Wall Street Goes to The Cows!

Chris breaks down Wall Street’s dirty tricks with a hilarious cow analogy. From leveraged buyouts (think Henry Kravis and Eddie Lampert draining Kmart) to hedge funds promising filet mignon while leaving you with sour milk, learn how financial “vampires” and “Masters of the Universe” profit off your losses. www.watchdogonwallstreet.com

Episode Transcript

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 that we'll have on everyday Americans. Author,
investment banker, consumer advocate, analyst, and trader Chris Markowski.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
Moo, Wall Street goes to the cows. Yeah, well we're
you know, on the you know today, we're talking a
little bit hot now sausages made on Wall Street. Then
go back again, go back in time a little bit
and how yeah. It was a great way kind of
explaining some terms that you might be hearing again. You

(00:36):
still hear them out on CNBC and business networks out there,
and you think you might know, but you really don't know.
And again yea. Mark Gilbert had a great piece this
can going back almost twenty years in Bloomberg and I
used the world of cows bow lines, that's right to

(00:57):
describe several arenas in the world of finance. Here's my
offbeat take leveraged buyouts. Leverage buyouts, here about them a lot, yeah,
or what we're work sports on one verge buyouts basically vampires.

(01:17):
But anyway, start with two cows and then you get
to you get two big time leverage buyout guys. You
get Henry Kravis, You got Eddie Lampert. Remember Eddie Lampert?
Remember what he did to kmart He sucked that company
drive for what almost two decades for crying out loud. Yeah,

(01:38):
you find them. You find them at your house. You
come home from work and they're chatting up your spouse
at the dining room table. Lo and behold several days later,
you don't have any spouse, you don't have any table,
and you got two big guys that showed up your house.
They're massive, like Andre the Giant. They put saddles on
your cows and they're riding them off of your farm.

(02:00):
Hedge funds. I've excused this one before. It's how hedge funds.
Guys work in the world of cows. Got two cows,
Got two cows. Now a guy wearing a very very
nice suit, he's got himself. It's cessorized with a very
very very expensive watch hundred k plus pulls up to

(02:23):
your farm in his aston Martin So got mister Master
the Universe. Here he offers to take care of your
two cows, and in return, it's going to provide you
with a one year supply of Filet Mignon and fifty
percent of your cow's milk yield. Now you're saying yourself,

(02:47):
how in the world is this possible? I don't get this.
This is crazy. But wait wait, mister Master the Universe
says that he is a financial engineer, who financial engineer.
And as you said, I got the I got the suit,
I got the car, I got the watch, and I
got the twenty year old hot model as my girlfriend.

(03:09):
Here's job that proves it.

Speaker 1 (03:13):
Now.

Speaker 2 (03:13):
The only caveat that the hedge fund guy tells you
is that your cows are gonna have to stay with him.
They're going to be with him at his Greenwich, Connecticut
compound for at least at least two years, So wagle
your cows. Six months later, you get your you know,

(03:35):
you get your bovine account statement in the mail from
mister hedge fund guy, and holy cow, you know, you
realize that you have left is half a cow producing
sour milk. So jezu, what the hell is going on?
You try to get a hold of mister Master the
Universe hedge fund guy. You want to figure out what
in God's creation has happened. He returns your phone call

(03:58):
several weeks later from the Cayman Islands. Yeah, he's drinking
a forty year bottle of French wine. He's chewing on
Filet mignon, and he's he's gonna reassure you here. He's
a Hedge fun guy. Here, everything's gonna be just fine.
And he tells you this. He says, you can you
can get a good look, good look at a t
bone by sticking your head up a cow's ass. But

(04:21):
wouldn't you rather take the butcher's word for it? Hangs
up on you. You take a deep breath, and you
realize he's quoting Chris Farley from the movie Tommy Boy.
And at that point in time, you realize all is lost.
And again, mister Master Universe is fine. He's living on
Paradis Island in the Bahamas. All's good. Wall Street goes

(04:49):
to the cows watchdog on Wall Street dot Com.