Episode Transcript
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):
Shut it down, shut it down, shut it shut it down.
I got that public Enemy song in my head. Yeay y'all,
yea y'all. Shut down the Postal Service. Trump, I love it.
I love it. This is great, great news. Trump making
plans to dismay the governing board that oversees the Postal
(00:39):
Service and absorb the agency into the administration again, throwing
the whole thing into doubt. And this fantastic. Yeah, I
can to fire the all the members of the Postal
Services governing board, put the agency under the direct control
of the Commerce Department. Yeah. I love it, I love it.
(01:00):
I don't know. We talked about this several months ago
here on the program. There was a great bit from
the nineteen nineties on Seinfeld where Kramer. Kramer was sick
and tired of getting pottery barn catalogs and all this
junk mail, and he tried to cancel the mail. He
(01:21):
wanted to cancel it and Newman, okay, the resident mail
carrier in their building. No, can't do it. Kramer. You
don't know what you're messing with. You don't know the
powers you're messing with. And it was funny, and it
eventually got down to Wilford Brimley appeared as some head
of the Postal Service basically given Kramer talking to you
(01:42):
can't you can't do this, you can't cancel the post office.
But all points that Kramer made at that point in
time is like, and again this is the nineties, basically,
really don't need this any more. And I remember talking
about this again nineteen nineties, the ad email coming out
(02:04):
and right away I'm like, wait to sign it. This
is free. What do you think that this is going
to do to the Postal Service, which was a mess
back then ahead of time. I remember back in the
Postal Service wanted the government. They were actually thinking about
charging for email so it would compete with the Postal service. Yeah,
(02:29):
it's a joke. And again I'm biased to some degree
because the Postal Service has screwed me royally many times
and screwing up things and tired of it. And then
again you deal with the Postal inspectors. Good luck with that.
They're not doing it, damn thing. They're sitting on their
asses all day long. Yeah, they're really looking into why
(02:50):
mail goes missing. And we did a bit on this
on the program, the amount of checks that are stolen
via the mail every single day. But anyway, neither here
nor there. Okay, last night, last night I was I
ran out of a couple of my uh the vitamins
(03:11):
that I take every single day, and ordered it from Amazon.
Bata boom bada bing. It was here by morning. It
was here by morning. Don't don't tell me. Don't tell
me that. I don't care who, whether it be Amazon,
(03:32):
I don't care any of these teching. You don't think
that they could figure this stuff out but quick. You
don't think that they could have this whole thing solved
and have the service running efficiently, efficiently in a very
in a timely manner. There's no doubt about it. It
would be awesome. But again, you talking about the amount
(03:55):
of government workers that are involved and the pensions and
everything that goes along with this. This is a this
is a big government agency that we have to continue
to pour money in because they can't figure it out.
(04:16):
They can't figure it out. You know, I'm hoping that
Trump does the same thing to Amtrak as well. Yeah.
I like choot your trains too. I do. And there's
certain areas of the country where trains are fantastic and necessary,
but not everywhere. Watchdog on Wall Street dot com
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.
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
The Burden
The Burden is a documentary series that takes listeners into the hidden places where justice is done (and undone). It dives deep into the lives of heroes and villains. And it focuses a spotlight on those who triumph even when the odds are against them. Season 5 - The Burden: Death & Deceit in Alliance On April Fools Day 1999, 26-year-old Yvonne Layne was found murdered in her Alliance, Ohio home. David Thorne, her ex-boyfriend and father of one of her children, was instantly a suspect. Another young man admitted to the murder, and David breathed a sigh of relief, until the confessed murderer fingered David; “He paid me to do it.” David was sentenced to life without parole. Two decades later, Pulitzer winner and podcast host, Maggie Freleng (Bone Valley Season 3: Graves County, Wrongful Conviction, Suave) launched a “live” investigation into David's conviction alongside Jason Baldwin (himself wrongfully convicted as a member of the West Memphis Three). Maggie had come to believe that the entire investigation of David was botched by the tiny local police department, or worse, covered up the real killer. Was Maggie correct? Was David’s claim of innocence credible? In Death and Deceit in Alliance, Maggie recounts the case that launched her career, and ultimately, “broke” her.” The results will shock the listener and reduce Maggie to tears and self-doubt. This is not your typical wrongful conviction story. In fact, it turns the genre on its head. It asks the question: What if our champions are foolish? Season 4 - The Burden: Get the Money and Run “Trying to murder my father, this was the thing that put me on the path.” That’s Joe Loya and that path was bank robbery. Bank, bank, bank, bank, bank. In season 4 of The Burden: Get the Money and Run, we hear from Joe who was once the most prolific bank robber in Southern California, and beyond. He used disguises, body doubles, proxies. He leaped over counters, grabbed the money and ran. Even as the FBI was closing in. It was a showdown between a daring bank robber, and a patient FBI agent. Joe was no ordinary bank robber. He was bright, articulate, charismatic, and driven by a dark rage that he summoned up at will. In seven episodes, Joe tells all: the what, the how… and the why. Including why he tried to murder his father. Season 3 - The Burden: Avenger Miriam Lewin is one of Argentina’s leading journalists today. At 19 years old, she was kidnapped off the streets of Buenos Aires for her political activism and thrown into a concentration camp. Thousands of her fellow inmates were executed, tossed alive from a cargo plane into the ocean. Miriam, along with a handful of others, will survive the camp. Then as a journalist, she will wage a decades long campaign to bring her tormentors to justice. Avenger is about one woman’s triumphant battle against unbelievable odds to survive torture, claim justice for the crimes done against her and others like her, and change the future of her country. Season 2 - The Burden: Empire on Blood Empire on Blood is set in the Bronx, NY, in the early 90s, when two young drug dealers ruled an intersection known as “The Corner on Blood.” The boss, Calvin Buari, lived large. He and a protege swore they would build an empire on blood. Then the relationship frayed and the protege accused Calvin of a double homicide which he claimed he didn’t do. But did he? Award-winning journalist Steve Fishman spent seven years to answer that question. This is the story of one man’s last chance to overturn his life sentence. He may prevail, but someone’s gotta pay. The Burden: Empire on Blood is the director’s cut of the true crime classic which reached #1 on the charts when it was first released half a dozen years ago. Season 1 - The Burden In the 1990s, Detective Louis N. Scarcella was legendary. In a city overrun by violent crime, he cracked the toughest cases and put away the worst criminals. “The Hulk” was his nickname. Then the story changed. Scarcella ran into a group of convicted murderers who all say they are innocent. They turned themselves into jailhouse-lawyers and in prison founded a lway firm. When they realized Scarcella helped put many of them away, they set their sights on taking him down. And with the help of a NY Times reporter they have a chance. For years, Scarcella insisted he did nothing wrong. But that’s all he’d say. Until we tracked Scarcella to a sauna in a Russian bathhouse, where he started to talk..and talk and talk. “The guilty have gone free,” he whispered. And then agreed to take us into the belly of the beast. Welcome to The Burden.