January 16, 2025 • 10 mins
Chris takes on Wall Street's long history of deception in his critique of "Demonic Musical Chairs" — a cycle where private equity firms and big banks create overpriced financial products, ladder them up, and leave unsuspecting investors holding the bag. Markowski shares examples, including dot-com-era schemes and private equity's impact on industries like healthcare. www.watchdogonwallstreet.com
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Watchdog on Wall Street podcast explaining the news coming
out of the complex worlds of finance, economics, and politics
and the impact it we'll have on everyday Americans. Author,
investment banker, consumer advocate, analyst, and trader Chris Markowski.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Welcome one, Welcome all kids. It's now time for.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
A game of.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Demonic musical chairs, brought to you by Wall Street. Yes,
Wall Street, the people who brought you the dot com
collapse and Ron out of financial crisis. And I can
go on and on and on demonic musical chairs on
this something that for years I've been trying to get
(00:48):
across to the general public to help people avoid inevitably
what's going to happen to them. There was a there
was a writer. There was a writer for NBC back
in the nineteen nineties. His name was Christopher Byron, and
(01:10):
he liked to call people he was he did he
was a good columnist. He liked to call people who
bought into the crap that Wall Street was selling greater
fools in essence, talking about who is going to be
the greater fool. Much of what Wall Street does and
(01:31):
has been doing for some time, is creating financial products,
laddering them up as high as they can possibly go into.
You know, who's left holding the bag or like demonic
musical chairs. Think of it that way, the last person standing.
(01:53):
We've tried to help people out when it comes to
avoiding the crap that will Street is selling and again
it oftentimes yeah, I get some wins here and there,
but more often than not, it's all for naught. People
will buy into it. People will buy Oh my god,
these are all disruptor companies during COVID or oh my god,
(02:16):
it's got a dot comment tat to it. Oh gee whiz,
you know, three or four pre construction condos, whatever it
may be, whatever it may be. Okay, again, people fall victims.
It's it's greed. We've explained here on the program. It's
just two things. There's there's two things that set the trap.
(02:38):
Investment con artists, the world's second oldest profession. Greed and fear.
Greed and fear. And you know, all these people need
to do is to get you to believe, sell you
champagne wishes and caviar dreams. For some people, other people
it's it may be greed the sense that they want to,
(03:00):
you know, have money to pay for their grandkids, college education,
whatever it is. They'll figure out what your green buttons
are and they will push it on you. There is
not a day that goes by, not a day that
goes by now where I am not invited out to dinner,
(03:22):
out golfing again, I get my social calendar would look
something like the damn Kardashians for crying out loud if
I really wanted it. Why well, Wall Street wants my clients.
They want my clients that well, they want to want
(03:45):
the Markowskis to buy their bs and have my clients
play the perverse game of demonic musical chairs. What has
been taking place for some time now is Wall Street
has eh They've been working with private equity companies, forming
(04:06):
some funding, others, whatever it may be. And these private
equity companies go out and they have to build a
portfolio of businesses. Seems that seems reasonable? Sure, Sure, if
the businesses are priced properly. Many of these private equity
(04:29):
most all are buying companies at absolutely ridiculous, ridiculous valuations.
Why well, they need to have stuff. They need to
put together a brochure. They need to eventually with that
cast that was given to them by the big brokerage firms.
(04:51):
They got to come up with a portfolio of companies.
Portfolio of companies. They got their private equity company, and
now they're going to have Wall Street go out and
sell it at an even higher level to the dupes.
That's you, the greater fools. Goldman Sachs called you muppets.
(05:11):
There was lots of nasty names that were discovered in
emails at these various different brokerage firms for these suckers
that buy the crap that these people put together. It
was a story this past week in the Wall Street
Journal talking about how Goldman Sachs is putting together another group,
the Capital Solutions Group. Yeah, put another investment banking again.
(05:35):
This is a kind of like a puff piece that
they wrote. In essence, they are going to put together
more garbage product to try to sell off. They'll try
to sell it to pension funds, They'll try to sell
it to the general public. They're doing everything and anything
that they can to lower the standards where you can
qualify to buy into these products, to make more people available.
(05:58):
I want to jog everybody's memory go back in time
to Morgan Stanley. This was during the dot com run up,
Morgan Stanley buys Dean Witter. You remember that. Yeah, we
covered it here way back in the day. Yeah, uh,
I was it even the ninety nine was Yeah, I
(06:20):
think it was late nineteen nineties. I can't remember the
exact year, but anyway, Morgan Stanley goes out and buys
Dean Winter. What was Dean Winter. Dean Winter had brokerage
for they had offices inside Sears Roebucks. What the hell
Morgan Stanley White Shoe Firm. Uh you know, this is
(06:41):
the country club circuit on Long Island. Uh Manhassett, Hampton's
that whole crowd. Okay, yeah, what do they want to
do with Dean Winter? Well, they needed greater fools. Morgan
Stanley was late to the game and the whole dot
Com run up time. There was the who's the lead
there with Mary Meeker joined the CEO at the time,
(07:04):
John mackwist, but she was in charge of equities there
and they were late in the game when it comes
to dot COM's. Once they got in, they realized, oh crap,
we got to get our big clients out, so they
buy Dean Winter. The actual stock symbol changes ms DW.
That was the symbol MSDW. Yeah, there's no more DW.
(07:26):
They proceeded to offload got all their big clients out
of all of the garbage dot com companies and give
them to the DW clients that are no longer. They
eventually said, hey, you DW clients, you're just not big
enough for Morgan Stanley. See you go take your business elsewhere.
(07:48):
So who they are, that's who they are. If that's
who you want to do business with. Okay, okay, I'm
just warning everybody we've been approached. We've been approached by
(08:10):
private equity. I'm not going to give the dollar amount
here that you know we could sell Markowski Investments and
everything for. But it's ridiculous. It's ridiculous, and there's no
way I would ever do anything like that to my
(08:31):
clients because again, I, you know, produciary, I have to
take care of my clients. I it's a private equity company,
buy at Markowski Investments and churn and burn and destroy everybody.
But it's happening. It's happening everywhere, happening everywhere. Smaller again,
private equity. Eventually they'll ruin everything. But what do you
(08:54):
think they're doing with healthcare? Right now. They've they've been
in business, erect and things for a very long time. Again,
you know, this's I wrote a piece this is again
this some twenty something years ago, and I was using
(09:14):
Dante as a part of it. At the time, I
was writing about affinity fraud and how you know, various
different people, you know, getting people to buy into stuff.
Since I'm like you and believe like you, you can
believe in me and what I say. Well, at that time,
I was talking about the divine comedy and Dante in
(09:35):
the eighth Circle of Hell and the Eighth Ditch, fraudulent
advisors were sent there to be trapped in flames. The
ninth circle of Hell was traders, and they were distinguished
from the merely fraudulent, and that their deeds involved knowingly
and deliberately betraying others. Now, these traders, according to Dante,
(10:01):
are frozen in a lake of ice that has kept
frozen by Satan flappening his wings while he sits chewing
on sinners. That's you know, the people that do this.
In my opinion, it's ethical bypass sole legal. It's there's
nothing illegal about it. But I'm going to be visiting
(10:25):
a couple of these levels. If you ask me, I'm
just saying watchdog on Wall Street dot Com
The Watchdog on Wall Street podcast explaining the news coming
out of the complex worlds of finance, economics, and politics
and the impact it we'll have on everyday Americans. Author,
investment banker, consumer advocate, analyst, and trader Chris Markowski.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Welcome one, Welcome all kids. It's now time for.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
A game of.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Demonic musical chairs, brought to you by Wall Street. Yes,
Wall Street, the people who brought you the dot com
collapse and Ron out of financial crisis. And I can
go on and on and on demonic musical chairs on
this something that for years I've been trying to get
(00:48):
across to the general public to help people avoid inevitably
what's going to happen to them. There was a there
was a writer. There was a writer for NBC back
in the nineteen nineties. His name was Christopher Byron, and
(01:10):
he liked to call people he was he did he
was a good columnist. He liked to call people who
bought into the crap that Wall Street was selling greater
fools in essence, talking about who is going to be
the greater fool. Much of what Wall Street does and
(01:31):
has been doing for some time, is creating financial products,
laddering them up as high as they can possibly go into.
You know, who's left holding the bag or like demonic
musical chairs. Think of it that way, the last person standing.
(01:53):
We've tried to help people out when it comes to
avoiding the crap that will Street is selling and again
it oftentimes yeah, I get some wins here and there,
but more often than not, it's all for naught. People
will buy into it. People will buy Oh my god,
these are all disruptor companies during COVID or oh my god,
(02:16):
it's got a dot comment tat to it. Oh gee whiz,
you know, three or four pre construction condos, whatever it
may be, whatever it may be. Okay, again, people fall victims.
It's it's greed. We've explained here on the program. It's
just two things. There's there's two things that set the trap.
(02:38):
Investment con artists, the world's second oldest profession. Greed and fear.
Greed and fear. And you know, all these people need
to do is to get you to believe, sell you
champagne wishes and caviar dreams. For some people, other people
it's it may be greed the sense that they want to,
(03:00):
you know, have money to pay for their grandkids, college education,
whatever it is. They'll figure out what your green buttons
are and they will push it on you. There is
not a day that goes by, not a day that
goes by now where I am not invited out to dinner,
(03:22):
out golfing again, I get my social calendar would look
something like the damn Kardashians for crying out loud if
I really wanted it. Why well, Wall Street wants my clients.
They want my clients that well, they want to want
(03:45):
the Markowskis to buy their bs and have my clients
play the perverse game of demonic musical chairs. What has
been taking place for some time now is Wall Street
has eh They've been working with private equity companies, forming
(04:06):
some funding, others, whatever it may be. And these private
equity companies go out and they have to build a
portfolio of businesses. Seems that seems reasonable? Sure, Sure, if
the businesses are priced properly. Many of these private equity
(04:29):
most all are buying companies at absolutely ridiculous, ridiculous valuations.
Why well, they need to have stuff. They need to
put together a brochure. They need to eventually with that
cast that was given to them by the big brokerage firms.
(04:51):
They got to come up with a portfolio of companies.
Portfolio of companies. They got their private equity company, and
now they're going to have Wall Street go out and
sell it at an even higher level to the dupes.
That's you, the greater fools. Goldman Sachs called you muppets.
(05:11):
There was lots of nasty names that were discovered in
emails at these various different brokerage firms for these suckers
that buy the crap that these people put together. It
was a story this past week in the Wall Street
Journal talking about how Goldman Sachs is putting together another group,
the Capital Solutions Group. Yeah, put another investment banking again.
(05:35):
This is a kind of like a puff piece that
they wrote. In essence, they are going to put together
more garbage product to try to sell off. They'll try
to sell it to pension funds, They'll try to sell
it to the general public. They're doing everything and anything
that they can to lower the standards where you can
qualify to buy into these products, to make more people available.
(05:58):
I want to jog everybody's memory go back in time
to Morgan Stanley. This was during the dot com run up,
Morgan Stanley buys Dean Witter. You remember that. Yeah, we
covered it here way back in the day. Yeah, uh,
I was it even the ninety nine was Yeah, I
(06:20):
think it was late nineteen nineties. I can't remember the
exact year, but anyway, Morgan Stanley goes out and buys
Dean Winter. What was Dean Winter. Dean Winter had brokerage
for they had offices inside Sears Roebucks. What the hell
Morgan Stanley White Shoe Firm. Uh you know, this is
(06:41):
the country club circuit on Long Island. Uh Manhassett, Hampton's
that whole crowd. Okay, yeah, what do they want to
do with Dean Winter? Well, they needed greater fools. Morgan
Stanley was late to the game and the whole dot
Com run up time. There was the who's the lead
there with Mary Meeker joined the CEO at the time,
(07:04):
John mackwist, but she was in charge of equities there
and they were late in the game when it comes
to dot COM's. Once they got in, they realized, oh crap,
we got to get our big clients out, so they
buy Dean Winter. The actual stock symbol changes ms DW.
That was the symbol MSDW. Yeah, there's no more DW.
(07:26):
They proceeded to offload got all their big clients out
of all of the garbage dot com companies and give
them to the DW clients that are no longer. They
eventually said, hey, you DW clients, you're just not big
enough for Morgan Stanley. See you go take your business elsewhere.
(07:48):
So who they are, that's who they are. If that's
who you want to do business with. Okay, okay, I'm
just warning everybody we've been approached. We've been approached by
(08:10):
private equity. I'm not going to give the dollar amount
here that you know we could sell Markowski Investments and
everything for. But it's ridiculous. It's ridiculous, and there's no
way I would ever do anything like that to my
(08:31):
clients because again, I, you know, produciary, I have to
take care of my clients. I it's a private equity company,
buy at Markowski Investments and churn and burn and destroy everybody.
But it's happening. It's happening everywhere, happening everywhere. Smaller again,
private equity. Eventually they'll ruin everything. But what do you
(08:54):
think they're doing with healthcare? Right now. They've they've been
in business, erect and things for a very long time. Again,
you know, this's I wrote a piece this is again
this some twenty something years ago, and I was using
(09:14):
Dante as a part of it. At the time, I
was writing about affinity fraud and how you know, various
different people, you know, getting people to buy into stuff.
Since I'm like you and believe like you, you can
believe in me and what I say. Well, at that time,
I was talking about the divine comedy and Dante in
(09:35):
the eighth Circle of Hell and the Eighth Ditch, fraudulent
advisors were sent there to be trapped in flames. The
ninth circle of Hell was traders, and they were distinguished
from the merely fraudulent, and that their deeds involved knowingly
and deliberately betraying others. Now, these traders, according to Dante,
(10:01):
are frozen in a lake of ice that has kept
frozen by Satan flappening his wings while he sits chewing
on sinners. That's you know, the people that do this.
In my opinion, it's ethical bypass sole legal. It's there's
nothing illegal about it. But I'm going to be visiting
(10:25):
a couple of these levels. If you ask me, I'm
just saying watchdog on Wall Street dot Com
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