Latest / Stuff You Should Know / How Ponzi Schemes Work

Transcript

How Ponzi Schemes Work · Stuff You Should Know

0:00
Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
0:03
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should know?
0:08
Speaker 1: From house Stuff Works dot com? Hey, and welcome to
0:16
Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. Chuck say Hi, Hi, welcome people.
0:21
Speaker 1: This is stuff you should know. Indeed, Chuck's got his
0:24
Speaker 1: little jug of vodka. I got my Fresca and we
0:27
Speaker 1: were ready to go. All right, Chuck, No, I don't wire, Chuck, Chuck,
0:31
Speaker 1: do you know how we have these weblogs? Now, there's
0:34
Speaker 1: like a stuff you should know? Weblog, a k a blog. Yeah, sure, yeah,
0:38
Speaker 1: if you wouldn't be all hit or whatever. I do
0:40
Speaker 1: know how we have that because I write on it
0:42
Speaker 1: every day. I know. I was just starting a conversation,
0:45
Speaker 1: Chuck lay off. Well, yes, sorry, Um remember that post
0:47
Speaker 1: I put up yesterday that you said, like you read
0:49
Speaker 1: three times and still couldn't make heads or tails of that? Yeah,
0:51
Speaker 1: I didn't get it. Well, there's a there's a part
0:53
Speaker 1: of it, uh, kind of the crux of the whole thing.
0:57
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's the case or not, but anyway,
0:59
Speaker 1: there's an aspect of it. And it was about these, um,
1:01
Speaker 1: these two artists and um well, one of them just
1:05
Speaker 1: goes by the name Arakawa, right, and his partner, and
1:09
Speaker 1: I don't think just artistic partner. I think I think
1:12
Speaker 1: that their life partners. Maybe her name is Madeline Gins, right,
1:18
Speaker 1: And they have been quite successful at creating this architecture
1:23
Speaker 1: UM that's intended to achieve immortality. Right. Well, the way
1:28
Speaker 1: these two have done it is um by through surprising,
1:31
Speaker 1: disturbing architectural choices. Right. Basically, their theory is that if
1:38
Speaker 1: you create or if you live in an uncomfortable dwelling,
1:42
Speaker 1: UM discomfort or comfort least the laziness and sedentariness, and
1:47
Speaker 1: then that's ultimately what kills you. Holly unproven, but they
1:52
Speaker 1: designed their architecture based on that theory, so they keep
1:54
Speaker 1: you uncomfortable. And uh, it's unfamiliar. I think I know this.
1:59
Speaker 1: I think we actually have an article on this. Like
2:01
Speaker 1: the floors are undulating, undulating floors and uh yeah, I've
2:05
Speaker 1: heard of that. They also like um kind of moonscape floors,
2:10
Speaker 1: um angled like ceilings that just it doesn't sound like
2:13
Speaker 1: a very pleasant place to live. Pretty interesting, this one
2:16
Speaker 1: guy and these things go for there there. Just to
2:18
Speaker 1: build them, they cost millions of dollars, but they have
2:21
Speaker 1: built several most of them are lost in in Tokyo.
2:24
Speaker 1: And this one guy who lives in one with his
2:26
Speaker 1: family so that he's lost like twenty pounds and doesn't
2:29
Speaker 1: have hay fever any longer since he moved in there. Yeah. Um,
2:33
Speaker 1: but there their their whole firm is basically in jeopardy
2:38
Speaker 1: because they were heavily invested with one Bernard made Off,
2:41
Speaker 1: who you may may have heard. This guy's reach extends everywhere.
2:45
Speaker 1: We're talking Kevin Bacon, right, and there's a six degrees
2:49
Speaker 1: joke in there somewhere. Um, I imagine Kiras Sedgewick, since
2:53
Speaker 1: Kevin Bacon is in there, Jaja Gabor Spielberg, Spielberg, And
2:58
Speaker 1: that's just like the tip of the iceberg, right. I mean,
3:00
Speaker 1: thousands and thousands of people were invested with this guy
3:03
Speaker 1: and it turned out he was a Ponzi schemer. That's right.
3:07
Speaker 1: It's a Ponzi scheme. Yeah, Chuck likes to say it
3:10
Speaker 1: like that in a tribute to the Italian immigrant Mr
3:14
Speaker 1: Charles Ponzi, who was running around in the twenties. And actually, yeah,
3:20
Speaker 1: you want to talk a little bit about Mr Ponzi, Yeah,
3:23
Speaker 1: I didn't know this until I read the article. Is
3:24
Speaker 1: pretty interesting, and you know, Ponce's all over the news,
3:26
Speaker 1: so it's kind of cool to get some background. Yeah. Oh,
3:29
Speaker 1: and also we should probably say thanks to all the
3:30
Speaker 1: people who wrote in and requested that we do this podcast.
3:33
Speaker 1: This one's for you. Right. Bernie Madoff made off excuse
3:36
Speaker 1: me himself, wrote in Yeah he did. He's like, hey,
3:38
Speaker 1: can you tell everybody what I did? So, Yeah, in
3:41
Speaker 1: the nineties, Charles Poncey. What he did was at the
3:45
Speaker 1: time there was if you want to send mail overseas,
3:49
Speaker 1: you would include what was called an international reply cupon
3:52
Speaker 1: well if you wanted to reply, right. But it's basically
3:55
Speaker 1: sort of like, uh, when you get something from you know,
3:57
Speaker 1: magazine and the postage is prepaid to short in the card,
4:00
Speaker 1: you know, right, it's it's prepaid so that you get
4:03
Speaker 1: that back to say, hey, these people got that exactly right,
4:06
Speaker 1: So this is what you did back then. Uh. He
4:09
Speaker 1: had an idea. He said, Hey, if I go over
4:12
Speaker 1: and buy these in a different country where they're cheaper,
4:15
Speaker 1: I can come back and sell them in the United States, right,
4:17
Speaker 1: And he could do this because these things were internationally recognized.
4:20
Speaker 1: There was same in any country. But apparently they went
4:23
Speaker 1: for different prices in different countries, so it's not a
4:25
Speaker 1: bad business model, right right, I would say so. Uh,
4:28
Speaker 1: And things went pretty well at first. He got a
4:30
Speaker 1: lot of investors and made some pretty good money. But
4:33
Speaker 1: the return that he promised, which what was it again,
4:36
Speaker 1: it was a ridiculous promise. It was I think return
4:39
Speaker 1: in forty to ninety days. So yeah, that should have
4:42
Speaker 1: been a red flag right then we'll talk about that later.
4:45
Speaker 1: But yeah, that didn't go as well as he thought. Um,
4:48
Speaker 1: but he kept getting investors and he just kind of
4:50
Speaker 1: kept this all quiet. So what he would do is
4:52
Speaker 1: he would payback some to the initial investors based on
4:55
Speaker 1: the money that the current investors were giving him, and
4:59
Speaker 1: just kind of kept going in a cyclical way until
5:02
Speaker 1: he had a lot of He started, you know, taking
5:04
Speaker 1: a little money for himself and uh ended up having
5:07
Speaker 1: you know, millions of bucks office in the nineteen twenties
5:09
Speaker 1: before it finally crumbled. Um as a big scan. Well,
5:13
Speaker 1: the reason he was found out was because somebody apparently
5:17
Speaker 1: calculated that um, there would have had to have been
5:20
Speaker 1: about a hundred and sixty million of these things extant
5:23
Speaker 1: for him to be making the money he was making,
5:26
Speaker 1: and the problem is that there was only twenty seven thousand.
5:29
Speaker 1: That's that's kind of what found him out. But what
5:31
Speaker 1: I got from this, what I got from reading about
5:32
Speaker 1: Ponzi schemes, is that, Um, Charles Ponzi didn't appear to
5:37
Speaker 1: be a huckster from the outset like he This is
5:41
Speaker 1: actually a legitimate business that he was trying to run. Sure,
5:45
Speaker 1: I think it was an act of desperation. Um, And well,
5:49
Speaker 1: we should probably talk about exactly how Ponzi schemes work. Right,
5:53
Speaker 1: they're pretty straightforward and simple. But I can't imagine that
5:56
Speaker 1: as they just get bigger and bigger, you start to
5:58
Speaker 1: eat a lot of rolaids. Right. I bet that that
6:01
Speaker 1: was the original Ponzi scheme, and I'm sure he was
6:03
Speaker 1: nervous as that was going if scheme scheme very nice.
6:08
Speaker 1: So do you want to give some detailed explanation on
6:11
Speaker 1: how Ponzi schemes work? Yeah, it's actually pretty simple. What
6:15
Speaker 1: you do is you, um, you come up with an
6:20
Speaker 1: investment a shell sort of, and you get people to
6:24
Speaker 1: invest in You're in whatever you're saying you're gonna invest in.
6:28
Speaker 1: In this case and in the original Ponzi scheme, it
6:30
Speaker 1: was these reply coupons, but nowadays it's usually like a
6:34
Speaker 1: stock thing. So you get these folks to invest, and
6:37
Speaker 1: you take their money and essentially, uh use that first
6:41
Speaker 1: rung of people to attract other people to invest. And
6:45
Speaker 1: once you start getting other investors, you can pay back
6:47
Speaker 1: those initial folks and they can go on record and say, oh, yeah,
6:50
Speaker 1: you know I made a great return. That's right. And
6:52
Speaker 1: then that more investors right and more wrongs, and you
6:56
Speaker 1: just kind of it's sort of like robbing Peter to
6:58
Speaker 1: pay Paul the entire your time, right, but you're pocketing
7:02
Speaker 1: like Ponzi did some for himself. Right. At a certain point,
7:05
Speaker 1: you can start skimming off the top, right. And but
7:07
Speaker 1: it's not like it take the money and run proposition.
7:09
Speaker 1: It's to take the money, stick around and pay people
7:11
Speaker 1: off as much as you can. The problem is is
7:14
Speaker 1: to like, people don't divest very easily. When they get
7:18
Speaker 1: a better and unbelievable return on something, they want to
7:21
Speaker 1: keep investing. Sure, So if you're like, no, no, you
7:23
Speaker 1: can't invest anymore, Uh, the people are gonna start to
7:26
Speaker 1: get suspicious. So you've got your first wrong, You've got
7:28
Speaker 1: your second wrong. And then so on and so on
7:30
Speaker 1: and so on. But to sustain it, you have to
7:32
Speaker 1: keep adding more and more wrongs. But the more wrongs
7:35
Speaker 1: you add, more difficult it is to pay everybody back.
7:38
Speaker 1: So it's inevitable. But as some people will know they're
7:42
Speaker 1: investing in a Ponzi scheme, some of those first wrong people. Yeah,
7:45
Speaker 1: and yeah, from what I understand, people can actually make
7:49
Speaker 1: money off Ponzi schemes. You get in early enough, and
7:51
Speaker 1: you're smart enough to get out while they getting is
7:53
Speaker 1: good because those are the people are gonna get paid first,
7:56
Speaker 1: so they can vouch and say this is a really
7:58
Speaker 1: great deal, right exactly. So yeah, so the whole that
8:01
Speaker 1: that's pretty much a Ponzi scheme. And if it sounds
8:03
Speaker 1: a lot like a pyramid scheme, do you you would
8:05
Speaker 1: be right. Uh, it's virtually the same structure. The one
8:09
Speaker 1: big difference is is that in a Ponzi scheme, you're
8:11
Speaker 1: not asked to do anything. You're just an investor. They
8:14
Speaker 1: just want your money. Uh. In a pyramid scheme, generally
8:17
Speaker 1: you have to do something like you are buying in
8:20
Speaker 1: uh to sell something? Sorry, well no, actually, um on
8:24
Speaker 1: Amway site, they have uh like on an f a
8:28
Speaker 1: Q section. It's like, is am Way a pyramid scheme?
8:31
Speaker 1: And they're like, we're a pyramid model. Schemes the wrong
8:34
Speaker 1: word to use, And actually the pyramid model has worked
8:38
Speaker 1: for legitimate businesses Amway, Mary kay Avon, Um pamper Chef.
8:45
Speaker 1: So yeah, so I mean it can work and it
8:48
Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily have to be illegal. That that that's the
8:51
Speaker 1: other distinction between Ponzi schemes and um pyramids models is
8:56
Speaker 1: that Ponzi schemes are always fraud completely faults because it's
9:00
Speaker 1: an investment, but the money's never invested. So it's so simple.
9:04
Speaker 1: When I read this, I was just like, it's the
9:07
Speaker 1: beauty is in its simplicity, Just like, give me a
9:09
Speaker 1: bunch of money and I will keep it and get
9:12
Speaker 1: more people to give me money. I'll give you a
9:14
Speaker 1: little bit, and it's just amazing how that works. Can
9:16
Speaker 1: you imagine being such an edgy, savvy investor that you
9:19
Speaker 1: actually knowingly invest in ponzi schemes? Who does that? I
9:24
Speaker 1: don't know. I bet there's some names on the on
9:26
Speaker 1: the Maid off list. Yeah, I bet, I bet um,
9:29
Speaker 1: But no, he did everything alone. We'll get to him
9:31
Speaker 1: in a minute. Allegedly, not more, he confessed, buddy, Well,
9:35
Speaker 1: we're certain things are still alleged at this point. All right,
9:37
Speaker 1: well let's go with it. You're such a c o
9:39
Speaker 1: a dude. But I appreciate the oh because that includes me. Um.
9:44
Speaker 1: So Ponzi wasn't the guy who came up with a scheme.
9:47
Speaker 1: He he did it so well that they named it
9:50
Speaker 1: after him. But the earliest one we know about goes
9:53
Speaker 1: back to UH eighteen eighty early eighteen eighties in Boston
9:58
Speaker 1: with a woman named Sarah Howe. I don't think I
10:00
Speaker 1: know about this one, okay, So she actually actively and
10:04
Speaker 1: purposefully built a Ponzi scheme, although you know what, with
10:09
Speaker 1: it being forty years before Charles Ponzi showed up, she
10:11
Speaker 1: probably didn't call it that to herself. What was her name,
10:14
Speaker 1: Sarah how scheme? Yes, if she were, if she did
10:18
Speaker 1: have enough foresight to know that it would eventually be
10:20
Speaker 1: called a Ponzi scheme, how would it sound in her
10:23
Speaker 1: head when she said, this is the kind of scheme
10:25
Speaker 1: that I'm carrying out. It's a um Anyway, Miss Howe
10:32
Speaker 1: basically put together a m a group of thousands of
10:36
Speaker 1: women investors, and UH invested in women's um women's liberty bonds,
10:42
Speaker 1: I think is what they were called. Uh, that's supposedly
10:46
Speaker 1: what the investment was for, but no, it wasn't. She
10:49
Speaker 1: just basically carried out a Ponzi scheme UM and she
10:52
Speaker 1: managed to rake in about half a million bucks before
10:55
Speaker 1: she was caught. Uh. And then another guy shortly after
11:00
Speaker 1: the turn of the century. His name was William Franklin Miller,
11:03
Speaker 1: and he also builked investors for about another half a million.
11:08
Speaker 1: And this is, you know, substantial enough to be remembered
11:10
Speaker 1: a hundred years plus later. But Ponzi was the first one, right,
11:15
Speaker 1: Ponsi was the first big one, I should say. Uh.
11:18
Speaker 1: And then you don't really hear about anybody in in
11:20
Speaker 1: the world of Ponzi schemes. I mean, I'm sure you can,
11:22
Speaker 1: but nobody huge doing it right now. Well until Lou Pearlman.
11:28
Speaker 1: Is that where you're going? I was going to go
11:30
Speaker 1: to the Balkans first bolicity, Mr Pearlman. Okay, Yeah, this
11:32
Speaker 1: is one of my favorites because his associations are kind
11:35
Speaker 1: of funny. H Lou Pearlman, who I think you have
11:37
Speaker 1: to say his name like Lou Pearlman. That's how I
11:40
Speaker 1: got that impression as well. And he kind of looks
11:42
Speaker 1: like that kind of guy too. He was. He kind
11:45
Speaker 1: of funded the boy band craze in the nineties. And
11:47
Speaker 1: I remember the Backstreet Boys because of the tattoo you
11:50
Speaker 1: have on your neck, and uh, in Sync was the
11:53
Speaker 1: other one. I don't know if you have a tattoo
11:55
Speaker 1: of instinctly, okay, I was covering all my bases. Uh.
11:58
Speaker 1: So he funded these bands. Uh, And it turned out
12:01
Speaker 1: in two thousand six that he was running a big
12:04
Speaker 1: Ponzi scheme. He had been for like twenty years and
12:07
Speaker 1: a lot, you know, in Sync and the Backstreet Boys
12:09
Speaker 1: were kind of funded on this Ponzi schemes. I don't
12:11
Speaker 1: think funded kind of at all. I think they were
12:13
Speaker 1: fully fully funded. Yeah, and this this guy created the
12:16
Speaker 1: back Street Boys and in Sync and funded him with
12:19
Speaker 1: illegal money. So those yahoo's kind of oh Ponzi with
12:23
Speaker 1: their careers, yes they do. Yeah, well, their careers past tense,
12:28
Speaker 1: right sure? Um timber Lakes done well for himself? Was
12:31
Speaker 1: he in one of us? H J T I don't
12:33
Speaker 1: know who that is. Um. Right back to Albania, Yes,
12:37
Speaker 1: Albania basically a whole bunch of people were working this
12:41
Speaker 1: big ponzi scheme, which from what I understand also uh
12:45
Speaker 1: can extend the life of a ponzi scheme. Uh. Lou
12:47
Speaker 1: Perlman is an unusual animal, uh, and that he could
12:51
Speaker 1: carry it out single handedly for twenty years. Um. But
12:55
Speaker 1: in Albania, for a while a group of ponzi schemers
12:59
Speaker 1: UM had had one set up that builked these investors
13:04
Speaker 1: out of two billion dollars before it collapsed, which is
13:08
Speaker 1: in Albania, that is thirty of their gross domestic product.
13:12
Speaker 1: That's huge, Like how to cripple a country? Yeah yeah,
13:16
Speaker 1: and yeah, so yeah, I think Albania is probably second world. Um. So,
13:21
Speaker 1: I think a hit like that is just ginormous. And
13:23
Speaker 1: that was a big problem when it happened. It was
13:25
Speaker 1: because when people found out, they started riding in the
13:28
Speaker 1: streets and fires broke out and people died. Yeah yeah,
13:31
Speaker 1: So that's the Albania, the old Albania ponzi scheme. And
13:35
Speaker 1: we should note that Lou Pearlman he went to jail
13:38
Speaker 1: or received a sentence of twenty five years for conning
13:42
Speaker 1: three hundred million dollars, and apparently every million he paid back,
13:46
Speaker 1: they cut a month off of sentence, which seems really fair.
13:49
Speaker 1: I think so. But Pearlman million dollars sounds like a lot.
13:53
Speaker 1: It ain't it was. And then two thousand and eight
13:55
Speaker 1: came along the big daddy dude, this guy Bernard made Off,
14:01
Speaker 1: one of the founders of Nastak. Yeah, which is one
14:04
Speaker 1: reason why it works so well, because he was beyond
14:07
Speaker 1: legit He was beyond legit um. Although he his One
14:13
Speaker 1: of the other reasons he was so successful was that
14:15
Speaker 1: he was smart. First of all, like Sarah, how he
14:19
Speaker 1: used affinity fraud. An affinity fraud is where you are bilking.
14:24
Speaker 1: You're you're using the inclusiveness of a of a group
14:28
Speaker 1: to um against themselves, right, So he uh used his
14:33
Speaker 1: membership in a a uber wealthy, very exclusive Jewish country
14:37
Speaker 1: club down in Florida to prey on investors at first um.
14:41
Speaker 1: And you know, the affinity fraud happens a lot like
14:44
Speaker 1: and usually it happens with religious groups. Somebody comes in,
14:47
Speaker 1: it's like, hey, I'm a Lutheran two and I've got
14:49
Speaker 1: this great investment. Since he's a Lutheran, you know, he
14:52
Speaker 1: seems up standing, you trust him, and then that's that.
14:55
Speaker 1: But made Off very much used affinity fraud, at least
14:59
Speaker 1: at first, and then news of his amazing returns got out.
15:02
Speaker 1: But as I was saying, the reason he was so
15:04
Speaker 1: successful is he he didn't pull a Ponzi and say
15:07
Speaker 1: I'll get you fifty percent return in forty five days.
15:10
Speaker 1: You know, Uh, he offered reasonable. I think eleven percent
15:15
Speaker 1: was the average returns over the long haul, right, That
15:18
Speaker 1: was the key. It was very believable, well to an extent.
15:20
Speaker 1: Have you ever looked at our prospectus, the t RO
15:23
Speaker 1: price prospectus or prospectus. Yeah, have you ever noticed, like
15:28
Speaker 1: if you look at it like one year, three years,
15:30
Speaker 1: five years, ten years, and it'll be up at one
15:33
Speaker 1: year down, three years down, five years up. He was
15:36
Speaker 1: offering like a straight even kill eleven percent return. You
15:40
Speaker 1: couldn't lose, right, So that actually should have been a
15:43
Speaker 1: red flag, but it wasn't. Um And in two thousand one, Barons,
15:47
Speaker 1: the Financial rag they published a an article on him,
15:53
Speaker 1: specifically saying made Off can't be offering these returns. Mathematically speaking,
16:00
Speaker 1: this isn't possible. No one listened, But chief among the
16:04
Speaker 1: people who weren't listening was the SEC. Yeah, and they've
16:07
Speaker 1: been under a lot of fire lately. Because they did
16:09
Speaker 1: not listen. They did not investigate, even when it was
16:12
Speaker 1: kind of handed to them, like hey, several times, actually
16:15
Speaker 1: here there were like two or three formal complaints h
16:18
Speaker 1: to them and they never followed up. Well. One reason why,
16:21
Speaker 1: and this is even another reason why he was successful,
16:23
Speaker 1: is he was also running a legit business alongside it,
16:27
Speaker 1: so he could sort of defer, you know, when he
16:29
Speaker 1: needed to pay people back and things were getting tight,
16:31
Speaker 1: he could pull a little money out of his legit
16:33
Speaker 1: business and do that, and apparently did so promptly if
16:36
Speaker 1: somebody wanted to um withdrawal. Yeah, they got to check
16:40
Speaker 1: like that, no questions asked, Like when Kevin Bacon was like,
16:43
Speaker 1: we're heading to Barbados and I need a million dollars
16:45
Speaker 1: because I'm gonna buy a hut on the beach. Right,
16:48
Speaker 1: I'm trying to hide my wife from her shame for
16:50
Speaker 1: being in the closer right. Yeah. Um so yeah, made
16:55
Speaker 1: Off was very, very successful, to the tune of what
16:57
Speaker 1: twenty to fifty billion dollars he made off. I know
17:00
Speaker 1: he's got the perfect name for it. I should have
17:02
Speaker 1: been like, wait, what's your last name? Though I'm not
17:04
Speaker 1: investing that. Every headline has already used that, so that's
17:07
Speaker 1: probably stale by now. Yeah, thanks for that, Chuck. So
17:09
Speaker 1: what what can you do? Chuck? How do you stay
17:11
Speaker 1: out of a Ponzi scheme unless you're a very savvy
17:13
Speaker 1: investor who's totally unconscionable. Well, uh, there's a few things
17:17
Speaker 1: you can look for, um. And and it also should
17:20
Speaker 1: be noted that a ponzi scheme is pretty much a
17:23
Speaker 1: one way street to collapse. There's really no way to
17:27
Speaker 1: pull it off in the long run sustainable unless I
17:29
Speaker 1: think a lot of people might start these and think, well,
17:31
Speaker 1: I can get out at a certain point, pay everyone
17:33
Speaker 1: back and make a lot of money. Um. But yeah,
17:35
Speaker 1: it's it's not a good working model in the end. Well,
17:38
Speaker 1: apparently the point to a ponzi schemers to keep it
17:40
Speaker 1: going until they die. Yeah, which is considered a big
17:43
Speaker 1: success because you live like a billionaire and then uh,
17:47
Speaker 1: at the end, you know you die or you know,
17:49
Speaker 1: you off yourself. Speaking of that, did you know that
17:53
Speaker 1: um after he was found out made off with spending
17:56
Speaker 1: a hundred and sixty grand a month on personal security? Ah? Yeah,
18:04
Speaker 1: do you know how many in Manhattan? Do you know
18:06
Speaker 1: how many bodyguards that buys you. That's like delta force money.
18:09
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, uh so, yeah, some things you can look for. Um.
18:14
Speaker 1: The obvious, of course is if it sounds too good
18:17
Speaker 1: to be true, it is. That's the oldest adage in
18:19
Speaker 1: the book, and it's true across the board. Uh So,
18:22
Speaker 1: someone's making you promises on big returns, then you should
18:26
Speaker 1: probably turn around and walk away. Don't let anyone pressure
18:29
Speaker 1: you into doing well. Pressure that's another point too, is
18:32
Speaker 1: I mean, it's usually going to be a high pressure pitch,
18:34
Speaker 1: like you have a very limited time window maybe for
18:37
Speaker 1: as long as the person standing there, um, and you're
18:39
Speaker 1: made to feel like a jackass if you don't take
18:42
Speaker 1: them up on it. Um. But yeah, yeah, pressure is
18:45
Speaker 1: definitely one one of the factors. And even one like
18:49
Speaker 1: you said that uh like made off scam where he
18:53
Speaker 1: would not promise huge returns, that might make it a
18:56
Speaker 1: little more believable. But everything, like you said, fluctuates, So
19:00
Speaker 1: if it's a consistent even if it's a consistent like
19:03
Speaker 1: five growth for years, then that should be a red
19:07
Speaker 1: flag right there. And also you should um ask questions
19:10
Speaker 1: and and demand answers as well, because I mean, if
19:13
Speaker 1: you're just if you have a friend who has a
19:15
Speaker 1: friend that has this great investment and you cut him
19:18
Speaker 1: a check and it turns out to be a Ponzi scheme. Well,
19:20
Speaker 1: t s for you. That was a stupid thing to do.
19:23
Speaker 1: You should know what your money is being invested in.
19:26
Speaker 1: You should know who's investing it. You should and even
19:29
Speaker 1: if it's legitimate, you should be asking these questions if
19:31
Speaker 1: it's through any of the major brokerages, by out how
19:34
Speaker 1: many fees there are. Just just that's a good habit
19:37
Speaker 1: no matter what. Uh. And the other thing is um
19:40
Speaker 1: even if you're involved in a Ponzi scheme, even if
19:43
Speaker 1: you get sucked in, uh, you should never it should
19:46
Speaker 1: never break you and leave you bankrupt. Excellent point, Chuck,
19:49
Speaker 1: because this is probably the most impotant important point. Well, now,
19:52
Speaker 1: I say diversification is a key to a good portfolio,
19:55
Speaker 1: and this is definitely true here. You should not invest
19:57
Speaker 1: all your money in one thing. You just setting yourself
20:00
Speaker 1: up for bankruptcy. And whether it's a Ponzi scheme or not.
20:03
Speaker 1: Because you do all real estate and you're just totally
20:06
Speaker 1: invested in real estate in two thousand and seven, you're
20:09
Speaker 1: in big trouble. I mean, even Donald Trump, Uh, hit
20:13
Speaker 1: the lowest of the lows at one point we all forget.
20:15
Speaker 1: I think he's lost a lot of his old edge
20:17
Speaker 1: that he used to have. He's made some bad decisions
20:20
Speaker 1: like the TV show. Sure no one needs to see that,
20:22
Speaker 1: you know. And if you if you do find yourself
20:25
Speaker 1: in a Ponzi scheme and you're not the type to
20:28
Speaker 1: take the law into your own hands with like a
20:29
Speaker 1: tire iron or anything like that, you could always contact
20:32
Speaker 1: the SEC. I don't know that they'll do anything, and
20:34
Speaker 1: they probably won't, but it's worth a shot anyway, right right, Oh,
20:38
Speaker 1: and we should just as a sidebar here, I know
20:40
Speaker 1: that Madeoff did confess, but they are. There's a SEC
20:45
Speaker 1: is still coming under fire because he's claiming that he
20:47
Speaker 1: acted alone and didn't have any help with this, which
20:50
Speaker 1: is really really hard to believe, just because paperwork alone
20:54
Speaker 1: for scheme this size would be huge. And uh, some
20:59
Speaker 1: people think out there that he probably had his family
21:01
Speaker 1: involved and then did everything he could to cover for
21:04
Speaker 1: them and take the hits right yet to come out. Well. Also,
21:06
Speaker 1: even if they weren't involved, their salary came directly from
21:09
Speaker 1: the bilking of other people, even if they somehow we're
21:12
Speaker 1: just totally unaware of it. You know, it makes it
21:15
Speaker 1: kind of I don't know, it puts it puts their
21:18
Speaker 1: own wealth in question, right, So yeah, so that's a
21:21
Speaker 1: Ponzi schemes. That was very good, Chuck, Thank you, Chuck.
21:23
Speaker 1: Last time I'll say that. Are we are we going
21:25
Speaker 1: to talk about our spoken word album? Yes? Yeah, and
21:29
Speaker 1: then maybe we'll talk about blogs and then listener mail
21:32
Speaker 1: stick around. All right, So we do have a spoken
21:35
Speaker 1: word album, our first one, and it is about the
21:38
Speaker 1: economy and economics. Everyone knows that we are in the
21:42
Speaker 1: second Great Depression, and um, we just kind of decided
21:47
Speaker 1: to make a spoken word album about that. That that's
21:51
Speaker 1: such a an off a slightly off kilter description. It's
21:57
Speaker 1: more like a guide, right right, possibly a guide to
22:01
Speaker 1: the economy, that's what it's called. But it's very big, right,
22:04
Speaker 1: Like there's a lot of stuff in it, right. Yes,
22:07
Speaker 1: it's called the Stuff you should Know, super Stuffed Guy
22:09
Speaker 1: to the Economy, and it's got expert interviews. Josh and
22:13
Speaker 1: I get out of studio, we go in uh around
22:15
Speaker 1: the working Farm, chicken Farm, don't spoil it. And Jerry
22:19
Speaker 1: are awesome producer. She did excellent sound design and it's
22:23
Speaker 1: got more bells and whistles, and it's it's definitely a
22:26
Speaker 1: cut above the silliness we do here each week. Yeah. Yeah,
22:29
Speaker 1: And you can find it by typing a super stuffed
22:33
Speaker 1: in the search bar iTunes. It's frankly chuck and I
22:37
Speaker 1: think it's worth it. I think so. So if you
22:39
Speaker 1: want to get it, knock yourself out, get it a
22:41
Speaker 1: couple of times if you like support us, Yeah, because
22:44
Speaker 1: it blows up your computer after four to eight hours,
22:46
Speaker 1: So unless you keep downloading it fresh each time, and
22:50
Speaker 1: I'm paying for it over and over again, not sure
22:51
Speaker 1: at all. All right, So there was that plug that
22:54
Speaker 1: was plugged the blog. Yes, we've been plugging the blog now.
22:56
Speaker 1: I hope you guys aren't sick of it yet. Um.
22:58
Speaker 1: But Josh and I blog a couple of times a day.
23:01
Speaker 1: He post once, I post once, and it's called stuff
23:04
Speaker 1: you should know. You can find it on the right
23:06
Speaker 1: hand side of our homepage at House of Works dot com.
23:09
Speaker 1: And we just cherry pick interesting news items and kind
23:12
Speaker 1: of like what we do here, except it may not
23:15
Speaker 1: be enough to flesh out of full show. So yeah,
23:17
Speaker 1: and a couple of times we've we've posted on listeners
23:20
Speaker 1: suggestions like why don't you guys do this? Actually? Um,
23:24
Speaker 1: so yeah, keep keep the ideas coming. We love them.
23:26
Speaker 1: We do it keeps us from having to do any
23:28
Speaker 1: real research. Just true, and you know what that leads
23:31
Speaker 1: us to listener mail time. That's right, Okay, Josh, this
23:37
Speaker 1: is an installment of stuff we should know, stuff we
23:40
Speaker 1: should have known. No, it's not, because sometimes it's additional things.
23:45
Speaker 1: Qu's saying that. This one is from Sarah, and Sarah
23:48
Speaker 1: wrote in UM about the word theory versus hypotheses. Sarah
23:54
Speaker 1: is a teacher, and we say all the time, someone's theory,
23:58
Speaker 1: someone's theory, and he says, we've been misusing it. She
24:02
Speaker 1: says in the thinking cap podcast you repleted, you repeatedly
24:05
Speaker 1: referenced theories about savantis um and left hemisphere damage, and
24:10
Speaker 1: scientifically speaking, these are not theories, their hypotheses. So her
24:14
Speaker 1: basic point is that a theory is not just an
24:16
Speaker 1: educated guest. It's h something that a lot of detail
24:20
Speaker 1: and research has gone into to get to the point
24:22
Speaker 1: where you can call it a theory, like the theory
24:25
Speaker 1: of evolution, which is often dismissed as oh, it's just
24:27
Speaker 1: a theory, but a theory is actually got a lot
24:30
Speaker 1: to it. So Sarah wanted us to set the record straight,
24:34
Speaker 1: so we did that. Another little minor correction here, josh
24:38
Speaker 1: said at one point we were the only country that
24:41
Speaker 1: uses uh, the imperial system. I thought we got this
24:44
Speaker 1: out of the way with the bodies on ever supodect,
24:47
Speaker 1: we did not officially U s Burma, Liberia and Myanmar.
24:52
Speaker 1: Myanmar and Burma are the same place, Okay, have it
24:55
Speaker 1: ever since the junta? It's now Myanmar? Look at you?
24:59
Speaker 1: So Rich from Omaha, Joshua from You, Claire Wisconsin, Stephen
25:04
Speaker 1: from Newark, Delaware, and Jeanne or Gene Gene. They all
25:09
Speaker 1: wrote in and told us that, and I have one
25:12
Speaker 1: more and I like this one. Stephanie wrote in and
25:14
Speaker 1: told us that on our afrods X podcast, we're talking
25:16
Speaker 1: about phallic symbol and fallacies, and we were talking about
25:20
Speaker 1: an oyster. Apparently there is a word for something that
25:24
Speaker 1: resembles the female genitalia. Yeah. I was interested to hear
25:26
Speaker 1: this because we kept saying female genitali. And I wish
25:29
Speaker 1: that she had written in before then. And we knew
25:31
Speaker 1: that phallus only represented the male genitalia, but I did
25:34
Speaker 1: not realize there was one for female. Yannick y o
25:38
Speaker 1: n I see and she said, Yannick or Yanni is
25:41
Speaker 1: Sanskrit for the word womb vulva in place of origin.
25:46
Speaker 1: And she said she just wanted to tell us this
25:47
Speaker 1: because for one of the first times in her life
25:49
Speaker 1: she actually knew something Yonnick. So thank you Stephanie for
25:52
Speaker 1: the Yeah, thanks Stephanie getting it. I'm processing it right now.
25:56
Speaker 1: So Yanni, canoa remember the famous tennis player? Yeah, I
25:59
Speaker 1: knew that there's any reference to female, genn tell you Odd.
26:02
Speaker 1: I don't wonder if he knows that. I'm sure sort
26:04
Speaker 1: of surely. But now, so, if you want to point
26:07
Speaker 1: out that there are other words Chuck and I are
26:09
Speaker 1: unfamiliar with, basically, let me know that I shouldn't call
26:13
Speaker 1: my crackpot theories theories but hypotheses instead, or just say hi.
26:18
Speaker 1: You can send us an email to Stuff podcast at
26:22
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com for moralness and thousands of
26:28
Speaker 1: other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com m
26:33
Speaker 1: brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
26:36
Speaker 1: It's ready, are you