Latest / Success Story with Scott Clary / Wilbur Ross - Former United States Secretary of Commerce | From The ‘King of Bankruptcy’ ($400 Billion Deals) to Trump's Cabinet

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Wilbur Ross - Former United States Secretary of Commerce | From The ‘King of Bankruptcy’ ($400 Billion Deals) to Trump's Cabinet · Success Story with Scott Clary

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  American dream has always been, work hard, keep at it, succeed, and you end up being more
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  prosperous and more happy than even your parents were. Usually within a problem there also lies
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  an opportunity. Our educational system, I think, is failing the younger generation. We're not
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  doing a good job teaching kids what they need to know to have a good career. Entrepreneurship
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  takes a lot of work, but somebody is starting their own business. It's not a question,
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  do I work 40 hours, 41 or 42? You're starting your own business and you don't even think about
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  am I working overtime. A lot of people have gotten rich collecting rent. I don't know anybody who
• 0:48
  got rich paying rent. Big lesson is the only person who can hold you back is you yourself.
• 0:57
  Welcome to success story. I'm your host, Scott Clary. The success story podcast is part of
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  the HubSpot podcast network. Now, HubSpot is the resource that you need to tap into if you are
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  Thank you for coming on. I'm excited to do this. I want to start just to understand because
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  you've had a life that's been shared with so many different things that you've worked on
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  and so many different things that you've built. I want to just go back and understand
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  as a child what was an inflection point or a moment that happened or a series of moments that
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  happened that sort of set you up and put you on the road to where you are today.
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  Okay, well that's a very good question and I'm delighted you started off with it.
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  But when I was a kid I was very scrawny, undersized for my age in a bookworm. So I was a perfect
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  candidate to be a victim for bullies. And for a while I was getting bullied and then my father
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  got me a punching bag and some instruction and that accomplished two things. One made me feel
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  more self-confident and two the few times I had to use the instruction it pretty well solved the
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  problem. So it both gave me more self-confidence and reduced the need for actual finding. So that was
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  one very very big step. The other one was when I was about 10 years old my paternal grandfather
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  took me to a recreation hall. He was a great baller. In fact he bowled in his lifetime three
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  three hundred games. Well for me at my age the bowling ball was too heavy so I couldn't do that
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  with him. But the rec hall also had a shooting range and so he took me down there to see if that
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  would be interesting. Turned out I had a very good aptitude for it and I became a real marksman.
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  And that's what led to the most interesting second turning point. That was this. I became
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  such a good marksman that at age 14 I won the New Jersey State Championship and at age 16 I set
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  the U.S. junior record over the Olympic small ball rightful course and they were trying Winchester
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  was trying to get me to drop out of school for a while and just spend full time shooting to get
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  ready for the actual Olympics. Well that event which was an outdoor event was unique and that
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  I was great that we set the record but the spotter they had given me to make sure I fired the
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  right number of rounds because you had a target the real target and a fake target. The fake
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  target was so that as the wind adjusted you could change your sight and make sure you were
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  well he undercounted so it was a bittersweet victory. Here I set a national record as a young kid
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  but I did so with firing one round less than I could have fired so it would have been even a
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  better score. That taught me a lesson that is stuck with me ever since. Namely you can delegate
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  authority but at the end of the day responsibility stays with you. So that got me to be kind of a
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  micro manager in later life and I really tried to supervise very carefully the people that are
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  helping me. So when you look at your career and sort of like these moments that gave you confidence
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  and showed your own ability and really just turned you from a boy into a man at the end of the day.
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  How did those impacts your career, your life, what you chose to work on because obviously now
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  well I mean even years ago you were known as the king of bankruptcy but you didn't start there.
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  That's after a career of a lot of work and a lot of ups and downs and wins and losses it gets you
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  to that point and then you go from private to public to serving the government. I'm very curious
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  as you started your career at least and obviously as a long career so you don't have to do the whole
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  thing but what were some of the things that pushed you down the paths that you went on?
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  Well in the very beginning I went to Yale and then directly to Harvard Business School and I had
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  been in ROTC at Yale because in those days we had universal military training, the draft and I
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  thought it'd be better to go in as an officer than as an enlisted man. So they gave me a deferment
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  so I could go directly to HBS. So I go in the military and I was supposed to be six months active
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  duty seven-and-a-half years reserved but the loan came to the Cuban Missile Crisis so I ended up
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  spending a year and a half in the army. During that period my employer to be a very hot money
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  manager called Emery DuVay died, died two weeks before I was scheduled to show up for work
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  and on his deathbed sold the firm to a very wealthy client called Robert Winthrop
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  from the Massachusetts Winthrop family. They agreed to hire me anyway so now I show up
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  the firm is now called Winthrop DuVay so I changed employers before I even got my first paycheck.
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  Two weeks later in came Jack Doran's but then was the CEO of Campbell Soup and between him and
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  the pension fund they had several billion dollars of money with us so they had a nice chip chat
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  over lunch and then Doran said, God why do my accounts have so much lucky Friday silver mines
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  in them. And Mr. Winthrop turned to me and said, well but do my accounts have lucky Friday silver
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  mines as well and I said yes and they do all of our accounts have some lucky Friday silver mines
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  and then explained why. Well that made it clear to Doran's that this was not the same kinds of
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  hand-on senior management that he'd been used to before Emery DuVay died so the following
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  Monday they pulled all three billion dollars out from under our management so Bob Winthrop a
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  little later that week was at a board meeting of city bank he had been on the board of city bank
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  and he the CEO of city bank on hearing his problem and we bought the sperm and just lost this
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  big account and how embarrassing it was he said Bob Sam Millbank is desiring to pull out his money
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  from a nice old line farm called Woodstrothers if you put a few billion more dollars in by him out
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  they'll call it Woodstrothers and Winthrop and you'll never be embarrassed again so he did that
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  you know as you as you walk through your career and we I I I agree with this as well and it's
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  something that I've seen you spoken about you obviously believe the concept of hard work
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  and you speak about this in your book it's obviously something that's very important to you
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  talk to me about the concept of hard work and talk to me about it from the perspective of
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  when you started your career and what you had to put in versus perhaps even what you see now
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  with people in their careers sure well uh we had been a barely middle class family
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  and then when I was at Yale my father died and since I had two younger siblings
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  that my mom who was a third grade school teacher had the support and hopefully help get
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  the real education so as a result of all that I had to work my way through school so I went on
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  aid at Yale and did a variety of odd jobs to get spend money and to pay tuition and all of that
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  so um that's probably there's no bad thing about working hard because I was taking a regular curriculum
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  then you had to do all these jobs because at Yale when you got student aid you didn't just get the aid
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  you had that any worked out of a billing system and you had to work so many hours a week
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  from the university to make up for the fact that they were giving you aid and then I had to find odd
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  jobs for uh spend money so that was when I started really working hard because Yale was obviously a
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  challenging curriculum and when I went through to the business school at Harvard it too was a
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  challenging curriculum but again I didn't have any money and so I had to do odd jobs so I wrote articles
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  for a magazine called Financial World I wrote the anonymous research reports for a little brokerage
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  for and I was even a census taker during the decennial census going door to door I was trying to get
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  people to fill out their census forms and that was a real challenge because they gave me a bad
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  section of Boston to go to so I'm wearing this little white skull patrol
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  that sort of shoulder thing with a big make-believe silver badge on it well in that section of
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  Boston when you show up at a door with a badge if they open the door at all then more like
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  you're gonna have a dog come out after you then they are to let you interview them so that's
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  a lot about the fact that you can survive and argue with school day plus a lot of
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  part-time jobs that you needed to do to survive so it became a habit and it's like anything else
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  once you get used to it and once it's a routine that you work long hours and hard hours it doesn't
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  become so challenging what bothers me about today is that the kids don't like the idea of work
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  I found a while ago there's actually a reddit site that had six million members totally devoted to
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  anti-work and there would be postings on it one very similar to one I'm quoting now it said I just
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  can't force myself to go to work anymore so the notion that work is an aberrant behavior
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  than something you have to be forced to do or force yourself to do rather than being a natural
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  and a part of the whole growing up and adulthood process this is troubling because
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  that everybody now wants things easy quick not joining work and you see people saying things you
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  a very real bright young people saying things like I'm only gonna do the bare necessary
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  amount of work so I don't lose my job or they'll say I don't want a real job I just want to do
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  gigs and I'll just do enough gigs to get by the idea of just getting by and not liking work
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  is the antithesis of the American dream the American dream has always been work hard keep at it
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  succeed and you end up being more prosperous and more happy than even your parents were
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  so to me it's a very very sad phenomenon that there's this attitude the younger people today
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  are also very fragile of with many of them you say boo they wet their pants or they go hide in
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  a safe room or something like that it's a wrong system there are challenges there are problems
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  that everybody will face but usually within a problem there also lies an opportunity and if
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  they were sensible they would look through the problem find the opportunity grab it and advance
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  themselves what do you think what do you think caused this mindset I have a couple I have a
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  couple ideas but I don't know I don't know if it was a whole bunch of small little things or if it
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  was a cultural shift but all those people on that reddit thread will say well there's no way we're
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  going to be as happy as our parents we can't even afford the attached home anymore and cost of
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  living has gone up and salaries having kept up and now if I want to live in a city where I could
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  get potentially a great job like a you know a New York or any any coastal city really any big major
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  US city well the renders through the roof and that's just for a single bedroom apartment so
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  all of these things probably stressed people out but maybe there was a breaking point and I don't
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  know what that breaking point was when people just threw up their hands and they said you know what
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  I'm not gonna I'm not gonna try and do and build the life that my parents had I'm gonna try and
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  build a different life and I think maybe that's what led to this mindset I don't know if you have
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  ideas or opinions on what caused yes I have a couple of thoughts one we've been through a period
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  of unique prosperity in the country and as a result a lot of parents have made more income
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  than they ever thought that they could make and that meant the kids had a very full
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  fairly easy lifetime themselves so I think in one sense our prosperity kind of spoiled the
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  picture for young people but I think there are also a couple other phenomena that contributed
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  to it particularly the government policies during the pandemic and even leading up to it
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  where quite a few people in this country are now being paid more for not working than they ever
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  earned when they were working and that creates a very bad mindset it creates a mindset of entitlement
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  that you don't really have to do any work government will just take care of you so I think that's
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  a second factor and I think a third factor is our educational system I think is failing the younger
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  generation and the generation that immediately preceded it we're not doing a good job
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  teaching kids what they need to know to have a good career when I was a kid I had there were two
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  tracks that people would be on as you probably know something like two thirds of adult Americans
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  do not have a college degree but in the old days there was a track for kids who were headed to
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  college and one true ones who were not and the ones who were not they had a class called manual
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  training we nicknamed the shop class I don't know quite why and that taught them skills that would
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  let them become electricians plumbers appliance people all kinds of trades many of which turn out to
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  be very high paying trades what wasn't that it was condemning them to a bad life you'll look
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  at what you pay an hour for a plumber or an electrician in plenty of room for good economic result
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  but the our country now as the least vocational training of any OECD country big leagues in the
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  high schools and the middle schools no longer even offer manual training courses just not part of
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  the curriculum so that disadvantages the kids who were not on a college track for the ones who
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  are on the college track there are also being disadvantaged because we're not teaching the
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  fundamentals we're not teaching in the lower grades arithmetic reading and writing in most of those
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  skills young Americans in grammar school rank around 30th in the world how can we be staying as
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  the number one world country when we rank 30th in primary education and it gets worse when they
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  get to high school when they get to high school there no longer teaching high school math physics
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  chemistry all those skills that you need to survive in a technologically advancing country
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  so I think it's partly a self-inflicted wound in the school system it's partly that their
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  parents had such an easy time of it that the kids got spoiled I've been amazed with how many
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  young people don't get a summer job when they're out of school forget about getting a job while
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  they're in school they don't even have summer job they're allowing around on the beach I don't
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  know why the parents permit that when my two girls were teenagers and one of them first got a driver's
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  license the question came up what would they do for a summer job we go out to the hamptons in the
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  summer what would they do so I bought a food truck a stainless steel food truck got them the food
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  concession for one of the beaches and they worked pretty hard during the whole day because
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  nothing like making hamburgers and hot dogs and cutting up fruits and everything and then serving
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  the customer because of one of them to learn even though they would not have to do that just to
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  make tuition I wanted them to learn you don't have to be a productive person you're not just
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  going to sit around on the beach I don't think there's enough of that in the parental
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  attitude so I think it's a whole series of factors that have led to it but I think it's a very
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  bad phenomenon. Hey guys Scott here I just wanted to take a quick moment to say a heartfelt
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  thanks to every single one of you six years of this show and it's really all because of you
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  your listens your support your shares it will keep this thing going when I started I had no idea
• 23:34
  how big this would get how many lives we touch the stories we share the lessons that we learned
• 23:40
  together it's truly humbling and I believe that we're building something really special here a
• 23:44
  community where no one has to reinvent the wheel we're all in this together learning and growing
• 23:50
  and here's my ask if you love this show it's made a difference for you please share it with
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  somebody who needs it hella friend host on social whatever works it's the best way to keep
• 24:00
  this thing going strong bring on even better guests and share more life changing wisdom and you
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  can find us on all the spots so you can go to successstorypodcast.com if you like listening to podcasts
• 24:12
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• 24:25
  one of you let's keep learning let's keep growing and let's keep making this world a little
• 24:30
  bit better together all right let's get back to the show very interesting because I mean I don't
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  even consider myself that old I'm 34 and I remember during university I would work during the day
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  and I would push my classes and I'm also came from I didn't come from a you know a hard life growing
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  up like I didn't really have to concern myself with tuition but for me it was more about I want
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  to get my career started early and I want to figure out how to get some reps in and and get some
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  experience so I would push my classes to tonight and weekends so that I could work during the day
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  but it's it's a very slippery slope now and it's only listen not that that was only a couple of
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  years ago and it seems like there's been this entire culture shift I mean again you came from a
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  generation the you know previous to mind where you had to work you there was no there wasn't
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  the economic prosperity that I grew up with when you were a kid like you had to figure out life
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  and work and whatnot and at least for the majority of people so if you look forward it must be
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  very concerning for you where this country's going if we don't find a way to turn it around
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  well it it is very concerning because unlike when I grew up I was born in the depression 1937
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  and that was more or less the peak of the depression so it was a very different time as you
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  point out but um in those days we were unchallenged as the world's leading economic power now there
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  are lots of challenges you obviously have China being very aggressive pushing education very hard
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  and having very hard working very dedicated population so now there's the added challenge for our
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  country how do we sustain ourselves as a number one power or even as a shared power when you have
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  a country like China where education is highly prized the people are very hard working and where
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  they have a real mercantile instinct if we lose our entrepreneurship then it's really going to
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  be over with we live if we lose innovation and entrepreneurship well entrepreneurship takes a lot
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  of work with somebody who's starting their own business it's not a question do I work 40 hours
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  or 39 or 41 or 42 you're starting your own business you're in it you're in it up to your
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  eyeballs and you don't even think about am I working overtime so the danger is that these other
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  societal problems that you and I have been discussing may very well spill over into the entrepreneur
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  ship that creative this country and one alarming trend in that regard of the institution only
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  back venture capital companies in the last 10 years 40% have a foreign born person who's either
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  the CEO or the co CEO 40% so you think about that it's great that we've had that influx of very
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  entrepreneur and skilled foreigners but it also suggests that we'd not have as much
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  entrepreneurship if it weren't for the foreigners and that's a scary thing that would lead more
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  and more foreign help just to keep going um I mean you you've seen you I mean I think that if you
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  look at some of the CEOs of major tech companies you see people that come from other parts of the
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  world that move to the US that take up these positions again which is great but you you do have to
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  have a culture of entrepreneurship of hard working of not being afraid to build things and fail and I
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  think that we're so we're moving so far from people being willing to do uncomfortable work
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  that we're not even talking about like you said entrepreneurship we're just talking about
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  people working a nine to five Monday to Friday job because if you're gonna if you're gonna be a
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  successful entrepreneur like I came from a nine to five environment and I worked hard there then
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  I realized it I wasn't moving fast enough my career wasn't progressing as quick as I wanted to
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  so then I'm gonna take that into my own hands and instead of working nine to five Monday to Friday
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  I'm working 24 7 365 but at least I can now move at my own pace but the nine to five was because I
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  didn't have entrepreneurial parents the nine to five was this this a little bit of like an incubation
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  for me as a professional to then say okay this is great but I want to go farther if I had never
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  even had the exposure to the nine to five or if I was I see some people traveling all over the
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  world and working the gig economy again there's nothing inherently wrong with that but if a culture
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  promotes that and social media promotes lifestyle and all that I think that I think that again
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  another component that you didn't mention is we look on social we think other people's lives
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  are so great and how can they work two hours a week and make you know a million dollars a year
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  well that's not reality but social media is a megaphone and it broadcasts this reality and people
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  assume it's the reality so then they try and architect their lives like that and amongst all the
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  other things you mentioned it's just a very um we're gonna we're in a dangerous place I think because
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  there's so much influence telling us how we should live or what hard work should be or shouldn't be
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  and I think that it's I think we're kind of messing up the minds of a younger generation
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  as to what life can look like well I agree with that and I think you see it in another context
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  it used to be people's dream was own your own home that was a big big dream get married have a kid
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  own your own home was part of the cultural scene now people are not so interested in
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  owning things they've seen this settle for having the use of things there's even an industry now
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  where people are renting their clothes rather than buying I mean what could be more weird and what could
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  be gross actually efficient then renting your clothes because you know the guy running them
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  to you is making a high rate of return well whereas his rate of return coming from was coming from
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  you because you're such a fool you won't even want to front end the price of your clothing
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  and so I think it's gotten to a very very extreme point there's nothing wrong with wanting to own
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  things and for most families owning the home was central to their ability to develop some semblance
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  of wealth because homes tend to appreciate over time my father had a pretty good saying even though
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  he was not wealthy he said I know a lot of people have gotten rich collecting rent I don't know
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  anybody who got rich paying rent and that's a philosophy that the people don't seem to have
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  everything is measured in terms of monthly payment not am I earning owning something not am I
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  getting somewhere not am I getting ahead it's a whole attitude little thing that as you point out
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  is very very dangerous you know what I'm actually I'm really concerned because it seems to be
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  compounded with shortsightedness what will happen is people will make enough money to rent their
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  whole life and then what happens when you can't work anymore or when you have some when you when
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  you get sick or or when you do just of old age you can't put in those hours or the cognitive
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  performance just isn't there or the physical performance isn't there I mean we haven't really
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  seen that generation get to that age yet and that's going to be scary unless something is done
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  because the generation that is of the age that can no longer work most of them will have pensions
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  or they'll have some sort or they came from the mentality of I want to buy my house I want to
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  invest yeah it's it's very scary the people that are you know 70 80 90 now did not rent their clothes
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  when they were growing up well as sociologists that I met at a cocktail party had an interesting encapsulation
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  of that he said one of the real problems of the younger generation is the inability to postpone
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  immediate gratification that's what leads to they want everything quick easy now very accessible
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  the idea of saving up to buy a home is quite different from that that generally especially
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  for younger people used to mean some postponement of immediate gratification because you put away
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  a little money put away a little money and then you got to do something by way of the home
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  with it but they're happy to rent the house happy to run a car when they need it happy to run
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  even their clothes and it's a dead end street because what they're doing is raising their current
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  cost of living to the point where they're not going to be able as you point out to have something
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  to take care of them later on and that in turn is producing and encouraging the very unfortunate
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  relationship between the population and government remember the old communist manifesto the way to
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  make socialism permanent is first of all get to where a majority of the adult population pays no
• 35:53
  tax well we're just about there second is get to the point where a majority of the adult population
• 36:02
  depends on government for its livelihood that's where we're starting to head with all these
• 36:10
  programs and once we get through that second thing if we do unfortunately and most people
• 36:18
  pay no tax and or dependent on government forget it society as we've known it our culture as we've
• 36:26
  known it and tragically our economy as we've known it will be no more talk to me about it actually
• 36:35
  just a point I have I want to talk about your transition to public service but can you just
• 36:40
  explain that point the because I understand being dependent on government but can you explain the
• 36:46
  pay no tax point well it is theoretically true that almost half the battle in Americans do not pay
• 36:59
  any tax because they have all these tax credits in refund when the government says I'm going to
• 37:07
  give you a tax credit for having a child let's say now that may be a worthwhile idea to help people
• 37:16
  have children but what it works works works out to in reality is if you don't have enough income
• 37:25
  that you really paying tax you get that money directly so instead of being what it's presented as
• 37:33
  which is just a tax credit slot it's an actual gift to the people who don't have taxable income
• 37:43
  and in some cases even if they do it small and again it becomes a tax a cash payment rather than a
• 37:52
  tax credit so it encourages the wrong behavior basically yes yes and I'm not opposed to child care
• 38:01
  I'm not opposed to people having families obviously those are important but when you create those
• 38:11
  two things nobody pays tax and people are dependent on government now you've changed the whole
• 38:18
  society and it is a very very slippery slope because the theory of it is that somehow the rest of
• 38:28
  society can afford not only to maintain themselves but pay the bills to government to maintain the
• 38:37
  half that aren't working then aren't productive well that's a very different world from the world
• 38:45
  that we used to have I just want to take a second and thank the HubSpot podcast network for
• 38:50
  supporting success story the HubSpot podcast network has incredible podcasts like the product boss
• 38:56
  hosted by Jacqueline Snyder and Mina Kuhnlo Sithep if you want to take your physical product sales
• 39:03
  and strategy to the next level to create your dream life you need to listen to the product boss
• 39:09
  they sit down for an hour they do a workshop style podcast they're going to talk about everything
• 39:14
  that you need to know to up level yourself social media marketing if you're a consumer package goods
• 39:21
  if you have any sort of physical widget you need to tune into the product boss wherever you get
• 39:26
  your podcasts that makes sense I understand um talk to me about I mean I've I've I've had this
• 39:36
  conversation with a lot of people why somebody would want to go work in the government go work
• 39:43
  in public service because listen this is not like you needed this for your career you you've made a
• 39:50
  lot of money doing what you're very good at and government always seems like it just seems like
• 39:56
  a lot of headache it seems like your life is picked apart people criticize you know was ever happy
• 40:01
  with you this is like the life of of government so at this point in your career I mean you've made
• 40:08
  by anyone standards what was the purpose in your mind of going to serve the government going to
• 40:14
  serve the people it was several things but first of all it came at a point in my life where I
• 40:23
  could afford to do it because I had made enough to take care of myself forever and forever so there
• 40:29
  was the potential for doing it and making the economic sacrifice to go into government and in
• 40:38
  fact when I had my sort of job interview for the cabinet post with President Trump and the others
• 40:46
  it was weird because it was the first time in my life I was ever eager to have a job that paid
• 40:53
  a tiny fraction of what my old job had paid but nonetheless I felt it was at a point in time
• 41:01
  where I could afford being more importantly I felt that what Trump was trying to do was what the
• 41:10
  country needed I felt that he was the only one of the either democratic or republican candidates
• 41:19
  who understood how badly abused middle class and lower middle class working America were in
• 41:29
  favor of people who were not working the other candidates didn't even understand it so I felt
• 41:37
  the only one who's going to try to fix this is somebody who at least understands the problem
• 41:43
  the other candidates didn't even know that it was a problem so I felt there was a societal need
• 41:50
  for somebody to try to help fix this problem because I love this country country has been very
• 41:59
  good to me and I felt it was time to try to give back as part of an enterprise in the government
• 42:07
  to regain some of what we had been losing and I mean when you announced that
• 42:18
  you were even supporting Trump I think from what I remember that was a little bit of a surprise
• 42:23
  to the public yes it was what happened back then this was before the Republican primaries
• 42:32
  in the 2016 election I was on squawk box in the morning and toward the end of the interview one
• 42:47
  of them said if Trump is the presidential nominee for the Republicans will you support him
• 42:55
  and they were thinking my answer would be no because at that point most of Wall Street was anti-Trump
• 43:03
  and strangely a lot of Wall Street remains democratic I would say a majority of the senior
• 43:10
  people have been Democrats I don't quite understand why but anyhow so that shocked people
• 43:19
  and then I explained why my theory that he was the only one who understood the societal problem
• 43:28
  that you and I have been discussing and that in turn led to my getting involved with the campaign
• 43:35
  so I started doing editorial mostly in regional newspapers he would send me as a surrogate
• 43:44
  to debate with the left wing people things like that and then ultimately he asked me to
• 43:55
  go into the cabinet. Talk to me about some of the some of the policies that you implemented
• 44:05
  while you were in in his government but also I also want to understand going forward
• 44:11
  obviously right now we'll we'll try and keep this interview evergreen but
• 44:17
  you know in a couple months we're going to see a very new US government and I'm curious
• 44:25
  what do we have to do going forward to sort of continue the work that you did?
• 44:31
  Well fortunately unlike most of the Biden cabinet people
• 44:38
  Gina Romando who is my successor has pretty well continued the tariff policies and the export
• 44:47
  control policies that I put into effect during the Trump administration so for the moment
• 44:57
  the Democrats have been relatively supportive of the tariff initiatives and denying potential
• 45:06
  enemies access to high-tech materials sanctions things of that sort so so far it hasn't been a problem
• 45:16
  what worries me in case it's Kamala Harris is a lot of things one of which is we have no idea
• 45:25
  what her trade policies are going to be she's not made any real statement about trade
• 45:33
  so I can't judge what she might do or not to the second thing though I think she's more interested
• 45:44
  in changing the educational system away from what I think it should be which is the manual
• 45:53
  training and the high-tech training she's more interested in making it a sociological instrument
• 46:02
  making it very woke well woke it is really in many ways the direct antithesis of the American dream
• 46:13
  because woke says you should be embarrassed to be a citizen of the United States
• 46:21
  woke says your four bearers were abusers and that's a really bad thing and we need retribution
• 46:31
  so I'm worried that while I think the educational system needs reforming in the direction of going
• 46:40
  back to what it used to be I think her visualization of education is very different and it's resulting
• 46:52
  in young people having very little understanding of what's really going on and there was a university
• 47:02
  somewhere in the Midwest that took a survey of people 18 to 25 and it asked them a whole variety of
• 47:11
  questions two that struck me as really dangerous one was the question who was Andrew Jackson
• 47:23
  as you know he was very controversial person the most popular answer was Michael's brother
• 47:31
  wow he had nothing to do with each other the second question that he asked was where was slavery
• 47:43
  invented and the most popular answer there was in the United States now it's not only
• 47:52
  historically inaccurate by thousands of years but it's also inaccurate by thousands of miles
• 48:01
  and these young people genuinely did not understand the answer to either of those questions now
• 48:09
  there were many others they also had funny answers too but when your misconception is that the US
• 48:20
  is what created the whole slavery problem you don't understand where anything is coming
• 48:28
  it's found when I was in government one of the tasks I occasionally did was swear in
• 48:37
  citizens naturalized citizens who had come legally into this country and when you are a legal
• 48:46
  immigrant seeking citizenship you have to study a lot you have to study about the constitution
• 48:54
  and I concluded that the legal immigrants who became citizen were better informed about our country
• 49:03
  than most young people and that's really an unfortunate thing they were also wonderful in that
• 49:13
  their eyes were filled with happy tears when they became citizens they were proud as could be
• 49:21
  whereas a lot of young people know the question whether the US is a good place the question said
• 49:29
  their own sexuality the question what kinds of things what they don't question is why am I not
• 49:36
  learning what I should learn to be a productive battle and therefore I'm very worried about the
• 49:44
  direction in which Kamala Harris might very well take this country you know you mentioned something
• 49:53
  that's very interesting to me and I never quite understood it because all the different things
• 49:58
  that people question I never understood why anybody would question if the US was a good place
• 50:06
  and I see that I mean there's a lot of things people question like he just mentioned people question
• 50:10
  their own sexuality their pronouns you know what they want to do with their life their career
• 50:16
  those are whatever you can you can make a comment on whether or not those are things that people
• 50:21
  should question or shouldn't question that's more personal my biggest issue is it seems like
• 50:28
  there's so much hate for for the US from from a younger generation and I don't I don't understand it
• 50:35
  I don't get where that came from because the US is giving these people all the abilities in the world
• 50:43
  to question all these different things and to choose all these different things like this is the
• 50:48
  country that's affording you that opportunity I never understood that and I actually you know
• 50:52
  just to give you perspective I'm Canadian so I actually have to go through an immigration process
• 50:58
  and I've gone probably spent about at this point coming in through a visa and then going through
• 51:04
  this visa process that eventually getting green card probably 40 50 thousand dollars in fees and
• 51:10
  applications and just time spent and getting referral like it's a very arguing as process but
• 51:17
  very grateful I mean now my business is down here now my connections are down here network is
• 51:24
  down here and and Canada is like listen Canada is not a third world country Canada is Canada but
• 51:30
  even the contrast between Canada and the US I see a hundred X more opportunity and and and and
• 51:38
  my career moves exponentially quicker so it's just interesting I can't for any reason understand
• 51:47
  how people can hate the US it's very confusing to me well if you really thought that the only reason
• 51:56
  there was slavery in this world was the United States that we literally invented it that would
• 52:04
  probably give you a guilty feel of certainly teaching people that that's the case is meant to give
• 52:11
  you a guilty it's not even true it's not even close to true it's it's so far from reality oh of
• 52:18
  course so but remember Garibald's the big propaganda minister under Hitler he said if you tell a
• 52:27
  big lie often enough then if you can control the media so that they don't dispute it too much
• 52:35
  then it becomes the truth then the real truth becomes a lie and I think that's what's happening
• 52:42
  because the young people and our educational system both are totally intolerant of any other
• 52:52
  opinion and if you try to talk to a young piece of Purbran and say that is just not true that
• 53:02
  slavery was invented here you get a real argument if if they will even respond rather than just
• 53:09
  walk away so there's an intolerance to disagreement and you see it on the campuses
• 53:18
  if if a non-left wing professor wants to give a talk on a campus they get booed they get
• 53:27
  picketed and buried few colleges will even let them come so whereas you would think
• 53:36
  educations of learning were meant to be open to different ideas now they're very close to them
• 53:44
  and in a funny way the extreme left and the extreme right have that one thing in common that
• 53:53
  they're both intolerant of any view other than their own extremes and it's a very worrisome thing
• 54:03
  because it's starting to tear apart the heart of society you saw with this young kid trying to
• 54:10
  assassinate Trump we see it in all kinds of violent outbursts there's a real anger that's been
• 54:20
  developed in people partly I think because they feel hopeless about their own careers as we
• 54:27
  talked about earlier but also there's been inculcated in them by the school systems this
• 54:36
  negatism toward the US negatism toward traditional values and that's gotta be fixed and so my biggest
• 54:47
  worry I think our educational system is more of a danger to this country than China is I think
• 54:56
  it's more of a danger than Russia is I think it's more of a danger than Iran is because those
• 55:05
  of things we're gonna have to cope with but our educational problems are self-inflicted wounds
• 55:12
  and the most crazy way to die is through a self-inflicted wound but I think that's I think that's
• 55:20
  the most concerning way and it's actually interesting because you talk about universities not
• 55:26
  allowing right wing thought leaders on the campus I was always under the assumption that history
• 55:33
  was history and then university and college was a place for debate and conversation and critical
• 55:41
  thinking about policies moving forward not not about trying to rewrite world history this is a
• 55:50
  very very strange because if somebody who's a a right way and I say that in air quotes because
• 55:57
  there's some very moderate thinkers and and very middle of the road thinkers that I think are now
• 56:02
  labeled as more right wing than they really are but I mean even Trump was a Democrat he he lived
• 56:09
  in New York City his whole life like he was he was always a Democrat he was always very forward
• 56:15
  thinking person but you see these you see that these people are being turned into like right wing
• 56:25
  individuals when really they're just trying to they're just trying to provide a different lens
• 56:30
  or a different perspective on on what's happening in society which I always thought was
• 56:35
  as as as an individual I want to get access to as much information as possible and I want to
• 56:41
  hear arguments and I want to hear debate and I think that's how society moves forward I think that's
• 56:47
  I think that's a healthy to hear as much information and to study and to research and to do your
• 56:53
  own due diligence this is the way that I grew up this is the way that my career moved forward it's
• 56:58
  not just business information it's it's getting societal and cultural and political and financial
• 57:05
  information from all these different people it just made me a better individual well it's true
• 57:12
  and what when I was a young teenager there was a very popular TV show that consisted of debates
• 57:20
  between Bill Buckley a very right-wing very scholarly right-winger and Gore Vidal
• 57:28
  very intelligent left-wing one and it was the kind of show that no longer would appear on any
• 57:37
  television station or any probably even any cable network it was an thinking hour long thing
• 57:45
  there were both different in their thinking they both probably disliked each other as individuals
• 57:54
  so a major good TV but the point was in those days the media welcomed debate and then it's not
• 58:05
  just the editorial page that expresses opinion the news columns are really editorials for the most
• 58:14
  part and that's wrong that's not what media news should be the news should be what it is
• 58:21
  and just as you said history is what it is it is what it was it shouldn't be tampered with it's
• 58:29
  a factual thing but they change it what are you you know when you look forward they just touched
• 58:38
  very briefly on on Russia China Iran and then of course they're not all the same entity there are
• 58:44
  nuances to how each each one of those nations builds their country and interacts with the US
• 58:53
  but going forward on a global level what are some thoughts about biggest risks biggest concerns
• 58:59
  things that the US should be aware of things that the average person should be aware of
• 59:05
  based on your experience well but on the geopolitical sense what I'm worried the most about
• 59:13
  is Russia China and Iran seem to be getting more and more into the becoming the Axis powers
• 59:24
  they've seen to band together in a lot of activities and if you look back to what led to world
• 59:32
  too it was treaties between Germany and Japan that started it they started a mutual defense treaty
• 59:44
  Germany and Italy did the same thing then what next happened was Germany made an agreement
• 59:55
  with Poland with Russia to a mutual defense agreement and what they didn't disclose was that
• 1:00:06
  part of the agreement was to divide up Poland so two weeks after they signed that agreement
• 1:00:14
  Germany invaded Poland overran it and did split it up with the Russians so where his knees
• 1:00:22
  more and more they're operating jointly the why is that a problem that's a problem because
• 1:00:30
  Germany itself and even Japan were very small economies relative to the US so when you put even
• 1:00:40
  the two of them together didn't come near ours but China is already about more than two-thirds
• 1:00:48
  of our economy you add to that Russia you add to that Iran and you have the potential that we
• 1:00:57
  could become engaged in World War III and be fighting it on three fronts fighting it in the mid-East
• 1:01:07
  fighting it in the Asian sector and fighting it in Europe that's the really scary thing and it's
• 1:01:18
  why it bothers me that the Democrats don't seem to understand my attitude about bully remember I said
• 1:01:28
  bully needs a willing victim well the US is acting nowadays more like a willing victim than like
• 1:01:37
  anything else we beg Iran to make a treaty with us and I think it was a national disgrace
• 1:01:45
  that the Iranians few weeks ago after all these years of Biden's growing around with them
• 1:01:53
  trying to get into what would have been a terrible nuclear treaty anyway they announced they
• 1:01:59
  have no interest in any further negotiation well for the world's number one power to be brushed
• 1:02:07
  off by a third or fourth rate power that never would have happened under Trump or any other sensible
• 1:02:16
  similarly look at what's been happening China floated a spy balloon over the whole country
• 1:02:26
  later they've been developing a huge intelligence operation in Cuba and God knows what else they're
• 1:02:33
  putting in there and then recently they had one of their vessels in a Russian nuclear submarine
• 1:02:42
  dock in Havana 90 miles off our coast well what did we do what was our response nothing
• 1:02:52
  lately Russia and China had a joint bombing exercise a drill off Alaska what did we do nothing
• 1:03:03
  meanwhile China and Russia consistently support Iran and the Houthis and as well and all that
• 1:03:12
  in the Middle East the Houthis have totally disrupted the Red Sea and it's disrupting shipping
• 1:03:20
  what are we doing a very very limited defense I think instead we need to go back to Teddy Roosevelt's
• 1:03:29
  philosophy which was speak softly and carry a big stick these fellas speak loudly and they don't
• 1:03:38
  have any stick at all so that's my scary analysis of what's going on geopolitically but I think
• 1:03:48
  if we can fix the educational system make Americans feel patriotic again make Americans
• 1:03:58
  be better educated restore the hardware concept restore the entrepreneurship concept then we can
• 1:04:08
  combat all that but if we stay as a willing victim geopolitical things are going to get worse they're
• 1:04:16
  not going to get better and I think a key turning point in the Trump administration was when we had
• 1:04:24
  the first date visit came from president G and at more largo in Palm Beach a lot of components to
• 1:04:34
  the story which are in my book risks and returns but I'll just summarize one segment that afternoon
• 1:04:45
  we had a national security council meeting and we voted up that meeting to launch the 52
• 1:04:53
  missiles into Syria then reprisal for their efforts to blow up one of our bases in the mid-East
• 1:05:02
  but we just the Trump decided not to postpone the implementation he decided to do it at 7.15
• 1:05:12
  that night and with minutes the the ceremony will then enter with praise to the NJ
• 1:05:21
  well I didn't he do that first of all I think far and look what I will do it was obviously also
• 1:05:29
  a message to Iran or anyone else who wants to do us arm push me too far and you're going to get
• 1:05:37
  a response you don't like and if you notice during the Trump years we didn't have these incursions
• 1:05:44
  from China or Iran made a little trouble but not so much Russia didn't invade Ukraine until
• 1:05:53
  well into the Biden presidency that's not an accident I think they got the message from what Trump
• 1:06:02
  did that night at more largo and from other things that he did privately and publicly I think they
• 1:06:10
  got the message you can't go too far with this guy that's a message we have to get back to
• 1:06:18
  because if we let them keep becoming more and more bold and if we be becoming weaker and weaker
• 1:06:27
  and less patriotic that's not a good formula that's a formula that will lead to a war and a war
• 1:06:36
  that we may have a tough time when I have one last one last question just about
• 1:06:44
  about China and then I want to I want to just understand where people can go to get your book
• 1:06:50
  and connect with you as well but the last the last thought that I had because I've had the
• 1:06:55
  conversation about China with several people and I don't look at China in the same lenses around
• 1:07:02
  China China seems to be not interested in anything like military compared to Iran which seems like
• 1:07:12
  to be Iran seems to be very hostile exceptionally hostile but I've had a conversation with Keith
• 1:07:19
  Crack about Iran as well as Dimitri Alprovich about about China excuse me and there's just different
• 1:07:29
  views on how to manage and engage with China so in terms of your perspective trade and agreements
• 1:07:40
  and and how we sort of interact with China would it be better for the US to entrench further into
• 1:07:50
  China and try and put more businesses in China and do more trade and make them to some degree
• 1:07:58
  dependent is that even possible or is it better to completely remove and isolate and and not
• 1:08:06
  engage with them at a commercial level if that's even viable no I don't think either extreme is
• 1:08:13
  the right answer I think what we need is a more finely tuned policy and what I mean by that
• 1:08:25
  is the following it's inevitable that we will need to trade with China China is the second largest
• 1:08:35
  hour in the world it's a very large and until recently growing market so I think the idea of
• 1:08:44
  total disengagement simply doesn't work the world is a more complicated place than that
• 1:08:52
  and further if we were somehow to totally disengage from China all that it would do is to
• 1:09:01
  divert their exports to other countries and then in term would have to export more to us so it
• 1:09:09
  would just scramble things up I don't think that's a practical solution the problem with putting
• 1:09:18
  more businesses into China is that the businesses they're mostly interested in are the high tech
• 1:09:26
  businesses and most of the output of high tech is what we call dual use semi conductors have peaceful
• 1:09:35
  use but they also are very critical to military applications so you can't build a semi conductor
• 1:09:44
  plant that doesn't really turn out both kinds so and then China you don't really have been dependent
• 1:09:55
  with it even if it's America now there's subject to all kinds of constraints all sorts of
• 1:10:05
  requirements that we don't have here so I don't think putting more investment into China is the
• 1:10:14
  I think we need to figure out a serious adult level way to coexist with them and I think part of
• 1:10:22
  it has to be the realization that they will become more of a power they're already a meaningful
• 1:10:31
  power we can't just dismiss them and say it will go away won't go away they are an ambitious
• 1:10:39
  country and under President Xi are a very tightly controlled country you perhaps aren't aware
• 1:10:50
  but of their billion three or four hundred million population only 65 million are members of the
• 1:10:58
  communist party so a tiny percentage of the entire population is even communist so that's an
• 1:11:07
  interesting dimension for people to think about but what it basically means is the bulk of the
• 1:11:15
  population is totally disenfranchised that leads to making it easy for dictatorship and while the
• 1:11:25
  technical form of government it may be communist and the reality is China's a dictatorship Russia's
• 1:11:33
  a dictatorship certainly Iran is a dictatorship and that's the real problem is the ideological
• 1:11:41
  problem I don't know of a single communist country that hasn't turned out to be a dictatorship
• 1:11:51
  and if you have a gigantic and powerful country that's a dictatorship all you have to run into
• 1:11:59
  is one successive dictator who really wants to take over the world then I'm not saying that
• 1:12:06
  Xi is necessarily that person but he's getting old there he won't be the dictator forever someone
• 1:12:14
  else will be and it could very well be some right wing general so I think we do need an accommodation
• 1:12:23
  but it needs to be an accommodation unequal footing it can't be that we let them win in trade because
• 1:12:33
  of violating rules taking advantage of intellectual property things like that we need a rule-based
• 1:12:42
  trading system and one that's fair and one that has a mechanism for resolving honest disputes
• 1:12:51
  that's the way to solve the trade problem ultimately but we need to get the other parties to agree
• 1:12:58
  to it now on the book which is which is my balance of trades issue yes so this is risk and
• 1:13:07
  returns creating success in business and life and that's what's out now that's correct and it's
• 1:13:12
  available on Amazon right now and the formal publication date is September 10th so to be
• 1:13:23
  readily available and bookstores all over by then it's an anecdotal autobiography that takes
• 1:13:37
  the anecdotes many of which are the meaner to say and interesting and tries to draw loose
• 1:13:48
  lessons from them lessons that could of their career and their life that may happen to be
• 1:13:56
  so I'm running all around the countryside doing a book signing parties and as we have a website
• 1:14:05
  or the book it's called risks in returns dot net and I would urge anybody who enjoys this
• 1:14:15
  discussion enough to want to learn more about the book look on that website and you'll find a lot
• 1:14:22
  of information so you'll see you'll the book will encapsulate basically your life anecdotes we'll
• 1:14:31
  talk about politics we'll talk about business all of that I mean you've done over 400 you've
• 1:14:37
  restructured more than 400 billion dollars in assets and you've been named Bloomberg's 50 most
• 1:14:42
  influential people so this is going to be a very interesting book so we'll link that in the show
• 1:14:48
  notes as well and if you're in by the way it will but if you're in Miami let me know we'll
• 1:14:53
  have to create some content around the book signing sometime if you're ever down here well I will
• 1:14:58
  be doing some stops in Miami so I'd love to take you up on that on that offer and that'll also
• 1:15:06
  force feed you a book so it's a two birds one stone that works perfect um okay so we'll get all
• 1:15:14
  those links in the show notes so people can go they can pre-order the book now by the way on Amazon
• 1:15:19
  if they want to pre-order it or you can get it probably any any book stores on September 10
• 1:15:24
  um well but I really appreciate your time I really appreciate you just sort of covering a wide
• 1:15:29
  range of different topics because I just sort of threw everything at you you're about a very
• 1:15:32
  interesting life so I wanted to get a little bit of I want to get like a sample of all the different
• 1:15:36
  things that you've you've taken on um if you were going to leave the audience you can pick you can
• 1:15:43
  pick an insight or a lesson something that you would tell your younger self your 20 year old
• 1:15:49
  self after your career in private and public service what would that what would that one lesson be
• 1:15:55
  but my one big lesson is the only person who can hold you back is you yourself and if you
• 1:16:04
  yourself instead really work hard sees opportunities and take an occasional risk you can become
• 1:16:14
  pretty much whatever you want to so there's no reason to hide in a safe room get out there in the
• 1:16:22
  open get into the real world the rough things up a bit and if you get roughed up some along the way
• 1:16:31
  that's good because that's a learning experience but bottom line the only one who can hold you back
• 1:16:40
  is you yourself