyou pay and value is what you
get, right?
So like if I can't figure thatout, what's diversity for
diversity's sake?
I don't get it.
I mean, look what happened.
(17:40):
I I criticized precious metalsin mid-October.
We're on all this podcast, weput out this substack, everyone
wants to kill me, and then thinkthey all crash across the board
15%.
And everyone's like, oh,father's so dumb, he's finally
gone off the rails, you know,whatever they were saying.
I don't know what they weresaying.
But like, still, we don't know.
It's come down 15%.
Is it still a bubble?
Who knows?
It's only worth what the nextguy's willing to pay for it.
You know, the bottom line is,I'm sorry, Melanie Dangrew, but
(18:02):
like the thing is this ourcurrency clearly is based on
trust in the government.
In fact, the currency said, inGod we trust.
Obviously, I think we need toour security comes from God.
That's my position.
Needless to say, everything elseis a footnote.
But if the empire is going tocollapse, maybe it's collapsing.
Uh, I don't have a crystal ball.
But at some point as a society,we have to have trust, right?
(18:25):
I mean, the British Empire,which you you lived in the UK
for a number of years, you know,it was at one time it was in the
last hundred years, it was agreat and sprawling empire, and
then it wasn't, and now it'slike a little island that's
almost inconsequential.
And uh but the b bottom line iswe as people uh living in
society, are we gonna distrustone another so greatly that we
(18:45):
have to uh store these preciousmetals along with what, our
guns, I guess?
Uh I I don't understand.
Like, what's it gonna look like?
So the government's gonnacollapse and we're gonna be out
hunting, could be, I guess, andthen we're gonna transact in
gold and silver.
We're gonna like some of thesepeople you talk to who stack
gold, they're like, that's howthey think.
They're survivalists and stuff,and they're like this is like a
mania.
And then when you turn on everypodcast, and every podcast,
(19:07):
there's an advertisement forgold and silver to own physical
gold and silver.
That should tell you something.
That there's a lot of peoplemaking money off it.
It's it's a gold rush,literally.
But in the original gold rush,where people went out west to to
uh prospect for gold, who wasreally consistently making all
the money was the guy sellingpickaxes and shovels.
There's a lot of guys sellingpickaxes and shovels right now
in the form of advertisement onpodcasts.
(19:27):
So people are making money offit.
I don't know if the the peoplebuying it up and stacking it, I
don't know how they're gonna doit in the long run, though.
And if you look at the aggregaterates of return, forgive me for
talking so much, but if you lookat the last 50 years, the
aggregate rate of returnadjusted for inflation on on
gold is 1.8%.
During that time, the SP 500returned 8%.
Do you know the enormousdifference over 50 years that
made?
Because the SP representsproductive assets.
(19:48):
They're dynamic, they'recompanies.
So, I mean, if we were to goback to math, you'd say, okay,
Father Emmanuel's lost his mind,but let's look at the math.
Uh, history doesn't bear out anargument for owning precious
metals, certainly not for thesake of diversification.
SPEAKER_00 (20:00):
Yeah, I I and it's really interesting.
I I have it's a different umviewpoint than uh a lot of the
podcasts or interviews that Ido, but it's definitely
something to think about.
But I I just want to pivot a bitnow and uh talk a little bit
more about the advice that youhave.
Uh and that's for people whomight be thinking of getting
into finance.
How do you think someone shouldbuild a career in this business
(20:23):
today?
SPEAKER_01 (20:24):
Don't.
SPEAKER_02 (20:26):
Unless you really feel a calling.
You know, I mean, and I wouldsay that starts with a love of
accounting.
You're not really in thebusiness unless you're doing
accounting.
You know, it's a it's a what isit,$13 trillion, channel with a
$15 trillion has probably grown.
My numbers are probably out ofdate.
But the thing about thisindustry, Melanie, is that
everybody can make money,regardless if they have talent
in this area.
(20:47):
And that makes it unique.
Like great doctors, like they gointo medical medicine, they feel
a calling, they're they havetalent, they're identified.
So many people do so well inthis industry, even though they
don't have one bit of talent.
They're good salespeople,essentially.
And that doesn't end up workingout very well for the owners of
the capital.
(21:07):
So um there's so manytemptations.
I mean, unless you really aresound spiritually and grounded
and and you really feel a deepcalling to stewardship, to
account, and there are somemanagers out there, I think for
sure.
I'm not saying everyone on WallStreet's bad, they're not, just
almost everybody, um, because ofthe temptations.
Uh but otherwise, if if you'renot really grounded in a fear of
God, if you don't have a deepfaith, you know, just do
(21:29):
something else.
It's the devil's lair, WallStreet, frankly, in my opinion,
most of the time.
Not always, but most of thetime.
Uh, you know, there's a sayingin the gospel that uh the love
of money is the root of allkinds of evil.
In my mind, that's the word ofGod.
And prove me wrong.
Every time you find evil in theworld, there's a money trail.
So why do people go to WallStreet?
That's where the money's at.
That's not a great calling.
(21:50):
Like if that's why you're going,that's not a good reason.
You can make money other waysthat if you're great at what you
do and you put your heart intoit, you make money any way you
want.
That's what my father used tosay.
You know, you don't have to workin Wall Street.
Uh, but unless you really feel acalling to that and you want to,
like, in our case, most of ourwork has been about declining
against fraud, exposing fraud,uh, which we paid a huge price
(22:12):
for, teaching, you know, almostall of our work has been free.
Uh that's where most of our workis at, because I'm aware of
those temptations.
SPEAKER_00 (22:20):
So I I I think our listeners will agree with me
when I say that I want to uhknow a little bit more about how
you got involved in both uh thechurch and in finance.
And then if you could just giveus a little uh a bit of
background on that and then tolet us and the listeners know
where they can find uh your youryour thoughts, where they can
(22:42):
read your Substack and wherethey can go to connect with you.
SPEAKER_02 (22:45):
All right, wonderful, Melanie.
Uh, if I talk too much, just cutme off.
But I'll give you the reallyshort version if you have
questions or not today.
So I grew up in the Seattlearea.
Uh, well, I was there for about10 years.
I didn't really grow up there, Igrew up all over the world, but
I wound up being in Seattle forabout 10 years.
And during that time, it was avery fertile area for
businesses.
There was Boeing, Microsoft,Starbucks, Amazon, and the like
many other companies.
And I I saw wealth creation andI and I was sort of mystified by
(23:07):
it.
I didn't really understandcapital markets, but I saw
people growing very wealthy andcreating amazing uh companies
through stock ownership andstock options.
And uh I kind of left a mark onme, and I was had a uh a
peripheral interest in markets,but then my life took a
religious turn around the age of18.
I was baptizing OrthodoxChristian as a child, uh, but
didn't really grow up going tochurch.
(23:29):
Um, my mother was a uh is adeeply devout person, but my
father was not, and so we didn'treally go to church.
But around the age of 18, I metmy mentor who was a priest, and
I just felt an overwhelming callto serve the church.
Wound up studying theology fornine years, loved it, went to
the seminary, but always had towork uh for financial reasons,
uh, some of which I inherited,most of which I inherited.
Uh and then when I graduatedfrom the seminary, I didn't get
(23:50):
ordained.
I spent eight years actuallybeing a businessman.
I built some companies.
Um, I didn't really feel worthyto be a priest.
Um and uh during that time, I Iactually stumbled during the
Great Recession, I stumbledacross the work of Benjamin
Graham, the great um investmentthinker who was a mentor to
Warren Buffett.
He wrote two some of the works,uh, The Intelligent Investor and
Security Analysis.
(24:10):
And when I found those books, umI was just curious.
I'd been watching an interviewwith Warren Buffett one day or
something like that.
The world was like collapsing,that seemed to be collapsing,
banks were crashing.
And I just remember WarrenBuffett looked really calm.
And I was like, you know, it'sinteresting, you know, he
doesn't look stressed out.
He doesn't look like he'sworking too hard either.
So, I mean, how hard could it beto do what he does?
So I went to the bookstore and Ijust, by God's grace, come
across Ben Graham's book andlike right on the cover of the
(24:31):
Intelligent Investor is a quoteby Warren Buffett that says, the
greatest book on investing everwritten, something to that
effect.
So I take him home, read likefive pages and put it down.
I'm like, oh, I know everythingthis book is about.
I'm like, that is so arrogant.
Like, I mean I knew I wasn'thumble, but that was so arrogant
to think I knew everything thatDina Wall Street, Warren
Buffett's mentor, had said inlike a 500-page tome after
reading like 10 pages.
I didn't touch it again for sixmonths.
(24:53):
Eventually I went back and readthe whole thing cover to cover,
like just a couple nights.
I was blown away becauseeverything he was talking about
was already in my mind, but Ijust nobody put words to it.
Like the framework wasn't clear.
And eventually I went out toread all the essays of Warren
Buffett.
And then there's this greatessay.
I would encourage your listenersto read it.
It's called The Super Investorsof Graham in Doddsville.
It's like a 10-minute read.
You got to read it.
It's published by ColumbiaUniversity, which is Ben
(25:14):
Graham's Aleman matter.
And if you look at the resultsand you're intellectually
honest, you got to tellyourself, like, where are the
speculators on the Forbes 400?
I mean, Buffett's returned 20%through Berkshire over 50 years.
What speculators have done that?
None.
So, like, the math is there thatlike they've got a better
mousetrap.
The catch, Melanie, which Icouldn't believe, is that you
can't learn it.
(25:35):
I'm like, that cannot be right.
Buffett's like, it's like, andmaybe it was Munger said it.
Either Buffer might say, it'slike an inoculation.
Either you get it in the firstfew minutes or you never get it
at all.
So if you're in that category,that small percentage of people,
like right away, it's like aEureka moment, you're like, oh
my gosh, that makes perfectsense.
A dollar bill for 50 centsprotects principal and gets
better than average rates ofreturn, which is the antithesis
of what everyone on Wall Streetis going to tell you.
(25:56):
Like your wealth advisor or JPMorgan or wherever Credit Suisse
is gonna be like, oh, do youwant to get higher rates of
return or can you take morerisk?
Nonsense.
It's the inversion of thatthat's true.
You take less risk to get higherrates of return.
So the whole world's been soldon this lie, right?
That's the key myth, the key lieof Wall Street, because the guy
selling the products don't havethe ability to do what Munger or
Buffett do, and they didn't getit, learn it at school.
Yes, Buffett had the benefit ofbeing in a classroom with Ben
(26:17):
Graham for many years and aswarm of years.
But the fact of the matter is hewas born that way.
So is Munger.
So if you're it sounds like apopular culture song, right?
Uh born that way.
But really, you have to havethat personality type.
You can't just be like, I'mgoing to Harvard, I'm getting a
master's in business, and I'mgoing to be having all these
acronyms after my name, and thenI'll be able to do it.
It just doesn't work that way.
So you either think that way oryou don't.
Uh, and and you don't have to beLady Gaga to think that way.
(26:39):
Um, so you know, when when Irealized that, again, it was
like an epiphany, and again, notprobably not being the most
humble guy in the world.
I turn over, I look at my wife.
By the way, I'm Orthodox, we'reall married.
It's not like the Catholicpriests.
I looked at her, I said, youknow, I think I'm gonna be one
of the greatest investors of alltime.
Totally humble statement,obviously.
So she laughs, and I'm like,look, let me put some of the
essays out there.
And if I'm wrong, then I'll beouted as just another arrogant
(27:03):
guy working on Wall Streetbecause Wall Street's not where
you go to find the next motherTeresa, right?
I mean, where nobody's there tobe humble.
And I certainly thought I'm justin that camp.
So I'm like, I'll just publishmy work.
I kept publishing, publishing,publishing.
And they just turned out not tobe wrong, let's say.
And so that's how I got intoFrance.
Now I'm a couple years intothis, and the bishop calls me.
He's like, Father Emmanuel, it'sbeen eight years since you
(27:24):
finished the seminary.
Are you ever going to getordained?
Like, I mean, even Christstarted earlier than you.
I was like 33 at that point.
He's like, you're getting kindof old, you know, like what is
this?
Like I wasn't the turtle in thehair, I was like a three-toed
sloth.
So I knew at that point, uh, ifI had said no again, because I
said no after I finished theseminary, I'm like, I'll
probably never serve the church,which is really what my heart
desires.
And I told him, I said, look,I'm doing all this work now,
(27:45):
like in security analysis, I'mpublishing these articles, I'm
helping people out with theirportfolio.
I'm like, what do you think?
He's like, well, you know,you're what churches you serve?
I told him the church, I said,Well, do they pay you?
I'm like, no.
They're the poorest churchesaround.
He's like, well, just keepworking, then you got a family.
So I'm like, okay, I'm I'm gonnahold that to you.
I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonnahold you to that.
So he never bothered me again.
(28:05):
But it got a little crazy afterthat because you know, people
come along and say, well, whatwould a priest be doing working
on Walsh?
It's just terrible.
And the first reason, the firstthought that comes to mind,
right, is it's gonna be like oneof these televangelists with
their huge mega churches, youknow, living in their gigantic
mansions.
But if you read my work, youlisten to my podcast, that's not
what we're doing here.
We're trying to get people to bea little bit more intelligent
(28:26):
about what they're doing withtheir capital.
And uh, I certainly think withinthe context of ecclesiastical
circles, you know, we can't justput our hand out and tell the
prisoners, like when we pass thebasket, like put 20 bucks on
their 50 or something.
If we can't tell them they'regonna do something intelligent
with it that builds up thekingdom of God.
So whether or not Christiansshould be involved or not, you
know what, I I can't answer thatquestion.
But the fact of the matter is,everyone already is.
(28:48):
Look at all these Catholicuniversities and hospitals.
You think they don't haveinvestment committees?
And you know, what is FatherEmmanuel doing?
You think they're on priestshistorically on those
committees?
Of course they are.
But they just don't know whatthey're doing, frankly, which is
why the returns are often pooror set bar.
So really that was all I wastrying to say.
So that's sort of the long andthe short of it.
And in terms of where you canfind our work, we've got this
Substack now.
I think the handle's justLemelson, my last name.
We've got a podcast we run.
(29:08):
It's mostly religious content.
You can find it on YouTube.
It's a very visual podcast.
Again, the handle's Lemelson.
Same thing on X, Facebook, andso forth.
Um, but if we do some episodeson business, some episodes on
fraud, but mostly it's justcultural issues and religion.
But you might enjoy it anyways,even if you're not a
particularly religious person.
So uh check it out if you can.
SPEAKER_00 (29:25):
And just uh before um we say goodbye, can you just
talk a little bit about how umyou work with these high net
worth uh individuals or MarkWalt Waltberg, etc.?
SPEAKER_02 (29:34):
Uh well, you know, really, gosh, it it it's kind of
started with Donald Trump,actually.
He in in 2015, he had asked mefor a blessing, and he had never
asked a priest for a blessing.
He he came to Keene where myparish was located.
And uh there's a picture, kindof a a well known picture online
of this.
And uh that was before he'd wonany primaries.
Everyone thought he was justkind of a joke, he wasn't gonna
(29:55):
win.
And he asked me to give thistalk at one of his rallies.
And after that, a firestormstarted.
Um, the government just cameafter me.
And I spent 10 years fightingthe SEC because I had criticized
the pharmaceutical industry.
Uh, and two a company inparticular called Ligen
Pharmaceuticals, in my opinion,total fraud.
And they had birthed this othercompany called Viking
(30:16):
Therapeutics, in my opinion,also a total fraud.
And uh I declaimed against, Iput out 56 pages of reports and
hundreds of allegations offraud.
And uh the company quietly hadco-opted the SEC and certain
players in the government.
Actually, this guy, Brad Bondy,is the brother of the sitting
attorney general Pam Bondy, isthis sort of shadow operator.
He's, in my opinion, the epitomeof a deep state operator.
(30:37):
Anyways, that's another story.
You can read about it on theMuslim Capitol's history page.
I don't want to talk too muchabout it, but getting back to
Mark, um, that fight became moreand more high profile because
everybody settles with the SEC,like everybody.
But I wasn't gonna settle withthem.
I'm like, there's no way I'mgonna settle with you because
the same people I go to thehospital and minister to are the
ones you're preying on, thesepharmaceutical companies.
You know, they're completely theexact example of corruption and
(31:01):
greed and dehumanization.
It's the worst of Wall Street.
It's everything I've beendeclaiming against.
So at this point, it's like thepharmaceutical industry and the
Wall Street ganging up on me.
And, you know, it was kind of anunfair fight, you know, for them
because I was on the other side.
So despite all of that, I thinkthey blew through something like
14 million in taxpayer dollarsto try to quote unquote silence
(31:21):
me for good.
That's actually what they saidin an email they had to quote,
silence Father Man for good.
At any rate, Mark had seen aclip of me speaking.
He invited me out to Hollywoodto say, why don't you come out
uh have dinner with me?
We went out of dinner.
Really good guy, Mark.
You know, he gets a he gets someflacks sometimes for his early
life, but he's a good person,very intelligent, uh, actually
very humble, believe it or not.
And um he he just asked me tohelp out on some things he was
(31:44):
working on, and and that one upbeing part of an HBO Max uh
docuseries called Wall Street.
Uh that's W-A-H-L.
You can watch it, season one,where it sort of goes into uh
the work we do.
Now, it's a little bit editedhow we actually met.
They changed things up a littlebit, but um, in fact, I was just
with Mark on Sunday and uh he'sshooting a film in Boston.
I think for Apple, it's gonna bea tremendous uh movie, uh a
(32:06):
brilliant movie, and uh when itcomes out, everyone should
probably watch it.
But he's uh a great person andit's been a privilege to uh be
asked for help from people likeTrump or from uh from Mark and
so forth, and uh and hopefullyto make some sort of a small
positive contribution.
SPEAKER_00 (32:20):
Yeah, that's great.
Well, I hope that the visitorsare gonna spend the next five,
10, 15 minutes even um addingthemselves to all your social
media looking up the movie onthat Mark.
SPEAKER_02 (32:30):
Yeah, we'd be grateful for that, Moni.
Thank you.
SPEAKER_00 (32:33):
Yeah, well, and and thank you, Father Emmanuel.
Thank you so much for your timeand for your insight, and thanks
to everyone for watching.
Be sure to like, share, andsubscribe for more episodes of
Weeklight Live.
SPEAKER_02 (32:43):
And again, Melanie, we love your show and thank you
so much for the invitation.
I hope that people keep watchingthe show because I certainly do.
SPEAKER_00 (32:49):
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Ruthie's Table 4
For more than 30 years The River Cafe in London, has been the home-from-home of artists, architects, designers, actors, collectors, writers, activists, and politicians. Michael Caine, Glenn Close, JJ Abrams, Steve McQueen, Victoria and David Beckham, and Lily Allen, are just some of the people who love to call The River Cafe home. On River Cafe Table 4, Rogers sits down with her customers—who have become friends—to talk about food memories. Table 4 explores how food impacts every aspect of our lives. “Foods is politics, food is cultural, food is how you express love, food is about your heritage, it defines who you and who you want to be,” says Rogers. Each week, Rogers invites her guest to reminisce about family suppers and first dates, what they cook, how they eat when performing, the restaurants they choose, and what food they seek when they need comfort. And to punctuate each episode of Table 4, guests such as Ralph Fiennes, Emily Blunt, and Alfonso Cuarón, read their favourite recipe from one of the best-selling River Cafe cookbooks. Table 4 itself, is situated near The River Cafe’s open kitchen, close to the bright pink wood-fired oven and next to the glossy yellow pass, where Ruthie oversees the restaurant. You are invited to take a seat at this intimate table and join the conversation. For more information, recipes, and ingredients, go to https://shoptherivercafe.co.uk/ Web: https://rivercafe.co.uk/ Instagram: www.instagram.com/therivercafelondon/ Facebook: https://en-gb.facebook.com/therivercafelondon/ For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iheartradio app, apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com