Ep. 140 - The 'FTX Clawback, Spirited and Disney Relapse' Edition

The 'FTX Clawback, Spirited and Disney Relapse' Edition

Episode Transcript

(00:01):
This is the FCB Podcast Network.Okay, hey y'all, welcome back to

(00:21):
another episode of Marble Halls and SilverScreens. My name is Sarah Lee.
UM, we have a pretty goodshow for you today. Um this is
the Monday before Thanksgiving, so everything'skind of slow. I think it's going
to continue to be slow this weekMonday. On this week, anything related
to like sort of DC think TankWorld and the Hill slows down pretty significantly

(00:46):
basically through the months of November andum in December. But since we have
a a sort of newly elected House, the Republicans flipped the House, as
we know, there there are somethings going on. So so I decided
to go ahead and try to bringyou guys a podcast which really has nothing
to do with the mid terms exceptto say that the red wave, as

(01:07):
we know, was overblown. I'mnot sure how much I totally bought into
it. You know, I definitelythought that we were going to make some
gains. We did, but youknow, there was a lot of they
really oversold it in the press,So I don't know if that was intentional.

(01:30):
You know, you have McConnell comeout and say I never thought we
would have a red wave. Soyeah, it was a pretty interesting election
cycle. There's, of course adebate going on, which I think I
might say for another show, justbecause I want some more sort of experts
to weigh in on it. Ikind of know what I think already,
but it's only a topic I've studiedfor just a few years, and there

(01:55):
are certainly people who have been studyingit their entire careers. So this notion
of the GOP embracing some of thetactics of the left when it comes to
elections, like ballot harvesting and earlyvoting, I'm not really in favor of
this. I think some of thosethings are fairly innocuous or can be done

(02:16):
innocuously. I think that the lefthas a tendency to take very good programs.
I've talked about this before. Theytend to take very good things that
were set up for a small groupof people. In this case, you
know, mail in ballots and youknow absentee ballots and things like that,

(02:38):
set up to help people who couldn'tget to the polls, and they extrapolate
it, expand it to everyone,and then abuse the crap out of it.
It's what they do. They didit with Medicaid expansion. They it
seems like I hate to just chargecorruption about everything they do, but my
god, every time they get theirhands on something, they try to federalize

(02:59):
it and then abuse it. Nowis the intent there? It looks to
me like, yes, it's hardto give them the benefit of the doubt
anymore. I think in the pastit was easier to do that. They've
really kind of, you know,made that a difficult thing to do,
to kind of say, well,maybe they didn't mean for things to get

(03:20):
this out of hand. I thinkwe're beyond that now. I think the
intent is almost definitely there to createthe chaos. So I'll save that topic
about the GOP wanting to embrace someof these tactics, I am really nervous
about doing that. I understand thedesire to do it, certainly, but

(03:40):
I just don't know, if youknow, who cheats better is the way
we want to run elections? Sodo I understand that that makes it harder
for the GOP and that's how wegot into this situation. Yes, but
I think we've got to be muchmore clever than we've been without cheating.
So how we do that? Notsure yet still giving it some thought.

(04:01):
I definitely want to see what peoplelike Kans von Spakovsky at Heritage, Who's
this is his you know, thisis his Bailey Wick, he knows election
law, Jay Christian Adams, peoplelike that. I definitely want to see
what they're kind of thinking about allof this, and I'll sort of refine
my thoughts on what I think.But I'll say this at the outset,

(04:24):
I am not a huge fan ofembracing these tactics for a lot of different
reasons, but primarily because I justdon't think cheating or abusing a system.
I won't even say cheating, butjust abusing a system to compete with other
abusers of the system is the wayto go again, for a lot of

(04:46):
reasons, not just ethical, notjust moral. But I think you ultimately
you end up with a Seriously,you want a banana republic, That's how
you get a banana republic. Soyeah, not it's practical too. It's
not just me being you know,sanctimonious. It's about looking beyond sort of

(05:08):
the next election and into the futureand realizing that we have to scale these
things back, not embrace them.Um, that's a tough one, but
I definitely think that's what we haveto do. How we do that,
I'm not sure yet, so stillthinking. But that's not what I wanted
to talk about with you guys today. I want to talk about a little
a little bit about the ftx SPFimplosion that happened. I don't want to

(05:30):
get into it too much. Everybody'salready written a million things about it.
Most people already know basically what happened. But I wrote something for Red State
that I haven't seen a lot mentionedabout this, and it's about these investors
that lost all of their money,Like how can they recoup their investment?
So I want to talk a littlebit about that. I'm not sure that

(05:53):
they can, but there was areally interesting Twitter thread that kind of dealt
with this, so I want totalk a little bit about that. Then
I want to talk about a movieI saw on Apple TV called Spirited.
It's the newest holiday Christmas offering overtlyChristmas offering from Will Ferrell and Ryan Reynolds.

(06:14):
So I want to talk about that, and then that's gonna be my
sort of quote review section. Andthen finally I want to talk about the
fact that Disney went woke, movedaway from woke and as now re embracing
woke. We'll talk a little bitabout that at the end of the show,
but for the moment, if youguys would just sit tight, We've
got a couple of words from oursponsors, so we're gonna let that play

(06:38):
out, and then we'll be rightback and we'll jump into all this stuff.
Okay, be back in a second. Okay, and we're back.
Okay, let's talk about this FTXcrypto basically scam. Right. I'm not
going to get into too much intothe politics of it. You know,

(07:03):
gosh, there are so many theoriesout there, you know, the whole
the horrible side of me, thecynic in me, looks at this situation
and thinks that this kid was justused as they passed through, right,
um, that it was absolutely designedto be a I mean, you'll hear

(07:24):
people say money laundering. I don'tknow if i'd use that strong of terminology,
but yeah, I mean his motherand father were both heavy and to
progressive politics. His mother ran apack that was overtly intended to help you
know, very very very liberal,radical liberal politicians. Sam Bankman Freed of

(07:47):
Courses who have who I'm talking aboutso yeah, now there's this rumor of
the Ukraine connection where Ukraine was takingall of this funding from the United States
to help with the war our effortand then investing money back into FTX,
which then gave thirty eight million orsomething to political candidates, mainly on the

(08:07):
left. So you know, youcan see you can see the as someone
said on Twitter, you can seethe gun in every shadow in this story.
But what I so go ahead andread all you can about it and
figure out what you think about it. I don't want to sort of I
just don't know the answer. Itstill has to be investigated, and it's

(08:28):
still very crazy. But there aretwo parts of it that I do want
to talk about. One is thisnotion of effective altruism. You know,
a lot of the work I doduring the day job for the day job
deals with the notion of philanthropy,that the industry of philanthropy and charitable giving
and so effective altruism is something thathad popped up on everyone's radar. I

(08:54):
would say, some of the peoplein my sort of world knew about it
for much longer than I did.It kind of popped up on my radar
about a year or two ago,but I think it's been around a little
bit longer, several years. Butit's this idea that you can sort of
saber metrics the best way to giveyour money. And essentially it's the it's

(09:15):
the playground of the very wealthy,like your normal average you know, giver
of in any country is just notgoing to have the money to kind of
decide based on data where they shouldgive millions, right, They're going to
give from their hearts. So they'regoing to look at the Goodwill donation box
and think I can do that,that's something I can do, or they're

(09:37):
going to cut you know, onehundred dollar check or whatever to Saint Vincent
DePaul or something like that. Soeffective altruism, which is something Sam Bankman
Freed said he that he sort ofembraced, is this idea that you can
use data and say, well,in African countries, if I spend a
lot of my money there, givea lot of my money there. I

(10:00):
can save this many number of childrenfrom you know, bad drinking water versus
giving my money to the charity that'sin my hometown that I know does a
you know, monthly homeless shelter ordinner. Right, So it's this way
of sort of using data to dothe most good, which I find so

(10:26):
many holes in that just personally,but I think for our purposes today.
What was interesting is that after SPFand FTX sort of sort of after that
story broke and FTX imploded, anSPF who God only knows where all the
rest of the money went, hepretty much he gave an interview sort of

(10:48):
overdirect messages to pull a Politico reporterwhere he basically admitted that effective altruism,
the notion of this kind of giving, or just this notion of altruism at
all, was something just silly whiteWesterners have to say to make it basically
to be part of the club rightthat it was all just crap. You

(11:09):
know, he's a kid, sogen Z and he's like, yeah,
it's just what you know, basicallywhat our parents told us. We had
to say, Y're basically just capitalistslooking to make some money give to politicians
that help them do that. Iwas talking to somebody this morning about how
they're capitalists but they're not. Butthey don't, they don't ascribe to capitalism.

(11:31):
So if you're an actual capitalist,a moral and ethical capitalist, you
like things like market regulation where peoplecan't control like they're they're cutting down on
barriers to entry, they can't cornerthe market, they can't monopolize certain industries,
right, what you like those kindsof things If you're a capitalist in

(11:52):
practice but a socialist in you know, in word, and you know you're
out there saying no, no,no, I like WILL corporations, that's
really what I like, but you'reactually just doing everything to earn a ton
of money. Then you don't haveto say you like these things like yeah,
maybe there shouldn't be monopolies. Youdon't have to say that. You
can you can let those things happenand claim that it has nothing to do

(12:15):
with you because you're not a capitalist. Right. So essentially that's what's been
going on. We've got these sortof uh, you know, tricksters,
essentially, people lying about who theyare and what their agenda is us.
It's nothing new, you know,but it's essentially people out there are going,

(12:37):
yeah, you know, you seeit. You see a lot.
It's really weird. I mean,it used to be something that people thought
of that happened a lot on theright. Now we're seeing a lot of
it on the left, where youknow, you've got these people now,
it's these gen z kids out theresaying, oh yeah, yeah, sure,
we love to do good in theworld. But they really aren't trying

(12:58):
to do that, and they knowit's a joke and they know it's a
scam. Right, They're trying tomake a lot of money. They're trying
to make a lot of money fortheir for the people that are that are
you know, expecting their donations likepolitical candidates. So big scam, you
guys. So so yeah, Sothat's part of it. And the other
part of it. There was areally interesting Twitter thread that I wrote about

(13:22):
at red State that this guy Balajiwho hast Renovation I think is his last
name, um strenovation, Balaji's renovation. I don't even know if I'm pronouncing
that correctly, but he you know, he's kind of a sort of a
badass in his own right in thesort of finance world. Um you can

(13:46):
just look him up. You'll see. He was a he was the former
chief technology officer of coin Base.He's also done a lot of other things,
but that one, I think isparticularly that former job is gives him
some some heft to talk about thisand he's talking about this notion of under
SEC regulation of clawback, which isbasically that some of the nonprofits and political

(14:13):
candidates that Sam Bankman Free donated toand took these investors, the crypto investors
money to do it, but thecrypto investors may have a way to soothe
those entities to try to get theirinvestments back, and that this has actually
there's a precedent for this in SECregulation. Where he says, let me

(14:39):
pull up one of his tweets,it's a long threat. He says,
anyone with money on FTX may wantto learn the following terms clawback, look
back, fraudulent conveyance, unjustinen richmond, voidable preference, and he says that
the precedent for all of this.First of all he's talking about he kind

(15:00):
of lists out the donations that SPFmade potentially with stolen money. He says
that the key is there's going tohave to be forensic accounting to determine when
these donations were made relative to whenthe money was considered stolen. Okay,
so Belagi says, sixty nine millionin political donations, mostly to Democrats,

(15:24):
some to Republicans via his subordinates,one hundred and ninety million to a foundation,
one hundred and twenty eight million toa pack and then there's some other
undisclosed funds. And he says,this notion of clawback, the precedent has
to do with Bernie Madoff, right, and that Irving Picard, who was

(15:46):
a lawyer during the Madeoff scandal,actually kind of established how this might get
done. Now. I told oneof my you know, informed friends about
this situation, and they were like, yeah, right, good luck getting
that money back from any political candidate. It's probably true, but some of

(16:07):
the nonprofits might be up the creek. I won't say which one, but
we at my work became aware thatthere was a a philanthropic sort of news
organization that relied on these kinds ofdonations to operate, who had been relying

(16:30):
on a donation from FTX, wellactually not from FTX, but from a
subsidiary of FTX, and they arenow no longer going to get this and
this huge donation because of all ofthis. So, and this is a
well known news entity. So Iwonder if this is something that these uh

(16:52):
that some of these nonprofits are goingto be on the hook for. It's
an interesting question. I don't know, I M it's just very interesting,
but it should sort of put apoint on why the sort of charitable sector,
why having um abuses like these thataffect the charitable sector are so bad

(17:17):
because um, not only are thecrypto investors out of all of their money,
but some of these nonprofits may actuallywho you know, who knows if
they're able to pay it back,they may be on the hook. Right,
So uh yeah, so there's somethere's some clean up that needs to
be done and how these things aremanaged and how this stuff is done.

(17:38):
So yeah, I just thought Iwould bring that to your attention, thought
it might interest you all. Iwill link to the article that I wrote
in my column for this podcast,but worth a read. It's interesting.
It's it's pure theater um, butit also involves a lot of money,
so um for the people that areactually you know, that have lost a

(17:59):
ton of money in the politicians thathave abused this system to take in donations,
it's much it's much more real forthem, so and it's real for
you too, because even if itdoesn't directly affect you, it's just kind
of, you know, a rotin the system, and you should care
about that. I think Okay,moving on from that, let's talk about

(18:21):
our review this week, So Spirited, which I had started seeing ads for
about a month ago on Apple TV, and I think it did hit the
theater's first and it's Will Ferrell,Ryan Reynolds, and my god, it's
a musical. Now. I'm adancer, and I love musical theater absolutely,

(18:41):
unashamedly admit to that. Love themusic, love the costuming, love
the whole thing. Absolutely a theaterkid when it comes to musical theater.
So I was like, Okay,this is going to probably be just a
very watered down, silly musical theaterproduction just to try to make money at
Christmas because Hollywood's struggling. I changedmy mind. This is a pretty fun

(19:03):
movie. There's always a little bitof you know, political injection into Hollywood
these days, into any of thesebig budget films, but I think they
handled this one fairly well. Theydidn't go too hard in either direction.
They sort of sort of walked alittle bit of a middle line, which

(19:25):
I appreciated. There's certainly some leftystuff, but then there's also some righty
stuff too, and I could pointthose out, but I think it's just
good to maybe watch the movie knowingthat and see if you can find them.
I will say to you that theactual musical theater numbers. I can

(19:45):
see this actually going to Broadway,not without you know, Will Ferrell and
Ryan Ryld. So it's an interestingshift. I guess usually musical theater numbers
come to Hollywood after they are onBroadway. I don't know. Maybe this
one was originally on Broadway. Idon't think it was though. Um,
So I can see it going toBroadway. And you know, as much

(20:08):
as Will Farrell and Ryan Reynolds had, they have decent voices and it was
actually done fairly well. And OctaviaSpencer I should mention her as well.
She's also a big part of thisfilm. Um. You know, the
the the musical number parts. Ican see having a better singers. They
weren't terrible but actually trained you knowsingers, and it being quite arresting.

(20:32):
Um. And the musical numbers weregreat, and that there were very fun
songs. And it's a retelling witha twist of the Scrooge story of a
Christmas Carol. Um. And itwas actually had a really good message.
Like I would I would say thisis this is a good one for kids,
especially kids growing up in the digitalage, and it's it's overtly celebrating

(20:55):
Christmas, which, as we know, for a while there it was like
you couldn't say Christmas, oh mygoodness, and you had to take you
know. It doesn't get into thesort of the religious side of it,
um, but it gets into thethe tradition of it. And you know,
that was nice to see. Um. And then the message at the
end was pretty good. Um.It's the same message that's in a Christmas

(21:18):
Carol, but it's it's updated andmodernized and it's always good to see Ryan
Reynolds. I love that guy.Um. I definitely still think that he's
this this generation's Carrie Grant. Hejust he just plays the everyman with a
lot of comedy and a lot ofgrace and I just have always really liked

(21:38):
him, um, and a lotof he's got a heart and I think
Will Farrell does as well. Sothis is a pretty cool upgrade to the
to the Scrooge Christmas Carol. Andthey make fun of all of the sort
of attempts to to remake the ChristmasCarol as well, which is great.
Um. And there's some actual sortof musical theater. You know people in

(22:00):
this film that you'll you'll see andbe like, oh yeah, great dancing,
great musical numbers, great message,fun twist on the Christmas Carol story.
So I highly recommend this one foryour kids. Like, I just
think I'll just put it this way. It's less about the Scrooge character this

(22:22):
time, and it's more about thecharacters affected by the Scrooge character, which
maybe is what the original Christmas Carolmostly was about too, right, So
yeah, I think you should watchthis one. It's on Apple TV.
Can also catch it in theaters.Really fun. If you liked musical theater,
you'll love it. I mean again, I'm a dancer. There's tons

(22:45):
of dancing, tons of pageantry,and I'm like yay. So I'm gonna
make my boyfriend watch it and he'sgonna be like h but he'll end up
liking it. So yeah. Sosee Spirited. Pretty good, pretty good
one from Hollywood. Okay. Finally, and to close it out, Um
Disney, in a really weird decision, has decided to bring Bob Eiger back

(23:11):
to head it up. It hadthis guy, uh, you know,
a sort of as it Bob.I think it's Bob I hope I didn't
just call Bill Bob Um. Letme let me make sure, Bob no,
I'm sorry. Bob Shape was theas the outgoing Bob Iger is,
the former CEO of Disney was comingback. Shapec has been sort of declared

(23:38):
to have been a bit more conservative, which plays into this. Iger is
much more vocally liberal, has hadrun ins with He's sort of why I
think Disney went the way it went, where it kind of got into a
situation where it was so woke thatit was unrecognizable. So Disney and sort

(24:00):
of trying to um crisis pr theirway out of some of what after what
happened with De Santas in Florida bringthey sort of elevate Shapik to CEO,
and they're now blaming him for thefact that they've not really been as profitable

(24:22):
as they've wanted to be with Disney, plus, which I don't actually think
that's his fault, but there that'sdebatable. Um. Jim Garrity at National
Review has a really good article onthis. But what's interesting about it is
as you read it, Um,you'll and Iiger, by the way,
is just very very vocally progressive andwoke right. Um, yeah, he

(24:45):
just is, and they're bringing thatback on. But as you've read it,
and as you read, you know, Garrity's article is really good because
as you read some of the commentsfrom Shapik, who they you know,
have decided is the this is whatyou know, moving away from woke looks
like he's just this watered down,you know. His his statements about sort

(25:08):
of whether or not Disney had beengoing in the right direction with some of
their embrace of the culture wars areso tepid and just kind of sort of
weak. Right, He's trying towalk both sides. He's trying to you
know, you understand why CEO wantsto do this, but definitely not very

(25:33):
Um. Doesn't look a lot likewhat the GOP is moving toward, which
is very strong opinions about embracing uh, you know, and being strong in
their embrace of traditional values. Right. And I don't mean to sound scary
about that. I just mean that, like, uh, you know,

(25:56):
the progressive left went really far left, and it seems like some of the
GOP voters and some of the leadershipthat they like, like Ronda Santis and
Florida, they're not you know,sort of this religious right fanaticism. They're
seriously just clawing the progressive left backtoward the middle. So Chapick doesn't really

(26:22):
do that's he's much more milktoast andsort of how he how he actually is
versus how he was portrayed as moreconservative. Um, you know, he
did do things like have leader havemeetings with some GOP leadership. But but
here's the quote from Garrity's Gritty Garrity'sarticle that I think that I think I

(26:45):
wanted to explain to you and probablyin a in a pr sense, this
is Disney trying to say, yeah, this is what the GOP would like
for you to have, and it'sjust milktoast and tepid, and so they're
like, so we had to bringback either, right. This is Chapeck's
answer to a Wall Street Journal podcastquestion that directly asked him if the company

(27:10):
if Disney had become too woke,And here's what he said. The world
is a rich, diverse place andwe want our content to reflect that,
and we're so blessed to have thegreatest content creators and they see it similarly.
But I think that's good from acommercial standpoint as well. Because then
you appeal to the largest possible audience. And certainly we live in a world
now where everything seems to be polarized. But I think we want Disney to

(27:33):
stand for bringing people together, andI think we'll do that by diverse stories
and diverse characters. Okay, Ihear what he's saying. But if you've
ever seen the movie Bad Teacher,there's this fantastic scene and I'm going to
leave you guys with this, andI want you to look it up.
Now. Bad Teachers not for kids, so only adults should go watch Bad
Teacher. But there's a great scenewhere Justin Timberlake basically exist implifies this kind

(28:00):
of answer, where Cameron Diaz,who's kind of interested in him, is
speaking to him on a class fieldtrip with their you know, respective classrooms,
and he's talking about he's talking aboutsharks. Okay, and Jason Siegel,

(28:22):
who's the other sort of love interestof Cameron Diaz, comes over and
he realizes that, you know,Justin timber Lake's characters basically the wishiest,
washiest guy you've ever seen. Sohe's talking about sharks and how they've just
torn families apart, right, youknow, they're so vicious or whatever.

(28:44):
And Siegel comes over and to sortof make his point to Cameron Diaz,
he says to justin timber Lake,Yeah, but sharks, you know,
they're also so beautiful and timber Lakes, yes, they are very majestic,
and Stiegel says, but also vicious. He's like, oh yes, So
so basically to illustrate the point thatthis guy has no core, no core
belief if he just rolls with whateverthe person in front of him is suggesting,

(29:08):
Basically, that's cha peck here.So in some ways you can't blame
Disney for going back to Eiger.But also I think there's a pr thing
going on here where they're basically likebecause Disney has embraced woke and they want
to embrace it. Man, there'sa I mean, if you thought that
there was a lot of this goingon that had to be weeded out at

(29:29):
Twitter you're talking about, you know, just sort of amplify that by like
a thousand, and that's the Disney, you know, employee base. So
they have a bigger problem, andthey're going to blame this GP, this
sort of conservative guy for them notbeing profitable. So we'll see what Eiger
does. It's going to be interestingto see. I don't think that he's

(29:53):
going to be able to do anythingbetter. Disney has sort of written there,
you know, future in stone untilthey just move away from this.
They're going to have to get leadershipthat radically changes things up, like Twitter
just did with Elon Musk. ButElon Musk wasn't hired. Elon Musk had
to buy the company. So yeah, keep an eye on Disney. It's

(30:17):
gonna be really interesting to see whathappens. I mean, it's a loved
institution in this country and I wouldlove to see it turn around. It
don't want it to fail, butI think it's going to have to go
the way of Twitter for it tosurvive. And that's sad, but also,
you know, maybe karmically right too. So all right, that's it.

(30:38):
You guys, please have a lovelyThanksgiving with family. If you're on
your own, you know, Idid that for several years in DC.
I was by myself for Thanksgiving forseveral years. So I did things like
I went to the homeless shelter andhanded out food on Thanksgiving. I made
food for the fire station down there, eat and would walk cookies and things

(31:00):
down there to them. So youcan find ways, even if you're on
your own to um, to havea happy Thanksgiving, and I hope that
you do. I know the holidayscan be hard, but there are ways
to make them happy even if you'reby yourself. So UM, but if
you're with family, enjoy that.I mean, families are crazy, That's

(31:21):
what That's what I'm going to bedoing with my gigantic Catholic family. It's
gonna be madness. Usually there's tearssomewhere. It's it's insane. Um.
But please all of you remember thatlife is a precious gift and UM,
and try to try to live itaccordingly. This is the time of year
to do that, UM. Sotake care of yourselves, take care of

(31:41):
each other, be tough, besmart. Definitely enjoy your holiday and we
will talk again in a couple ofweeks. Watch Una loose from the psychiatric

(32:06):
chord. He's faces up on thebulletin board with the reward. He'll stab
you with the sword. Don't befooled by his arms. This has been
a presentation of the FCP podcast Network, where Real Talk lifts. Visit us
online at FCP podcasts dot com.